[Illustration: [See p. 5 "'GOOD HEAVENS!' HE SAID. 'WHERE'S MY SISTER?'"]

 A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

 BY

 ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

 AUTHOR OF "THE MAIDS OF PARADISE" "CARDIGAN" "THE MAID-AT-ARMS" "THE KING IN YELLOW" ETC

 ILLUSTRATED

 NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1904

 Copyright, 1904, by ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. 

 _All rights reserved. _ Published October, 1904. 

 TO MARGERY

ILLUSTRATIONS

 "'GOOD HEAVENS!' HE SAID. 'WHERE'S MY SISTER?'" _Frontispiece_

 "'I LOVE YOU ENOUGH TO WAIT A MILLION YEARS!'" _Facing p. 20_

 "'I MEANT TO TAKE SOME FLOWERS, ANYWAY'" " 28

 "'HERE ARE THE VIOLETS; . .. I WILL TIE THEM TO YOUR COLLAR'" " 34

 "AWAY THEY WENT, KNEE-DEEP IN DRY SILVERY GRASSES" " 132

 "THERE WAS THAT IN BURLESON'S EYES THAT SOBERED HER" " 164

 "'I WISH YOU'D GIVE MARLITT ANOTHER CHANCE'" " 242

 "HE SAW HER THE MOMENT HE ENTERED THE WISTARIA ARBOR" " 250

CONTENTS

 PAGE A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 3

 A PILGRIM 23

 THE SHINING BAND 51

 ONE MAN IN A MILLION 95

 THE FIRE-WARDEN 123

 THE MARKET-HUNTER 171

 THE PATH-MASTER 197

 IN NAUVOO 223

 MARLITT'S SHOES 241

 PASQUE FLORIDA 263

A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY

 "Soyez tranquilles, mesdames. .. . Je suis un jeune homme pressé. .. . Mais modeste. "--LABICHE. 

At ten minutes before five in the evening the office doors of theFlorida and Key West Railway Company flew open, and a young man emergedin a hurry. 

Suit-case in one hand, umbrella in the other, he sped along the corridorto the elevator-shaft, arriving in time to catch a glimpse of thelighted roof of the cage sliding into depths below. 

"Down!" he shouted; but the glimmering cage disappeared, descendinguntil darkness enveloped it. 

Then the young man jammed his hat on his head, seized the suit-case andumbrella, and galloped down the steps. The spiral marble staircaseechoed his clattering flight; scrub-women heard him coming and fled; heleaped a pail of water and a mop; several old gentlemen flattenedthemselves against the wall to give him room; and a blond young personwith pencils in her hair lisped "Gee!" as he whizzed past and plungedthrough the storm-doors, which swung back, closing behind him with ahollow thwack. 

Outside in the darkness, gray with whirling snowflakes, he saw the wetlamps of cabs shining, and he darted along the line of hansoms andcoupés in frantic search for his own. 

"Oh, there you are!" he panted, flinging his suit-case up to asnow-covered driver. "Do your best now; we're late!" And he leaped intothe dark coupé, slammed the door, and sank back on the cushions, turningup the collar of his heavy overcoat. 

There was a young lady in the farther corner of the cab, buried to hernose in a fur coat. At intervals she shivered and pressed a fluffy muffagainst her face. A glimmer from the sleet-smeared lamps fell across herknees. 

Down-town flew the cab, swaying around icy corners, bumping overcar-tracks, lurching, rattling, jouncing, while its silent occupants, huddled in separate corners, brooded moodily at their respectivewindows. 

Snow blotted the glass, melting and running down; and over the waterypanes yellow light from shop windows played fantastically, distortingvision. 

Presently the young man pulled out his watch, fumbled for a match-box, struck a light, and groaned as he read the time. 

At the sound of the match striking, the young lady turned her head. Then, as the bright flame illuminated the young man's face, she sat boltupright, dropping the muff to her lap with a cry of dismay. 

He looked up at her. The match burned his fingers; he dropped it andhurriedly lighted another; and the flickering radiance brightened uponthe face of a girl whom he had never before laid eyes on. 

"Good heavens!" he said. "Where's my sister?"

The young lady was startled, but resolute. "You have made a dreadfulmistake, " she said; "you are in the wrong cab--"

The match went out; there came a brief moment of darkness, then the cabturned a corner, and the ghostly light of electric lamps played overthem in quivering succession. 

"Will you please stop this cab?" she said, unsteadily. "You havemistaken my cab for yours. I was expecting my brother. "

Stunned, he made no movement to obey. A sudden thrill of fear passedthrough her. 

"I must ask you to stop this cab, " she faltered. 

The idiotic blankness of his expression changed to acute alarm. 

"Stop this cab?" he cried. "Nothing on earth can induce me to stop thiscab!"

"You must!" she insisted, controlling her voice. "You must stop it atonce!"

"How can I?" he asked, excitedly; "I'm late now; I haven't one second tospare!"

"Do you refuse to leave this cab?"

"I beg that you will compose yourself--"

"Will you go?" she insisted. 

A jounce sent them flying towards each other; they collided andrecoiled, regarding one another in breathless indignation. 

"This is simply hideous!" said the young lady, seizing the door-handle. 

"Please don't open that door!" he said. She tried to wrench it open; thehandle stuck--or perhaps the strength had left her wrist. But it wasnot courage that failed, for she faced him, head held high, and--

"You coward!" she said. 

Over his face a deep flush burned--and it was a good face, too--youthfully wilful, perhaps, with a firm, clean-cut chin andpleasant eyes. 

"If I were a coward, " he said, "I'd stop this cab and get out. I neverfaced anything that frightened me half as much as you do!"

She looked him straight in the eyes, one hand twisting at the knob. 

"Don't you suppose that this mistake of mine is as humiliating andunwelcome to me as it is to you?" he said. "If you stop this cab it willruin somebody's life. Not mine--if it were my own life, I wouldn'thesitate. "

Her hand, still clasping the silver knob, suddenly fell limp. 

"You say that you are in a hurry?" she asked, with dry lips. 

"A desperate hurry, " he replied. 

"So am I, " she said, bitterly; "and, thanks to your stupidity, I mustmake the journey without my brother!"

There was a silence, then she turned towards him again:

"Where do you imagine this cab is going?"

"It's going to Cortlandt Street--isn't it?" Suddenly the recollectioncame to him that it was her cab, and that he had only told the driver todrive fast. 

The color left his face as he pressed it to the sleet-shot window. Fitful flickers of light, snow, darkness--that was all he could see. 

He turned a haggard countenance on her; he was at her mercy. But therewas nothing vindictive in her. 

"I also am going to Cortlandt Street; you need not be alarmed, " shesaid. 

The color came back to his cheeks. "I suppose, " he ventured, "that youare trying to catch the Eden Limited, as I am. "

"Yes, " she said, coldly; "my brother--" An expression of utter horrorcame into her face. "What on earth shall I do?" she cried; "my brotherhas my ticket and my purse!"

A lunge and a bounce sent them into momentary collision; a flare oflight from a ferry lantern flashed in their faces; the cab stopped and aporter jerked open the door, crying:

"Eden Limited? You'd better hurry, lady. They're closin' the gates now. "

They sprang out into the storm, she refusing his guiding arm. 

"What am I to do?" she said, desperately. "I _must_ go on that train, and I haven't a penny. "

"It's all right; you'll take my sister's ticket, " he said, hurriedlypaying the cabman. 

A porter seized their two valises from the box and dashed towards theferry-house; they followed to the turnstile, where the tickets wereclipped. 

"Now we've got to run!" he said. And off they sped, slipped through theclosing gates, and ran for the gang-plank, where their porter stoodmaking frantic signs for them to hasten. It was a close connection, butthey made it, to the unfeigned amusement of the passengers on deck. 

"Sa-ay!" drawled a ferry-hand, giving an extra twist to the wheel as thechains came clanking in, "she puts the bunch on the blink f'r a looker. Hey?"

"Plenty, " said his comrade; adding, after a moment's weary deliberation, "She's his tootsy-wootsy sure. B. And G. "

The two young people, who had caught the boat at the last second, stoodtogether, muffled to the eyes, breathing rapidly. She was casting tragicglances astern, where, somewhere behind the smother of snow, New Yorkcity lay; he, certain at last of his train, stood beside her, attemptingto collect his thoughts and arrange them in some sort of logicalsequence. 

But the harder he thought, the more illogical the entire episodeappeared. How on earth had he ever come to enter a stranger's cab anddrive with a stranger half a mile before either discovered thesituation? And what blind luck had sent the cab to the destination healso was bound for--and not a second to spare, either?

He looked at her furtively; she stood by the rail, her fur coat whitewith snow. 

"The poor little thing!" he thought. And he said: "You need not worryabout your section, you know. I have my sister's ticket for you. "

After a moment's gloomy retrospection he added: "When your brotherarrives to knock my head off I'm going to let him do it. "

She made no comment. 

"I don't suppose, " he said, "that you ever could pardon what I havedone. "

"No, " she said, "I never could. "

A brief interval passed, disturbed by the hooting of a siren. 

"If you had stopped the cab when I asked you to--" she began. 

"If I had, " he said, "neither you nor I could have caught this train. "

"If you had not entered my cab, I should have been here at this momentwith my brother, " she said. "Now I am here with you--penniless!"

He looked at her miserably, but she was relentless. 

"It is the cold selfishness of the incident that shocks me, " she said;"it is not the blunder that offended me--" She stopped short to give hima chance to defend himself; but he did not. "And now, " she added, "youhave reduced me to the necessity of--borrowing money--"

"Only a ticket, " he muttered. 

But she was not appeased, and her silence was no solace to him. 

After a few minutes he said: "It's horribly cold out here; would you notcare to go into the cabin?"

She shook her head, and her cheeks grew hot, for she had heard theobservations of the ferrymen as the boat left. She would freeze inobscurity rather than face a lighted cabin full of people. She looked atthe porter who was carrying their valises, and the dreadful idea seizedher that he, too, thought them bride and groom. 

Furious, half frightened, utterly wretched, she dared not even look atthe man whose unheard-of stupidity had inflicted such humiliation uponher. 

Tears were close to her eyes; she swallowed, set her head high, andturned her burning cheeks to the pelting snow. 

Oh, he should rue it some day! When, how, where, she did not trouble tothink; but he should rue it, and his punishment should leave a memoryineffaceable. Pondering on his future tribulation, sternly immersed invisions of justice, his voice startled her:

"The boat is in. Please keep close to me. "

Bump! creak--cre--ak! bump! Then came the clank of wheel and chain, andthe crowded cabin, and pressing throngs which crushed her close to hisshoulder; and, "Please take my arm, " he said; "I can protect you betterso. "

A long, covered way, swarming with people, a glimpse of a street andwhirling snowflakes, an iron fence pierced by gates where gilt-and-blueofficials stood, saying, monotonously: "Tickets! Please show yourtickets. This way for the Palmetto Special. The Eden Limited on tracknumber three. "

"Would you mind holding my umbrella a moment?" he asked. 

She took it. 

He produced the two tickets and they passed the gate, following a porterwho carried their luggage. 

Presently their porter climbed the steps of a sleeping-car. She followedand sat down beside her valise, resting her elbow on the polishedwindow-sill, and her flushed cheek on her hand. 

He passed her and continued on towards the end of the car, where she sawhim engage in animated conversation with several officials. Theofficials shook their heads, and, after a while, he came slowly back towhere she sat. 

"I tried to exchange into another car, " he said. "It cannot be done. "

"Why do you wish to?" she asked, calmly. 

"I suppose you would--would rather I did, " he said. "I'll stay in thesmoker all I can. "

She made no comment. He stood staring gloomily at the floor. 

"I'm awfully sorry, " he said, at last. "I'm not quite as selfish as youthink. My--my younger brother is in a lot of trouble--down at St. Augustine. I couldn't have saved him if I hadn't caught this train. .. . Iknow you can't forgive me; so I'll say--so I'll ask permission to saygood-bye. "

"Don't--please don't go, " she said, faintly. 

He wheeled towards her again. 

"How on earth am I to dine if you go away?" she asked. "I've a thousandmiles to go, and I've simply got to dine. "

"What a stupid brute I am!" he said, between his teeth. "I try to bedecent, but I can't. I'll do anything in the world to spare you--indeedI will. Tell me, would you prefer to dine alone--"

"Hush! people are listening, " she said, in a low voice. "It's bad enoughto be taken for bride and groom, but if people in this car think we'vequarrelled I--I simply cannot endure it. "

"Who took us for--that?" he whispered, fiercely. 

"Those people behind you; don't look! I heard that horrid little boysay, 'B. And G. !' and others heard it. I--I think you had better sitdown here a moment. "

He sat down. 

"The question is, " she said, with heightened color, "whether it is lessembarrassing for us to be civil to each other or to avoid each other. Everybody has seen the porter bring in our luggage; everybody supposeswe are at least on friendly terms. If I go alone to the dining-car, andyou go alone, gossip will begin. I'm miserable enough now--my positionis false enough now. I--I cannot stand being stared at for thirty-sixhours--"

"If you say so, I'll spread the rumor that you're my sister, " hesuggested, anxiously. "Shall I?"

Even she perceived the fatal futility of that suggestion. 

"But when you take off your glove everybody will know we're notB. And G. , " he insisted. 

She hesitated; a delicate flush crept over her face; then she nervouslystripped the glove from her left hand and extended it. A plain gold ringencircled the third finger. "What shall I do?" she whispered. "I can'tget it off. I've tried, but I can't. "

"Does it belong there?" he asked, seriously. 

"You mean, am I married? No, no, " she said, impatiently; "it's mygrandmother's wedding-ring. I was just trying it on this morning--thismorning of all mornings! Think of it!"

She looked anxiously at her white fingers, then at him. 

"What do you think?" she asked, naïvely; "I've tried soap andcold-cream, but it won't come off. "

"Well, " he said, with a forced laugh, "Fate appears to be personallyconducting this tour, and it's probably all right--" He hesitated. "Perhaps it's better than to wear no ring--"

"Why?" she asked, innocently. "Oh! perhaps it's better, after all, to bemistaken for B. And G. Than for a pair of unchaperoned creatures. Isthat what you mean?"

"Yes, " he said, vaguely. 

There came a gentle jolt, a faint grinding sound, a vibrationincreasing. Lighted lanterns, red and green, glided past their window. 

"We've started, " he said. 

Then a negro porter came jauntily down the aisle, saying something in alow voice to everybody as he passed. And when he came to them he smiledencouragement and made an extra bow, murmuring, "First call for dinner, if you please, madam. "

They were the centre of discreet attention in the dining-car; andneither the ring on her wedding-finger nor their bearing and attitudetowards each other were needed to confirm the general conviction. 

He tried to do all he could to make it easy for her, but he didn't knowhow, or he never would have ordered rice pudding with a confidence thatset their own negro waiter grinning from ear to ear. 

She bit her red lips and looked out of the window; but the window, blackened by night and quicksilvered by the snow, was only a mirror fora very lovely and distressed face. 

Indeed, she was charming in her supposed rôle; their fellow-passengers'criticisms were exceedingly favorable. Even the young imp who hadpronounced them B. And G. With infantile unreserve appeared to beimpressed by her fresh, young beauty; and an old clergyman across theaisle beamed on them at intervals, and every beam was a benediction. 

As for them, embarrassment and depression were at first masked under apolite gayety; but the excitement of the drama gained on them;appearances were to be kept up in the rôles of a comedy absolutelyforced upon them; and that brought exhilaration. 

From mental self-absolution they ventured on mentally absolving eachother. Fate had done it! Their consciences were free. Their situationwas a challenge in itself, and to accept it must mean to conquer. 

Stirring two lumps of sugar into his cup of coffee, he looked upsuddenly, to find her gray eyes meeting his across the table. Theysmiled like friends. 

"Of what are you thinking?" she asked. 

"I was thinking that perhaps you had forgiven me, " he said, hopefully. 

"I have"--she frowned a little--"I _think_ I have. "

"And--you do not think me a coward?"

"No, " she said, watching him, chin propped on her linked fingers. 

He laughed gratefully. 

"As a matter of cold fact, " he observed, "if we had met anywhere intown--under other circumstances--there is no reason that I can see whywe shouldn't have become excellent friends. "

"No reason at all, " she said, thoughtfully. 

"And that reminds me, " he went on, dropping his voice and leaning acrossthe table, "I'm going to send back a telegram to my sister, and I fancyyou may wish to send one to your wandering brother. "

"I suppose I'd better, " she said. An involuntary shiver passed over her. "He's probably frantic, " she added. 

"Probably, " he admitted. 

"My father and mother are in Europe, " she observed. "I hope my brotherhasn't cabled them. "

"I think we'd better get those telegrams off, " he said, motioning thewaiter to bring the blanks and find pen and ink. 

They waited, gazing meditatively at each other. Presently he said:

"I'd like to tell you what it is that sends me flying down to Florida atan hour's notice. I think some explanation is due you--if it wouldn'tbore you?"

"Tell me, " she said, quietly. 

"Why, then, it's that headlong idiot of a brother of mine, " heexplained. "He's going to try to marry a girl he has only knowntwenty-four hours--a girl we never heard of. And I'm on my way to stopit!--the young fool!--and I'll stop it if I have to drag him home by theheels! Here's the telegram we got late this afternoon--a regularbombshell. " He drew the yellow bit of paper from his breast-pocket, unfolded it, and read:

 "'ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA. 

 "'I am going to marry to-morrow the loveliest girl in the United States. Only met her yesterday. Love at first sight. You'll all worship her! She's eighteen, a New-Yorker, and her name is Marie Hetherford. JIM. '"

He looked up angrily. "What do you think of that?" he demanded. 

"Think?" she stammered--"think?" She dropped her hands helplessly, staring at him. "Marie Hetherford is my sister!" she said. 

"Your--sister, " he repeated, after a long pause--"_your_ sister!"

She pressed a white hand to her forehead, clearing her eyes with agesture. 

"Isn't it too absurd!" she said, dreamily. "My sister sent us a telegramlike yours. Our parents are abroad. So my brother and I threw somethings into a trunk and--and started! Oh, did you _ever_ hear ofanything like this?"

"Your sister!" he repeated, dazed. "_My_ brother and _your_ sister. AndI am on my way to stop it; and you are on your way to stop it--"

She began to laugh--not hysterically, but it was not a natural laugh. 

"And, " he went on, "I've lost another sister in the shuffle, and you'velost another brother in the shuffle, and now there's a double-shuffledanced by you and me--"

"Don't. _Don't!_" she said, faint from laughter. 

"Yes, I will, " he said. "And I'll say more! I'll say that Destiny istaking exclusive charge of our two families, and it would not surpriseme if _your_ brother and _my_ sister were driving around New Yorktogether at this moment looking for us!"

Their laughter infected the entire dining-car; every waiter snickered;the _enfant terrible_ grinned; the aged minister of the Church ofEngland beamed a rapid fire of benedictions on them. 

But they had forgotten everybody except each other. 

"From what I hear and from what I know personally of your family, " shesaid, "it seems to me that they never waste much time about anything. "

"We are rather in that way, " he admitted. "I have been in a hurry fromthe time you first met me--and you see what my brother is going to do. "

"Going to do? Are you going to let him?"

"Let him?" He looked steadily at her, and she returned the gaze assteadily. "Yes, " he said, "I'm going to let him. And if I tried to stophim I'd get my deserts. I think I know my brother Jim. And I fancy itwould take more than his brother to drag him away from your sister. " Hehesitated a moment. "Is she like--like you?"

"A year younger--yes, we are alike. .. . And you say that you are going tolet him--marry her?"

"Yes--if you don't mind. "

The challenge was in his eyes, and she accepted it. 

"Is your brother Jim like you?"

"A year younger--yes. .. . May he marry her?"

She strove to speak easily, but to her consternation she choked, and thebright color dyed her face from neck to hair. 

This must not be: she must answer him. To flinch now would beimpossible--giving a double meaning and double understanding to abadinage light as air. Alas! _Il ne faut pas badiner avec l'amour!_ Thenshe answered, saying too much in an effort to say a little with carelessand becoming courage. 

"If he is like you, he may marry her. .. . I am glad he is your brother. "

The answering fire burned in his face; she met his eyes, and twice herown fell before their message. 

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, hot face between his hands; acareless attitude for others to observe, but a swift glance warned herwhat was coming--coming in a low, casual voice, checked at intervals asthough he were swallowing. 

"You are the most splendid girl I ever knew. " He dropped one hand andpicked up a flower that had slipped from her finger-bowl. "You are theonly person in the world who will not think me crazy for saying this. We're a headlong race. Will you marry me?"

She bent her head thoughtfully, pressing her mouth to her claspedfingers. Her attitude was repose itself. 

"Are you offended?" he asked, looking out of the window. 

There was a slight negative motion of her head. 

A party of assorted travellers rose from their table and passed them, smiling discreetly; the old minister across the aisle mused in hiscoffee-cup, caressing his shaven face with wrinkled fingers. Thedining-car grew very still. 

"It's in the blood, " he said, under his breath; "my grandparents eloped;my father's courtship lasted three days from the time he first met mymother--you see what my brother has done in twenty-four hours. .. . We dothings more quickly in these days. .. . Please--_please_ don't look sounhappy!"

"I--I am not unhappy. .. . I am willing to--hear you. You were sayingsomething about--about--"

"About love. "

"I--think so. Wait until those people pass!"

He waited, apparently hypnotized by the beauty of the car ceiling. Then: "Of course, if you were not going to be my sister-in-lawto-morrow, I'd not go into family matters. "

"No, of course not, " she murmured. 

So he gave her a brief outline of his own affairs, and she listened withbent head until there came the pause which was her own cue. 

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked, innocently. 

"It--it--why, because I love you. "

On common ground once more, she prepared for battle, but to herconsternation she found the battle already ended and an enemy calmlypreparing for her surrender. 

"But when--when do you propose to--to do this?" she asked, in anunsteady voice. 

"Now, " he said, firmly. 

"Now? Marry me at once?"

"I love you enough to wait a million years--but I won't. I alwaysexpected to fall in love; I've rather fancied it would come like thiswhen it came; and I swore I'd never let the chance slip by. We're aheadlong family--but a singularly loyal one. We love but once in ourlifetime; and when we love we know it. "

"Do you think that this is that one time?"

"There is no doubt left in me. "

"Then"--she covered her face with her hands, leaning heavily on thetable--"then what on earth are we to do?"

"Promise each other to love. "

"Do you promise?"

"Yes, I do promise, forever. Do you?"

She looked up, pale as a ghost. "Yes, " she said. 

"Then--please say it, " he whispered. 

Some people rose and left the car. She sat apparently buried incolorless reverie. Twice her voice failed her; he bent nearer; and--

"I love you, " she said. 

[Illustration: "'I LOVE YOU ENOUGH TO WAIT A MILLION YEARS!'"]

A PILGRIM

I

The servants had gathered in the front hall to inspect the newarrival--cook, kitchen-maid, butler, flanked on the right byparlor-maids, on the left by a footman and a small buttons. 

The new arrival was a snow-white bull-terrier, alert, ardent, quiveringin expectation of a welcome among these strangers, madly wagging hiswhiplike tail in passionate silence. 

When the mistress of the house at last came down the great stonestairway, the servants fell back in a semi-circle, leaving her face toface with the white bull-terrier. 

"So _that_ is the dog!" she said, in faint astonishment. A respectfulmurmur of assent corroborated her conclusion. 

The dog's eyes met hers; she turned to the servants with a perplexedgesture. 

"Is the brougham at the door?" asked the young mistress of the house. 

The footman signified that it was. 

"Then tell Phelan to come here at once. "

Phelan, the coachman, arrived, large, rosy, freshly shaven, admirablycorrect. 

"Phelan, " said the young mistress, "look at that dog. "

The coachman promptly fixed his eyes on the wagging bull-terrier. Inspite of his decorous gravity a smile of distinct pleasure slowly spreadover his square, pink face until it became a subdued simper. 

"Is that a well-bred dog, Phelan?" demanded the young mistress. 

"It is, ma'am, " replied Phelan, promptly. 

"Very well bred?"

"Very, ma'am. "

"Dangerous?"

"In a fight, ma'am. " Stifled enthusiasm swelled the veins in thecoachman's forehead. Triumphant pæans of praise for the bull-terriertrembled upon his lips; but he stood rigid, correct, a martyr to hisperfect training. 

"Say what you wish to say, Phelan, " prompted the young mistress, with ahasty glance at the dog. 

"Thanky, ma'am. .. . The bull is the finest I ever laid eyes on. .. . Hehasn't a blemish, ma'am; and the three years of him doubled will leavehim three years to his prime, ma'am. .. . And there's never another bull, nor a screw-tail, nor cross, be it mastiff or fox or whippet, ma'am, that can loose the holt o' thim twin jaws. .. . Beg pardon, ma'am, I knowthe dog. "

"You mean that you have seen that dog before?"

"Yes, ma'am; he won his class from a pup at the Garden. That is 'HisHighness, ' ma'am, Mr. Langham's champion three-year. "

She had already stooped to caress the silent, eager dog--timidly, because she had never before owned a dog--but at the mention of hismaster's name she drew back sharply and stood erect. 

"Never fear, ma'am, " said the coachman, eagerly; "he won't bite, ma'am--"

"Mr. Langham's dog?" she repeated, coldly; and then, without anotherglance at either the dog or the coachman, she turned to the front door;buttons swung it wide with infantile dignity; a moment later she was inher brougham, with Phelan on the box and the rigid footman expectant atthe window. 

II

Seated in a corner of her brougham, she saw the world pass on flashingwheels along the asphalt; she saw the April sunshine slanting acrossbrown-stone mansions and the glass-fronted façades of shops; . .. Shelooked without seeing. 

So Langham had sent her his dog! In the first year of her widowhood shehad first met Langham; she was then twenty-one. In the second year ofher widowhood Langham had offered himself, and, with the declaration onhis lips, had seen the utter hopelessness of his offer. They had not metsince then. And now, in the third year of her widowhood, he offered herhis dog!

She had at first intended to keep the dog. Knowing nothing of animals, discouraged from all sporting fads by a husband who himself was devotedto animals dedicated to sport, she had quietly acquiesced in herhusband's dictum that "horse-women and dog-women made a man ill!"--andso dismissed any idea she might have entertained towards the harboringof the four-footed. 

A miserable consciousness smote her: why had she allowed the memory ofher husband to fade so amazingly in these last two months of earlyspring? Of late, when she wished to fix her thoughts upon her latehusband and to conjure his face before her closed eyes, she found thatthe mental apparition came with more and more difficulty. 

Sitting in a corner of her brougham, the sharp rhythm of her horses'hoofs tuning her thoughts, she quietly endeavored to raise thatcherished mental spectre, but could not, until by hazard she rememberedthe portrait of her husband hanging in the smoking-room. 

But instantly she strove to put that away; the portrait was by Sargent, a portrait she had always disliked, because the great painter hadpainted an expression into her husband's face which she had never seenthere. An aged and unbearable aunt of hers had declared that Sargentpainted beneath the surface; she resented the suggestion, because whatshe read beneath the surface of her husband's portrait sent hot bloodinto her face. 

Thinking of these things, she saw the spring sunshine gilding the graybranches of the park trees. Here and there elms spread tinted withgreen; chestnuts and maples were already in the full glory of newleaves; the leafless twisted tangles of wistaria hung thick with scentedpurple bloom; everywhere the scarlet blossoms of the Japanese quinceglowed on naked shrubs, bedded in green lawns. 

Her husband had loved the country. .. . There was one spot in the worldwhich he had loved above all others--the Sagamore Angling Club. She hadnever been there. But she meant to go. Probably to-morrow. .. . And beforeshe went she must send that dog back to Langham. 

At the cathedral she signalled to stop, and sent the brougham back, saying she would walk home. And the first man she met was Langham. 

III

There was nothing extraordinary in it. His club was there on the corner, and it was exactly his hour for the club. 

"It is so very fortunate . .. For me, " he said. "I did want to seeyou. .. . I am going north to-morrow. "

"Of course it's about the dog, " she said, pleasantly. 

He laughed. "I am so glad that you will accept him--"

"But I can't, " she said; . .. "and thank you so much for asking me. "

For a moment his expression touched her, but she could not permitexpressions of men's faces to arouse her compunction, so she turned hereyes resolutely ahead towards the spire of the marble church. 

He walked beside her in silence. 

"I also am going north to-morrow, " she said, politely. 

He did not answer. 

Every day since her widowhood, every day for three years, she haddecided to make that pilgrimage . .. Some time. And now, crossing UnionSquare on that lovely afternoon late in April, she knew that the timehad come. Not that there was any reason for haste. . .. At the vaguethought her brown eyes rested a moment on the tall young man besideher. .. . 

Yes . .. She would go . .. To-morrow. 

A vender of violets shuffled up beside them; Langham picked up a dewybundle of blossoms, and their perfume seemed to saturate the air till ittasted on the tongue. 

She shook her head. "No, no, please; the fragrance is too heavy. ". .. 

"Won't you accept them?" he inquired, bluntly. 

Again she shook her head; there was indecision in the smile, assent inthe gesture. However, he perceived neither. 

She took a short step forward. The wind whipped the fountain jet, and afanlike cloud of spray drifted off across the asphalt. Then they movedon together. 

Presently she said, quietly, "I believe I will carry a bunch of thoseviolets;" and she waited for him to go back through the fountain spray, find the peddler, and rummage among the perfumed heaps in the basket. "Because, " she added, cheerfully, as he returned with the flowers, "I amgoing to the East Tenth Street Mission, and I meant to take someflowers, anyway. "

"If you would keep that cluster and let me send the whole basket to yourmission--" he began. 

But she had already started on across the wet pavement. 

"I did not know you were going to give my flowers to those cripples, " hesaid, keeping pace with her. 

[Illustration: "'I MEANT TO TAKE SOME FLOWERS, ANYWAY'"]

"Do you mind?" she asked, but she had not meant to say that, and shewalked a little more quickly to escape the quick reply. 

"I want to ask you something, " he said, after a moment's brisk walking. "I wish--if you don't mind--I wish you would walk around the square withme--just once--"

"Certainly not, " she said; "and now you will say good-bye--because youare going away, you say. " She had stopped at the Fourth Avenue edge ofthe square. "So good-bye, and thank you for the beautiful dog, and forthe violets. "

"But you won't keep the dog, and you won't keep the violets, " he said;"and, besides, if you are going north--"

"Good-bye, " she repeated, smiling. 

"--besides, " he went on, "I would like to know where you are going. "

"That, " she said, "is what I do not wish to tell you--or anybody. "

There was a brief silence; the charm of her bent head distracted him. 

"If you won't go, " she said, with caprice, "I will walk once around thesquare with you, but it is the silliest thing I have ever done in myentire life. "

"Why won't you keep the bull-terrier?" he asked, humbly. 

"Because I'm going north--for one reason. "

"Couldn't you take His Highness?"

"No--that is, I could, but--I can't explain--he would distract me. "

"Shall I take him back, then?"

"Why?" she demanded, surprised. 

"I--only I thought if you did not care for him--" he stammered. "Yousee, I love the dog. "

She bit her lip and bent her eyes on the ground. Again he quickened hispace to keep step with her. 

"You see, " he said, searching about for the right phrase, "I wanted youto have something that I could venture to offer you--er--something notvaluable--er--I mean not--er--"

"Your dog is a very valuable champion; everybody knows that, " she said, carelessly. 

"Oh yes--he's a corker in his line; out of Empress by Ameer, you know--"

"I might manage . .. To keep him . .. For a while, " she observed, withoutenthusiasm. "At all events, I shall tie my violets to his collar. "

He watched her; the roar of Broadway died out in his ears; in hers itgrew, increasing, louder, louder. A dim scene rose unbidden before hereyes--the high gloom of a cathedral, the great organ's first unsteadythrobbing--her wedding-march! No, not that; for while she stood, coldlytransfixed in centred self-absorption, she seemed to see a shapelessmass of wreaths piled in the twilight of an altar--the dreadful pomp andpanoply and circumstance of death--

She raised her eyes to the man beside her; her whole being vibrated withthe menace of a dirge, and in the roar of traffic around her she divinedthe imprisoned thunder of the organ pealing for her dead. 

She turned her head sharply towards the west. 

"What is it?" he asked, in the voice of a man who needs no answer to hisquestion. 

She kept her head steadily turned. Through Fifteenth Street the sunpoured a red light that deepened as the mist rose from the docks. Sheheard the river whistles blowing; an electric light broke out throughthe bay haze. 

It was true she was thinking of her husband--thinking of him almostdesperately, distressed that already he should have become to hernothing more vital than a memory. 

Unconscious of the man beside her, she stood there in the red glow, straining eyes and memory to focus both on a past that receded andseemed to dwindle to a point of utter vacancy. 

Then her husband's face grew out of vacancy, so real, so living, thatshe started--to find herself walking slowly past the fountain withLangham at her side. 

After a moment she said: "Now we have walked all around the square. NowI am going to walk home; . .. And thank you . .. For my walk, . .. Whichwas probably as wholesome a performance as I could have indulged in--andquite unconventional enough, even for you. "

They faced about and traversed the square, crossed Broadway in silence, passed through the kindling shadows of the long cross-street, and turnedinto Fifth Avenue. 

"You are very silent, " she said, sorry at once that she had said it, uncertain as to the trend his speech might follow, and withal curious. 

"It was only about that dog, " he said. 

She wondered if it was exactly that, and decided it was not. It was not. He was thinking of her husband as he had known him--only by sight and byreport. He remembered the florid gentleman perfectly; he had often seenhim tooling his four; he had seen him at the traps in Monte Carlo, dividing with the best shot in Italy; he had seen him riding to hounds afew days before that fatal run of the Shadowbrook Hunt, where he hadtaken his last fence. Once, too, he had seen him at the Sagamore AnglingClub up state. 

"When are you going?" he said, suddenly. 

"To-morrow. "

"I am not to know where?"

"Why should you?" and then, a little quickly: "No, no. It is apilgrimage. "

"When you return--" he began, but she shook her head. 

"No, . .. No. I do not know where I may be. "

In the April twilight the electric lamps along the avenue snappedalight. The air rang with the metallic chatter of sparrows. 

They mounted the steps of her house; she turned and swept the dim avenuewith a casual glance. 

"So you, too, are going north?" she asked, pleasantly. 

"Yes--to-night. "

She gave him her hand. She felt the pressure of his hand on her glovedfingers after he had gone, although their hands had scarcely touched atall. 

And so she went into the dimly lighted house, through the drawing-room, which was quite dark, into the music-room beyond; and there she sat downupon a chair by the piano--a little gilded chair that revolved as shepushed herself idly, now to the right, now to the left. 

Yes, . .. After all, she would go; . .. She would make that pilgrimage tothe spot on earth her husband loved best of all--the sweet waters of theSagamore, where his beloved club lodge stood, and whither, for a monthevery year, he had repaired with some old friends to renew a bachelor'slove for angling. 

She had never accompanied him on these trips; she instinctively divineda man's desire for a ramble among old haunts with old friends, freed fora brief space from the happy burdens of domesticity. 

The lodge on the Sagamore was now her shrine; there she would rest andthink of him, follow his footsteps to his best-loved haunts, wanderalong the rivers where he had wandered, dream by the streams where hehad dreamed. 

She had married her husband out of awe, sheer awe for his wonderfulpersonality. And he was wonderful; faultless in everything--though notso faultless as to be in bad taste, she often told herself. His_entourage_ also was faultless; and the general faultlessness ofeverything had made her married life very perfect. 

As she sat thinking in the darkened music-room, something stirred in thehallway outside. She raised her eyes; the white bull-terrier stood inthe lighted doorway, looking in at her. 

A perfectly incomprehensible and resistless rush of loneliness swept herto her feet; in a moment she was down on the floor again, on her silkenknees, her arms around the dog, her head pressed tightly to his head. 

"Oh, " she said, choking, "I must go to-morrow--I must--I must. .. . Andhere are the violets; . .. I will tie them to your collar. .. . Holdstill!. .. He loves you; . .. But you shall not have them--do youhear?. .. No, no, . .. For I shall wear them, . .. For I like their odor;. .. And, anyway, . .. I am going away. ". .. 

IV

The next day she began her pilgrimage; and His Highness went with her;and a maid from the British Isles. 

She had telegraphed to the Sagamore Club for rooms, to make sure, butthat was unnecessary, because there were at the moment only threemembers of the club at the lodge. 

Now although she herself could scarcely be considered a member of theSagamore Angling Club, she still controlled her husband's shares in theconcern, and she was duly and impressively welcomed by the steward. Twoof the three members domiciled there came up to pay their respects whenshe alighted from the muddy buckboard sent to the railway to meet her;they were her husband's old friends, Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, white-haired, purple-faced, well-groomed gentlemen in the early fifties. The third member was out in the rain fishing somewhere down-stream. 

"New man here, madam--a good fellow, but a bad rod--eh, Brent?"

"Bad rod, " repeated Major Brent, wagging his fat head. "Uses ferrules toa six-ounce rod. _We_ splice--eh, Colonel?"

"Certainly, " said the Colonel. 

[Illustration: "'HERE ARE THE VIOLETS; . .. I WILL TIE THEM TO YOURCOLLAR'"]

She stood by the open fire in the centre of the hallway, holding hershapely hands out towards the blaze, while her maid relieved her of thewet rain-coat. 

"Splice what, Colonel Hyssop, if you please?" she inquired, smiling. 

"Splice our rods, madam--no creaky joints and ferrules for old handslike Major Brent and me, ma'am. Do you throw a fly?"

"Oh no, " she said, with a faint smile. "I--I do nothing. "

"Except to remain the handsomest woman in the five boroughs!" said theMajor, with a futile attempt to bend at the waist--utterly unsuccessful, yet impressive. 

She dropped him a courtesy, then took the glass of sherry that thesteward brought and sipped it, meditative eyes on the blazing logs. Presently she held out the empty wine-glass; the steward took it on hisheavy silver salver; she raised her eyes. A half-length portrait of herhusband stared at her from over the mantel, lighted an infernal red inthe fire-glow. 

A catch in her throat, a momentary twitch of the lips, then she gazedcalmly up into the familiar face. 

Under the frame of the picture was written his full hyphenated name;following that she read:

 PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER OF THE SAGAMORE ANGLING CLUB 1880-1901

Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop observed her in decorously suppressedsympathy. 

"I did not know he was president, " she said, after a moment; "he nevertold me that. "

"Those who knew him best understood his rare modesty, " said Major Brent. "I knew him, madam; I honored him; I honor his memory. "

"He was not only president and founder, " observed Colonel Hyssop, "buthe owned three-quarters of the stock. "

"Are the shares valuable?" she asked. "I have them; I should be glad togive them to the club, Colonel Hyssop--in his memory. "

"Good gad! madam, " said the Colonel, "the shares are worth five thousandapiece!"

"I am the happier to give them--if the club will accept, " she said, flushing, embarrassed, fearful of posing as a Lady Bountiful beforeanybody. She added, hastily, "You must direct me in the matter, ColonelHyssop; we can talk of it later. "

Again she looked up into her husband's face over the mantel. 

Her bull-terrier came trotting into the hall, his polished nails andpadded feet beating a patter across the hardwood floor. 

"I shall dine in my own rooms this evening, " she said, smiling vaguelyat the approaching dog. 

"We hoped to welcome you to the club table, " cried the Major. 

"There are only the Major and myself, " added the Colonel, with courteousentreaty. 

"And the other--the new man, " corrected the Major, with a wry face. 

"Oh yes--the bad rod. What's his name?"

"Langham, " said the Major. 

The English maid came down to conduct her mistress to her rooms; the twogentlemen bowed as their build permitted; the bull-terrier trottedbehind his mistress up the polished stairs. Presently a door closedabove. 

"Devilish fine woman, " said Major Brent. 

Colonel Hyssop went to a mirror and examined himself with closeattention. 

"Good gad!" he said, irritably, "how thin my hair is!"

"Thin!" said Major Brent, with an unpleasant laugh; "thin as the hair ona Mexican poodle. "

"You infernal ass!" hissed the Colonel, and waddled off to dress fordinner. At the door he paused. "Better have no hair than a complexionlike a violet!"

"What's that?" cried the Major. 

The Colonel slammed the door. 

Up-stairs the bull-terrier lay on a rug watching his mistress withtireless eyes. The maid brought tea, bread and butter, and trout friedcrisp, for her mistress desired nothing else. 

Left alone, she leaned back, sipping her tea, listening to the milliontiny voices of the night. The stillness of the country made her nervousafter the clatter of town. Nervous? Was it the tranquil stillness of thenight outside that stirred that growing apprehension in her breast till, of a sudden, her heart began a deadened throbbing?

Langham here? What was he doing here? He must have arrived this morning. So that was where he was going when he said he was going north!

After all, in what did it concern her? She had not run away from town toavoid him, . .. Indeed not, . .. Her pilgrimage was her own affair. AndLangham would very quickly divine her pious impulse in coming here. .. . And he would doubtless respect her for it. .. . Perhaps have the subtletact to pack up his traps and leave. .. . But probably not. .. . She knew alittle about Langham, . .. An obstinate and typical man, . .. Doubtlessselfish to the core, . .. Cheerfully, naïvely selfish. .. . 

She raised her troubled eyes. Over the door was printed in gilt letters:

 THE PRESIDENT'S SUITE. 

Tears filled her eyes; truly they were kindly and thoughtful, these oldfriends of her husband. 

And all night long she slept in the room of her late husband, thepresident of the Sagamore Angling Club, and dreamed till daybreak of . .. Langham. 

V

Langham, clad in tweeds from head to foot, sat on the edge of his bed. 

He had been sitting there since daybreak, and the expression on hisornamental face had varied between the blank and the idiotic. That theonly woman in the world had miraculously appeared at Sagamore Lodge hehad heard from Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent at dinner the eveningbefore. 

That she already knew of his presence there he could not doubt. Thatshe did not desire his presence he was fearsomely persuaded. 

Clearly he must go--not at once, of course, to leave behind him apossibility for gossip at his abrupt departure. From the tongues ofinfants and well-fed club-men, good Lord deliver us!

He must go. Meanwhile he could easily avoid her. 

And as he sat there, savoring all the pent-up bitterness poured out forhim by destiny, there came a patter of padded feet in the hallway, thescrape of nails, a sniff at the door-sill, a whine, a franticscratching. He leaned forward and opened the door. His Highness landedon the bed with one hysterical yelp and fell upon Langham, paw andmuzzle. 

When their affection had been temporarily satiated, the dog lay down onthe bed, eyes riveted on his late master, and the man went over to hisdesk, drew a sheet of club paper towards him, found a pen, and wrote:

"Of course it is an unhappy coincidence, and I will go when I can do sodecently--to-morrow morning. Meanwhile I shall be away all day fishingthe West Branch, and shall return too late to dine at the club table. 

"I wish you a happy sojourn here--"

This he reread and scratched out. 

"I am glad you kept His Highness. "

This he also scratched out. 

After a while he signed his name to the note, sealed it, and steppedinto the hallway. 

At the farther end of the passage the door of her room was ajar; asunlit-scarlet curtain hung inside. 

"Come here!" said Langham to the dog. 

His Highness came with a single leap. 

"Take it to . .. Her, " said the man, under his breath. Then he turnedsharply, picked up rod and creel, and descended the stairs. 

Meanwhile His Highness entered his mistress's chamber, with a politescratch as a "by your leave!" and trotted up to her, holding out thenote in his pink mouth. 

She looked at the dog in astonishment. Then the handwriting on theenvelope caught her eye. 

As she did not offer to touch the missive, His Highness presently satdown and crowded up against her knees. Then he laid the letter in herlap. 

Her expression became inscrutable as she picked up the letter; while shewas reading it there was color in her cheeks; after she had read itthere was less. 

"I see no necessity, " she said to His Highness--"I see no necessity forhis going. I think I ought to tell him so. .. . He overestimates theimportance of a matter which does not concern him. .. . He is sublimelyself-conscious, . .. A typical man. And if he presumes to believe thatthe hazard of our encounter is of the slightest moment . .. To me . .. "

The dog dropped his head in her lap. 

"I wish you wouldn't do that!" she said, almost sharply, but there was adry catch in her throat when she spoke, and she laid one fair hand onthe head of His Highness. 

A few moments later she went down-stairs to the great hall, where shefound Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent just finishing their morningcocktails. 

When they could at last comprehend that she never began her breakfastwith a cocktail, they conducted her solemnly to the breakfast-room, seated her with _empressement_, and the coffee was served. 

It was a delicious, old-fashioned, country breakfast--crisp trout, bacon, eggs, and mounds of fragrant flapjacks. 

"Langham's gone off to the West Branch; left duty's compliments and allthat sort of thing for you, " observed the Colonel, testing his coffeewith an air. 

His Highness, who had sniffed the bacon, got up on a chair where hecould sit and view the table. Moisture gathered on his jet-black nose;he licked his jowl. 

"You poor darling!" cried his mistress, rising impulsively, with herplate in her hand. She set the plate on the floor. It was cleaned with asnap, then carefully polished. 

"You are fond of your dog, madam, " said the Major, much interested. 

"He's a fine one, " added the Colonel. "Gad! I took him for Langham'schampion at first. "

She bent her head over the dog's plate. 

Later she walked to the porch, followed by His Highness. 

A lovely little path invited them on--a path made springy by troddenleaves; and the dog and his mistress strolled forth among clumps ofhazel and silver-birches, past ranks of alders and Indian-willows, onacross log bridges spanning tiny threads of streams which poured intothe stony river. 

The unceasing chorus of the birds freshened like wind in her ears. Spring echoes sounded from blue distances; the solemn congress of theforest trees in session murmured of summers past and summers to come. 

How could her soul sink in the presence of the young world's uplifting?

Her dog came back and looked up into her eyes. With a cry, which washalf laughter, she raced with him along the path, scattering the wildbirds into flight from bush and thicket. 

Breathless, rosy, she halted at the river's shallow edge. 

Flung full length on the grass, she dipped her white fingers in theriver, and dropped wind-flowers on the ripples to watch them dance away. 

She listened to the world around her; it had much to say to her if shewould only believe it. But she forced her mind back to her husband andlay brooding. 

An old man in leggings and corduroys came stumping along the path; HisHighness heard him coming and turned his keen head. Then he went andstood in front of his mistress, calm, inquisitive, dangerous. 

"Mornin', miss, " said the keeper; "I guess you must be one of ourfolks. "

"I am staying at the club-house, " she said, smiling, and sitting up onthe grass. 

"I'm old Peter, one o' the guards, " he said. "Fine mornin', miss, but aleetle bright for the fish--though I ain't denyin' that a small darkfly'd raise 'em; no'm. If I was sot on ketchin' a mess o' fish, I guessa hare's-ear would do the business; yes'm. I jest passed Mr. Langhamdown to the forks, and I seed he was a-chuckin' a hare's-ear; an' he riz'em, too; yes'm. "

"How long have you been a keeper here?" she asked. 

"How long, 'm? Waal, I was the fustest guard they had; yes'm. I livedown here a piece. They bought my water rights; yes'm. An' they give methe job. The president he sez to me, 'Peter, ' he sez, jest likethat--'Peter, you was raised here; you know all them brooks an' riverslike a mink; you stay right here an' watch 'em, an' I'll do the squar'by ye, ' he sez, jest like that. An' he done it; yes'm. "

"So you knew the president, then?" she asked, in a low voice. 

"Knew him?--_him_? Yes'm. "

The old man laughed a hollow, toothless laugh, and squinted out acrossthe dazzling river. 

"Knew him twenty year, I did. A good man, and fair at that. Why, I'veseen him a-settin' jest where you're settin' this minute--seen him ahundred times a-settin' there. "

"Fishing?" she said, in an awed voice. 

"Sometimes. Sometimes he was a-drinkin' out o' that silver pocket-pistolo' his'n. He got drunk a lot up here; but he didn't drink alone; no'm. There wasn't a stingy hair in his head; he--"

"Do you mean the president?" she said, incredulously, almost angrily. 

"Him? Yes'm. Him an' Colonel Hyssop an' Major Brent; they had good timesin them days. "

"You knew the president _before_ his marriage, " she observed, coldly. 

"Him? He wasn't never married, miss!" said the old man, scornfully. 

"Are you sure?" she asked, with a troubled smile. 

"Sure? Yes'm. Why, the last time he was up here, three year come JulyFourth, I seen him a-kissin' an' a-huggin' of old man Dawson'sdarter--"

She was on her feet in a flash. The old man stood there smiling hissenile smile and squinting out across the water, absorbed in hisgarrulous reminiscence. 

"Yes'm; all the folks down to the village was fond o' the president, hewas that jolly and free, an' no stuck-up city airs; no'm; jest free andeasy, an' a-sparkin' the gals with the best o' them--"

The old man laughed and crossed his arms under the barrel of hisshot-gun. 

"Folks said he might o' married old man Dawson's darter if he'd lived. Idun'no'. I guess it was all fun. But I hear the gal took on awful whenthey told her he was dead; yes'm. "

VI

Towards evening Langham waded across the river, drew in his drippingline, put up his rod, and counted and weighed his fish. Then, lighting apipe, he reslung the heavy creel across his back and started up thedarkening path. From his dripping tweeds the water oozed; his shoeswheezed and slopped at every step; he was tired, soaked, successful--buthappy? Possibly. 

It was dark when the lighted windows of the lodge twinkled across thehill; he struck out over the meadow, head bent, smoking furiously. 

On the steps of the club-house Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent greetedhim with the affected heartiness of men who disliked his anglingmethods; the steward brought out a pan; the fish were uncreeled, reweighed, measured, and entered on the club book. 

"Finest creel this year, sir, " said the steward, admiringly. 

The Major grew purple; the Colonel carefully remeasured the largestfish. 

"Twenty-one inches, steward!" he said. "Wasn't my big fish of lastThursday twenty-two?"

"Nineteen, sir, " said the steward, promptly. 

"Then it shrank like the devil!" said the Colonel. "By gad! it must haveshrunk in the creel!"

But Langham was in no mood to savor his triumph. He climbed the stairswearily, leaving little puddles of water on each step, slopped down thehallway, entered his room, and sank into a chair, too weary, too sadeven to think. 

Presently he lighted his lamp. He dressed with his usual attention todetail, and touched the electric button above his bed. 

"I'm going to-morrow morning, " he said to the servant who came; "returnin an hour and pack my traps. "

Langham sat down. He had no inclination for dinner. With his chinpropped on his clinched hands he sat there thinking. A sound fell on hisear, the closing of a door at the end of the hall, the padded patteringof a dog's feet, a scratching, a whine. 

He opened his door; the bull-terrier trotted in and stood before him insilence. His Highness held in his mouth a letter. 

Langham took the note with hands that shook. He could scarcely steadythem to open the envelope; he could scarcely see to read the line:

"Why are you going away?"

He rose, made his way to his desk like a blind man, and wrote, "Because I love you. "

His Highness bore the missive away. 

For an hour he sat there in the lamp-lit room. The servant came to packup for him, but he sent the man back, saying that he _might_ change hismind. Then he resumed his waiting, his head buried in his hands. Atlast, when he could endure the silence no longer, he rose and walked thefloor, backward, forward, pausing breathless to listen for the patter ofthe dog's feet in the hall. But no sound came; he stole to the door andlistened, then stepped into the hall. The light still burned in herroom, streaming out through the transom. 

She would never send another message to him by His Highness; heunderstood that now. How he cursed himself for his momentary delusion!how he scorned himself for reading anything but friendly kindness in hermessage! how he burned with self-contempt for his raw, brutal reply, crude as the blurted offer of a yokel!

That settled the matter. If he had any decency left, he mustnever offend her eyes again. How could he have hoped? How couldhe have done it? Here, too!--here in this place so sanctified toher by associations--here, whither she had come upon her piouspilgrimage--here, where at least he might have left her to herdead!

Suddenly, as he stood there, her door opened. She saw him standingthere. For a full minute they faced each other. Presently His Highnessemerged from behind his mistress and trotted out into the hall. 

Behind His Highness came his mistress, slowly, more slowly. The dogcarefully held a letter between his teeth, and when Langham saw it hesprang forward eagerly. 

"No, no!" she said. "I did not mean--I cannot--I cannot-- Give me backthe letter!"

He had the letter in his hand; her hand fell over it; the color surgedinto her face and neck. The letter dropped from her yielding hand; thethrill from their interlocked fingers made her faint, and she swayedforward towards him, so close that their lips touched, then clung, crushed in their first kiss. .. . 

Meanwhile His Highness picked up the letter and stood politely waiting. 

THE SHINING BAND

I

Before the members of the Sagamore Fish and Game Association had erectedtheir handsome club-house, and before they had begun to purchase thosethousands of acres of forest, mountain, and stream which now belonged tothem, a speculative lumberman with no capital, named O'Hara, built thewhite house across the river on a few acres of inherited property, settled himself comfortably with his wife and child, and prepared toacquire all the timber in sight at a few dollars an acre . .. On credit. For thus, thought he, is the beginning of all millionaires. 

So certain was O'Hara of ultimately cornering the standing timber thathe took his time about it, never dreaming that a rival might disturb himin the wilderness of Sagamore County. 

He began in the woodland which he had inherited, which ran for a mile oneither side of the river. This he leisurely cut, hired a few riverdrivers, ran a few logs to Foxville, and made money. 

Now he was ready to extend business on a greater scale; but when he cameto open negotiations with the score or more of landholders, he foundhimself in the alarming position of a bidder against an unknown butclever rival, who watched, waited, and quietly forestalled his everymovement. 

It took a long time for O'Hara to discover that he was fighting acombination of fifteen wealthy gentlemen from New York. Finally, whenthe Sagamore Club, limited to fifteen, had completed operations, O'Harasuddenly perceived that he was bottled up in the strip of worthless landwhich he had inherited, surrounded by thousands of acres of preservedproperty--outwitted, powerless, completely hemmed in. And that, too, with the best log-driving water betwixt Foxville and Canada washing thevery door-sill of his own home. 

At first he naturally offered to sell, but the club's small offerenraged him, and he swore that he would never sell them an inch of hisland. He watched the new club-house which was slowly taking shape underthe trowels of masons and the mallets of carpenters; and his wrath grewas grew the house. 

The man's nature began to change; an inextinguishable hatred for thesepeople took possession of him, became his mania, his existence. 

His wife died; he sent his child to a convent school in Canada andremained to watch. He did the club what damage he could, posting hisproperty, and as much of the river as he controlled. But he could notlegally prevent fishermen from wading the stream and fishing; so hefilled the waters with sawdust, logs, barbed-wire, brambles, and brush, choking it so that no living creature, except perhaps a mink, couldcatch a fish in it. 

The club protested, and then offered to buy the land on O'Hara's ownterms. O'Hara cursed them and built a dam without a fishway, and satbeside it nights with a loaded shot-gun. 

He still had a few dollars left; he wanted millions to crush these richmen who had come here to mock him and take the bread out of his mouthfor their summer's sport. 

He had a shrewd young friend in New York, named Amasa Munn. Through thisman, O'Hara began to speculate in every wild-cat scheme that squalledaloud for public support; and between Munn and the wild-cats his littlefortune spread its wings of gold and soared away, leaving him a wreck onhis wrecked land. 

But he could still find strength to watch the spite dam with hisshot-gun. One day a better scheme came into his unbalanced brain; hebroke the dam and sent for Munn. Between them they laid a plan to ruinforever the trout-fishing in the Sagamore; and Munn, taking the last ofO'Hara's money as a bribe, actually secured several barrels full of livepickerel, and shipped them to the nearest station on the Sagamore andInland Railway. 

But here the club watchers caught Munn, and held him and his fish forthe game-wardens. The penalty for introducing trout-destroying pickerelinto waters inhabited by trout was a heavy fine. Munn was guilty only inintent, but the club keepers swore falsely, and Peyster Sprowl, a lawyerand also the new president of the Sagamore Club, pushed the case; andMunn went to jail, having no money left to purge his sentence. 

O'Hara, wild with rage, wrote, threatening Sprowl. 

Then Sprowl did a vindictive and therefore foolish thing: he swore outa warrant for O'Hara's arrest, charging him with blackmail. 

The case was tried in Foxville, and O'Hara was acquitted. But a chanceword or two during the testimony frightened the club and gave O'Hara theopportunity of his life. He went to New York and scraped up enough moneyfor his purpose, which was to search the titles of the lands controlledby the Sagamore Club. 

He worked secretly, grubbing, saving, starving; he ferreted out theoriginal grants covering nine-tenths of Sagamore County; he disinterredthe O'Hara patent of 1760; and then he began to understand that histitle to the entire Sagamore Club property was worth the services, onspec, of any first-class Centre Street shyster. 

The club got wind of this and appointed Peyster Sprowl, in his capacityof lawyer and president of the club, to find out how much of a claimO'Hara really had. The club also placed the emergency fund of onehundred thousand dollars at Sprowl's command with _carte-blanche_ ordersto arrest a suit and satisfy any claim that could not be beaten by moneyand talent. 

Now it took Sprowl a very short time to discover that O'Hara's claim wasprobably valid enough to oust the club from three-quarters of itspresent holdings. 

He tried to see O'Hara, but the lumberman refused to be interviewed, andpromptly began proceedings. He also made his will; for he was a sickman. Then he became a sicker man, and suspended proceedings and sent forhis little daughter. 

Before she arrived he called Munn in, gave him a packet of papers, andmade him burn them before his eyes. 

"They're the papers in my case, " he said. "I'm dying; I've fought toohard. I don't want my child to fight when I'm dead. And there's nothingin my claim, anyway. " This was a lie, and Munn suspected it. 

When the child, Eileen, arrived, O'Hara was nearly dead, but he gatheredsufficient strength to shove a locked steel box towards his daughter andtell her to keep it from Munn, and keep it locked until she found anhonest man in the world. 

The next morning O'Hara appeared to be much better. His friend Munn cameto see him; also came Peyster Sprowl in some alarm, on the matter of theproceedings threatened. But O'Hara turned his back on them both andcalmly closed his eyes and ears to their presence. 

Munn went out of the room, but laid his large, thin ear against thedoor. Sprowl worried O'Hara for an hour, but, getting no reply from theman in the bed, withdrew at last with considerable violence. 

O'Hara, however, had fooled them both: he had been dead all the while. 

The day after the funeral, Sprowl came back to look for O'Hara'sdaughter; and as he peeped into the door of the squalid flat he saw athin, yellow-eyed young man, with a bony face, all furry in promise offuture whiskers, rummaging through O'Hara's effects. This younggentleman was Munn. 

In a dark corner of the disordered room sat the child, Eileen, a white, shadowy elf of six, reading in the Book of Common Prayer. 

Sprowl entered the room; Munn looked up, then coolly continued torummage. 

Sprowl first addressed himself to the child, in a heavy, patronizingvoice:

"It's too dark to read there in that corner, young one. Take your bookout into the hall. "

"I can see better to read in the dark, " said the child, lifting hergreat, dark-blue eyes. 

"Go out into the hall, " said Sprowl, sharply. 

The child shrank back, and went, taking her little jacket in one hand, her battered travelling-satchel in the other. 

If the two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchelthis story might never have been told. But it never entered their headsthat the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to herown profit. 

"Munn, " said Sprowl, lighting a cigar, "what is there in this business?"

"I'll tell you when I'm done, " observed Munn, coolly. 

Sprowl sat down on the bed where O'Hara had died, cocked the cigar up inhis mouth, and blew smoke, musingly, at the ceiling. 

Munn found nothing--not a scrap of paper, not a line. This staggeredhim, but he did not intend that Sprowl should know it. 

"Found what you want?" asked Sprowl, comfortably. 

"Yes, " replied Munn. 

"Belong to the kid?"

"Yes; I'm her guardian. "

The men measured each other in silence for a minute. 

"What will you take to keep quiet?" asked Sprowl. "I'll give you athousand dollars. "

"I want five thousand, " said Munn, firmly. 

"I'll double it for the papers, " said Sprowl. 

Munn waited. "There's not a paper left, " he said; "O'Hara made me burn'em. "

"Twenty thousand for the papers, " said Sprowl, calmly. 

"My God, Mr. Sprowl!" growled Munn, white and sweating with anguish. "I'd give them to you for half that if I had them. Can't you believe me?I saw O'Hara burn them. "

"What were you rummaging for, then?" demanded Sprowl. 

"For anything--to get a hold on you, " said Munn, sullenly. 

"Blackmail?"

Munn was silent. 

"Oh, " said Sprowl, lazily. "I think I'll be going, then--"

Munn barred his exit, choking with anger. 

"You give me five thousand dollars, or I'll stir 'em up to look intoyour titles!" he snarled. 

Sprowl regarded him with contempt; then another idea struck him, an ideathat turned his fat face first to ashes, then to fire. 

A month later Sprowl returned to the Sagamore Club, triumphant, good-humored, and exceedingly contented. But he had, he explained, onlysucceeded in saving the club at the cost of the entire emergencyfund--one hundred thousand dollars--which, after all, was a drop in thebucket to the remaining fourteen members. 

The victory would have been complete if Sprowl had also been able topurchase the square mile of land lately occupied by O'Hara. But thisbelonged to O'Hara's daughter, and the child flatly refused to part withit. 

"You'll have to wait for the little slut to change her mind, " observedMunn to Sprowl. And, as there was nothing else to do, Sprowl and theclub waited. 

Trouble appeared to be over for the Sagamore Club. Munn disappeared; thedaughter was not to be found; the long-coveted land remained tenantless. 

Of course, the Sagamore Club encountered the petty difficulties andannoyances to which similar clubs are sooner or later subjected;disputes with neighboring land-owners were gradually adjusted; troublesarising from poachers, dishonest keepers, and night guards had been, andcontinued to be, settled without harshness or rancor; minks, otters, herons, kingfishers, and other undesirable intruders were kept withinlimits by the guns of the watchers, although by no means exterminated;and the wealthy club was steadily but unostentatiously making vastadditions to its splendid tracts of forest, hill, and river land. 

After a decent interval the Sagamore Club made cautious inquiriesconcerning the property of the late O'Hara, only to learn that the landhad been claimed by Munn, and that taxes were paid on it by thatindividual. 

For fifteen years the O'Hara house remained tenantless; anglers from theclub fished freely through the mile of river; the name of Munn had beenforgotten save by the club's treasurer, secretary, and president, Peyster Sprowl. 

However, the members of the club never forgot that in the centre oftheir magnificent domain lay a square mile which did not belong tothem; and they longed to possess it as better people than they havecoveted treasures not laid up on earth. 

The relations existing between the members of the Sagamore Clubcontinued harmonious in as far as their social intercourse and thegeneral acquisitive policy of the club was concerned. 

There existed, of course, that tacit mutual derision based uponindividual sporting methods, individual preferences, obstinate theoriesconcerning the choice of rods, reels, lines, and the killing propertiesof favorite trout-flies. 

Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop continued to nag and sneer at each otherall day long, yet they remained as mutually dependent upon each other asDavid and Jonathan. For thirty years the old gentlemen had angled incompany, and gathered inspiration out of the same books, the samesurroundings, the same flask. 

They were the only guests at the club-house that wet May in 1900, although Peyster Sprowl was expected in June, and young Dr. Lansing hadwired that he might arrive any day. 

An evening rain-storm was drenching the leaded panes in thesmoking-room; Colonel Hyssop drummed accompaniment on the windows andsmoked sulkily, looking across the river towards the O'Hara house, justvisible through the pelting downpour. 

"Irritates me every time I see it, " he said. 

"Some day, " observed Major Brent, comfortably, "I'm going to astonishyou all. "

"How?" demanded the Colonel, tersely. 

The Major examined the end of his cigarette with a cunning smile. 

"It isn't for sale, is it?" asked the Colonel. "Don't try to bemysterious; it irritates me. "

Major Brent savored his cigarette leisurely. 

"Can you keep a secret?" he inquired. 

The Colonel intimated profanely that he could. 

"Well, then, " said the Major, in calm triumph, "there's a tax sale onto-morrow at Foxville. "

"Not the O'Hara place?" asked the Colonel, excited. 

The Major winked. "I'll fix it, " he said, with a patronizing squint athis empty glass. 

But he did not "fix it" exactly as he intended; the taxes on the O'Haraplace were being paid at that very moment. 

He found it out next day, when he drove over to Foxville; he alsolearned that the Rev. Amasa Munn, Prophet of the Shining Band Community, had paid the taxes and was preparing to quit Maine and re-establish hiscolony of fanatics on the O'Hara land, in the very centre and heart ofthe wealthiest and most rigidly exclusive country club in America. 

That night the frightened Major telegraphed to Munnville, Maine, anoffer to buy the O'Hara place at double its real value. Thebusiness-like message ended: "Wire reply at my expense. "

The next morning an incoherent reply came by wire, at the Major'sexpense, refusing to sell, and quoting several passages of Scripture atWestern Union rates per word. 

The operator at the station counted the words carefully, and collectedeight dollars and fourteen cents from the Major, whose fury deprivedhim of speech. 

Colonel Hyssop awaited his comrade at the club-house, nervously pacingthe long veranda, gnawing his cigar. "Hello!" he called out, as MajorBrent waddled up. "Have you bought the O'Hara place for us?"

The Major made no attempt to reply; he panted violently at the Colonel, then began to run about, taking little, short, distracted steps. 

"Made a mess of it?" inquired the Colonel, with a badly concealed sneer. 

He eyed the Major in deepening displeasure. "If you get any redder inthe face you'll blow up, " he said, coldly; "and I don't propose to haveyou spatter me. "

"He--he's an impudent swindler!" hissed the Major, convulsively. 

The Colonel sniffed: "I expected it. What of it? After all, there'snobody on the farm to annoy us, is there?"

"Wait!" groaned the Major--"wait!" and he toddled into the hall and fellon a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands. 

When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatenedcalamity, he utterly refused to credit it. 

"Rubbish!" he said, calmly--"rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn isholding out for more money, d'ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It's blackmail, d'ye see?"

"Do you think so?" faltered the Major, hopefully. "It isn't possiblethat they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting aboutunder our windows--"

"Rubbish!" said the Colonel, calmly. "I'll write to the fellow myself. "

All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had theclub-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek byjowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late overtheir toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at eachother, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who couldhold their own with any toddy ever brewed. 

No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him. 

"They are playing a waiting game, " he said, sagely. "This man Munn hasbought the land from O'Hara's daughter for a song, and he means to bleedus. I'll write to Sprowl; he'll fix things. "

Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay, arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn'sobject was to squeeze the club by threats. 

The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds, Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, AgathaSprowl, _née_ Van Guilder. 

Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond ananxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion. However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welshrarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne, and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a triflefor his handsome wife. 

"She's lovely enough, " said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, "to set everystar in heaven wabbling. " To which the bull-necked Major assented withan ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband. 

Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrivedat Foxville in six farm wagons, singing "Roll, Jordan!"

Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel havingforgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion. 

II

The members of the Sagamore Club heard the news next morning at a latebreakfast. Major Brent, who had been fishing early up-stream, bore thenews, and delivered it in an incoherent bellow. 

"What d'ye mean by that?" demanded Colonel Hyssop, setting down hiscocktail with unsteady fingers. 

"Mean?" roared the Major; "I mean that Munn and a lot o' women aresitting on the river-bank and singing 'Home Again'!"

The news jarred everybody, but the effect of it upon the president, Peyster Sprowl, appeared to be out of all proportion to its gravity. That gentleman's face was white as death; and the Major noticed it. 

"You'll have to rid us of this mob, " said the Major, slowly. 

Sprowl lifted his heavy, overfed face from his plate. "I'll attend toit, " he said, hoarsely, and swallowed a pint of claret. 

"I think it is amusing, " said Agatha Sprowl, looking across the table atCoursay. 

"Amusing, madam!" burst out the Major. "They'll be doing their laundryin our river next!"

"Soapsuds in my favorite pools!" bawled the Colonel. "Damme if I'llpermit it!"

"Sprowl ought to settle them, " said Lansing, good-naturedly. "It maycost us a few thousands, but Sprowl will do the work this time as he didit before. "

Sprowl choked in his claret, turned a vivid beef-color, and wiped hischin. His appetite was ruined. He hoped the ruin would stop there. 

"What harm will they do?" asked Coursay, seriously--"beyond thesoapsuds?"

"They'll fish, they'll throw tin cans in the water, they'll keep usawake with their fanatical powwows--confound it, haven't I seen thatsort of thing?" said the Major, passionately. "Yes, I have, at niggercamp-meetings! And these people beat the niggers at that sort of thing!"

"Leave 'em to me, " repeated Peyster Sprowl, thickly, and began onanother chop from force of habit. 

"About fifteen years ago, " said the Colonel, "there was some talk aboutour title. You fixed that, didn't you, Sprowl?"

"Yes, " said Sprowl, with parched lips. 

"Of course, " muttered the Major; "it cost us a cool hundred thousand toperfect our title. Thank God it's settled. "

Sprowl's immense body turned perfectly cold; he buried his face in hisglass and drained it. Then the shrimp-color returned to his neck andears, and deepened to scarlet. When the earth ceased reeling before hisapoplectic eyes, he looked around, furtively. Again the scene inO'Hara's death-chamber came to him; the threat of Munn, who had gotwind of the true situation, and the bribing of Munn to silence. 

But the club had given Sprowl one hundred thousand dollars to perfectits title; and Sprowl had reported the title perfect, all proceedingsended, and the payment of one hundred thousand dollars to Amasa Munn, asguardian of the child of O'Hara, in full payment for the O'Hara claimsto the club property. 

Sprowl's coolness began to return. If five thousand dollars had stoppedMunn's mouth once, it might stop it again. Besides, how could Munn knowthat Sprowl had kept for his own uses ninety-five thousand dollars ofhis club's money, and had founded upon it the House of Sprowl of manymillions? He was quite cool now--a trifle anxious to know what Munnmeant to ask for, but confident that his millions were a buckler and ashield to the honored name of Sprowl. 

"I'll see this fellow, Munn, after breakfast, " he said, lighting anexpensive cigar. 

"I'll go with you, " volunteered Lansing, casually, strolling out towardsthe veranda. 

"No, no!" called out Sprowl; "you'll only hamper me. " But Lansing didnot hear him outside in the sunshine. 

Agatha Sprowl laid one fair, heavily ringed hand on the table and pushedher chair back. The Major gallantly waddled to withdraw her chair; sherose with a gesture of thanks, and a glance which shot the Major throughand through--a wound he never could accustom himself to receive withstoicism. 

Mrs. Sprowl turned carelessly away, followed by her two Great Danes--asuperb trio, woman and dogs beautifully built and groomed, andexpensive enough to please even such an amateur as Peyster Sprowl, M. F. H. 

"Gad, Sprowl!" sputtered the Major, "your wife grows handsomer everyminute--and you grow fatter. "

Sprowl, midway in a glass of claret, said: "This simple backwoods régimeis what she and I need. "

Agatha Sprowl was certainly handsome, but the Major's eyesight was noneof the best. She had not been growing younger; there were lines; also adiscreet employment of tints on a very silky skin, which was not quiteas fresh as it had once been. 

Dr. Lansing, strolling on the veranda with his pipe, met her and her bigdogs turning the corner in full sunlight. Coursay was with her, hiseager, flushed face close to hers; but he fell back when he saw hiskinsman Lansing, and presently retired to the lawn to unreel and dry outa couple of wet silk lines. 

Agatha Sprowl sat down on the veranda railing, exchanging a gay smileacross the lawn with Coursay; then her dark eyes met Lansing'ssteel-gray ones. 

"Good-morning, once more, " she said, mockingly. 

He returned her greeting, and began to change his mist leader for awhite one. 

"Will you kindly let Jack Coursay alone?" she said, in a low voice. 

"No, " he replied, in the same tone. 

"Are you serious?" she asked, as though the idea amused her. 

"Of course, " he replied, pleasantly. 

"Is it true that you came here because he came?" she inquired, withfaint sarcasm in her eyes. 

"Yes, " he answered, with perfect good-nature. "You see he's my own kin;you see I'm the old-fashioned sort--a perfect fool, Mrs. Sprowl. "

There was a silence; he unwound the glistening leader; she flicked atshadows with her dog-whip; the Great Danes yawned and laid their heavyheads against her knees. 

"Then you _are_ a fool, " she concluded, serenely. 

He was young enough to redden. 

Three years ago she had thought it time to marry somebody, if she everintended to marry at all; so she threw over half a dozen young fellowslike Coursay, and married Sprowl. For two years her beauty, audacity, and imprudence kept a metropolis and two capitals in food for scandal. And now for a year gossip was coupling her name with Coursay's. 

"I warned you at Palm Beach that I'd stop this, " said Lansing, lookingdirectly into her eyes. "You see, I know his mother. "

"Stop what?" she asked, coolly. 

He went on: "Jack is a curiously decent boy; he views his danger withoutpanic, but with considerable surprise. But nobody can tell what he maydo. As for me, I'm indifferent, liberal, and reasonable in my views of. .. Other people's conduct. But Jack is not one of those 'other people, 'you see. "

"And _I_ am?" she suggested, serenely. 

"Exactly; I'm not your keeper. "

"So you confine your attention to Jack and the Decalogue?"

"As for the Commandments, " observed Lansing, "any ass can shatter themwith his hind heels, so why should he? If he _must_ be an ass, let himbe an original ass--not a cur. "

"A cur, " repeated Agatha Sprowl, unsteadily. 

"An _affaire de coeur_ with a married woman is an affair do cur, " saidLansing, calmly--"Gallicize it as you wish, make it smart andfashionable as you can. I told you I was old-fashioned. .. . And I meanit, madam. "

The leader had eluded him; he uncoiled it again; she mechanically tookit between her delicate fingers and held it steady while he measured andshortened it by six inches. 

"Do you think, " she said, between her teeth, "that it is your mission topadlock me to _that_--in there?"

Lansing turned, following her eyes. She was looking at her husband. 

"No, " replied Lansing, serenely; "but I shall see that you don'ttransfer the padlock to . .. _that_, out _there_"--glancing at Coursay onthe lawn. 

"Try it, " she breathed, and let go of the leader, which flew up insilvery crinkles, the cast of brightly colored flies dancing in thesunshine. 

"Oh, let him alone, " said Lansing, wearily; "all the men in Manhattanare drivelling about you. Let him go; he's a sorry trophy--and there'sno natural treachery in him; . .. It's not in our blood; . .. It's toocheap for us, and we can't help saying so when we're in our rightminds. "

There was a little color left in her face when she stood up, her handsresting on the spiked collars of her dogs. "The trouble with you, " shesaid, smiling adorably, "is your innate delicacy. "

"I know I am brutal, " he said, grimly; "let him alone. "

She gave him a pretty salutation, crossed the lawn, passed her husband, who had just ridden up on a powerful sorrel, and called brightly toCoursay: "Take me fishing, Jack, or I'll yawn my head off my shoulders. "

Before Lansing could recover his wits the audacious beauty had steppedinto the canoe at the edge of the lawn, and young Coursay, eager andradiant, gave a flourish to his paddle, and drove it into the glitteringwater. 

If Sprowl found anything disturbing to his peace of mind in theproceeding, he did not betray it. He sat hunched up on his big sorrel, eyes fixed on the distant clearing, where the white gable-end ofO'Hara's house rose among the trees. 

Suddenly he wheeled his mount and galloped off up the river road; thesun glowed on his broad back, and struck fire on his spurs, then horseand rider were gone into the green shadows of the woods. 

To play spy was not included in Lansing's duties as he understood them. He gave one disgusted glance after the canoe, shrugged, set fire to thetobacco in his pipe, and started slowly along the river towards O'Hara'swith a vague idea of lending counsel, aid, and countenance to hispresident during the expected interview with Munn. 

At the turn of the road he met Major Brent and old Peter, thehead-keeper. The latter stood polishing the barrels of his shot-gun witha red bandanna; the Major was fuming and wagging his head. 

"Doctor!" he called out, when Lansing appeared; "Peter says they raisedthe devil down at O'Hara's last night! This can't go on, d'ye see! No, by Heaven!"

"What were they doing, Peter?" asked Lansing, coming up to where the oldman stood. 

"Them Shinin' Banders? Waal, sir, they was kinder rigged out in whitenight-gounds--robes o' Jordan they call 'em--an' they had rubbed somekind o' shiny stuff--like matches--all over these there night-gounds, an' then they sang a spell, an' then they all sot down on the edge o'the river. "

"Is that all?" asked Lansing, laughing. 

"Wait!" growled the Major. 

"Waal, " continued old Peter, "the shinin' stuff on them night-gounds wasthat bright that I seen the fishes swimmin' round kinder dazed like. 'Gosh!' sez I to m'self, it's like a Jack a-drawnin' them trout--yaas'r. So I hollers out, 'Here! You Shinin' Band folk, you air a-drawin' thetrout. Quit it!' sez I, ha'sh an' pert-like. Then that there Munn, theProphet, he up an' hollers, 'Hark how the heathen rage!' he hollers. An'with that, blamed if he didn't sling a big net into the river, an' allthem Shinin' Banders ketched holt an' they drawed it clean up-stream. 'Quit that!' I hollers, 'it's agin the game laws!' But the Prophet hehollers back, 'Hark how the heathen rage!' Then they drawed that therenet out, an' it were full o' trout, big an' little--"

"Great Heaven!" roared the Major, black in the face. 

"I think, " said Lansing, quietly, "that I'll walk down to O'Hara's andreason with our friend Munn. Sprowl may want a man to help him in thismatter. "

III

When Sprowl galloped his sorrel mare across the bridge and up to theO'Hara house, he saw a man and a young girl seated on the grass of theriver-bank, under the shade of an enormous elm. 

Sprowl dismounted heavily, and led his horse towards the couple underthe elm. He recognized Munn in the thin, long-haired, full-bearded manwho rose to face him; and he dropped the bridle from his hand, freeingthe sorrel mare. 

The two men regarded each other in silence; the mare strayed leisurelyup-stream, cropping the fresh grass; the young girl turned her headtowards Sprowl with a curious movement, as though listening, rather thanlooking. 

"Mr. Munn, I believe, " said Sprowl, in a low voice. 

"The Reverend Amasa Munn, " corrected the Prophet, quietly. "You arePeyster Sprowl. "

Sprowl turned and looked full at the girl on the grass. The shadow ofher big straw hat fell across her eyes; she faced him intently. 

Sprowl glanced at his mare, whistled, and turned squarely on his heel, walking slowly along the river-bank. The sorrel followed like a dog;presently Munn stood up and deliberately stalked off after Sprowl, rejoining that gentleman a few rods down the river-bank. 

"Well, " said Sprowl, turning suddenly on Munn, "what are you doinghere?"

From his lank height Munn's eyes were nevertheless scarcely level withthe eyes of the burly president. 

"I'm here, " said Munn, "to sell the land. "

"I thought so, " said Sprowl, curtly. "How much?"

Munn picked a buttercup and bit off the stem. With the blossom betweenhis teeth he surveyed the sky, the river, the forest, and then thefeatures of Sprowl. 

"How much?" asked Sprowl, impatiently. 

Munn named a sum that staggered Sprowl, but Munn could perceive notremor in the fat, blank face before him. 

"And if we refuse?" suggested Sprowl. 

Munn only looked at him. 

Sprowl repeated the question. 

"Well, " observed Munn, stroking his beard reflectively, "there's thatmatter of the title. "

This time Sprowl went white to his fat ears. Munn merely glanced at him, then looked at the river. 

"I will buy the title this time, " said Sprowl, hoarsely. 

"You can't, " said Munn. 

A terrible shock struck through Sprowl; he saw through a mist; he laidhis hand on a tree-trunk for support, mechanically facing Munn all thewhile. 

"Can't!" he repeated, with dry lips. 

"No, you can't buy it. "

"Why?"

"O'Hara's daughter has it. "

"But--she will sell! Won't she sell? Where is she?" burst out Sprowl. 

"She won't sell, " said Munn, studying the ghastly face of the president. 

"You can make her sell, " said Sprowl. "What is your price?"

"I can't make her sell the title to your club property, " said Munn. "She'll sell this land here. Take it or leave it. "

"If I take it--will _you_ leave?" asked Sprowl, hoarsely. 

Munn smiled, then nodded. 

"And will that shut your mouth, you dirty scoundrel?" said Sprowl, gripping his riding-crop till his fat fingernails turned white. 

"It will shut _my_ mouth, " said Munn, still with his fixed smile. 

"How much extra to keep this matter of the title quiet--as long as Ilive?"

"As long as you live?" repeated Munn, surprised. 

"Yes, I don't care a damn what they say of me after I'm dead, " snarledSprowl. 

Munn watched him for a moment, plucked another buttercup, pondered, smoothed out his rich, brown, silky beard, and finally mentioned asecond sum. 

Sprowl drew a check-book from the breast-pocket of his coat, and filledin two checks with a fountain pen. These he held up before Munn'ssnapping, yellowish eyes. 

"This blackmail, " said Sprowl, thickly, "is paid now for the last time. If you come after me again you come to your death, for I'll smash yourskull in with one blow, and take my chances to prove insanity. And I'veenough money to prove it. "

Munn waited. 

"I'll buy you this last time, " continued Sprowl, recovering hisself-command. "Now, you tell me where O'Hara's child is, and how you aregoing to prevent her from ever pressing that suit which he dropped. "

"O'Hara's daughter is here. I control her, " said Munn, quietly. 

"You mean she's one of your infernal flock?" demanded Sprowl. 

"One of the Shining Band, " said Munn, with a trace of a whine in hisvoice. 

"Where are the papers in that proceeding, then? You said O'Hara burnedthem, you liar!"

"She has them in a box in her bedroom, " replied Munn. 

"Does she know what they mean?" asked Sprowl, aghast. 

"No--but I do, " replied Munn, with his ominous smile. 

"How do you know she does not understand their meaning?"

"Because, " replied Munn, laughing, "she can't read. "

Sprowl did not believe him, but he was at his mercy. He stood with hisheavy head hanging, pondering a moment, then whistled his sorrel. Themare came to him and laid her dusty nose on his shoulder. 

"You see these checks?" he said. 

Munn assented. 

"You get them when you put those papers in my hands. Understand? Andwhen you bring me the deed of this cursed property here--house and all. "

"A week from to-day, " said Munn; his voice shook in spite of him. Fewmen can face sudden wealth with a yawn. 

"And after that--" began Sprowl, and glared at Munn with such a furythat the Prophet hastily stepped backward and raised a nervous hand tohis beard. 

"It's a square deal, " he said; and Sprowl knew that he meant it, atleast for the present. 

The president mounted heavily, and sought his bridle and stirrups. 

"I'll meet you here in a week from to-day, hour for hour; I'll give youtwenty-four hours after that to pack up and move, bag and baggage. "

"Done, " said Munn. 

"Then get out of my way, you filthy beast!" growled Sprowl, swinging hishorse and driving the spurs in. 

Munn fell back with a cry; the horse plunged past, brushing him, tearingout across the pasture, over the bridge, and far down the stony roadMunn heard the galloping. He had been close to death; he did not quiteknow whether Sprowl had meant murder or whether it was carelessness orhis own fault that the horse had not struck him and ground him into thesod. 

However it was, he conceived a new respect for Sprowl, and promisedhimself that if he ever was obliged to call again upon Sprowl forfinancial assistance he would do it through a telephone. 

A dozen women, dressed alike in a rather pretty gray uniform, weresinging up by the house; he looked at them with a sneer, then walkedback along the river to where the young girl still sat under the elm. 

"I want to talk to you, " he said, abruptly, "and I don't want any morerefusals or reasons or sentiments. I want to see the papers in thatsteel box. "

She turned towards him in that quaint, hesitating, listening attitude. 

"The Lord, " he said, more cheerfully, "has put it into my head that wemust journey once more. I've had a prayerful wrestle out yonder, and Isee light. The Lord tells me to sell this land to the strangers withoutthe gates, and I'm going to sell it to the glory of God. "

"How can you sell it?" said the girl, quietly. 

"Isn't all our holdings in common?" demanded Munn, sharply. 

"You know that I am not one of you, " said the girl. 

"Yes, you are, " said Munn; "you don't want to be because the light hasbeen denied you, but I've sealed you and sanctified you to the ShiningBand, and you just can't help being one of us. Besides, " he continued, with an ugly smile, "I'm your legal guardian. "

This was a lie; but she did not know it. 

"So I want to see those papers, " he added. 

"Why?" she asked. 

"Oh, legal matters; I've got to examine 'em or I can't sell this land. "

"Father told me not to open the box until . .. I found an . .. Honestman, " she said, steadily. 

Munn glared at her. She had caught him in a lie years ago; she neverforgot it. 

"Where's the key?" he demanded. 

She was silent. 

"I'll give you till supper-time to find that key, " said Munn, confidently, and walked on towards the house. 

But before he had fairly emerged from the shadow of the elm he metLansing face to face, and the young man halted him with a pleasantgreeting, asking if he were not the Reverend Doctor Munn. 

"That's my name, " said Munn, briefly. 

"I was looking for Mr. Sprowl; I thought to meet him here; we were tospeak to you about the netting of trout in the river, " said Lansing, good-humoredly. 

Munn regarded him in sulky silence. 

"It won't do, " continued Lansing, smiling; "if you net trout you'll havethe wardens after you. "

"Oh! and I suppose you'll furnish the information, " sneered Munn. 

"I certainly will, " replied Lansing. 

Munn had retraced his steps towards the river. As the men passed beforeEileen O'Hara, Lansing raised his cap. She did not return his salute;she looked towards the spot where he and Munn had halted, and her facebore that quaint, listening expression, almost pitifully sweet, asthough she were deaf. 

"Peter, our head-keeper, saw you netting trout in that pool last night, "said Lansing. 

Munn examined the water and muttered that the Bible gave him hisauthority for that sort of fishing. 

"He's a fake, " thought Lansing, in sudden disgust. Involuntarily heglanced around at the girl under the elm. The beauty of her pale facestartled him. Surely innocence looked out of those dark-blue eyes, fixedon him under the shadow of her straw hat. He noted that she also worethe silvery-gray uniform of the elect. He turned his eyes towards thehouse, where a dozen women, old and young, were sitting out under thetree, sewing and singing peacefully. The burden of their song camesweetly across the pasture; a golden robin, high in the elm's featherytip, warbled incessant accompaniment to the breeze and the flowing ofwater and the far song of the women. 

"We don't mean to annoy you, " said Lansing, quietly; "I for one believethat we shall find you and your community the best of courteousneighbors. "

Munn looked at him with his cunning, amber-yellow eyes and stroked hisbeard. 

"What do you want, anyway?" he said. 

"I'll tell you what I want, " said Lansing, sharply; "I want you andyour people to observe the game laws. "

"Keep your shirt on, young man, " said Munn, coarsely, and turned on hisheel. Before he had taken the second step Lansing laid his hand on hisshoulder and spun him around, his grip tightening like a vise. 

"What y' doing?" snarled Munn, shrinking and squirming, terrified by theviolent grasp, the pain of which almost sickened him. 

Lansing looked at him, then shoved him out of his path, and carefullyrinsed his hands in the stream. Then he laughed and turned around, butMunn was making rapid time towards the house, where the gray-clad womensat singing under the neglected apple-trees. The young man's eyes fellon the girl under the elm; she was apparently watching his everymovement from those dark-blue eyes under the straw hat. 

He took off his cap and went to her, and told her politely how amiablehad been his intentions, and how stringent the game laws were, andbegged her to believe that he intended no discourtesy to her communitywhen he warned them against the wholesale destruction of the trout. 

He had a pleasant, low voice, very attractive to women; she smiled andlistened, offering no comment. 

"And I want to assure you, " he ended, "that we at the club will alwaysrespect your boundaries as we know you will respect ours. I fear one ofour keepers was needlessly rude last night--from his own account. He'san old man; he supposes that all people know the game laws. "

Lansing paused; she bent her head a trifle. After a silence he startedon, saying, "Good-morning, " very pleasantly. 

"I wish you would sit down and talk to me, " said the girl, withoutraising her head. 

Lansing was too astonished to reply; she turned her head partly towardshim as though listening. Something in the girl's attitude arrested hisattention; he involuntarily dropped on one knee to see her face. It wasin shadow. 

"I want to tell you who I am, " she said, without looking at him. "I amEily O'Hara. "

Lansing received the communication with perfect gravity. "Your fatherowned this land?" he asked. 

"Yes; I own it now, . .. I think. "

He was silent, curious, amused. 

"I think I do, " she repeated; "I have never seen my father's will. "

"Doubtless your lawyer has it, " he suggested. 

"No; I have it. It is in a steel box; I have the key hanging around myneck inside my clothes. I have never opened the box. "

"But why do you not open the box?" asked Lansing, smiling. 

She hesitated; color crept into her cheeks. "I have waited, " she said;"I was alone; my father said--that--that--" She stammered; the richflush deepened to her neck. 

Lansing, completely nonplussed, sat watching the wonderful beauty ofthat young face. 

"My father told me to open it only when I found an honest man in theworld, " she said, slowly. 

The undertone of pathos in her voice drove the smile from Lansing'slips. 

"Have you found the world so dishonest?" he asked, seriously. 

"I don't know; I came from Notre Dame de Sainte Croix last year. Mr. Munn was my guardian; . .. Said he was; . .. I suppose he is. "

Lansing looked at her in sympathy. 

"I am not one of the community, " she said. "I only stay because I haveno other home but this. I have no money, . .. At least I know of nonethat is mine. " Lansing was silent and attentive. 

"I--I heard your voice; . .. I wanted to speak to you--to hear you speakto me, " she said. A new timidity came into her tone; she raised herhead. "I--somehow when you spoke--I felt that you--you were honest. " Shestammered again, but Lansing's cool voice brought her out of herdifficulty and painful shyness. 

"What is your name?" she asked. 

"I'm Dr. Lansing, " he said. 

"Will you open my steel box and read my papers for me?" she inquired, innocently. 

"I will--if you wish, " he said, impulsively; "if you think it wise. ButI think you had better read the papers for yourself. "

"Why, I can't read, " she said, apparently surprised that he should notknow it. 

"You mean that you were not taught to read in your convent school?" heasked, incredulously. 

A curious little sound escaped her lips; she raised both slender handsand unpinned her hat. Then she turned her head to his. 

The deep-blue beauty of her eyes thrilled him; then he started andleaned forward, closer, closer to her exquisite face. 

"My child, " he cried, softly, "my poor child!" And she smiled andfingered the straw hat in her lap. 

"Will you read my father's papers for me?" she said. 

"Yes--yes--if you wish. Yes, indeed!" After a moment he said: "How longhave you been blind?"

IV

That evening, at dusk, Lansing came into the club, and went directly tohis room. He carried a small, shabby satchel; and when he had locked hisdoor he opened the satchel and drew from it a flat steel box. 

For half an hour he sat by his open window in the quiet starlight, considering the box, turning it over and over in his hands. At length heopened his trunk, placed the box inside, locked the trunk, andnoiselessly left the room. 

He encountered Coursay in the hall, and started to pass him with anabstracted nod, then changed his mind and slipped his arm through thearm of his young kinsman. 

"Thought you meant to cut me, " said Coursay, half laughing, half inearnest. 

"Why?" Lansing stopped short; then, "Oh, because you played the foolwith Agatha in the canoe? You two will find yourselves in a crankiercraft than that if you don't look sharp. "

"You have an ugly way of putting it, " began Coursay. But Lansing scowledand said:

"Jack, I want advice; I'm troubled, old chap. Come into my room while Idress for dinner. Don't shy and stand on your hind-legs; it's not aboutAgatha Sprowl; it's about me, and I'm in trouble. "

The appeal flattered and touched Coursay, who had never expected thathe, a weak and spineless back-slider, could possibly be of aid orcomfort to his self-sufficient and celebrated cousin, Dr. Lansing. 

They entered Lansing's rooms; Coursay helped himself to some cognac, andsmoked, waiting for Lansing to emerge from his dressing-room. 

Presently, bathed, shaved, and in his shirt-sleeves, Lansing came in, tying his tie, a cigarette unlighted between his teeth. 

"Jack, " he said, "give me advice, not as a self-centred, cautious, andorderly citizen of Manhattan, but as a young man whose heart leads hishead every time! I want that sort of advice; and I can't give it tomyself. "

"Do you mean it?" demanded Coursay, incredulously. 

"By Heaven, I do!" returned Lansing, biting his words short, as the snapof a whip. 

He turned his back to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred betweenhim and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely andexactly as they occurred. 

"I have the box in my trunk yonder, " he went on; "the poor little thingmanaged to slip out while Munn was in the barn; I was waiting for her inthe road. "

After a moment Coursay asked if the girl was stone blind. 

"No, " said Lansing; "she can distinguish light from darkness; she caneven make out form--in the dark; but a strong light completely blindsher. "

"Can you help her?" asked Coursay, with quick pity. 

Lansing did not answer the question, but went on: "It's been comingon--this blindness--since her fifth year; she could always see to readbetter in dark corners than in a full light. For the last two years shehas not been able to see; and she's only twenty, Jack--only twenty. "

"Can't you help her?" repeated Coursay, a painful catch in his throat. 

"I haven't examined her, " said Lansing, curtly. 

"But--but you are an expert in that sort of thing, " protested hiscousin; "isn't this in your line?"

"Yes; I sat and talked to her half an hour and did not know she wasblind. She has a pair of magnificent deep-blue eyes; nobody, talking toher, could suspect such a thing. Still--her eyes were shaded by herhat. "

"What kind of blindness is it?" asked Coursay, in a shocked voice. 

"I think I know, " said Lansing. "I think there can be little doubt thatshe has a rather unusual form of lamellar cataract. "

"Curable?" motioned Coursay. 

"I haven't examined her; how could I-- But--I'm going to do it. "

"And if you operate?" asked Coursay, hopefully. 

"Operate? Yes--yes, of course. It is needling, you know, withprobability of repetition. We expect absorption to do the work forus--bar accidents and other things. "

"When will you operate?" inquired Coursay. 

Lansing broke out, harshly: "God knows! That swindler, Munn, keeps her aprisoner. Doctors long ago urged her to submit to an operation; Munnrefused, and he and his deluded women have been treating her by prayerfor years--the miserable mountebank!"

"You mean that he won't let you try to help her?"

"I mean just exactly that, Jack. "

Coursay got up with his clinched hands swinging and his eager face redas a pippin. "Why, then, " he said, "we'll go and get her! Come on; Ican't sit here and let such things happen!"

Lansing laughed the laugh of a school-boy bent on deviltry. 

"Good old Jack! That's the sort of advice I wanted, " he said, affectionately. "We may see our names in the morning papers for this;but who cares? We may be arrested for a few unimportant and absurdthings--but who cares? Munn will probably sue us; who cares? At anyrate, we're reasonably certain of a double-leaded column in the yellowpress; but do you give a tinker's damn?"

"Not one!" said Coursay, calmly. 

Then they went down to dinner. 

Sprowl, being unwell, dined in his own rooms; Agatha Sprowl was morewitty and brilliant and charming than ever; but Coursay did not join heron the veranda that evening, and she sat for two hours enduring theplatitudes of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, and planning serioustroubles for Lansing, to whose interference she attributed Coursay'snon-appearance. 

But Coursay and Lansing had other business in hand that night. Fortune, too, favored them when they arrived at the O'Hara house; for there, leaning on the decaying gate, stood Eileen O'Hara, her face raised tothe sky as though seeking in the soft star radiance which fell upon herlids a celestial balm for her sightless eyes. 

She was alone; she heard Lansing's step, and knew it, too. From withinthe house came the deadened sound of women's voices singing:

 "Light of the earth and sky, Unbind mine eyes, Lest I in darkness lie While my soul dies. Blind, at Thy feet I fall, All blindly kneel, Fainting, Thy name I call; Touch me and heal!"

In the throbbing hush of the starlight a whippoorwill called threetimes; the breeze rose in the forest; a little wind came fragrantly, puff on puff, along the road, stirring the silvery dust. 

 * * * * *

She laid one slim hand in Lansing's; steadily and noiselessly theytraversed the dew-wet meadow, crossed the river by the second bridge, and so came to the dark club-house under the trees. 

There was nobody visible except the steward when they entered the hall. 

"Two rooms and a bath, John, " said Lansing, quietly; and followed thesteward up the stairs, guiding his blind charge. 

The rooms were on the north angle; Lansing and Coursay inspected themcarefully, gave the steward proper direction, and dismissed him. 

"Get me a telegram blank, " said Lansing. Coursay brought one. Hiscousin pencilled a despatch, and the young man took it and left theroom. 

The girl was sitting on the bed, silent, intent, following Lansing withher sightless eyes. 

"Do you trust me?" he asked, pleasantly. 

"Yes, . .. Oh, yes, with all my heart!"

He steadied his voice. "I think I can help you--I am sure I can. I havesent to New York for Dr. Courtney Thayer. "

He drew a long breath; her beauty almost unnerved him. "Thayer willoperate; he's the best of all. Are you afraid?"

She lifted one hand and held it out, hesitating. He took it. 

"No, not afraid, " she said. 

"You are wise; there is no need for fear. All will come right, mychild. "

She listened intently. 

"It is necessary in such operations that the patient should, above all, be cheerful and--and happy--"

"Oh, yes, . .. And I am happy! Truly! truly!" she breathed. 

"--and brave, and patient, and obedient--and--" His voice trembled atrifle. "You must lie very still, " he ended, hastily. 

"Will you be here?"

"Yes--yes, of course!"

"Then I will lie very still. "

He left her curled up in an easy-chair, smiling at him with blind eyes;he scarcely found his way down-stairs for all his eyesight. He stumbledto the grill-room door, felt for the knob, and flung it open. 

A flood of yellow light struck him like a blow; through the smoke hesaw the wine-flushed faces of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent staring athim. 

"Gad, Lansing!" said the Major, "you're white and shaky as aninety-nine-cent toy lamb. Come in and have a drink, m'boy!"

"I wanted to say, " said Lansing, "that I have a patient in 5 and 6. It'san emergency case; I've wired for Courtney Thayer. I wish to ask theprivilege and courtesy of the club for my patient. It's unusual; it'sintrusive. Absolute and urgent necessity is my plea. "

The two old gentlemen appeared startled, but they hastily assuredLansing that his request would be honored; and Lansing went away to pacethe veranda until Coursay returned from the telegraph station. 

In the grill-room Major Brent's pop eyes were fixed on the Colonel ininflamed inquiry. 

"Damme!" snapped the Colonel, "does that young man take this club for ahospital?"

"He'll be washing bandages in the river next; he'll poison the troutwith his antiseptic stuffs!" suggested the Major, shuddering. 

"The club's going to the dogs!" said the Colonel, with a hearty oath. 

But he did not know how near to the dogs the club already was. 

V

It is perfectly true that the club and the dogs were uncomfortably closetogether. A week later the crisis came when Munn, in a violent rage, accused Sprowl of spiriting away his ward, Eileen O'Hara. But whenSprowl at last comprehended that the girl and the papers had reallydisappeared, he turned like a maddened pig on Munn, tore the signedchecks to shreds before his eyes, and cursed him steadily as long as heremained within hearing. 

As for Munn, his game appeared to be up. He hurried to New York, andspent a month or two attempting to find some trace of his ward, then hismoney gave out. He returned to his community and wrote a cringing letterto Sprowl, begging him to buy the O'Hara land for next to nothing, andrisk the legality of the transfer. To which Sprowl paid no attention. Aweek later Munn and the Shining Band left for Munnville, Maine. 

It was vaguely understood at the club that Lansing had a patient in5 and 6. 

"Probably a rich woman whom he can't afford to lose, " suggested Sprowl, with a sneer; "but I'm cursed if I can see why he should turn this clubinto a drug-shop to make money in!" And the Colonel and the Major agreedthat it was indecent in the extreme. 

To his face, of course, Sprowl, the Colonel, and the Major treatedLansing with perfect respect; but the faint odor of antiseptics fromrooms 5 and 6 made them madder and madder every time they noticed it. 

Meanwhile young Coursay had a free bridle; Lansing was never around tointerfere, and he drove and rode and fished and strolled with AgathaSprowl until neither he nor the shameless beauty knew whether they werestanding on their heads or their heels. To be in love was a newsensation to Agatha Sprowl; to believe himself in love was nothing newto Coursay, but the flavor never palled. 

What they might have done--what, perhaps, they had already decided todo--nobody but they knew. The chances are that they would have bolted ifthey had not run smack into that rigid sentinel who guards the pathwayof life. The sentinel is called Fate. And it came about in the followingmanner:

Dr. Courtney Thayer arrived one cool day early in October; Lansing methim with a quiet smile, and, together, these eminent gentlemen enteredrooms 5 and 6. 

A few moments later Courtney Thayer came out, laughing, followed byLansing, who also appeared to be a prey to mirth. 

"She's charming--she's perfectly charming!" said Courtney Thayer. "Wherethe deuce do these Yankee convent people get that elusive Continentalflavor? Her father must have been a gentleman. "

"He was an Irish lumberman, " said Lansing. After a moment he added: "Soyou won't come back, doctor?"

"No, it's not necessary; you know that. I've an operation to-morrow inManhattan; I must get back to town. Wish I could stay and shoot grousewith you, but I can't. "

"Come up for the fall flight of woodcock; I'll wire you when it's on, "urged Lansing. 

"Perhaps; good-bye. "

Lansing took his outstretched hand in both of his. "There is no use inmy trying to tell you what you have done for me, doctor, " he said. 

Thayer regarded him keenly. "Thought I did it for _her_, " he remarked. 

Instantly Lansing's face turned red-hot. Thayer clasped the young man'shands and shook them till they ached. 

"You're all right, my boy--you're all right!" he said, heartily; and wasgone down the stairs, two at a jump--a rather lively proceeding for thefamous and dignified Courtney Thayer. 

Lansing turned and entered rooms 5 and 6. His patient was standing bythe curtained window. "Do you want to know your fate?" he asked, lightly. 

She turned and looked at him out of her lovely eyes; the quaint, listening expression in her face still remained, but she _saw_ him, thistime. 

"Am I well?" she asked, calmly. 

"Yes; . .. Perfectly. "

She sat down by the window, her slender hands folded, her eyes on him. 

"And now, " she asked, "what am I to do?"

He understood, and bent his head. He had an answer ready, trembling onhis lips; but a horror of presuming on her gratitude kept him silent. 

"Am I to go back . .. To _him_?" she said, faintly. 

"God forbid!" he blurted out. With all his keen eyesight, how could hefail to see the adoration in her eyes, on her mute lips' quiveringcurve, in every line of her body? But the brutality of asking for thatwhich her gratitude might not withhold froze him. It was no use; hecould not speak. 

"Then--what? Tell me; I will do it, " she said, in a desolate voice. "Ofcourse I cannot stay here now. "

Something in his haggard face set her heart beating heavily; then for amoment her heart seemed to stop. She covered her eyes with a swiftgesture. 

"Is it pain?" he asked, quickly. "Let me see your eyes!" Her handscovered them. He came to her; she stood up, and he drew her fingers fromher eyes and looked into them steadily. But what he saw there he aloneknows; for he bent closer, shaking in every limb; and both her armscrept to his shoulders and her clasped hands tightened around his neck. 

Which was doubtless an involuntary muscular affection incident onsuccessful operations for lamellar or zonular cataract. 

 * * * * *

That day they opened the steel box. She understood little of what heread to her; presently he stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentenceand remained staring, reading on and on in absorbed silence. 

Content, serene, numbed with her happiness, she watched him sleepily. 

He muttered under his breath: "Sprowl! What a fool! What a cheap fool!And yet not one among us even suspected him of _that_!"

After a long time he looked up at the girl, blankly at first, and with agrimace of disgust. "You see, " he said, and gave a curious laugh--"yousee that--that _you_ own all this land of ours--as far as I can makeout. "

After a long explanation she partly understood, and laughed outright, aclear child's laugh without a trace of that sad undertone he knew sowell. 

"But we are not going to take it away from your club--are we?" sheasked. 

"No, " he said; "let the club have the land--_your_ land! What do wecare? We will never come here again!" He sat a moment, thinking, thensprang up. "We will go to New York to-morrow, " he said; "and I'll juststep out and say good-bye to Sprowl--I think he and his wife are alsogoing to-morrow; I think they're going to Europe, _to live_! I'm surethey are; and that they will never come back. "

And, curiously enough, that is exactly what they did; and they are thereyet. And their establishment in the American colony is the headquartersfor all nobility in exile, including the chivalrous Orleans. 

Which is one sort of justice--the Lansing sort; and, anyway, Coursaysurvived and married an actress a year later. And the club still remainsin undisturbed possession of Eileen Lansing's land; and Major Brent isnow its president. 

As for Munn, he has permanently retired to Munnville, Maine, where, itis reported, he has cured several worthy and wealthy people by thesimple process of prayer. 

ONE MAN IN A MILLION

I

"Do you desire me to marry him?" asked Miss Castle, quietly. 

"Let me finish, " said her uncle. "Jane, " he added, turning on hissister, "if you could avoid sneezing for a few moments, I should beindebted to you. "

Miss Jane Garcide, a sallow lady of forty, who suffered with colds allwinter and hay-fever all summer, meekly left the room. 

Miss Castle herself leaned on the piano, tearing the pink petals from ahalf-withered rose, while her guardian, the Hon. John Garcide, finishedwhat he had to say and pulled out his cigar-case with decision. 

"I have only to add, " he said, "that James J. Crawford is one man in amillion. "

Her youthful adoration of Garcide had changed within a few years to asweet-tempered indifference. He was aware of this; he was anxious tolearn whether the change had also affected her inherited passion fortruthfulness. 

"Do you remember a promise you once made?" he inquired, lighting hiscigar with care. 

"Yes, " she said, calmly. 

"When was it?"

"On my tenth birthday. "

He looked out of the heavily curtained window. 

"Of course you could not be held to such a promise, " he remarked. 

"There is no need to _hold_ me to it, " she answered, flushing up. 

Her delicate sense of honor amused him; he lay back in his arm-chair, enjoying his cigar. 

"It is curious, " he said, "that you cannot recall meeting Mr. Crawfordlast winter. "

"A girl has an opportunity to forget hundreds of faces after her firstseason, " she said. 

There was another pause; then Garcide went on: "I am going to ask you tomarry him. "

Her face paled a trifle; she bent her head in acquiescence. Garcidesmiled. It had always been that way with the Castles. Their word, oncegiven, ended all matters. And now Garcide was gratified to learn thevalue of a promise made by a child of ten. 

"I wonder, " said Garcide, plaintively, "why you never open your heart tome, Hilda?"

"I wonder, too, " she said; "my father did. "

Garcide turned his flushed face to the window. 

Years before, when the firm of Garcide & Castle went to pieces, PeterCastle stood by the wreck to the end, patching it with his last dollar. But the wreck broke up, and he drifted piteously with the débris until akindly current carried him into the last harbor of all--the port ofhuman derelicts. 

Garcide, however, contrived to cling to some valuable flotsam andpaddle into calm water, and anchor. 

After a few years he built a handsome house above Fiftieth Street; aftera few more years he built a new wing for Saint Berold's Hospital; andafter a few more years he did other things equally edifying, but which, if mentioned, might identify him. 

Church work had always interested him. As a speculation in moralobligation, he adopted Peter Castle's orphan, who turned to him in apassion of gratitude and blind devotion. And as she bade fair to rivalher dead mother in beauty, and as rich men marry beauty when it is inthe market, the Hon. John Garcide decided to control the child's future. A promise at ten years is quickly made, but he had never forgotten it, and she could not forget. 

And now Garcide needed her as he needed mercy from Ophir Steel, whichwas slowly crushing his own steel syndicate to powder. 

The struggle between Steel Plank and James J. Crawford's Ophir Steel ishistorical. The pure love of fighting was in Crawford; he fought Garcideto a standstill and then kicked him, filling Garcide with a mixture ofterror and painful admiration. 

But sheer luck caught at Garcide's coat-tails and hung there. Crawford, prowling in the purlieus of society, had seen Miss Castle. 

The next day Crawford came into Garcide's office and accepted a chairwith such a humble and uneasy smile that Garcide mistook hisconciliatory demeanor and attempted to bully him. But when he found outwhat Crawford wanted, he nearly fainted in an attempt to conceal hisastonishment and delight. 

"Do you think I'd buy you off with an innocent child?" he said, lashinghimself into a good imitation of an insulted gentleman. 

Crawford looked out of the window, then rose and walked towards thedoor. 

"Do you think you can bribe me?" shouted Garcide after him. Crawfordhesitated. 

"Come back here, " said Garcide, firmly; "I want you to explainyourself. "

"I can't, " muttered Crawford. 

"Well--try, anyway, " said Garcide, more amiably. 

And now this was the result of that explanation, at least one of theresults; and Miss Castle had promised to wed a gentleman in Ophir Steelnamed Crawford, at the convenience of the Hon. John Garcide. 

The early morning sunshine fell across the rugs in the music-room, filling the gloom with golden lights. It touched a strand of hair onMiss Castle's bent head. 

"You'll like him, " said Garcide, guiltily. 

Her hand hung heavily on the piano keys. 

"You have no other man in mind?" he asked. 

"No, . .. No man. "

Garcide chewed the end of his cigar. 

"Crawford's a bashful man. Don't make it hard for him, " he said. 

She swung around on the gilded music-stool, one white hand lying amongthe ivory keys. 

"I shall spare us both, " she said; "I shall tell him that it issettled. "

Garcide rose; she received his caress with composure. He made anothergrateful peck at her chin. 

"Why don't you take a quiet week or two in the country?" he suggested, cheerfully, "Go up to the Sagamore Club; Jane will go with you. You canhave the whole place to yourselves. You always liked nature and--er--allthat, eh?"

"Oh yes, " she said, indifferently. 

That afternoon the Hon. John Garcide sent a messenger to James J. Crawford with the following letter:

 "MY DEAR CRAWFORD, --Your manly and straightforward request for permission to address my ward, Miss Castle, has profoundly touched me. 

 "I have considered the matter, I may say earnestly considered it. 

 "Honor and the sacred duties of guardianship forbid that I should interfere in any way with my dear child's happiness if she desires to place it in your keeping. On the other hand, honor and decency prevent me from attempting to influence her to any decision which might prove acceptable to myself. 

 "I can therefore only grant you the permission you desire to address my ward. The rest lies with a propitious Providence. 

 "Cordially yours, JOHN GARCIDE. 

 "P. S. --My sister, Miss Garcide, and Miss Castle are going to the Sagamore Club to-night. I'll take you up there whenever you can get away. "

To which came answer by messenger:

 "_Hon. John Garcide_:

 "MY DEAR GARCIDE, --Can't go for two weeks. My fool nephew Jim is on his vacation, and I don't know where he is prowling. Hastily yours, "JAMES J. CRAWFORD. 

 "P. S. --There's a director's meeting at three. Come down and we'll settle all quarrels. "

To this the Hon. John Garcide telegraphed: "All right, " and hurriedlyprepared to escort his sister and Miss Castle to the mid-day express forSagamore Hills. 

II

Miss Castle usually rose with the robins, when there were any in theneighborhood. There were plenty on the lawn around the Sagamore Clubthat dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating theirendless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of therobins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird's whinefloated earthward the melody of the golden orioles. 

Miss Castle, fresh from the bath, breakfasted in her own rooms with anappetite that astonished her. 

She was a wholesome, fresh-skinned girl, with a superb body, limbs atrifle heavy in the strict classical sense, straight-browed, blue-eyed, and very lovely and Greek. 

Pensively she ate her toast, tossing a few crumbs at the robins;pensively she disposed of two eggs, a trout, and all the chocolate, andlooked into the pitcher for more cream. 

The swelling bird-music only intensified the deep, sweet country silencewhich brooded just beyond the lawn's wet limits; she saw the flat rivertumbling in the sunlight; she saw the sky over all, its blue mysteryuntroubled by a cloud. 

"I love all that, " she said, dreamily, to her maid behind her. "Nevermind my hair now; I want the wind to blow it. "

The happy little winds of June, loitering among the lilacs, heard; andthey came and blew her bright hair across her eyes, puff after puff ofperfumed balm, and stirred the delicate stuff that clung to her, and shefelt their caress on her bare feet. 

"I mean to go and wade in that river, " she said to her maid. "Dress mevery quickly. "

But when she was dressed the desire for childish things had passed away, and she raised her grave eyes to the reflected eyes in the mirror, studying them in silence. 

"After all, " she said, aloud, "I am young enough to have foundhappiness--if they had let me. .. . The sunshine is full of it, out-doors. .. . I could have found it. .. . I was not meant for men. .. . Still . .. It is all in the future yet. I will learn not to be afraid. "

She made a little effort to smile at herself in the mirror, but hercourage could not carry her as far as that. So, with a quick, quaintgesture of adieu, she turned and walked rapidly out into the hallway. 

Miss Garcide was in bed, sneezing patiently. "I won't be out for weeks, "said the poor lady, "so you will have to amuse yourself alone. "

Miss Castle kissed her and went away lightly down the polished stairs tothe great hall. 

The steward came up to wish her good-morning, and to place the resourcesof the club at her disposal. 

"I don't know, " she said, hesitating at the veranda door; "I think asun-bath is all I care for. You may hang a hammock under the maples, ifyou will. I suppose, " she added, "that I am quite alone at the club?"

"One gentleman arrived this morning, " said the steward--"Mr. Crawford. "

She looked back, poised lightly in the doorway through which the morningsunshine poured. All the color had left her face. "Mr. Crawford, " shesaid, in a dull voice. 

"He has gone out after trout, " continued the steward, briskly; "he is arare rod, ma'am, is Mr. Crawford. He caught the eight-poundfish--perhaps you noticed it on the panel in the billiard-room. "

Miss Castle came into the hall again, and stepped over to the register. Under her signature, "Miss Castle and maid, " she saw "J. Crawford, NewYork. " The ink was still blue and faint. 

She turned and walked out into the sunshine. 

The future was no longer a gray, menacing future; it had become suddenlythe terrifying present, and its shadow fell sharply around her in thesunshine. 

Now all the courage of her race must be summoned, and must respond tothe summons. The end of all was at hand; but when had a Castle everflinched at the face of fate under any mask?

She raised her resolute head; her eyes matched the sky--clear, unclouded, fathomless. 

In hours of deep distress the sound of her own voice had always helpedher to endure; and now, as she walked across the lawn bareheaded, shetold herself not to grieve over a just debt to be paid, not to quailbecause life held for her nothing of what she had dreamed. 

If there was a tremor now and then in her low voice, none but the robinsheard it; if she lay flung face downward in the grasses, under thescreen of alders by the water, there was no one but the striped chipmunkto jeer and mock. 

"Now listen, you silly girl, " she whispered; "he cannot take away thesky and the sunshine from you! He cannot blind and deafen you, silly!Cry if you must, you little coward!--you will marry him all the same. "

Suddenly sitting up, alert, she heard something singing. It was theriver flowing close beside her. 

She pushed away the screen of leaves and stretched out full length, looking down into the water. 

A trout lay there; his eyes were shining with an opal tint, his scarletspots blazed like jewels. 

And as she lay there, her bright hair tumbled about her face, she heard, above the river's monotone, a sharp, whiplike sound--swis-s-sh--and asilvery thread flashed out across her vision. It was a fishing-line andleader, and the fisherman who had cast it was standing fifty feet awayup-stream, hip-deep in the sunlit water. 

Swish! swish! and the long line flew back, straightened far behind him, and again lengthened out, the single yellow-and-gilt fly settling on thewater just above the motionless trout, who simply backed offdown-stream. 

But there were further troubles for the optimistic angler; a tough alderstem, just under water, became entangled in the line; the fisherman gavea cautious jerk; the hook sank into the water-soaked wood, buried to thebarb. 

"Oh, the deuce!" said the fisherman, calmly. 

Before she could realize what he was about, he had waded across theshallows and seized the alder branch. A dash of water showered her as heshook the hook free; she stood up with an involuntary gasp and met theastonished eyes of the fisherman. 

He was a tall, sunburned young fellow, with powerful shoulders and aneasy, free-limbed carriage; he was also soaking wet and streaked withmud. 

"Upon my word, " he said, "I never saw you! Awf'lly sorry; hope I haven'tspoiled your sport--but I have. You were fishing, of course?"

"No, I was only looking, " she said. "Of course I've spoiled your sport. "

"Not at all, " he said, laughing; "that alder twig did for me. "

"But there was a trout lying there--I saw him; and the trout saw me, soof course he wouldn't rise to your cast. And I'm exceedingly sorry, " sheended, smiling in spite of herself. 

Her hair was badly rumpled; she had been crying, and he could see it, but he had never looked upon such tear-stained, smiling, and dishevelledloveliness. 

As he looked and marvelled, her smile died out; it came to her with adistinct shock that this water-logged specimen of sun-tanned manhoodmust be Crawford. 

"_Are_ you?" she said, scarcely aware that she spoke. 

"What?" he asked, puzzled. 

"Mr. Crawford?"

"Why, yes--and, of course, you are Miss Castle, " he replied, smilingeasily. "I saw your name in the guest-book this morning. Awf'lly gladyou came, Miss Castle; hope you'll let me show you where the big fellowslie. "

"You mean the fish, " she said, with composure. 

The shock of suddenly realizing that this man was the man she had tomarry confused her; she made an effort to get things back into properperspective, for the river was swimming before her eyes, and in herears rang a strangely pleasant voice--Crawford's--saying all sorts ofgood-humored things, which she heard but scarcely comprehended. 

Instinctively she raised her hands to touch her disordered hair; shestood there naïvely twisting it into shape again, her eyes constantlyreverting to the sun-tanned face before her. 

"And I have the pleasure of knowing your guardian, Mr. Garcide, veryslightly--in a business way, " he was saying, politely. 

"Ophir Steel, " she said. 

He laughed. 

"Oh, we are making a great battle, " he said. "I'm only hoping we maycome to an understanding with Mr. Garcide. "

"I thought you had already come to an understanding, " she observed, calmly. 

"Have we? I hope so; I had not heard that, " he said, quickly. "How didyou hear?"

Without warning she flushed scarlet to her neck; and she was as amazedas he at the surging color staining her white skin. 

She could not endure that--she could not face him--so she bent her heada little in recognition of his presence and stepped past him, out alongthe river-bank. 

He looked after her, wondering what he could have said. 

She wondered, too, and her wonder grew that instead of self-pity, repugnance, and deep dread, she should feel such a divine relief fromthe terror that had possessed her. 

Now at least she knew the worst. This was the man!

She strove to place him, to recall his face. She could not. All alongshe had pictured Crawford as an older man. And this broad-shouldered, tanned young fellow was Crawford, after all! Where could her eyes havebeen? How absurd that her indifference should have so utterly blindedher!

She stood a moment on the lawn, closing her eyes. 

Oh, now she had no difficulty in recalling his face--in fact thedifficulty was to shut it out, for it was before her eyes, open orshut--it was before her when she entered her bedroom and sank into acushioned chair by the breezy window. And she took her burning cheeks inboth hands and rested her elbows on her knees. 

Truly terror had fled. It shamed her to find herself thanking God thather fate was to lie in the keeping of this young man. Yet it wasnatural, too, for the child had nigh died of horror, though the courageof the Castles had held her head high in the presence of the inevitable. And now suddenly into her gray and hopeless future, peopled by thephantoms of an old man, stepped a living, smiling young fellow, withgentle manners and honest speech, and a quick courtesy which there wasno mistaking. 

She had no mother--nobody to talk to--so she had long ago made aconfidante of her own reflection in the looking-glass. And to the mirrorshe now went, meeting the reflected eyes shyly, yet smiling withfriendly sympathy:

"Silly! to frighten yourself! It is all over now. He's young and talland sunburned. I don't think he knows a great deal--but don't befrightened, he is not a bit dreadful, . .. Only . .. It is a pity, . .. ButI suppose he was in love with me, . .. And, after all, it doesn't matter, . .. Only I am . .. Sorry . .. For him. .. . If he had only cared for a girlwho could love him!. .. I don't suppose I could, . .. Ever!. .. But I willbe very kind to him, . .. To make up. "

III

She saw him every day; she dined at the club table now. 

Miss Garcide's hay-fever increased with the ripening summer, and she layin her room with all the windows closed, sneezing and reading AnthonyTrollope. 

When Miss Castle told her that Mr. Crawford was a guest at the club, Miss Garcide wept over her for an hour. 

"I feel like weeping, too, " said Miss Castle, tremulously--"but not overmyself. "

"Dot over hib?" inquired Miss Garcide. 

"Yes, over him. He ought to marry a girl who could fall in love withhim. "

Meanwhile Crawford was dining every evening with her at the great clubtable, telling her of the day's sport, and how a black bear had comesplashing across the shallows within a few rods of where he stoodfishing, and how the deer had increased, and were even nibbling thesucculent green stalks in the kitchen garden after nightfall. 

During the day she found herself looking forward to his return and hisjolly, spirited stories, always gay and humorous, and never tiresome, technical, nor conceited, although for three years he had held the clubcup for the best fish taken on Sagamore water. 

She took sun-baths in her hammock; she read novels; she spent hours inreverie, blue eyes skyward, arms under her head, swayed in her hammockby the delicious winds of a perfect June. 

All her composure and common-sense had returned. She began to experiencea certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford--a feeling almostmaternal. 

"He's so amusingly shy about speaking, " she told Miss Garcide; "Isuppose he's anxious and bashful. I think I'll tell him that it is allarranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don't see why Idon't; _I'm not a bit embarrassed_. "

But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle hadnot taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover. 

"Oh, this is simply dreadful, " she argued with herself. "Besides, I wantto know how soon the man expects to marry me. I've a few things topurchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together ina day, he's a--a man!"

That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide asscrupulously as she kept all her promises. 

She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawfordhad brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to befrightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear andovercome it. 

"I'm going to walk down to the little foot-bridge, " she said, steadily, examining the coffee in her tiny cup; "and if you will stroll down withyour pipe, I . .. I will tell you something. "

"That will be very jolly, " he said. "There's a full moon; I mean to havea try at a thumping big fish in the pool above. "

She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door. 

Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank. 

This is what he wrote:

 "_James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N. Y. _: "I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return? "JAMES H. CRAWFORD. "

The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking andthinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that heshould miss very, very soon. 

Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the littlefoot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn. 

A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face. She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodlandrivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon, and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wingsof moths. 

"Surely, " she said, aloud--"surely there is something in the worldbesides men. I love this--all of it! I do indeed. I could find happinesshere; I do not think I was made for men. "

For a long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her wholebody saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then sheraised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenlybecame faintly spiced with tobacco smoke. 

Where did the smoke come from? She turned instinctively. On a rockup-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a whitefly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out into thedusk. 

After a few moments' casting, she saw him step ashore and sauntertowards the bridge, where she was standing; then his step jarred thestructure and he came up, cap in one hand, rod in the other. 

"I thought perhaps you might like to try a cast, " he said, pleasantly. "There's a good-sized fish in the pool above; I raised him twice. He'llscale close to five pounds, I fancy. "

"Thank you, " said Miss Castle; "that is very generous of you, becauseyou are deliberately sacrificing the club loving-cup if I catch thatfish. "

He said, laughing: "I've held the cup before. Try it, Miss Castle; thatis a five-pound fish, and the record this spring is four and a half. "

She took the rod; he went first and she held out her hand so that hecould steady her across the stones and out into the dusk. 

"My skirts are soaked with the dew, anyway, " she said. "I don't mind awetting. "

He unslung his landing-net and waited ready; she sent the line whirlinginto the darkness. 

"To the right, " he said. 

For ten minutes she stood there casting in silence. Once a splash inthe shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat. 

"By-the-way, " she said, quietly, over her shoulder, "I know why you andI have met here. "

And as Crawford said nothing she reeled in her line, and held out herhand to him as a signal that she wished to come ashore. 

He aided her, taking the rod and guiding her carefully across the duskystepping-stones to the bank. 

She shook out her damp skirts, then raised her face, which had grown atrifle pale. 

"I will marry you, Mr. Crawford, " she said, bravely, --"and I hope youwill make me love you. Mr. Garcide wishes it. .. . I understand . .. Thatyou wish it. You must not feel embarrassed, . .. Nor let me feelembarrassed. Come and talk it over. Shall we?"

There was a rustic seat on the river-bank; she sat down in one corner. 

His face was in shadow; he had dropped his rod and landing-net abruptly. And now he took an uncertain step towards her and sat down at her side. 

"I want you to make me love you, " she said, frankly; "I hope you will; Ishall do all I can to help you. But--unless I do--will you rememberthat?--I do _not_ love you. " As he was silent, she went on: "Take me asa comrade; I will go where you wish. I am really a good comrade; I cando what men do. You shall see! It will be pleasant, I think. "

After a little while he spoke in a low voice which was not perfectlysteady: "Miss Castle, I am going to tell you something which you mustknow. I do not believe that Mr. Garcide has authorized me to offermyself to you. "

"He told me that he desired it, " she said. "That is why he brought ustogether. And he also said, " she added, hastily, "that you were somewhatbashful. So I thought it best to make it easy for us both. I hope Ihave. "

Crawford sat motionless for a long while. At last he passed his handsover his eyes, leaning forward and looking into her face. 

"I've simply got to be honest with you, " he said; "I know there is amistake. "

"No, there is no mistake, " she said, bending her head and looking him inthe eyes--"unless you have made the mistake--unless, " she said, quickly--"you do not want me. "

"Want you!" he stammered, catching fire of a sudden--"want you, youbeautiful child! I love you if ever man loved on earth! Want you?" Hishand fell heavily on hers, and closed. For an instant their palms layclose together; her heart almost stopped; then a swift flame flew to herface and she struggled to withdraw her fingers twisted in his. 

"You must not do that, " she said, breathlessly. "I do not love you--Iwarned you!"

He said: "You _must_ love me! Can't you understand? You made me loveyou--you made me! Listen to me--it is all a mistake--but it is too latenow. I did not dare even think of you--I have simply got to tell you thetruth--I did not dare think of you--I must say it--and I can'tunderstand how I could ever have seen you and not loved you. But whenyou spoke--when I touched you--"

"Please, please, " she said, faintly, "let me go! It is not a mistake;I--I am glad that you love me; I will try to love you. I want to--Ibelieve I can--"

"You _must_!"

"Yes, . .. I will. .. . Please let me go!"

Breathless and crimson, she fell back into her corner, staring at him. He dropped his arm on the back of the rustic seat. 

Presently he laughed uncertainly, and struck his forehead with his openhand. 

"It's a mistake, " he said; "and if it is a mistake, Heaven help theother man!"

She watched him with curious dismay. Never could she have believed thatthe touch of a man's hand could thrill her; never had she imagined thatthe words of a man could set her heart leaping to meet his stammeredvows. A new shame set her very limbs quaking as she strove to rise. Thedistress in her eyes, the new fear, the pitiful shyness, called to himfor mercy. 

For a miracle he understood the mute appeal, and he took her hand in hisquietly and bade her good-night, saying he would stay and smoke awhile. 

"Good-night, " she said; "I am really tired. I would rather you stayedhere. Do you mind?"

"No, " he said. 

"Then I shall go back alone. "

He watched her across the lawn. When she had gone half-way, she lookedback and saw him standing there in the moonlight. 

And that night, as her little silver hand-glass reflected her brilliantcheeks, she veiled her face in her bright hair and knelt down by herbedside. 

But all she could say was, "I love him--truly I love him!" which was onekind of prayer, after all. 

IV

A deep, sweet happiness awoke her ere the earliest robin chirped. Neversince the first pink light touched Eden had such a rosy day dawned forany maid on earth. 

She awoke in love; her enchanted eyes unclosed on a world she had neverknown. 

Unashamed, she held out her arms to the waking world and spoke herlover's name aloud. Then the young blood leaped in her, and her eyeswere like stars after a rain. 

Oh, she must hasten now, for there was so little time to live in theworld, and every second counted. Healthy of body, wholesome of soul, innocent and ardent in her new-born happiness, she could scarcely endurethe rush of golden moments lost in an impetuous bath, in twisting up herbright hair, in the quick knotting of a ribbon, the click of a buckle onknee and shoe. 

Then, as she slipped down the stairs into the darkened hall, trepidationseized her, for she heard his step. 

He came swinging along the hallway; she stood still, trembling. He cameup quickly and took her hands; she did not move; his arm encircled herwaist; he lifted her head; it lay back on his shoulder, and her eyes methis. 

"All day together, " he was saying; and her soul leaped to meet hiswords, but she could not speak. 

He held her at arms'-length, laughing, a little troubled. 

"Mystery of mysteries, " he said, under his breath; "there is someblessed Heaven-directed mistake in this. _Is_ there, sweetheart?"

"No, " she said. 

"And if there was?"

"Can you ask?"

"Then come to breakfast, heart of my heart!--the moments are flying veryswiftly, and there is only this day left--until to-morrow. Listen! Ihear the steward moving like a gray rat in the pantry. Can we endure asteward in Eden?"

"Only during breakfast, " she said, laughing. "I smell the wheatenflapjacks, and, oh, I am famished!"

There have been other breakfasts--Barmecide breakfasts compared withtheir first crust broken in love. 

But they ate--oh, indeed, they ate everything before them, fromflapjacks to the piles of little, crisp trout. And they might havecalled for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing, presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford's heart stopped, and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake. 

She, too, suddenly apprehensive, sat rigid, the smile dying out in hereyes; and when he finally took the envelope and tore it open, sheshivered. 

 "_Crawford, Sagamore Club_:

 "Ophir has consolidated with Steel Plank. You take charge of London office. Make arrangements to catch steamer leaving a week from to-morrow. Garcide and I will be at Sagamore to-night. JAMES J. CRAWFORD. "

He sat staring at the telegram; she, vaguely apprehensive for the safetyof this new happiness of hers, clasped her hands tightly in her lap andwaited. 

"Any answer, sir?" asked the steward. 

Crawford took the offered telegram blank and mechanically wrote:

 "Instructions received. Will expect you and Garcide to-night. JAMES CRAWFORD. "

She sat, twisting her fingers on her knees, watching him in growingapprehension. The steward took the telegram. 

Crawford looked at her with a ghastly smile. 

They rose together, instinctively, and walked to the porch. 

"Oh yes, " he said, under his breath, "such happiness was too perfect. Magic is magic--it never lasts. "

"What is it?" she asked, faintly. 

He picked up his cap, which was lying on a chair. 

"Let's get away, somewhere, " he said. "Do you mind coming withme--alone?"

"No, " she said. 

There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle andsetting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river, side by side. 

Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, theyembarked on Sagamore Water. 

The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade, the spray floated shoreward. 

V

Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with drippingwater-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tallhemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm waterstretched away into the forest's sombre depths, barred here and there bydusty sunbeams. 

Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered aneagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craftswept the yellow gravel. 

Knee to knee, vis-à-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment ofeach other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them;life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold ofseparation. 

"I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow, " she said, lookingat him. 

The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she wouldnot permit him to touch her. 

"See to what you have brought me!" she said. "I'm utterly unable to livewithout you. And now what are you going to do with me?"

Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid itagainst his face. 

"There is a way, " he said. 

"A way?"

"Shall I lead? Would you follow?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, amused. 

"There is a way, " he repeated. "That thread of a brook leads to it. "

He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream, scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its moundsof moss. 

He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoeswung westward. 

"Where are you taking me?" she asked. 

But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughingrecklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns. 

"If we turned back now, " she said, "it would be sunset before we reachedthe club. "

"What do we care?" he laughed. "Look!"

Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoeshot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of thesinking sun. 

Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moistmeadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which thestream wound in pools of gold. 

The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, andhe sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-polein drops of fire. 

There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered onsomething that might have been a long reed quivering. 

"An old friend fishing yonder, " he said, quietly; "I knew he would bethere. " He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. "That is theparson of Foxville, " he said. "We will need him before we go to London. "

She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaningflashed out like a sunbeam. 

"Do--do you wish--that--_now_?" she faltered. 

He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling. 

"No, no!"--she whispered, with bent head--"I cannot; don't take meso--so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it. "

He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the bladeand she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on. 

"Oh, we are quite mad, " she said, unsteadily. 

"I am glad we are, " he said. 

The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-wingedblackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marshin flickering flight. 

The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up inmild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide intohis pool and swing shoreward. 

The parson of Foxville was a very old man--almost too old to fish fortrout. 

Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris. 

Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peeredat her with his aged eyes, saying, "You are quite mad, my child, andvery lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would bemuch safer if you were married. "

Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of herlover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his. 

A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings ofmoths--that was her fate--with the sky a canopy of fire above her, andthe curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processionalof the woods lining the corridors of the coming night. 

And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husbandand shambled away across the meadows. 

Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing thebride of an hour, her head on her husband's knees. The stars came out towatch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle's wake, stringing away, twinkling in the starlight. 

Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on hisknees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead. 

A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyeslike rubies in the dark. 

Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windowsof the house glimmered, reflected in the water. 

Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, risingin chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting. 

"I've a word to say to you, " snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in hisward's ear--"and another word for your fool of an aunt!"

She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. "What do youmean?" she stammered; "we--we are married. Will you not speak to my--myhusband?"

A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh. 

"You're all right, Jim, " said the elder Crawford, slowly. "Ophir Steelwon't slip through your fingers when I'm under the sod. Been marriedlong, Jim?"

THE FIRE-WARDEN

I

"And of course what I buy is my own, " continued Burleson, patiently. "Noman here will question that, I suppose?"

For a moment there was silence in the cross-roads store; then a lank, mud-splashed native arose from behind the stove, shoving his scarredhands deep into the ragged pockets of his trousers. 

"Young man, " he said, harshly, "there's a few things you can't buy; youmay think you can buy 'em--you may pay for 'em, too--but they can't bebought an' sold. You thought you bought Grier's tract; you thought youbought a lot o' deer an' birds an' fish, several thousand acres intimber, and a dozen lakes. An' you paid for 'em, too. But, sonny, youwas took in; you paid for 'em, but you didn't buy 'em, because Griercouldn't sell God's free critters. He fooled ye that time. "

"Is that the way you regard it, Santry?" asked Burleson. "Is that theway these people regard private property?"

"I guess it is, " replied the ragged man, resuming his seat on theflour-barrel. "I cal'late the Lord A'mighty fashioned His wild crittersf'r to peramble round about, offerin' a fair mark an' no favor to themthat's smart enough to git 'em with buck, bird-shot, or bullet. Livewild critters ain't for sale; they never was made to buy an' sell. Thespryest gits 'em--an' that's all about it, I guess, _Mister_ Burleson. "

A hard-faced young man leaning against the counter, added significantly:"We talked some to Grier, an' he sold out. He come here, too, just likeyou. "

The covert menace set two spots of color deepening in young Burleson'slean cheeks; but he answered calmly:

"What a man believes to be his own he seldom abandons from fear ofthreats. "

"That's kinder like our case, " observed old man Santry, chewingvigorously. 

Another man leaned over and whispered to a neighbor, who turned a grimeye on Burleson without replying. 

As for Burleson and his argument, a vicious circle had been completed, and there was little chance of an understanding; he saw that plainly, but, loath to admit it, turned towards old man Santry once more. 

"If what has been common rumor is true, " he said, "Mr. Grier, from whomI bought the Spirit Lake tract, was rough in defending what he believedto be his own. I want to be decent; I desire to preserve the game andthe timber, but not at the expense of human suffering. You know betterthan I do what has been the history of Fox Cross-roads. Twenty-fiveyears ago your village was a large one; you had tanneries, lumber-mills, paper-mills--even a newspaper. To-day the timber is gone, and so has the town except for your homes--twenty houses, perhaps. Yoursoil is sand and slate, fit only for a new forest; the entire country isuseless for farming, and it is the natural home of pine and oak, of thedeer and partridge. "

He took one step nearer the silent circle around the stove. "I haveoffered to buy your rights; Grier hemmed you in on every side to forceyou out. I do not want to force you; I offer to buy your land at a fairappraisal. And your answer is to put a prohibitive price on the land. "

"Because, " observed old man Santry, "we've got you ketched. That'sbusiness, I guess. "

Burleson flushed up. "Not business; blackmail, Santry. "

Another silence, then a man laughed: "Is that what they call it down toYork, Mr. Burleson?"

"I think so. "

"When a man wants to put up a skyscraper an' gits all but the key-lot, an' if the owner of the key-lot holds out for his price, do they call itblackmail?"

"No, " said Burleson; "I think I spoke hastily. "

Not a sound broke the stillness in the store. After a moment old manSantry opened his clasp-knife, leaned forward, and shaved off a thinslice from the cheese on the counter. This he ate, faded eyes fixed onspace. Men all around him relaxed in their chairs, spat, recrossed theirmuddy boots, stretching and yawning. Plainly the conference had ended. 

"I am sorry, " said young Burleson; "I had hoped for a fairunderstanding. "

Nobody answered. 

He tucked his riding-crop under one arm and stood watching them, buttoning his tan gloves. Then with the butt of his crop he rubbed a dryspot of mud from his leather puttees, freed the incrusted spurs, andturned towards the door, pausing there to look back. 

"I hate to leave it this way, " he said, impulsively. "I want to live inpeace with my neighbors. I mean to make no threats--but neither can I bemoved by threats. .. . Perhaps time will aid us to come to a fairunderstanding; perhaps a better knowledge of one another. Although theshooting and fishing are restricted, my house is always open to myneighbors. You will be welcome when you come--"

The silence was profound as he hesitated, standing there before them inthe sunshine of the doorway--a lean, well-built, faultless figure, anunconscious challenge to poverty, a terrible offence to their everyinstinct--the living embodiment of all that they hated most in all theworld. 

And so he went away with a brief "Good-morning, " swung himself astridehis horse, and cantered off, gathering bridle as he rode, sweeping at agallop across the wooden bridge into the forest world beyond. 

The September woods were dry--dry enough to catch fire. His troubledeyes swept the second growth as he drew bridle at a gate set in a fenceeight feet high and entirely constructed of wire net interwoven withbarbed wire, and heavily hedged with locust and buck-thorn. 

He dismounted, unlocked the iron gate, led his horse through, refastened the gate, and walked on, his horse following as a trained dogfollows at heel. 

Through the still September sunshine ripened leaves drifted down throughinterlaced branches, and the whispering rustle of their fall filled theforest silence. The wood road, carpeted with brilliant leaves, woundthrough second growth, following the edge of a dark, swift stream, thenswept westward among the pines, where the cushion of brown needlesdeadened every step, and where there was no sound save the rustle of aflock of rose-tinted birds half buried in the feathery fronds of a whitepine. Again the road curved eastward; skirting a cleft of slate rocks, through which the stream rushed with the sound of a wind-stirredwoodland; and by this stream a man stood, loading a rusty fowling-piece. 

Young Burleson had retained Grier's keepers, for obvious reasons; andalready he knew them all by name. But this man was no keeper of his; andhe walked straight up to him, bidding him a rather sharp good-morning, which was sullenly returned. 

Then Burleson told him as pleasantly as he could that the land waspreserved, that he could not tolerate armed trespassing, and that thekeepers were charged to enforce the laws. 

"It is better, " he said, "to have a clear understanding at once. I thinkthe law governing private property is clearly set forth on the signsalong my boundary. This preserve is posted and patrolled; I have doneall I could to guarantee public rights; I have not made any applicationto have the public road closed, and I am perfectly willing to keep itopen for public convenience. But it is not right for anybody to carry agun in these preserves; and if it continues I shall surely apply forpermission to close the road. "

"I guess you think you'll do a lot o' things, " observed the man, stolidly. 

"I think I will, " returned Burleson, refusing to take offence at theinsolence. 

The man tossed his gun to his shoulder and slouched towards theboundary. Burleson watched him in silence until the fellow reached thenetted wire fence, then he called out. 

"There is a turnstile to the left. "

But the native deliberately drew a hatchet from his belt, opened thewire netting with one heavy slash, and crawled through. Then wheeling inhis tracks outside, he cursed Burleson and shook his gun at him, andfinally slouched off towards Fox Cross-roads, leaving the master of theforest a trifle white and quivering under the cutting curb ofself-control. 

Presently his spasmodic grip on the riding-crop relaxed; he looked abouthim with a long, quiet breath, flicked a burr from his riding-breeches, and walked on, head lowered and jaw set. His horse followed at hisheels. 

A mile beyond he met a keeper demolishing a deadfall along the creek, and he summoned him with a good-humored greeting. 

"Rolfe, we're headed for trouble, but it must not come--do you hear? Iwon't have it if it can be avoided--and it must be avoided. These poordevils that Grier hemmed in and warned off with his shot-gun patrol arelooking for that same sort of thing from me. Petty annoyance shall notdrive me into violence; I've made it plain to every keeper, everyforester, every man who takes wages from me. If I can stand insolencefrom people I am sorry for, my employés can and must. .. . Who was thatman I met below here?"

"Abe Storm, sir. "

"What was he doing--building deadfalls?"

"Seven, sir. He had three muskrats, a mink, and a string of steel trapswhen I caught him--"

"Rolfe, you go to Abe Storm and tell him I give him leave to takemuskrat and mink along Spirit Creek, and that I'll allow him a quarterbounty on every unmarked pelt, and he may keep the pelts, too. "

The keeper looked blankly at the master: "Why--why, Mr. Burleson, he'sthe dirtiest, meanest market hunter in the lot!"

"You do as I say, Rolfe, " said the master, amiably. 

"Yes, sir--but--"

"Did you deliver my note to the fire-warden?"

"Yes, sir. The old man's abed with miseries. He said he'd send hisdeputy at noon. "

Burleson laid his gloved hand on his horse's saddle, looking sharply atthe keeper. 

"They tell me that Mr. Elliott has seen better fortune, Rolfe. "

"Yes, sir. When the Cross-roads went to pot, he went too. He owned apiece o' land that was no good only for the timber. He's like the resto' them, I guess--only he had more to lose--an' he lost it same as allo' them. "

Burleson drew out his watch, glanced at it, and then mounted. 

"Try to make a friend of Abe Storm, " he said; "that is my policy, andyou all know it. Help me to keep the peace, Rolfe. If I keep it, I don'tsee how they're going to break it. "

"Very well, sir. But it riles me to--"

"Nonsense! Now tell me where I'm to meet the fire-warden's deputy. Oh!then I'll jump him somewhere before long. And remember, Rolfe, that it'sno more pleasure for me to keep my temper than it is for anybody. ButI've got to do it, and so have you. And, after all, it's more fun tokeep it than to let it loose. "

"Yes, sir, " said Rolfe, grinning like a dusty fox in July. 

So Burleson rode on at a canter, presently slacking to a walk, arguingwith himself in a low, calm voice:

"Poor devils--poor, half-starved devils! If I could afford to pay theirprices I'd do it. .. . I'll wink at anything short of destruction; I can'tlet them cut the pine; I can't let them clean out the grouse and deerand fish. As for law-suits, I simply won't! There must be some decentway short of a shot-gun. "

He stretched out a hand and broke a flaming maple leaf from a branch inpassing, drew it through his button-hole, thoughtful eyes searching theroad ahead, which now ran out through long strips of swale bordered bysaplings. 

Presently a little breeze stirred the foliage of the white birches to asea of tremulous gold; and at the same moment a rider appeared in themarsh beyond, galloping through the blanched swale-grass, which rosehigh as the horse's girth. 

Young Burleson drew bridle; the slim youth who sat his saddle so easilymust be the deputy of the sick fire-warden; this was the time and theplace. 

As the young rider galloped up, Burleson leaned forward, offering hishand with an easy, pleasant greeting. The hand was unnoticed, thegreeting breathlessly returned; two grave, gray eyes met his, andBurleson found himself looking into the flushed face of a young girl. 

When he realized this, he took off his cap, and she inclined her head, barely acknowledging his salute. 

"I am Mr. Elliott's daughter, " she said; "you are Mr. Burleson?"

Burleson had the honor of presenting himself, cap in hand. 

"I am my father's deputy, " said the girl, quietly, gathering her bridleand wheeling her horse. "I read your note. Have you reason to believethat an attempt has been made to fire the Owl Vlaie?"

There was a ring of business in her voice that struck him as amusinglydelightful--and such a sweet, clear voice, too, untinged with theslightest taint of native accent. 

"Yes, " said Burleson, gravely, "I'm afraid that somebody tried to burnthe vlaie. I think that a change in the wind alone saved us from a badfire. "

"Shall we ride over?" inquired the girl, moving forward with unconsciousgrace. 

Burleson ranged his big horse alongside; she set her mount at a gallop, and away they went, wheeling into the swale, knee-deep in dry, silverygrasses, until the deputy fire-warden drew bridle with a side-flungcaution: "Muskrats! Look out for a cropper!"

Now, at a walk, the horses moved forward side by side through the pale, glistening sea of grass stretching out on every side. 

Over a hidden pond a huge heron stood guard, stiff and shapeless as aweather-beaten stake. Blackbirds with crimson-slashed shoulders rose inclouds from the reeds, only to settle again as they passed amid aceaseless chorus of harsh protest. Once a pair of summer duck camespeeding overhead, and Burleson, looking up, exclaimed:

"There's a bird I never shoot at. It's too beautiful. "

The girl turned her head, serious gray eyes questioning his. 

"Have you ever seen a wood-duck?--a drake? in full plumage?" he asked. 

"Often--before Mr. Grier came. "

Burleson fell silent, restless in his saddle, then said:

"I hope you will see many wood-duck now. My boats on Spirit Water arealways at Mr. Elliott's disposal--and at yours. "

She made the slightest sign of acknowledgment, but said nothing. Once ortwice she rose upright, standing straight in her stirrups to scan thedistance under a small, inverted hand. East and north the pine forestgirdled the vlaie; west and south hardwood timber laced the sky-linewith branches partly naked, and the pine's outposts of white birch andwillow glimmered like mounds of crumpled gold along the edges of the seaof grass. 

"There is the stream!" said Burleson, suddenly. 

[Illustration: "AWAY THEY WENT, KNEE-DEEP IN DRY SILVERY GRASSES"]

She saw it at the same moment, touched her mare with spurred heels, andlifted her clean over with a grace that set Burleson's nerves thrilling. 

He followed, taking the water-jump without effort; and after a second'shesitation ventured to praise her horse. 

"Yes, " she said, indifferently, "The Witch is a good mare. " After asilence, "My father desires to sell her. "

"I know a dozen men who would jump at the chance, " said the youngfellow. "But"--he hesitated--"it is a shame to sell such a mare--"

The girl colored. "My father will never ride again, " she said, quietly. "We should be very glad to sell her. "

"But--the mare suits you so perfectly--"

She turned her head and looked at him gravely. "You must be aware, Mr. Burleson, that it is not choice with us, " she said. There was nothing ofbitterness in her voice; she leaned forward, patting the mare's chestnutneck for a moment, then swung back, sitting straight as a cavalryman inher saddle. "Of course, " she said, smiling for the first time, "it willbreak my heart to sell The Witch, but"--she patted the mare again--"themare won't grieve; it takes a dog to do that; but horses--well, I knowhorses enough to know that even The Witch won't grieve. "

"That is a radical theory, Miss Elliott, " said Burleson, amused. "Whatabout the Arab and his loving steed?"

"That is not a legend for people who know horses, " she replied, stillsmiling. "The love is all on our side. You know horses, Mr. Burleson. Isit not the truth--the naked truth, stripped of poetry and freed fromtradition?"

"Why strip poetry from anything?" he asked, laughing. 

She rode on in silence for a while, the bright smile fading from lipsand eyes. 

"Oh, you are quite right, " she said; "let us leave what romance theremay be in the world. My horse loves me like a dog. I am very happy tobelieve it, Mr. Burleson. "

From the luminous shadow of her sombrero she looked out across thestretch of marsh, where from unseen pools the wild-duck were rising, disturbed by the sound of their approach. And now the snipe began todart skyward from under their horses' feet, filling the noon silencewith their harsh "squak! squak!"

"It's along here somewhere, " said Burleson, leaning forward in hissaddle to scan the swale-grass. A moment later he said, "Look there, Miss Elliott!"

In the tall, blanched grasses a velvety black space marked the ashes ofa fire, which had burned in a semi-circle, then westward to the water'sedge. 

"You see, " he said, "it was started to sweep the vlaie to the pinetimber. The wind changed, and held it until the fire was quenched at theshore. "

"I see, " she said. 

He touched his horse, and they pressed forward along the bog's edge. 

"Here, " he pointed out, "they fired the grass again, you see, alwayscounting on the west wind; and here again, and yonder too, and beyondthat, Miss Elliott--in a dozen places they set the grass afire. If thatwet east wind had not come up, nothing on earth could have saved athousand acres of white pine--and I'm afraid to say how many deer andpartridges and woodcock. .. . It was a savage bit of business, was it not, Miss Elliott?"

She sat her horse, silent, motionless, pretty head bent, studying thecourse of the fire in the swale. There was no mistaking the signs; agrass fire had been started, which, had the west wind held, must havebecome a brush fire, and then the most dreaded scourge of the north, afull-fledged forest-fire in tall timber. After a little while she raisedher head and looked full at Burleson, then, without comment, she wheeledher mare eastward across the vlaie towards the pines. 

"What do you make of it?" he asked, pushing his horse forward alongsideof her mare. 

"The signs are perfectly plain, " she said. "Whom do you suspect?"

He waited a moment, then shook his head. 

"You suspect nobody?"

"I haven't been here long enough. I don't exactly know what to do aboutthis. It is comparatively easy to settle cases of simple trespass ordeer-shooting, but, to tell the truth, Miss Elliott, fire scares me. Idon't know how to meet this sort of thing. "

She was silent. 

"So, " he added, "I sent for the fire-warden. I don't know just what thewarden's duties may be. "

"I do, " she said, quietly. Her mare struck solid ground; she sent herforward at a gallop, which broke into a dead run. Burleson came poundingalong behind, amused, interested at this new caprice. She drew bridle atthe edge of the birches, half turned in her saddle, bidding him followwith a gesture, and rode straight into the covert, now bending to avoidbranches, now pushing intrusive limbs aside with both gloved hands. 

Out of the low bush pines, heirs of the white birches' heritage, rabbitshopped away; sometimes a cock grouse, running like a rat, fled, crestedhead erect; twice twittering woodcock whirred upward, beating wingstangled for a moment in the birches, fluttering like great moths caughtin a net. 

And now they had waded through the silver-birches which fringed thepines as foam fringes a green sea; and before them towered the talltimber, illuminated by the sun. 

In the transparent green shadows they drew bridle; she leaned forward, clearing the thick tendrils of hair from her forehead, and satstock-still, intent, every exquisite line and contour in full reliefagainst the pines. 

At first he thought she was listening, nerves keyed to sense soundsinaudible to him. Then, as he sat, fascinated, scarcely breathing lestthe enchantment break, leaving him alone in the forest with the memoryof a dream, a faint aromatic odor seemed to grow in the air; not theclose scent of the pines, but something less subtle. 

"Smoke!" he said, aloud. 

She touched her mare forward, riding into the wind, delicate nostrilsdilated; and he followed over the soundless cushion of brown needles, down aisles flanked by pillared pines whose crests swam in the upperbreezes, filling all the forest with harmony. 

And here, deep in the splendid forest, there was fire, --at first nothingbut a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles;then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path fromwhich fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanishing in thewoodland half-light. 

He sprang from his horse and tore away a bed of green moss through whichfilaments of blue smoke stole; and deep in the forest mould, spreadinglike veins in an autumn leaf, fire ran underground, its almost invisiblevapor curling up through lichens and the brown carpet of pine-needles. 

At first, for it was so feeble a fire, scarcely alive, he strove tostamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed itswormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals risingthrough living moss--everywhere the attenuated spirals creeping from theground underfoot. 

"I could summon every man in this town if necessary, " she said; "I amempowered by law to do so; but--I shall not--yet. Where could we find akeeper--the nearest patrol?"

"Please follow me, " he said, mounting his horse and wheeling eastward. 

In a few moments they came to a foot-trail, and turned into it at acanter, skirting the Spirit Water, which stretched away between twomountains glittering in the sun. 

"How many men can you get?" she called forward. 

"I don't know; there's a gang of men terracing below the lodge--"

"Call them all; let every man bring a pick and shovel. There is a guardnow!"

Burleson pulled up short and shouted, "Murphy!"

The patrol turned around. 

"Get the men who are terracing the lodge. Bring picks, shovels, andaxes, and meet me here. Run for it!"

The fire-warden's horse walked up leisurely; the girl had relinquishedthe bridle and was guiding the mare with the slightest pressure of kneeand heel. She sat at ease, head lowered, absently retying the ribbon onthe hair at her neck. When it was adjusted to her satisfaction shepassed a hat-pin through her sombrero, touched the bright, thick hairabove her forehead, straightened out, stretching her legs in thestirrups. Then she drew off her right gauntlet, and very discreetlystifled the daintiest of yawns. 

"You evidently don't believe there is much danger, " said Burleson, witha smile which seemed to relieve the tension he had labored under. 

"Yes, there is danger, " she said. 

After a silence she added, "I think I hear your men coming. "

He listened in vain; he heard the wind above filtering through thepines; he heard the breathing of their horses, and his own heart-beats, too. Then very far away a sound broke out. 

"What wonderful ears you have!" he said--not thinking of their beautyuntil his eye fell on their lovely contour. And as he gazed the little, clean-cut ear next to him turned pink, and its owner touched her mareforward--apparently in aimless caprice, for she circled and camestraight back, meeting his gaze with her pure, fearless gray eyes. 

There must have been something not only perfectly inoffensive, but alsowell-bred, in Burleson's lean, bronzed face, for her own face softenedinto an amiable expression, and she wheeled the mare up beside hismount, confidently exposing the small ear again. 

The men were coming; there could be no mistake this time. And there cameMurphy, too, and Rolfe, with his great, swinging stride, gun on oneshoulder, a bundle of axes on the other. 

"This way, " said Burleson, briefly; but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig ofaromatic black birch, as she rode, to place between her red lips. 

Murphy, arriving in the lead, scanned the haze which hung along theliving moss. 

"Sure, it's a foolish fire, sorr, " he muttered, "burrowing like a molegone mad. Rest aisy, Misther Burleson; we'll scotch the divil that donethis night's worruk!--bad cess to the dhirrty scut!"

"Never mind that, Murphy. Miss Elliott, are they to dig it out?"

She nodded. 

The men, ranged in an uneven line, stood stupidly staring at the longvistas of haze. The slim fire-warden wheeled her mare to face them, speaking very quietly, explaining how deep to dig, how far a marginmight be left in safety, how many men were to begin there, and at whatdistances apart. 

Then she picked ten men and bade them follow her. 

Burleson rode in the rear, motioning Rolfe to his stirrup. 

"What do you think of it?" he asked, in a low voice. 

"I think, sir, that one of those damned Storms did it--"

"I mean, what do you think about the chances? Is it serious?"

"That young lady ahead knows better than I do. I've seen two of thesehere underground fires: one was easy killed; the other cleaned out threethousand acres. "

Burleson nodded. "I think, " he said, "that you had better go back to thelodge and get every spare man. Tell Rudolf to rig up a wagon and bringrations and water for the men. Put in something nice for MissElliott--see to that, Rolfe; do you hear?"

"Yes, sir. "

"And, Rolfe, bring feed for the horses--and see that there are a coupleof men to watch the house and stables--" He broke out, bitterly, "It's ascoundrelly bit of work they've done!--" and instantly had himself undercontrol again. "Better go at once, Rolfe, and caution the men to remainquiet under provocation if any trespassers come inside. "

II

By afternoon they had not found the end of the underground fire. Thelive trail had been followed and the creeping terror exterminated forhalf a mile; yet, although two ditches had been dug to cut the fire offfrom farther progress, always ahead the haze hung motionless, stretchingaway westward through the pines. 

Now a third trench was started--far enough forward this time, for therewas no blue haze visible beyond the young hemlock growth. 

The sweating men, stripped to their undershirts, swung pick and axe anddrove home their heavy shovels. Burleson, his gray flannel shirt open atthe throat, arms bared to the shoulder, worked steadily among his men;on a knoll above, the fire-warden sat cross-legged on the pine-needles, her straight young back against a tree. On her knees were a plate and anapkin. She ate bits of cold partridge at intervals; at intervals shesipped a glass of claret and regarded Burleson dreamily. 

To make certain, she had set a gang of men to clear the woods in a beltbehind the third ditch; a young growth of hemlock was being sacrificed, and the forest rang with axe-strokes, the cries of men, the splinteringcrash of the trees. 

"I think, " said Burleson to Rolfe, who had just come up, "that we areahead of the trouble now. Did you give my peaceful message to AbeStorm?"

"No, sir; he wasn't to home--damn him!"

The young man looked up quickly. "What's the trouble now?" he asked. 

"There's plenty more trouble ahead, " said the keeper, in a low voice. "Look at this belt, sir!" and he drew from his pocket a leather belt, unrolled it, and pointed at a name scratched on the buckle. The name was"Abe Storm. "

"Where did that come from?" demanded Burleson. 

"The man that fired the vlaie grass dropped it. Barry picked it up onpatrol. There's the evidence, sir. The belt lay on the edge of theburning grass. "

"You mean he dropped it last night, and Barry found it where the grasshad been afire?"

"No, sir; that belt was dropped two hours since. _The grass was afireagain. _"

The color left Burleson's face, then came surging back through thetightening skin of the set jaws. 

"Barry put out the blaze, sir. He's on duty there now with Chase andConnor. God help Abe Storm if they get him over the sights, Mr. Burleson. "

Burleson's self-command was shaken. He reached out his hand for thebelt, flung away his axe, and walked up the slope of the knoll where thefire-warden sat calmly watching him. 

For a few moments he stood before her, teeth set, in silent battle withthat devil's own temper which had never been killed in him, which heknew now could never be ripped out and exterminated, which must, _must_lie chained--chained while he himself stood tireless guard, knowing thatchains may break. 

After a while he dropped to the ground beside her, like a man deadtired. "Tell me about these people, " he said. 

"What people, Mr. Burleson? My own?"

Her sensitive instinct had followed the little drama from hervantage-seat on the knoll; she had seen the patrol display the belt; shehad watched the color die out and then flood the young man's face andneck; and she had read the surface signs of the murderous fury thataltered his own visage to a mask set with a pair of blazing eyes. Andsuddenly, as he dropped to the ground beside her, his question had sweptaside formality, leaving them on the very edge of an intimacy which shehad accepted, unconsciously, with her low-voiced answer. 

"Yes--your own people. Tell what I should know I want to live in peaceamong them if they'll let me. "

She gathered her knees in her clasped fingers and looked out into theforest. "Mr. Burleson, " she said, "for every mental, every moraldeformity, man is answerable to man. You dwellers in the pleasant placesof the world are pitiless in your judgment of the sullen, suspicious, narrow life you find edging forests, clinging to mountain flanks, orstupidly stifling in the heart of some vast plain. I cannot understandthe mental cruelty which condemns with contempt human creatures who havehad no chance--not one single chance. Are they ignorant? Then bear withthem for shame! Are they envious, grasping, narrow? Do they gossip aboutneighbors, do they slander without mercy? What can you expect fromstarved minds, human intellects unnourished by all that you find sowholesome? Man's progress only inspires man; man's mind alone stimulatesman's mind. Where civilization is, there are many men; where is thegreatest culture, the broadest thought, the sweetest toleration, theremen are many, teaching one another unconsciously, consciously, alwaysadvancing, always uplifting, spite of the shallow tide of sin whichflows in the footsteps of all progress--"

She ceased; her delicate, earnest face relaxed, and a smile glimmeredfor a moment in her eyes, in the pretty curled corners of her partedlips. 

"I'm talking very like a school-marm, " she said. "I am one, by-the-way, and I teach the children of these people--_my_ people, " she added, withan exquisite hint of defiance in her smile. 

She rested her weight on one arm and leaned towards him a trifle. 

"In Fox Cross-roads there is much that is hopeless, much that issorrowful, Mr. Burleson; there is hunger, bodily hunger; there issickness unsolaced by spiritual or bodily comfort--not even the comfortof death! Ah, you should see them--_once_! Once would be enough! And nophysician, nobody that knows, I tell you--nobody through the long, dusty, stifling summers--nobody through the lengthening bitterness ofthe black winters--nobody except myself. Mr. Burleson, old man Stormdied craving a taste of broth; and Abe Storm trapped a partridge forhim, and Rolfe caught him and Grier jailed him--and confiscated themiserable, half-plucked bird!"

The hand which supported her weight was clinched; she was not looking atthe man beside her, but his eyes never left hers. 

"You talk angrily of market hunting, and the law forbids it. You say youcan respect a poacher who shoots for the love of it, but you have onlycontempt for the market hunter. And you are right sometimes--" Shelooked him in the eyes. "Old Santry's little girl is bedridden. Santryshot and sold a deer--and bought his child a patent bed. She sleepsalmost a whole hour now without much pain. "

Burleson, eyes fixed on her, did not stir. The fire-warden leanedforward, picked up the belt, and read the name scratched with ahunting-knife on the brass buckle. 

"Before Grier came, " she said, thoughtfully, "there was misery enoughhere--cold, hunger, disease--oh, plenty of disease always. Theirstarved lands of sand and rock gave them a little return forheart-breaking labor, but not enough. Their rifles helped them to keepalive; timber was free; they existed. Then suddenly forest, game, vlaie, and lake were taken from them--fenced off, closed to these people whosefathers' fathers had established free thoroughfare where posted warningsand shot-gun patrols now block every trodden trail! What is the sureresult?--and Grier was brutal! What could be expected? Why, Mr. Burleson, these people are Americans!--dwarfed mentally, stuntedmorally, year by year reverting to primal type--yet the fire in theirblood set their grandfathers marching on Saratoga!--marching toaccomplish the destruction of all kings! And Grier drove down here witha coachman and footman in livery and furs, and summoned the constablefrom Brier Bridge, and arrested old man Santry at his child'sbedside--the new bed paid for with Grier's buck. .. . "

She paused; then, with a long breath, she straightened up and leanedback once more against the tree. 

"They are not born criminals, " she said. "See what you can do withthem--see what you can do for them, Mr. Burleson. The relative values ofa deer and a man have changed since they hanged poachers in England. "

They sat silent for a while, watching the men below. 

"Miss Elliott, " he said, impulsively, "may I not know your father?"

She flushed and turned towards him as though unpleasantly startled. Thatwas only instinct, for almost at the same moment she leaned back quietlyagainst the tree. 

"I think my father would like to know you, " she said. "He seldom seesmen--men like himself. "

"Perhaps you would let me smoke a cigarette, Miss Elliott?" he ventured. 

"You were very silly not to ask me before, " she said, unconsciouslyfalling into his commonplace vein of easy deference. 

"I wonder, " he went on, lazily, "what that débris is on the land whichruns back from the store at Fox Cross-roads. It can't be that anybodywas simple enough to go boring for oil. "

She winced; but the smile remained on her face, and she met his eyesquite calmly. 

"That pile of débris, " she said, "is, I fancy, the wreck of the house ofElliott. My father did bore for oil and found it--about a pint, Ibelieve. "

"Oh, I beg your pardon, " cried Burleson, red as a pippin. 

"I am not a bit sensitive, " she said. Her mouth, the white, heavy lidsof her eyes, contradicted her. 

"There was a very dreadful smash-up of the house of Elliott, Mr. Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will adviseme how I may sell 'The Witch. ' I don't mind telling you why. My fatherhas simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped--bemade bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I werein a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know ofany people who care for that sort of horse, I'll be delighted to enterinto brisk correspondence with them. "

"I know a man, " observed Burleson, deliberately, "who would buy thatmare in about nine-tenths of a second. "

"Oh, I'll concede him the other tenth!" cried the girl, laughing. It wasthe first clear, care-free laugh he had heard from her--and sofascinating, so delicious, that he sat there silent in entrancedsurprise. 

"About the value of the mare, " she suggested, diffidently, "you may tellyour friend that she is only worth what father paid for her--"

"Good Lord!" he said, "that's not the way to sell a horse!"

"Why not? Isn't she worth that much?"

"What did your father pay for her?"

The girl named the sum a trifle anxiously. "It's a great deal, I know--"

"It's about a third what she's worth, " announced Burleson. "If I wereyou, I'd add seventy-five per cent. , and hold out like--like a demon forit. "

"But I cannot ask more than we paid--"

"Why not?"

"I--don't know. Is it honorable?"

They looked at each other for a moment, then he began to laugh. To hersurprise, she felt neither resentment nor chagrin, although he wasplainly laughing at her. So presently she laughed, too, a trifleuncertainly, shy eyes avoiding his, yet always returning curiously. Shedid not know just why; she was scarcely aware that she took pleasure inthis lean-faced young horseman's company. 

"I have always believed, " she began, "that to sell anything for morethan its value was something as horrid as--as usury. "

"Such a transaction resembles usury as closely as it does the theory ofPythagoras, " he explained; and presently their laughter aroused theworkmen, who looked up, leaning on spade and pick. 

"I cannot understand, " she said, "why you make such silly remarks or whyI laugh at them. A boy once affected me in the same way--years ago. "

She sat up straight, a faint smile touching her mouth and eyes. "I thinkthat my work is about ended here, Mr. Burleson. Do you know that mypupils are enjoying a holiday--because you choose to indulge in aforest-fire?"

He strove to look remorseful, but he only grinned. 

"I did not suppose you cared, " she said, severely, but made no motion torise. 

Presently he mentioned the mare again, asking if she really desired tosell her; and she said that she did. 

"Then I'll wire to-night, " he rejoined. "There should be a check for youday after to-morrow. "

"But suppose the man did not wish to buy her?"

"No chance of that. If you say so, the mare is sold from this moment. "

"I do say so, " she answered, in a low voice, "and thank you, Mr. Burleson. You do not realize how astonished I am--how fortunate--howdeeply happy--"

"I can only realize it by comparison, " he said. 

What, exactly, did he mean by that? She looked around at him; he wasabsorbed in scooping a hole in the pine-needles with his riding-crop. 

She made up her mind that his speech did not always express histhoughts; that it was very pleasant to listen to, but rather vague thanprecise. 

"It is quite necessary, " he mused aloud, "that I meet your father--"

She looked up quickly. "Oh! have you business with him?"

"Not at all, " said Burleson. 

This time the silence was strained; Miss Elliott remained very still andthoughtful. 

"I think, " he said, "that this country is only matched in paradise. Itis the most beautiful place on earth!"

To this astonishing statement she prepared no answer. The forest wasattractive, the sun perhaps brighter than usual--or was it only herimagination due to her own happiness in selling The Witch?

"When may I call upon Mr. Elliott?" he asked, suddenly. "To-night?"

No; really he was too abrupt, his conversation flickering from onesubject to another without relevance, without logic. She had no time toreflect, to decide what he meant, before, crack! he was off on anothertrail--and his English no vehicle for the conveyance of his ideas. 

"There is something, " he continued, "that I wish to ask you. May I?"

She bit her lip, then laughed, her gray eyes searching his. "Ask it, Mr. Burleson, for if I lived a million years I'm perfectly certain I couldnever guess what you are going to say next. "

"It's only this, " he said, with a worried look, "I don't know your firstname. "

"Why should you?" she demanded, amused, yet instinctively resentful. "Idon't know yours, either, Mr. Burleson--and I don't even ask you. "

"Oh, I'll tell you, " he said; "my name is only John William. Now willyou tell me yours?"

She remained silent, coping with a candor that she had not met withsince she went to parties in a muslin frock. She remembered one boy whohad proposed elopement on ten minutes' acquaintance. Burleson, somehowor other, reminded her of that boy. 

"My name, " she said, carelessly, "is Constance. "

"I like that name, " said Burleson. 

It was pretty nearly the last straw. Never had she been conscious ofbeing so spontaneously, so unreasonably approved of since that wretchedboy had suggested flight at her first party. She could not separate thememory of the innocent youth from Burleson; he was intensely like thatboy; and she had liked the boy, too--liked him so much that in those tenheavenly minutes' acquaintance she was half persuaded to consent--onlythere was nowhere to fly to, and before they could decide her nursearrived. 

"If you had not told me your first name, " said Burleson, "how couldanybody make out a check to your order?"

"Is _that_ why--" she began; and without the slightest reason her heartgave a curious little tremor of disappointment. 

"You see, " he said, cheerfully, "it was not impertinence--it was onlyformality. "

"I see, " she said, approvingly, and began to find him a trifle tiresome. 

Meanwhile he had confidently skipped to another subject. "Phosphates andnitrogen are what those people need for their farms. Now if you prepareyour soil--do your own mixing, of course--then begin with red clover, and plough--"

Her gray eyes were so wide open that he stopped short to observe them;they were so beautiful that his observation continued until she coloredfuriously. It was the last straw. 

"The fire is out, I think, " she said, calmly, rising to her feet; "myduty here is ended, Mr. Burleson. "

"Oh--are you going?" he asked, with undisguised disappointment. Sheregarded him in silence for a moment. How astonishingly like that boy hewas--this six-foot--

"Of course I am going, " she said, and wondered why she had said "ofcourse" with emphasis. Then she whistled to her mare. 

"May I ride with you to the house?" he asked, humbly. 

She was going to say several things, all politely refusing. What she didsay was, "Not this time. "

Then she was furious with herself, and began to hate him fiercely, untilshe saw something in his face that startled her. The mare came up; sheflung the bridle over hastily, set foot to metal, and seated herself ina flash. Then she looked down at the man beside her, prepared for hisnext remark. 

It came at once. "When may we ride together, Miss Elliott?"

She became strangely indulgent. "You know, " she said, as thoughinstructing youth, "that the first proper thing to do is to call upon myfather, because he is older than you, and he is physically unable tomake the first call. "

"Then by Wednesday we may ride?" he inquired, so guilessly that shebroke into a peal of delicious laughter. 

"How old are you, Mr. Burleson? Ten?"

"I feel younger, " he said. 

"So do I, " she said. "I feel like a little girl in a muslin gown. " Twospots of color tinted her cheeks. He had never seen such beauty in humanguise, and he came very near saying so. Something in the aromaticmountain air was tempting her to recklessness. Amazed, exhilarated bythe temptation, she sat there looking down at him; and her smile wasperilously innocent and sweet. 

"Once, " she said, "I knew a boy--like you--when I wore a muslin frock, and I have never forgotten him. He was extremely silly. "

"Do you remember only silly people?"

"I can't forget them; I try. "

"Please don't try any more, " he said. 

She looked at him, still smiling. She gazed off through the forest, where the men were going home, shovels shouldered, the blades of axe andspade blood-red in the sunset light. 

How long they stood there she scarcely reckoned, until a clear primroselight crept in among the trees, and the evening mist rose from an unseenpond, floating through the dimmed avenues of pines. 

"Good-night, " she said, gathered bridle, hesitated, then held out herungloved hand. 

Galloping homeward, the quick pressure of his hand still burning herpalm, she swept along in a maze of disordered thought. And being bycircumstances, though not by inclination, an orderly young woman, sheattempted a mental reorganization. This she completed as she wheeled hermare into the main forest road; and, her happy, disordered thoughtsrearranged with a layer of cold logic to quiet them, reaction cameswiftly; her cheeks burned when she remembered her own attitude ofhalf-accepted intimacy with this stranger. How did he regard her? Howcheaply did he already hold her--this young man idling here in theforest for his own pleasure?

But she had something more important on hand than the pleasures ofremorseful cogitation as she rode up to the store and drew bridle, wherein their shirt-sleeves the prominent citizens were gathered. She beganto speak immediately. She did not mince matters; she enumerated them byname, dwelt coldly upon the law governing arson, and told them exactlywhere they stood. 

She was, by courtesy of long residence, one of them. She taught theirchildren, she gave them pills and powders, she had stood by them evenwhen they had the law against them--stood by them loyally and in thevery presence of Grier, fencing with him at every move, combating hisbrutality with deadly intelligence. 

They collapsed under her superior knowledge; they trusted her, fawned onher, whined when she rebuked them, carried themselves more decently fora day or two when she dropped a rare word of commendation. Theyrespected her in spite of the latent ruffianly instinct which sneers atwomen; they feared her as a parish fears its priest; they loved her asthey loved one another--which was rather toleration than affection; thetoleration of half-starved bob-cats. 

And now the school-marm had turned on them--turned on them withundisguised contempt. Never before had she betrayed contempt for them. She spoke of cowardice, too. That bewildered them. Nobody had eversuggested that. 

She spoke of the shame of jail; they had heretofore been rather proud ofit--all this seated there in the saddle, the light from the store lampshining full in her face; and they huddled there on the veranda, gapingat her, stupefied. 

Then she suddenly spoke of Burleson, praising him, endowing him withevery quality the nobility of her own mind could compass. She extolledhis patience under provocation, bidding them to match it with equalpatience. She bad them be men in the face of this Burleson, who was aman; to display a dignity to compare with his; to meet him squarely, todeal fairly, to make their protests to his face and not whisper crimebehind his back. 

And that was all; she swung her mare off into the darkness; theylistened to the far gallop, uttering never a word. But when the lastdistant hoof-stroke had ceased, Mr. Burleson's life and forests weresafe in the country. How safe his game was they themselves did notexactly know. 

That night Burleson walked into the store upon the commonplace errand ofbuying a jack-knife. It was well that he did not send a groom; betterstill when he explained, "one of the old-fashioned kind--the kind I usedas a school-boy. "

"To whittle willow whistles, " suggested old man Santry. His voice washarsh; it was an effort for him to speak. 

"That's the kind, " said Burleson, picking out a one-blader. 

Santry was coughing; presently Burleson looked around. 

"Find swallowing hard?" he asked. 

"Swallerin' ain't easy. I ketched cold. "

"Let's see, " observed Burleson, strolling up to him and deliberatelyopening the old man's jaws, not only to Santry's astonishment, but tothe stupefaction of the community around the unlighted stove. 

"Bring a lamp over here, " said the young man. 

Somebody brought it. 

"Tonsilitis, " said Burleson, briefly. "I'll send you somethingto-night?"

"Be you a doctor?" demanded Santry, hoarsely. 

"Was one. I'll fix you up. Go home; and don't kiss your little girl. I'll drop in after breakfast. "

Two things were respected in Fox Cross-roads--death and adoctor--neither of which the citizens understood. 

But old man Santry, struggling obstinately with his awe of thingsmedical, rasped out, "I ain't goin' to pay no doctor's bills fur acold!"

"Nobody pays me any more, " said Burleson, laughing. "I only doctorpeople to keep my hand in. Go home, Santry; you're sick. "

Mr. Santry went, pausing at the door to survey the gathering with vacantastonishment. 

Burleson paid for the knife, bought a dozen stamps, tasted the cheeseand ordered a whole one, selected three or four barrels of apples, andturned on his heel with a curt good-night. 

"Say!" broke out old man Storm as he reached the door; "you wasn'tplannin' to hev the law on Abe, was you?"

"About that grass fire?" inquired Burleson, wheeling in his tracks. "Ohno; Abe lost his temper and his belt. Any man's liable to lose both. By-the-way"--he came back slowly, buttoning his gloves--"about thisquestion of the game--it has occurred to me that it can be adjusted verysimply. How many men in this town are hunters?"

Nobody answered at first, inherent suspicion making them coy. However, it finally appeared that in a community of twenty families there weresome four of nature's noblemen who "admired to go gunnin' with asmell-dog. "

"Four, " repeated Burleson. "Now just see how simple it is. The lawallows thirty woodcock, thirty partridges, and two deer to every hunter. That makes eight deer and two hundred and forty birds out of thepreserve, which is very little--if you shoot straight enough to get yourlimit!" he laughed. "But it being a private preserve, you'll do yourshooting on Saturdays, and check off your bag at the gate of thelodge--so that you won't make any mistakes in going over the limit. " Helaughed again, and pointed at a lean hound lying under the counter. 

"Hounds are barred; only 'smell-dogs' admitted, " he said. "And"--hebecame quietly serious--"I count on each one of you four men to aid mypatrol in keeping the game-laws and the fire-laws and every forest lawon the statutes. And I count on you to take out enough fox and minkpelts to pay me for my game--and you yourselves for your labor; forthough it is my game by the law of the land, what is mine is no sourceof pleasure to me unless I share it. Let us work together to keep thestreams and coverts and forests well stocked. Good-night. "

About eleven o'clock that evening Abe Storm slunk into the store, andthe community rose and fell on him and administered the most terrificbeating that a husky young man ever emerged from alive. 

III

In October the maple leaves fell, the white birches showered thehill-sides with crumpled gold, the ruffed grouse put on its downystockings, the great hare's flanks became patched with white. Cold wassurely coming; somewhere behind the blue north the Great White Winterstirred in its slumber. 

As yet, however, the oaks and beeches still wore their liveries ofrustling amber, the short grass on hill-side pastures was intenselygreen, flocks of thistle-birds disguised in demure russet passed inwavering flight from thicket to thicket, and over all a hot sun blazedin a sky of sapphire, linking summer and autumn together in themagnificence of a perfect afternoon. 

Miss Elliott, riding beside Burleson, had fallen more silent than usual. She no longer wore her sombrero and boy's clothes; hat, habit, collar, scarf--ay, the tiny polished spur on her polished boot--were eloquent ofFifth Avenue; and she rode a side-saddle made by Harrock. 

"Alas! alas!" said Burleson; "where is the rose of yesterday?"

"If you continue criticising my habit--" she began, impatiently. 

"No--not for a minute!" he cried. "I didn't mention your habit or yourstock--"

"You are always bewailing that soiled sombrero and those unspeakablebreeches--"

"I never said a word--"

"You did. You said, 'Where is the rose of yesterday?'"

"I meant the wild rose. You are a cultivated rose now, you know--"

She turned her face at an angle which left him nothing to look at butone small, close-set ear. 

"May I see a little more of your face by-and-by?" he asked. 

"Don't be silly, Mr. Burleson. "

"If I'm not, I'm afraid you'll forget me. "

They rode on in silence for a little while; he removed his cap andstuffed it into his pocket. 

"It's good for my hair, " he commented, aloud; "I'm not married, you see, and it behooves a man to keep what hair he has until he's married. "

As she said nothing, he went on, reflectively: "Eminent authorities havecomputed that a man with lots of hair on his head stands thirty andnineteen-hundredths better chance with a girl than a man who has but ascanty crop. A man with curly hair has eighty-seven chances in ahundred, a man with wavy hair has seventy-nine, a man--"

"Mr. Burleson, " she said, exasperated, "I am utterly at a loss tounderstand what it is in you that I find attractive enough to endureyou. "

"Seventy-nine, " he ventured--"my hair is wavy--"

She touched her mare and galloped forward, and he followed through theyellow sunshine, attendant always on her caprice, ready for any suddenwhim. So when she wheeled to the left and lifted her mare over asnake-fence, he was ready to follow; and together they tore away acrossa pasture, up a hill all purple with plumy bunch-grass, and forward tothe edge of a gravel-pit, where she whirled her mare about, drew bridle, and flung up a warning hand just in time. His escape was narrower; hishorse's hind hoofs loosened a section of undermined sod; the animalstumbled, sank back, strained with every muscle, and dragged himselfdesperately forward; while behind him the entire edge of the pit gaveway, crashing and clattering into the depths below. 

They were both rather white when they faced each other. 

"Don't take such a risk again, " he said, harshly. 

"I won't, " she answered, with dry lips; but she was not thinking ofherself. Suddenly she became very humble, guiding her mare alongside ofhis horse, and in a low voice asked him to pardon her folly. 

And, not thinking of himself, he scored her for the risk she had taken, alternately reproaching, arguing, bullying, pleading, after the fashionof men. And, still shaken by the peril she had so wilfully sought, heasked her not to do it again, for his sake--an informal request that sheaccepted with equal informality and a slow droop of her head. 

Never had she received such a thorough, such a satisfying scolding. There was not one word too much--every phrase refreshed her, everyarbitrary intonation sang in her ears like music. And so far not oneselfish note had been struck. 

She listened, eyes downcast, face delicately flushed--listened until itpleased him to make an end, which he did with amazing lack of skill:

"What do you suppose life would hold for _me_ with you at the bottom ofthat gravel-pit?"

The selfish note rang out, unmistakable, imperative--the clearest, sweetest note of all to her. But the question was no question andrequired no answer. Besides, he had said enough--just enough. 

"Let us ride home, " she said, realizing that they were on dangerousground again--dangerous as the gravel-hill. 

And a few moments later she caught a look in his face that disconcertedand stampeded her. "It was partly your own fault, Mr. Burleson. Why doesnot your friend take away the mare he has bought and paid for?"

"Partly--my--fault!" he repeated, wrathfully. 

"Can you not let a woman have that much consolation?" she said, liftingher gray eyes to his with a little laugh. "Do you insist on being theonly and perfect embodiment of omniscience?"

He said, rather sulkily, that he didn't think he was omniscient, and shepretended to doubt it, until the badinage left him half vexed, halflaughing, but on perfectly safe ground once more. 

Indeed, they were already riding over the village bridge, and he said:"I want to stop and see Santry's child for a moment. Will you wait?"

"Yes, " she said. 

So he dismounted and entered the weather-battered abode of Santry; andshe looked after him with an expression on her face that he had neversurprised there. 

Meanwhile, along the gray village thoroughfare the good folk peeped outat her where she sat her mare, unconscious, deep in maiden meditation. 

She had done much for her people; she was doing much. Fiction might addthat they adored her, worshipped her very footprints!--echoes all ofancient legends of a grateful tenantry that the New World believes inbut never saw. 

After a little while Burleson emerged from Santry's house, gravelyreturning the effusive adieus of the family. 

"You are perfectly welcome, " he said, annoyed; "it is a pleasure to beable to do anything for children. "

And as he mounted he said to Miss Elliott, "I've fixed it, I think. "

"Fixed her hip?"

"No; arranged for her to go to New York. They do that sort of thingthere. I see no reason why the child should not walk. "

"Oh, do you think so?" she exclaimed, softly. "You make me very happy, Mr. Burleson. "

He looked her full in the face for just the space of a second. 

"And you make me happy, " he said. 

She laughed, apparently serene and self-possessed, and turned up thehill, he following a fraction of a length behind. 

In grassy hollows late dandelions starred the green with gold, the redalder's scarlet berries flamed along the road-side thickets; beyond, against the sky, acres of dead mullein stalks stood guard above thehollow scrub. 

"Do you know, " she said, over her shoulder, "that there is a rose inbloom in our garden?"

"Is there?" he asked, without surprise. 

"Doesn't it astonish you?" she demanded. "Roses don't bloom up here inOctober. "

"Oh yes, they do, " he muttered. 

At the gate they dismounted, he silent, preoccupied, she uneasily alertand outwardly very friendly. 

"How warm it is!" she said; "it will be like a night in June with themoon up--and that rose in the garden. .. . You say that you are comingthis evening?"

"Of course. It is your last evening. "

"Our last evening, " she repeated, thoughtfully. .. . "You said . .. "

"I said that I was going South, too. I am not sure that I am going. "

"I am sorry, " she observed, coolly. And after a moment she handed himthe bridle of her mare, saying, "You will see that she is forwarded whenyour friend asks for her?"

"Yes. "

She looked at the mare, then walked up slowly and put her arms aroundthe creature's silky neck. "Good-bye, " she said, and kissed her. Turninghalf defiantly on Burleson, she smiled, touching her wet lashes with hergloved wrist. 

"The Arab lady and the faithful gee-gee, " she said. "I know The Witchdoesn't care, but I can't help loving her. .. . Are you properlyimpressed with my grief?"

There was that in Burleson's eyes that sobered her; she instinctivelylaid her hand on the gate, looking at him with a face which had suddenlygrown colorless and expressionless. 

"Miss Elliott, " he said, "will you marry me?"

The tingling silence lengthened, broken at intervals by the dullstamping of the horses. 

After a moment she moved leisurely past him, bending her head as sheentered the yard, and closing the gate slowly behind her. Then shehalted, one gloved hand resting on the closed gate, and looked at himagain. 

There is an awkwardness in men that women like; there is a _gaucherie_that women detest. She gazed silently at this man, considering him witha serenity that stunned him speechless. 

Yet all the while her brain was one vast confusion, and the tumult ofher own heart held her dumb. Even the man himself appeared as a blurredvision; echoes of lost voices dinned in her ears--the voices ofchildren--of a child whom she had known when she wore muslin frocks toher knees--a boy who might once have been this man before her--thistall, sunburned young man, awkward, insistent, artless--oh, entirelywithout art in a wooing which alternately exasperated and thrilled her. And now his awkwardness had shattered the magic of the dream and lefther staring at reality--without warning, without the courtesy of a"_garde à vous!_"

And his answer? He was waiting for his answer. But men are not gods todemand!--not highwaymen to bar the way with a "Stand and deliver!" Andan answer is a precious thing--a gem of untold value. It was hers togive, hers to withhold, hers to defend. 

"You will call on us to say good-bye this evening?" she asked, steadyingher voice. 

A deep color stung his face; he bowed, standing stiff and silent untilshe had passed through the open door of the veranda. Then, half blindwith his misery, he mounted, wheeled, and galloped away, The Witchclattering stolidly at his stirrup. 

Already the primrose light lay over hill and valley; already thedelicate purple net of night had snared forest and marsh; and the wildducks were stringing across the lakes, and the herons had gone to theforest, and plover answered plover from swamp to swamp, plaintive, querulous, in endless reiteration--"Lost! lost! she's lost--she'slost--she's lost!"

But it was the first time in his life that he had so interpreted thewild crying of the killdeer plover. 

 * * * * *

There was a gown that had been packed at the bottom of a trunk; it was afluffy, rather shapeless mound of filmy stuff to look at as it lay onthe bed. As it hung upon the perfect figure of a girl of twenty it was, in the words of the maid, "a dhream an' a blessed vision, glory be!" Itought to have been; it was brand-new. 

[Illustration: "THERE WAS THAT IN BURLESON'S EYES THAT SOBERED HER"]

At dinner, her father coming in on crutches, stared at hisdaughter--stared as though the apparition of his dead wife had risen toguide him to his chair; and his daughter laughed across the littletable--she scarcely knew why--laughed at his surprise, at his littletribute to her beauty--laughed with the quick tears brimming in hereyes. 

Then, after a silence, and thinking of her mother, she spoke ofBurleson; and after a while of the coming journey, and their new luckwhich had come up with the new moon in September--a luck which hadbrought a purchaser for the mare, another for the land--all of it, swamp, timber, barrens--every rod, house, barn, garden, and stock. 

Again leaning her bare elbows on the cloth, she asked her father who theman could be that desired such property. But her father shook his head, repeating the name, which was, I believe, Smith. And that, including thecheck, was all they had ever learned of this investor who had wantedwhat they did not want, in the nick of time. 

"If he thinks there is gas or oil here he is to be pitied, " said herfather. "I wrote him and warned him. "

"I think he replied that he knew his own business, " said the girl. 

"I hope he does; the price is excessive--out of all reason. I trust heknows of something in the land that may justify his investment. "

After a moment she said, "Do you really think we may be able to buy alittle place in Florida--a few orange-trees and a house?"

His dreamy eyes smiled across at her. 

"Thank God!" she thought, answering his smile. 

There was no dampness in the air; she aided him to the garden, where heresumed his crutches and hobbled as far as the wonderful bush that borea single belated rose. 

"In the South, " he said, under his breath, "there is no lack ofthese. .. . I think--I think all will be well in the South. "

He tired easily, and she helped him back to his study, where youngBurleson presently found them, strolling in with his hands in thepockets of his dinner-jacket. 

His exchange of greetings with Miss Elliott was quietly formal; with herfather almost tender. It was one of the things she cared most for inhim; and she walked to the veranda, leaving the two men alone--the manand the shadow of a man. 

Once she heard laughter in the room behind her; and it surprised her, pacing the veranda there. Yet Burleson always brought a new anecdote toshare with her father--and heretofore he had shared these with her, too. But now!--

Yet it was by her own choice she was alone there, pacing the moonlitporches. 

The maid--their only servant--brought a decanter; she could hear thering of the glasses, relics of better times. .. . And now better timeswere dawning again--brief, perhaps, for her father, yet welcome asIndian summer. 

After a long while Burleson came to the door, and she looked up, startled. 

"Will you sing? Your father asks it. "

"Won't you ask me, too, Mr. Burleson?"

"Yes. "

"But I want to show you my rose first. Will you come?--it is just astep. "

He walked out into the moonlight with her; they stood silently beforethe bush which had so capriciously bloomed. 

"Now--I will sing for you, Mr. Burleson, " she said, amiably. And theyreturned to the house, finding not a word to say on the way. 

The piano was in decent tune; she sat down, nodding across at herfather, and touched a chord or two. 

"The same song--the one your mother cared for, " murmured her father. 

And she looked at Burleson dreamily, then turned, musing with bent head, sounding a note, a tentative chord. And then she sang. 

A dropping chord, lingering like fragrance in the room, a silence, andshe rose, looking at her father. But he, dim eyes brooding, lay backunconscious of all save memories awakened by her song. And presently shemoved across the room to the veranda, stepping out into the moonlitgarden--knowing perfectly well what she was doing, though her heart wasbeating like a trip-hammer, and she heard the quick step on the gravelbehind her. 

She was busy with the long stem of the rose when he came up; she brokeit short and straightened up, smiling a little greeting, for she couldnot have spoken for her life. 

"Will you marry me?" he asked, under his breath. 

Then the slow, clear words came, "I cannot. "

"I love you, " he said, as though he had not heard her. "There is nothingfor me in life without you; from the moment you came into my life therewas nothing else, nothing in heaven or earth but you--your loveliness, your beauty, your hair, your hands, the echo of your voice haunting me, the memory of your every step, your smile, the turn of your head--allthat I love in you--and all that I worship--your sweetness, yourloyalty, your bravery, your honor. Give me all this to guard, toadore--try to love me; forget my faults, forgive all that I lack. Iknow--_I_ know what I am--what little I have to offer--but it is allthat I am, all that I have. Constance! Constance! Must you refuse?"

"Did I refuse?" she faltered. "I don't know why I did. "

With bare arm bent back and hand pressed over the hand that held herwaist imprisoned, she looked up into his eyes. Then their lips met. 

"Say it, " he whispered. 

"Say it? Ah, I do say it: I love you--I love you. I said it yearsago--when you were a boy and I wore muslin gowns above my knees. Did youthink I had not guessed it?. .. And you told father to-night--you toldhim, because I never heard him laugh that way before. .. . And you areJack--my boy that I loved when I was ten--my boy lover? Ah, Jack, I wasnever deceived. "

He drew her closer and lifted her flushed face. "I told yourfather--yes. And I told him that we would go South with him. "

"You--you dared assume that!--before I had consented!" she cried, exasperated. 

"Why--why, I couldn't contemplate anything else. "

Half laughing, half angry, she strained to release his arm, thendesisted, breathless, gray eyes meeting his. 

"No other man, " she breathed--"no other man--" There was a silence, thenher arms crept up closer, encircling his neck. "There is no other man, "she sighed. 

THE MARKET-HUNTER

A warm October was followed by a muggy, wet November. The elm leavesturned yellow but did not fall; the ash-trees lighted up the woods likegigantic lanterns set in amber; single branches among the maples slowlycrimsoned. As yet the dropping of acorns rarely broke the forest silencein Sagamore County, although the blue-jays screamed in the alders andcrows were already gathering for their annual caucus. 

Because there had been as yet no frost the partridges still lurked deepin the swamps, and the woodcock skulked, shunning the white birchesuntil the ice-storms in the north should set their comrades movingsouthward. 

There was little doing in the feathered world. Of course the swallowshad long since departed, and with the advent of the blue-jays andgolden-winged wood peckers a few heavy-pinioned hawks had appeared, wheeling all day over the pine-woods, calling querulously. 

Then one still night the frost silvered the land, and the raccoonswhistled from the beach-woods on the ridges, and old man Jocelyn'sdaughter crept from her chilly bed to the window which framed a staring, frosty moon. 

Through the silence she heard a whisper like the discreet rustle ofsilken hangings. It was the sound of leaves falling through thedarkness. She peered into the night, where, unseen, the delicate fingersof the frost were touching a million leaves, and as each little leaf wassummoned she heard it go, whispering obedience. 

Now the moonlight seemed to saturate her torn, thin night-gown and lielike frost on her body; and she crept to the door of her room, shivering, and called, "Father!"

He answered heavily, and the bed in the next room creaked. 

"There is a frost, " she said; "shall I load the cartridges?"

She could hear him stumble out of bed and grope for the window. 

Presently he yawned loudly and she heard him tumble back into bed. 

"There won't be no flight to-night, " he said; "the birds won't move fortwenty-four hours. Go to bed, Jess. "

"But there are sure to be a few droppers in to-night, " she protested. 

"Go to bed, " he said, shortly. 

After a moment she began again: "I don't mind loading a dozen shells, dad. "

"What for?" he said. "It's my fault I ain't ready. I didn't want youfoolin' with candles around powder and shot. "

"But I want you to have a good time to-morrow, " she urged, with teethchattering. "You know, " and she laughed a mirthless laugh, "it'sThanksgiving Day, and two woodcock are as good as a turkey. "

What he said was, "Turkey be darned!" but, nevertheless, she knew he waspleased, so she said no more. 

There was a candle on her bureau; she lighted it with stiff fingers, then trotted about over the carpetless floor, gathering up theloading-tools and flimsy paper shells, the latter carefully hoardedafter having already served. 

Sitting there at the bedside, bare feet wrapped in a ragged quilt, and ashawl around her shoulders, she picked out the first shell and placed itin the block. With one tap she forced out the old primer, inserted a newone, and drove it in. Next she plunged the rusty measuring-cup into theblack powder and poured the glistening grains into the shell, threedrams and a half. On this she drove in two wads. Now the shell was readyfor an ounce and an eighth of number nine shot, and she measured it andpoured it in with practised hand. Then came the last wad, a quick twirlof the crimper, and the first shell lay loaded on the pillow. 

Before she finished her hands were numb and her little feet like frozenmarble. But at last two dozen cartridges were ready, and she gatheredthem up in the skirt of her night-gown and carried them to her father'sdoor. 

"Here they are, " she said, rolling them in a heap on the floor; and, happy at his sleepy protest, she crept back to bed again, chilled to theknees. 

At dawn the cold was intense, but old man Jocelyn, descending the darkstairway gun in hand, found his daughter lifting the coffee-pot from thestove. 

"You're a good girl, Jess, " he said. Then he began to unwind the flannelcover from his gun. In the frosty twilight outside a raccoon whistledfrom the alders. 

When he had unrolled and wiped his gun he drew a shaky chair to the pinetable and sat down. His daughter watched him, and when he bent his grayhead she covered her eyes with one delicate hand. 

"Lord, " he said, "it being Thanksgiving, I do hereby give Thee a fewextry thanks. " And "Amen" they said together. 

Jess stood warming herself with her back to the stove, watching herfather busy with his bread and coffee. Her childish face was not a sadone, yet in her rare smile there was a certain beauty which sorrow alonebrings to young lips and eyes. 

Old man Jocelyn stirred his sugarless coffee and broke off a lump ofbread. 

"One of young Gordon's keepers was here yesterday, " he said, abruptly. 

His daughter slowly raised her head and twisted her dishevelled hairinto a great, soft knot. "What did Mr. Gordon's keeper want?" she asked, indifferently. 

"Why, some one, " said old man Jocelyn, with an indescribablesneer--"some real mean man has been and shot out them swales along BrierBrook. "

"Did you do it?" asked the girl. 

"Why, come to think, I guess I did, " said her father, grinning. 

"It is your right, " said his daughter, quietly; "the Brier Brook swaleswere yours. "

"Before young Gordon's pa swindled me out o' them, " observed Jocelyn, tearing off more bread. "And, " he added, "even old Gordon never daredpost his land in them days. If he had he'd been tarred 'n' feathered. "

His daughter looked grave, then a smile touched her eyes, and she said:"I hear, daddy, that young Gordon gives you cattle and seeds andploughs. "

Jocelyn wheeled around like a flash. "Who told you that?" he demanded, sharply. 

The incredulous smile in her eyes died out. She stared at him blankly. 

"Why, of course it wasn't true, " she said. 

"Who told you?" he cried, angrily. 

"Murphy told me, " she stammered. "Of course it is a lie! of course helied, father! I told him he lied--"

With horror in her eyes she stared at her father, but Jocelyn satsullenly brooding over his coffee-cup and tearing bit after bit from thecrust in his fist. 

"Has young Gordon ever said that to you?" he demanded, at length. 

"I have never spoken to him in all my life, " answered the girl, with adry sob. "If I had known that he gave things to--to--us--I should havedied--"

Jocelyn's eyes were averted. "How dare he!" she went on, trembling. "Weare not beggars! If we have nothing, it is his father's shame--and hisshame! Oh, father, father! I never thought--I never for one instantthought--"

"Don't, Jess!" said Jocelyn, hoarsely. 

Then he rose and laid a heavy hand on the table. "I took his cows andhis ploughs and his seed. What of it? He owes me more! I took them foryour sake--to try to find a living in this bit of flint and sand--foryou. Birds are scarce. They've passed a law against market-shooting. Every barrel of birds I send out may mean prison. I've lived my life asa market-hunter; I ain't fitted for farming. But you were growing, andyou need schooling, and between the game-warden and young Gordon Icouldn't keep you decent--so I took his damned cattle and I dug in theground. What of it!" he ended, violently. And, as she did not speak, hegave voice to the sullen rage within him--"I took his cattle and hisploughs as I take his birds. They ain't his to give; they're mine totake--the birds are. I guess when God set the first hen partridge on hernest in Sagamore woods he wasn't thinking particularly about breedingthem for young Gordon!"

He picked up his gun and started heavily for the door. His eyes met theeyes of his daughter as she drew the frosty latch for him. There was apause, then he pulled his cap over his eyes with a long grunt. 

"Dear dad, " she said, under her breath. 

"I guess, " he observed unsteadily, "you're ashamed of me, Jess. "

She put both arms around his neck and laid her head against his. 

"I think as you do, " she said; "God did not create the partridges forMr. Gordon--but, darling dad, you will never, never again take even onegrain of buckwheat from him, will you?"

"His father robbed mine, " said Jocelyn, with a surly shrug. But she wascontent with his answer and his rough kiss, and when he had gone outinto the gray morning, calling his mongrel setter from its kennel, shewent back up the stairs and threw herself on her icy bed. But her littleface was hot with tearless shame, and misery numbed her limbs, and shecried out in her heart for God to punish old Gordon's sin fromgeneration to generation--meaning that young Gordon should suffer forthe sins of his father. Yet through her torture and the burning anger ofher prayer ran a silent undercurrent, a voiceless call for mercy uponher and upon all she loved, her father and--young Gordon. 

After a while she fell asleep dreaming of young Gordon. She had neverseen him except Sundays in church, but now she dreamed he came into herpew and offered her a hymn-book of ivory and silver; and she dreamedthey sang from it together until the church thrilled with their unitedvoices. But the song they sang seemed to pain her, and her voice hurther throat. His voice, too, grew harsh and piercing, and--she awoke withthe sun in her eyes and the strident cries of the blue-jays in her ears. 

Under her window she heard somebody moving. It was her father, alreadyreturned, and he stood by the door, drawing and plucking half a dozenwoodcock. 

When she had bathed and dressed, she found the birds on thekitchen-table ready for the oven, and she set about her household dutieswith a glance through the window where Jocelyn, crouching on the bank ofthe dark stream, was examining his set-lines one by one. 

The sun hung above the forest, sending fierce streams of light over theflaming, frost-ripened foliage. A belt of cloud choked the mountaingorge in the north; the alders were smoking with chilly haze. 

As she passed across the yard towards the spring, bucket in hand, herfather called out: "I guess we'll keep Thanksgiving, Jess, after all. I've got a five-pounder here!"

He held up a slim, gold-and-green pickerel, then flung the fish on theground with the laugh of a boy. It was always so; the forest and thepursuit of wild creatures renewed his life. He was born for it; he hadlived a hunter and a roamer of the woods; he bade fair to die apoacher--which, perhaps, is no sin in the eyes of Him who designed thepattern of the partridge's wings and gave two coats to the northernhare. 

His daughter watched him with a strained smile. In her bitternessagainst Gordon, now again in the ascendant, she found no peace of mind. 

"Dad, " she said, "I set six deadfalls yesterday. I guess I'll go andlook at them. "

"If you line them too plainly, Gordon's keepers will save you yourtrouble, " said Jocelyn. 

"Well, then, I think I'll go now, " said the girl. Her eyes began tosparkle and the wings of her delicate nostrils quivered as she looked atthe forest on the hill. 

Jocelyn watched her. He noted the finely moulded head, the dainty nose, the clear, fearless eyes. It was the sensitive head of a free woman--amaid of windy hill-sides and of silent forests. He saw the faint quiverof the nostril, and he thought of the tremor that twitches the daintymuzzles of thoroughbred dogs afield. It was in her, the mystery andpassion of the forest, and he saw it and dropped his eyes to the fishswinging from his hand. 

"Your mother was different, " he said, slowly. 

Instinctively they both turned towards the shanty. Beside the doorsteprose a granite headstone. 

After a while Jocelyn drew out his jack-knife and laid the fish on thedead grass, and the girl carried the bucket of water back to the house. She reappeared a moment later, wearing her father's shooting-jacket andcap, and with a quiet "good-bye" to Jocelyn she started across thehill-side towards the woods above. 

Jocelyn watched her out of sight, then turning the pickerel over, heslit the firm, white belly from vent to gill. 

About that time, just over the scrubby hill to the north, young Gordonwas walking, knee deep in the bronzed sweet fern, gun cocked, eyesalert. His two beautiful dogs were working close, quartering thebirch-dotted hill-side in perfect form. But they made no points; nodropping woodcock whistled up from the shelter of birch or alder; nopartridge blundered away from bramble covert or willow fringe. Only theblue-jays screamed at him as he passed; only the heavy hawks, sailing, watched him with bright eyes. 

He was a dark-eyed, spare young man, with well-shaped head and a goodmouth. He wore his canvas shooting-clothes like a soldier, and handledhis gun and his dogs with a careless ease that might have appearedslovenly had the results been less precise. But even an amateur couldsee how thoroughly the ground was covered by those silent dogs. Gordonnever spoke to them; a motion of his hand was enough. 

Once a scared rabbit scuttled out of the sweet fern and bounded away, displaying the piteous flag of truce, and Gordon smiled to himself whenhis perfectly trained dogs crossed the alluring trail without a tremor, swerving not an inch for bunny and his antics. 

But what could good dogs do, even if well handled, when there had beenno flight from the north? So Gordon signalled the dogs and walked on. 

That part of his property which he had avoided for years he now came insight of from the hill, and he halted, gun under his arm. There was thefringe of alders, mirrored in Rat's Run; there was Jocelyn's shanty, theone plague-spot in his estate; there, too, was old man Jocelyn, on hisknees beside the stream, fussing with something that glistened, probablya fish. 

The young man on the hill-top tossed his gun over his shoulder andcalled his two silvery-coated dogs to heel; then he started to descendthe slope, the November sunlight dancing on the polished gun-barrels. Down through the scrubby thickets he strode; burr and thorn scraped hiscanvas jacket, blackberry-vines caught at elbow and knee. With anunfeigned scowl he kept his eyes on Jocelyn, who was still pottering onthe stream's bank, but when Jocelyn heard him come crackling through thestubble and looked up the scowl faded, leaving Gordon's faceunpleasantly placid. 

"Good-morning, Jocelyn, " said the young man, stepping briskly to thebank of the stream; "I want a word or two with you. "

"Words are cheap, " said Jocelyn, sitting up on his haunches; "how manywill you have, Mr. Gordon?"

"I want you, " said Gordon, slowly emphasizing each word, "to stop yourdepredations on my property, once and for all. "

Squatting there on the dead grass, Jocelyn eyed him sullenly withoutreplying. 

"Do you understand?" said Gordon, sharply. 

"Well, what's the trouble now--" began Jocelyn, but Gordon cut himshort. 

"Trouble! You've shot out every swale along Brier Brook! There isn't apartridge left between here and the lake! And it's a shabby business, Jocelyn--a shabby business. "

He flung his fowling-piece into the hollow of his left arm and began towalk up and down the bank. 

"This is my land, " he said, "and I want no tenants. There were a dozenfarms on the property when it came to me; I gave every tenant a year'slease, rent free, and when they moved out I gave them their houses totake down and rebuild outside of my boundary-lines. Do you know anyother man who would do as much?"

Jocelyn was silent. 

"As for you, " continued Gordon, "you were left in that house becauseyour wife's grave is there at your very threshold. You have your housefree, you pay no rent for the land, you cut your wood without payment. My gardener has supplied you with seed, but you never cultivate theland; my manager has sent you cows, but you sell them. "

"One died, " muttered Jocelyn. 

"Yes--with a cut throat, " replied Gordon. "See here, Jocelyn, I don'texpect gratitude or civility from you, but I do expect you to stoprobbing me!"

"Robbing!" repeated Jocelyn, angrily, rising to his feet. 

"Yes, robbing! My land is posted, warning people not to shoot or fish orcut trees. The land, the game, and the forests are mine, and you have nomore right to kill a bird or cut a tree on my property than I have toenter your house and steal your shoes!"

Gordon's face was flushed now, and he came and stood squarely in frontof Jocelyn. "You rob me, " he said, "and you break not only my ownprivate rules, but also the State laws. You shoot for the market, andit's a dirty, contemptible thing to do!"

Jocelyn glared at him, but Gordon looked him straight in the eye andwent on, calmly: "You are a law-breaker, and you know it! You snare mytrout, you cover the streams with set-lines and gang-hooks, you get morepartridges with winter grapes and deadfalls than you do with powder andshot. As long as your cursed poaching served to fill your own stomach Istood it, but now that you've started wholesale game slaughter for themarket I am going to stop the whole thing. "

The two men faced each other in silence for a moment; then Jocelyn said:"Are you going to tear down my house?"

Gordon did not answer. It was what he wanted to do, but he looked at thegaunt, granite headstone in the door-yard, then dropped the butt of hisgun to the dead sod again. "Can't you be decent, Jocelyn?" he asked, harshly. 

Jocelyn was silent. 

"I don't want to turn you out, " said Gordon. "Can't you let my gamealone? Come, let's start again; shall we? I'll send Banks down to-morrowwith a couple of cows and a crate or two of chickens, and Murphy shallbring you what seeds you want for late planting--"

"To hell with your seeds!" roared Jocelyn, in a burst of fury. "To hellwith your cows and your Murphys and your money and yourself, you loafingmillionaire! Do you think I want to dig turnips any more than you do? Iwas born free in a free land before you were born at all! I hunted theseswales and fished these streams while you were squalling for your pap!"

With blazing eyes the ragged fellow shook his fist at Gordon, cursinghim fiercely, then with a violent gesture he pointed at the ground underhis feet: "Let those whose calling is to dig, dig!" he snarled. "I'veturned my last sod!"

Except that Gordon's handsome face had grown a little white under theheavy coat of tan, he betrayed no emotion as he said: "You are welcometo live as you please--under the law. But if you fire one more shot onthis land I shall be obliged to ask you to go elsewhere. "

"Keep your ears open, then!" shouted Jocelyn, "for I'll knock apillowful of feathers out of the first partridge I run over!"

"Better not, " said Gordon, gravely. 

Jocelyn hitched up his weather-stained trousers and drew his leatherbelt tighter. "I told you just now, " he said, "that I'd never turnanother sod. I'll take that back. "

"I am glad to hear it, " said Gordon, pleasantly. 

"Yes, " continued Jocelyn, with a grim gesture, "I'll take it back. Yousee, I buried my wife yonder, and I guess I'm free to dig up what Iplanted. And I'll do it. "

After a pause he added: "Tear the house down. I'm done with it. I guessI can find room somewhere underground for her, and a few inches on topof the ground for me to sit down on. "

"Don't talk like that, " said Gordon, reddening to the roots of his hair. "You are welcome to the house and the land, and you know it. I only askyou to let my game alone. "

"Your game?" retorted Jocelyn. "They're wild creatures, put there by Himwho fashioned them. "

"Nonsense!" said Gordon, dryly. "My land is my own. Would you shoot thepoultry in my barn-yard?"

"If I did, " cried Jocelyn, with eyes ablaze, "I'd not be in your debt, young man. You are walking on my father's land. Ask _your_ father why!Yes, go back to the city and hunt him up at his millionaire's club andask him why you are driving Tom Jocelyn off of his old land!"

"My father died three years ago, " said Gordon, between his set teeth. "What do you mean?"

Jocelyn looked at him blankly. 

"What do you mean?" repeated Gordon, with narrowing eyes. 

Jocelyn stood quite still. Presently he looked down at the fish on theground and moved it with his foot. Then Gordon asked him for the thirdtime what he meant, and Jocelyn, raising his eyes, answered him: "Withthe dead all quarrels die. "

"That is not enough!" said Gordon, harshly. "Do you believe my fatherwronged you?"

"He's dead, " said Jocelyn, as though speaking to himself. 

Presently he picked up the fish and walked towards his house, gray headbent between his shoulders. 

For a moment Gordon hesitated, then he threw his gun smartly over hisshoulder and motioned his dogs to heel. But his step had lost somethingof its elasticity, and he climbed the hill slowly, following withtroubled eyes his own shadow, which led him on over the dead grass. 

The edge of the woods was warm in the sunshine. Faint perfumes of thevanished summer lingered in fern and bramble. 

He did not enter the woods. There was a fallen log, rotten and fragrant, half buried in the briers, and on it he found a seat, calling his dogsto his feet. 

In the silence of morning he could hear the pine-borers at work in thelog he was sitting on, scra-ape! scra-ape! scr-r-rape! deep in the soft, dry pulp under the bark. There were no insects abroad except thewhite-faced pine hornets, crawling stiffly across the moss. He noticedno birds, either, at first, until, glancing up, he saw a great drabbutcher-bird staring at him from a dead pine. 

At first that inert oppression which always came when the memory of hisfather returned to him touched his fine lips with a gravity too deep forhis years. No man had ever said that his father had dealt unfairly withmen, yet for years now his son had accumulated impressions, vague andindefinable at first, but clearer as he grew older, and the impressionshad already left the faintest tracery of a line between his eyebrows. Hehad known his father as a hard man; he knew that the world had found himhard and shrewd. And now, as he grew older and understood what thetribute of honest men was worth, even to the dead, he waited to hear oneword. But he never heard it. He had heard other things, however, butalways veiled, like the menacing outbreak of old man Jocelyn--nothingtangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he becamemorbid, believing he could read reproach in men's eyes, detect sarcasmin friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doingnow, living alone month after month in the great, silent house where hisfather and his grandfather's father had been born. Yet even here amongthe Sagamore Hills he had found it--that haunting hint that honor hadbeen moulded to fit occasions when old Gordon dealt with his fellow-men. 

He glanced up again at the butcher-bird, and rose to his feet. Thebird's cruel eyes regarded him steadily. 

"You wholesale murderer, " thought Gordon, "I'll just give you a chargeof shot. "

But before he could raise his gun, the shrike, to his amazement, burstinto an exquisite song, sweet and pure as a thrush's melody, and, spreading its slaty wings, it sailed off through the sunshine. 

"That's a new trick to me, " said Gordon, aloud, wondering to hear suchmusic from the fierce feathered criminal. But he let it go for the sakeof its song, and, lowering his gun again, he pushed into the underbrush. 

The yellow beech leaves illuminated the woods above and under foot; hesmelled the scent of ripened foliage, he saw the purple gentianswistfully raising their buds which neither sun nor frost could everunseal. 

In a glade where brambles covered a tiny stream, creeping through layersof jewel-weed and mint, the white setter in the lead swung suddenlywest, quartered, wheeled, crept forward and stiffened to a point. Behindhim his mate froze into a silvery statue. But Gordon walked on, gununder his arm, and the covey rose with a roar of heavy wings, drivingblindly through the tangle deep into the dim wood's depths. 

Gordon was not in a killing mood that morning. 

When the puzzled dogs had come wagging in and had been quietly motionedto heel, Gordon stood still and looked around at the mottled tree-trunksglimmering above the underbrush. The first beechnuts had dropped; a fewdainty sweet acorns lay under the white oaks. Somewhere above a squirrelscolded incessantly. 

As he was on the point of moving forward, stooping to avoid an ozier, something on the edge of the thicket caught his eye. It was a twig, freshly broken, hanging downward by a film of bark. 

After he had examined it he looked around cautiously, peering into thethicket until, a few yards to the right, he discovered another twig, freshly broken, hanging by its film of bark. 

An ugly flush stained his forehead; he set his lips together and movedon noiselessly. Other twigs hung dangling every few yards, yet it tookan expert's eye to detect them among the tangles and clusteringbranches. But he knew what he was to find at the end of the blind trail, and in a few minutes he found it. It was a deadfall, set, and baitedwith winter grapes. 

Noiselessly he destroyed it, setting the heavy stone on the moss withouta sound; then he searched the thicket for the next "line, " and in a fewmoments he discovered another broken twig leading to the left. 

He had been on the trail for some time, losing it again and again beforethe suspicion flashed over him that there was somebody ahead who hadeither seen or heard him and who was deliberately leading him astraywith false "lines" that would end in nothing. He listened; there was nosound either of steps or of cracking twigs, but both dogs had begungrowling and staring into the demi-light ahead. He motioned them on andfollowed. A moment later both dogs barked sharply. 

As he stepped out of the thicket on one side, a young girl, standing inthe more open and heavier timber, raised her head and looked at him withgrave, brown eyes. Her hands were on the silky heads of his dogs; fromher belt hung a great, fluffy cock-partridge, outspread wings stilllimber. 

He knew her in an instant; he had seen her often in church. Perplexedand astonished, he took off his cap in silence, finding absolutelynothing to say, although the dead partridge at her belt furnished a texton which he had often displayed biting eloquence. 

After a moment he smiled, partly at the situation, partly to put her ather ease. 

"If I had known it was you, " he said, "I should not have followed thosevery inviting twigs I saw dangling from the oziers and moose-vines. "

"Lined deadfalls are thoroughfares to woodsmen, " she answered, defiantly. "You are as free as I am in these woods--but not more free. "

The defiance, instead of irritating him, touched him. In it he felt astrange pathos--the proud protest of a heart that beat as free as thethudding wings of the wild birds he sometimes silenced with a shot. 

"It is quite true, " he said, gently; "you are perfectly free in thesewoods. "

"But not by your leave!" she said, and the quick color stung her cheeks. 

"It is not necessary to ask it, " he replied. 

"I mean, " she said, desperately, "that neither I nor my father recognizeyour right to these woods. "

"Your father?" he repeated, puzzled. 

"Don't you know who I am?" she said, in surprise. 

"I know you sing very beautifully in church, " he said, smiling. 

"My name, " she said, quietly, "is the name of your father's oldneighbor. I am Jessie Jocelyn. "

His face was troubled, even in his surprise. The line between his eyesdeepened. "I did not know you were Mr. Jocelyn's daughter, " he said, atlast. 

Neither spoke for a moment. Presently Gordon raised his head and foundher brown eyes on him. 

"I wish, " he said, wistfully, "that you would let me walk with you alittle way. I want to ask your advice. Will you?"

"I am going home, " she said, coldly. 

She turned away, moving two or three paces, then the next step was lesshasty, and the next was slower still. As he joined her she looked up atrifle startled, then bent her head. 

"Miss Jocelyn, " he said, abruptly, "have you ever heard your father saythat my father treated him harshly?"

She stopped short beside him. "Have you?" he repeated, firmly. 

"I think, " she said, scornfully, "your father can answer that question. "

"If he could, " said Gordon, "I would ask him. He is dead. "

She was listening to him with face half averted, but now she turnedaround and met his eyes again. 

"Will you answer my question?" he said. 

"No, " she replied, slowly; "not if he is dead. "

Young Gordon's face was painfully white. "I beg you, Miss Jocelyn, toanswer me, " he said. "I beg you will answer for your father's sakeand--in justice to my father's son. "

"What do you care--" she began, but stopped short. To her surprise herown bitterness seemed forced. She saw he did care. Suddenly she pitiedhim. 

"There was a promise broken, " she said, gravely. 

"What else?"

"A man's spirit. "

They walked on, he clasping his gun with nerveless hands, she breakingthe sapless twigs as she passed, with delicate, idle fingers. 

Presently he said, as though speaking to himself: "He had no quarrelwith the dead, nor has the dead with him--now. What my father would nowwish I can do--I can do even yet--"

Under her deep lashes her brown eyes rested on him pitifully. But at hisslightest motion she turned away, walking in silence. 

As they reached the edge of the woods in a burst of sunshine he lookedup at her and she stopped. Below them the smoke curled from herweather-racked house. "Will you have me for a guest?" he said, suddenly. 

"A guest!" she faltered. 

A new mood was on him; he was smiling now. 

"Yes, a guest. It is Thanksgiving Day, Miss Jocelyn. Will you and yourfather forget old quarrels--and perhaps forgive?"

Again she rested her slender hands on his dogs' heads, looking out overthe valley. 

"Will you forgive?" he asked, in a low voice. 

"I? Yes, " she said, startled. 

"Then, " he went on, smiling, "you must invite me to be your guest. WhenI look at that partridge, Miss Jocelyn, hunger makes me shameless. Iwant a second-joint--indeed I do!"

Her sensitive lips trembled into a smile, but she could not meet hiseyes yet. 

"Our Thanksgiving dinner would horrify you, " she said--"a pickerel takenon a gang-hook, woodcock shot in Brier Brook swales, and thispartridge--" She hesitated. 

"And that partridge a victim to his own rash passion for winter grapes, "added Gordon, laughing. 

The laugh did them both good. 

"I could make a chestnut stuffing, " she said, timidly. 

"Splendid! Splendid!" murmured Gordon. 

"Are you really coming?" she asked. 

Something in her eyes held his, then he answered with heightened color, "I am very serious, Miss Jocelyn. May I come?"

She said "Yes" under her breath. There was color enough in her lips andcheeks now. 

So young Gordon went away across the hills, whistling his dogs cheerilyon, the sunlight glimmering on the slanting barrels of his gun. Theylooked back twice. The third time she looked he was gone beyond thebrown hill's crest. 

She came to her own door all of a tremble. Old man Jocelyn sat sunninghis gray head on the south porch, lean hands folded over his stomach, pipe between his teeth. 

"Daddy, " she said, "look!" and she held up the partridge. Jocelynsmiled. 

All the afternoon she was busy in the kitchen, and when the earlyevening shadows lengthened across the purple hills she stood at thedoor, brown eyes searching the northern slope. 

The early dusk fell over the alder swales; the brawling brook wassheeted with vapor. 

Up-stairs she heard her father dressing in his ancient suit of rustyblack and pulling on his obsolete boots. She stole into the dining-roomand looked at the table. Three covers were laid. 

She had dressed in her graduating gown--a fluffy bit of white andribbon. Her dark soft hair was gathered simply; a bunch of blue gentianglimmered at her belt. 

Suddenly, as she lingered over the table, she heard Gordon's step on theporch, and the next instant her father came down the dark stairway intothe dining-room just as Gordon entered. 

The old man halted, eyes ablaze. But Gordon came forward gravely, saying, "I asked Miss Jocelyn if I might come as your guest to-night. Itwould have been a lonely Thanksgiving at home. "

Jocelyn turned to his daughter in silence. Then the three places laid attable and the three chairs caught his eye. 

"I hope, " said Gordon, "that old quarrels will be forgotten and oldscores wiped out. I am sorry I spoke as I did this morning. You arequite right, Mr. Jocelyn; the land is yours and has always been yours. It is from you I must ask permission to shoot. "

Jocelyn eyed him grimly. 

"Don't make it hard for me, " said Gordon. "The land is yours, and thatalso which you lost with it will be returned. It is what my fatherwishes--now. "

He held out his hand. Jocelyn took it as though stunned. 

Gordon, still holding his hard hand, drew him outside to the porch. 

"How much did you have in the Sagamore & Wyandotte Railway before oursystem bought it?" asked Gordon. 

"All I had--seven thousand dollars--" Suddenly the old man's hand beganto tremble. He raised his gray head and looked up at the stars. 

"That is yours still, " said Gordon, gently, "with interest. My fatherwishes it. "

Old man Jocelyn looked up at the stars. They seemed to swim in silverstreaks through the darkness. 

"Come, " said Gordon, gayly, "we are brother sportsmen now--and that skymeans a black frost and a flight. Will you invite me to shoot over BrierBrook swales to-morrow?"

As he spoke, high in the starlight a dark shadow passed, coming in fromthe north, beating the still air with rapid wings. It was a woodcock, the first flight bird from the north. 

"Come to dinner, young man, " said Jocelyn, excited; "the flight is onand we must be on Brier Brook by daybreak. "

In the blaze of a kerosene-lamp they sat down at table. Gordon lookedacross at Jocelyn's daughter; her eyes met his, and they smiled. 

Then old man Jocelyn bent his head on his hard clasped hands. 

"Lord, " he said, tremulously, "it being Thanksgiving, I gave Thee extrythanks this A. M. It being now P. M. , I do hereby double them extrythanks"--his mind wandered a little--"with interest to date. Amen. "

THE PATH-MASTER

 "The bankrupt can always pay one debt, but neither God nor man can credit him with the payment. "

I

When Dingman, the fate game-warden, came panting over the mountain fromSpencers to confer with young Byram, road-master at Foxville, he foundthat youthful official reshingling his barn. 

The two men observed each other warily for a moment; Byram jingled theshingle-nails in his apron-pocket; Dingman, the game-warden, took abrief but intelligent survey of the premises, which included anunpainted house, a hen-yard, and the newly shingled barn. 

"Hello, Byram, " he said, at length. 

"Is that you?" replied Byram, coldly. 

He was a law-abiding young man; he had not shot a bird out of season forthree years. 

After a pause the game-warden said, "Ain't you a-comin' down off'n thatridge-pole?"

"I'm a-comin' down when I quit shinglin', " replied the road-master, cautiously. Dingman waited; Byram fitted a shingle, fished out a nailfrom his apron-pocket, and drove it with unnecessary noise. 

The encircling forest re-echoed the hammer strokes; a squirrel scoldedfrom the orchard. 

"Didn't I hear a gun go off in them alder bushes this morning?" inquiredthe game-warden. Byram made no reply, but hammered violently. "Anybodygot a ice-house 'round here?" persisted the game-warden. 

Byram turned a non-committal eye on the warden. 

"I quit that business three years ago, an' you know it, " he said. "I'ain't got no ice-house for to hide no pa'tridges, an' I ain'ta-shootin' out o' season for the Saratogy market!"

The warden regarded him with composure. 

"Who said _you_ was shootin' pa'tridges?" he asked. But Byram broke in:

"What would I go shootin' them birds for when I 'ain't got no ice-box?"

"Who says _you_ got a ice-box?" replied the warden, calmly. "There isother folks in Foxville, ain't there?"

Byram grew angrier. "If you want to stop this shootin' out o' season, "he said, "you go to them rich hotel men in Saratogy. Are you afraid jestbecause they've got a pull with them politicians that makes thegame-laws and then pays the hotel men to serve 'em game out o' seasonan' reason? Them's the men to ketch; them's the men that set the poormen to vi'latin' the law. Folks here 'ain't got no money to buy powder'n' shot for to shoot nothin'. But when them Saratogy men offers twodollars a bird for pa'tridge out o' season, what d'ye think is bound tohappen?"

"Shootin', " said the warden, sententiously. "An' it's been did, too. An'I'm here for to find out who done that shootin' in them alders. "

"Well, why don't you find out, then?" sneered young Byram from his perchon the ridge-pole. 

"That's it, " said the warden, bitterly; "all you folks hang togetherlike bees in a swarm-bunch. You're nuthin' but a passel o' critters thatdigs ginseng for them Chinese an' goes gunnin' for pa'tridges out o'season--"

"I'll go gunnin' for _you_!" shouted Byram, climbing down the ladder ina rage. "I am going to knock your head off, you darned thing!"

Prudence halted him; the game-warden, who had at first meditated flight, now eyed him with patronizing assurance. 

"Don't git riled with me, young man, " he said. "I'm a 'fical of thisState. Anyway, it ain't you I'm lookin' for--"

"Well, why don't you say so, then?" broke in Byram, with an oath. 

"But it's one o' your family, " added the warden. 

"My family!" stammered Byram, in genuine surprise. Then an ugly lightglimmered in his eyes. "You mean Dan McCloud?"

"I do, " said the warden, "an' I'm fixed to git him, too. "

"Well, what do you come to me for, then?" demanded Byram. 

"For because Dan McCloud is your cousin, ain't he? An' I jest dropped inon you to see how the land lay. If it's a fight it's a fight, but I jestwant to know how many I'm to buck against. Air you with him? I'veproofs. I know he's got his ice-box stuffed full o' pa'tridges an'woodcock. Air you with him?"

"No, " said Byram, with a scowl; "but I ain't with you, neither!"

"Don't git riled, " said the warden. "I'm that friendly with folks Idon't wanter rile nobody. Look here, friend, you an' me is 'ficials, ain't we?"

"I'm road-master of Foxville, " said Byram, aggressively. 

"Well, then, let's set down onto this bunch o' shingles an' talk it over'ficially, " suggested the warden, suavely. 

"All right, " said Byram, pocketing his hammer; "if you're out to ketchDan McCloud I don't care. He's a low-down, shifty cuss, who won't payhis road-tax, an' I say it if he is my cousin, an' no shame to me, neither. "

The warden nodded and winked. 

"If you he'p me ketch Dan McCloud with them birds in his ice-box, I'llhe'p you git your road-tax outen him, " he proposed. "An' you git halfthe reward, too. "

"I ain't no spy, " retorted Byram, "an' I don't want no reward outennobody. "

"But you're a 'ficial, same as me, " persisted the warden. "Set down ontothem shingles, friend, an' talk it over. "

Byram sat down, fingering the head of his hammer; the warden, a fat, shiny man, with tiny, greenish eyes and an unshaven jaw, took a seatbeside him and began twisting a greasy black mustache. 

"You an' me's 'ficials, " he said, with dignity, "an' we has burdens thatfolks don't know. My burden is these here folks that shoots pa'tridgesin July; your burdens is them people who don't pay no road-tax. "

"One o' them people is Dan McCloud, an' I'm goin' after that road-taxto-night, " said Byram. 

"Can't you wait till I ketch McCloud with them birds?" asked the warden, anxiously. 

"No, I can't, " snapped Byram; "I can't wait for no such thing!" But hespoke without enthusiasm. 

"Can't we make it a kind o' 'ficial surprise for him, then?" suggestedthe warden. "Me an' you is 'ficials; your path-masters is 'ficials. We'll all go an' see Dan McCloud, that's what we'll do. How manypath-masters hev you got to back you up?"

Byram's face grew red as fire. 

"One, " he said; "we ain't a metropolipus. "

"Well, git your path-master an' come on, anyhow, " persisted thegame-warden, rising and buttoning his faded coat. 

"I--I can't, " muttered Byram. 

"Ain't you road-master?" asked Dingman, astonished. 

"Yes. "

"Then, can't you git your own path-master to do his dooty an' execootethe statoots?"

"You see, " stammered Byram, "I app'inted a--a lady. "

"A what!" cried the game-warden. 

"A lady, " repeated Byram, firmly. "Tell the truth, we 'ain't got nopath-master; we've got a path-mistress--Elton's kid, you know--"

"Elton?"

"Yes. "

"What hung hisself in his orchard?"

"Yes. "

"His kid? The girl that folks say is sweet on Dan McCloud?"

A scowl crisped Byram's face. 

"It's a lie, " he said, thickly. 

After a silence Byram spoke more calmly. "Old man Elton he didn't leaveher nothin'. She done chores around an' taught school some, down to FrogHoller. She's that poor--nothin' but pertaters an' greens for to eat, an' her a-savin' her money for to go to one o' them female institootswhere women learn to nurse sick folks. "

"So you 'pinted her path-master to kinder he'p her along?"

"I--I kinder did. "

"She's only a kid. "

"Only a kid. 'Bout sixteen. "

"An' it's against the law?"

"Kinder 'gainst it. "

The game-warden pretended to stifle a yawn. 

"Well, " he said, petulantly. "I never knowed nothin' about it--if theyask me over to Spencers. "

"That's right! An' I'll he'p you do your dooty regardin' thempa'tridges, " said Byram, quickly. "Dan McCloud's a loafer an' no good. When he's drunk he raises hell down to the store. Foxville is jest plumbsick o' him. "

"Is it?" inquired the game-warden, with interest. 

"The folks is that sick o' him that they was talkin' some o' runnin' himacrost the mountains, " replied Byram; "but I jest made the boys holdtheir horses till I got that there road-tax outen him first. "

"Can't you git it?"

"Naw, " drawled Byram. "I sent Billy Delany to McCloud's shanty tocollect it, but McCloud near killed Bill with a axe. That was Tuesday. Some o' the boys was fixin' to run McCloud outer town, but I guess mostof us ain't hankerin' to lead the demonstration. "

"'Fraid?"

"Ya-as, " drawled Byram. 

The game-warden laboriously produced a six-shooter from his side pocket. A red bandanna handkerchief protected the shiny barrel; he unwrappedthis, regarded the weapon doubtfully, and rubbed his fat thumb over thebutt. 

"Huh!" ejaculated Byram, contemptuously, "he's got a repeatin'-rifle; hecan cut a pa'tridge's head off from here to that butternut 'cross thecreek!"

"I'm goin' to git into his ice-house all the same, " said the warden, without much enthusiasm. 

"An' I'm bound to git my road-tax, " said Byram, "but jest how I'm tooperate I dunno. "

"Me neither, " added the warden, musingly. "God knows I hate to shootpeople. "

What he really meant was that he hated to be shot at. 

A young girl in a faded pink sunbonnet passed along the road, followedby a dog. She returned the road-master's awkward salutation with shycomposure. A few moments later the game-warden saw her crossing thecreek on the stepping-stones; her golden-haired collie dog splashedafter her. 

"That's a slick girl, " he said, twisting his heavy black mustache intotwo greasy points. 

Byram glanced at him with a scowl. 

"That's the kid, " he said. 

"Eh? Elton's?"

"Yes. "

"Your path-master?"

"Well, what of it?"

"Nuthin'--she's good-lookin'--for a path-master, " said the warden, witha vicious leer intended for a compliment. 

"What of it?" demanded Byram, harshly. 

"Be you fixin' to splice with that there girl some day?" asked thegame-warden, jocosely. 

"What of it?" repeated Byram, with an ugly stare. 

"Oh, " said the warden, hastily, "I didn't know nothin' was goin' on; Iwasn't meanin' to rile nobody. "

"Oh, you wasn't, wasn't you?" said Byram, in a rage. "Now you can jestgit your pa'tridges by yourself an' leave me to git my road-tax. I'mdone with you. "

"How you do rile up!" protested the warden. "How was I to know that youwas sweet on your path-master when folks over to Spencers say she'ssweet on Dan McCloud--"

"It's a lie!" roared young Byram. 

"Is it?" asked the warden, with interest. "He's a good-lookin' chap, an'folks say--"

"It's a damn _lie_!" yelled Byram, "an' you can tell them folks that Isay so. She don't know Dan McCloud to speak to him, an' he's thatbesotted with rum half the time that if he spoke to her she'd die o'fright, for all his good looks. "

"Well, well, " said the game-warden, soothingly; "I guess he ain't noaccount nohow, an' it's jest as well that we ketch him with them birdsan' run him off to jail or acrost them mountains yonder. "

"I don't care where he is as long as I git my tax, " muttered Byram. 

But he _did_ care. At the irresponsible suggestion of the gossipinggame-warden a demon of jealousy had arisen within him. Was it true thatDan McCloud had cast his sodden eyes on Ellie Elton? If it were true, was the girl aware of it? Perhaps she had even exchanged words with theyoung man, for McCloud was a gentleman's son and could make himselfagreeable when he chose, and he could appear strangely at ease in hisragged clothes--nay, even attractive. 

All Foxville hated him; he was not one of them; if he had been, perhapsthey could have found something to forgive in his excesses and drunkenrecklessness. 

But, though with them, he was not of them; he came from thecity--Albany; he had been educated at Princeton College; he neitherthought, spoke, nor carried himself as they did. Even in his darkesthours he never condescended to their society, nor, drunk as he was, would he permit any familiarities from the inhabitants. 

Byram, who had been to an agricultural college, and who, on his returnto Foxville had promptly relapsed into the hideous dialect which he hadimbibed with his mother's milk, never forgave the contempt with whichMcCloud had received his advances, nor that young man's amusedrepudiation of the relationship which Byram had ventured to recall. 

So it came about that Byram at length agreed to aid the game-warden inhis lawful quest for the ice-box, and he believed sincerely that it waslove of law and duty which prompted him. 

But their quest was fruitless; McCloud met them at the gate with arepeating-rifle, knocked the game-warden down, took away his revolver, and laughed at Byram, who stood awkwardly apart, dazed by thebusiness-like rapidity of the operation. 

"Road-tax?" repeated McCloud, with a sneer. "I guess not. If the roadsare good enough for cattle like you, pay for them yourselves! I use thewoods and I pay no road-tax. "

"If you didn't have that there rifle--" began Byram, sullenly. 

"It's quite empty; look for yourself!" said McCloud, jerking back thelever. 

The mortified game-warden picked himself out of the nettle-choked ditchwhere he had been painfully squatting and started towards Foxville. 

"I'll ketch you at it yet!" he called back; "I'll fix you an' yourice-box!"

McCloud laughed. 

"Gimme that two dollars, " demanded Byram, sullenly, "or do your day'sstint on them there public roads. "

McCloud dropped his hands into the pockets of his raggedshooting-jacket. 

"You'd better leave or I'll settle you as I settled Billy Delany. "

"You hit him with a axe; that's hommycide assault; he'll fix you, see ifhe don't!" said Byram. 

"No, " said McCloud, slowly; "I did not hit him with an axe. I had a ringon my finger when I hit him. I'm sorry it cut him. "

"Oh, you'll be sorrier yet, " cried Byram, turning away towards the road, where the game-warden was anxiously waiting for him. 

"We'll run you outer town!" called back the warden, waddling down theroad. 

"Try it, " replied McCloud, yawning. 

II

McCloud spent the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs, listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprigof mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of hiswell-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. Whenat length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber avoice from the road below aroused him. 

He listened lazily; again came the timid call; he arose, brushing hisshabby coat mechanically. 

Down the bramble-choked path he slouched, shouldering his wood-axe as aprecaution. Passing around the rear of his house, he peered over themessed tangle of sweetbrier which supported the remains of a rottingfence, and he saw, down in the road below, a young girl and a colliedog, both regarding him intently. 

"Were you calling me?" he asked. 

"It's only about your road-tax, " began the girl, looking up at him withpleasant gray eyes. 

"What about my road-tax?"

"It's due, isn't it?" replied the girl, with a faint smile. 

"Is it?" he retorted, staring at her insolently. "Well, don't let itworry you, young woman. "

The smile died out in her eyes. 

"It does worry me, " she said; "you owe the path-master two dollars, or aday's work on the roads. "

"Let the path-master come and get it, " he replied. 

"I am the path-master, " she said. 

He looked down at her curiously. She had outgrown her faded pink skirts;her sleeves were too short, and so tight that the plump, white armthreatened to split them to the shoulder. Her shoes were quite as raggedas his; he noticed, however, that her hands were slender and soft undertheir creamy coat of tan, and that her fingers were as carefully kept ashis own. 

"You must be Ellice Elton, " he said, remembering the miserable end ofold man Elton, who also had been a gentleman until a duel with drinkleft him dangling by the neck under the new moon some three years since. 

"Yes, " she said, with a slight drawl, "and I think you must be DanMcCloud. "

"Why do you think so?" he asked. 

"From your rudeness. "

He gave her an ugly look; his face slowly reddened. 

"So you're the path-master?" he said. 

"Yes. "

"And you expect to get money out of me?"

She flushed painfully. 

"You can't get it, " he said, harshly; "I'm dog poor; I haven't enough tobuy two loads for my rifle. So I'll buy one, " he added, with a sneer. 

She was silent. He chewed the mint-leaf between his teeth and stared ather dog. 

"If you are so poor--" she began. 

"Poor!" he cut in, with a mirthless laugh; "it's only a word to you, Isuppose. "

He had forgotten her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, inthe fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her whitethroat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calicoover her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in thepresence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in his soul againsther. 

"I don't know what you mean, " she said; "I also am terribly poor. If youmean that I am not sorry for you, you are mistaken. Only the poor canunderstand each other. "

"I can't understand _you_, " he sneered. "Why do you come and ask me topay money to your road-master when I have no money?"

"Because I am path-master. I must do my duty. I won't ask you for anymoney, but I must ask you to work out your tax. I can't help it, can I?"

He looked at her in moody, suspicious silence. 

Idle, vicious, without talent, without ambition, he had drifted part waythrough college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idlethrough the great universities, leaving unsavory records. His father hadmanaged to pay his debts, then very selfishly died, and there was nobodyto support the son and heir, just emerging from a drunken junior year. 

Creditors made a clean sweep in Albany; the rough shooting-lodge in theFox Hills was left. Young McCloud took it. 

The pine timber he sold as it stood; this kept him in drink and a littlefood. Then, when starvation looked in at his dirty window, he took hisrifle and shot partridges. 

Now, for years he had been known as a dealer in game out of season; thegreat hotels at Saratoga paid him well for his dirty work; thegame-wardens watched to catch him. But his ice-house was a cavesomewhere out in the woods, and as yet no warden had been quick enoughto snare McCloud red-handed. 

Musing over these things, the young fellow leaned on the rotting fence, staring vacantly at the collie dog, who, in turn stared gravely at him. 

The path-master, running her tanned fingers through her curls, laid onehand on her dog's silky head and looked up at him. 

"I do wish you would work out your tax, " she said. 

Before McCloud could find voice to answer, the alder thicket across theroad parted and an old man shambled forth on a pair of unsteady bowedlegs. 

"The kid's right, " he said, with a hoarse laugh; "git yewr pick an' hoe, young man, an' save them two dollars tew pay yewr pa's bad debts!"

It was old Tansey, McCloud's nearest neighbor, loaded down with a bundleof alder staves, wood-axe in one hand, rope in the other, supporting theheavy weight of wood on his bent back. 

"Get out of that alder-patch!" said McCloud, sharply. 

"Ain't I a-gittin'?" replied Tansey, winking at the little path-master. 

"And keep out after this, " added McCloud. "Those alders belong to me!"

"To yew and the _blue_-jays, " assented Tansey, stopping to wipe thesweat from his heavy face. 

"He's only cutting alders for bean-poles, " observed the path-master, resting her slender fingers on her hips. 

"Well, he can cut his bean-poles on his own land hereafter, " saidMcCloud. 

"Gosh!" observed Tansey, in pretended admiration. "Ain't he neighborly?Cut 'em on my own land, hey? Don't git passionate, " he added, moving offthrough the dust; "passionate folks is liable to pyralyze their in'ards, young man!"

"Don't answer!" said the path-master, watching the sullen rage inMcCloud's eyes. 

"Pay yewr debts!" called out Tansey at the turn of the road. "Pay yewrdebts, an' the Lord will pay yewr taxes!"

"The Lord can pay mine, then, " said McCloud to the path-master, "forI'll never pay a cent of taxes in Foxville. Now what do you say tothat?"

The path-master had nothing to say. She went away through the goldendust, one slim hand on the head of her collie dog, who trotted besideher waving his plumy tail. 

That evening at the store where McCloud had gone to buy cartridges, Tansey taunted him, and he replied contemptuously. Then young Byramflung a half-veiled threat at him, and McCloud replied with a threatthat angered the loungers around the stove. 

"What you want is a rawhide, " said McCloud, eying young Byram. 

"I guess I do, " said Byram, "an' I'm a-goin' to buy one, too--unless youpay that there road-tax. "

"I'll be at home when you call, " replied McCloud, quietly, picking uphis rifle, and pocketing his cartridges. 

Somebody near the stove said, "Go fur him!" to Byram, and the youngroad-master glared at McCloud. 

"He was a-sparkin' Ellie Elton, " added Tansey, grinning; "yew owe him afew for that, too, Byram. "

Byram turned white, but made no movement. McCloud laughed. 

"Wait, " said the game-warden, sitting behind the stove; "jest waitawhile; that's all. No man can fire me into a ditch full o' stingingnettles an' live to larf no pizened larf at me!"

"Dingman, " said McCloud, contemptuously, "you're like the rest of themhere in Foxville--all foxes who run to earth when they smell aWinchester. "

He flung his rifle carelessly into the hollow of his left arm; themuzzle was in line with the game-warden, and that official promptlymoved out of range, upsetting his chair in his haste. 

"Quit that!" bawled the storekeeper, from behind his counter. 

"Quit what--eh?" demanded McCloud. "Here, you old rat, give me thewhiskey bottle! Quick! What? Money to pay? Trot out that grog or I'llshoot your lamps out!"

"He's been a-drinkin' again, " whispered the game-warden. "Fur God'ssake, give him that bottle, somebody!"

But as the bottle was pushed across the counter, McCloud swung hisrifle-butt and knocked the bottle into slivers. "Drinks for the crowd!"he said, with an ugly laugh. "Get down and lap it up off the floor, youfox cubs!"

Then, pushing the fly-screen door open with one elbow, he sauntered outinto the moonlight, careless who might follow him, although now that hehad insulted and defied the entire town there were men behind who wouldhave done him a mischief if they had dared believe him off his guard. 

He walked moodily on in the moonlight, disdaining to either listen orglance behind him. There was a stoop to his shoulders now, a loosecarriage which sometimes marks a man whose last shred of self-respecthas gone, leaving him nothing but the naked virtues and vices with whichhe was born. McCloud's vices were many, though some of them lay dormant;his virtues, if they were virtues, could be counted in a breath--anatural courage, and a generous heart, paralyzed and inactive under aload of despair and a deep resentment against everybody and everything. He hated the fortunate and the unfortunate alike; he despised hisneighbors, he despised himself. His inertia had given place to a fiercerestlessness; he felt a sudden and curious desire for a physicalstruggle with a strong antagonist--like young Byram. 

All at once the misery of his poverty arose up before him. It was notunendurable simply because he was obliged to endure it. 

The thought of his hopeless poverty stupefied him at first, then ragefollowed. Poverty was an antagonist--like young Byram--a powerful one. How he hated it! How he hated Byram! Why? And, as he walked there, shuffling up the dust in the moonlight, he thought, for the first timein his life, that if poverty were only a breathing creature he wouldstrangle it with his naked hands. But logic carried him no further; hebegan to brood again, remembering Tansey's insults and the white angerof young Byram, and the threats from the dim group around the stove. Ifthey molested him they would remember it. He would neither pay taxes norwork for them. 

Then he thought of the path-master, reddening as he remembered Tansey'saccusation. He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, dismissingher from his mind, but she returned, only to be again dismissed with aneffort. 

When for the third time the memory of the little path-master returned, he glanced up as though he could see her in the flesh standing in theroad before his house. She _was_ there--in the flesh. 

The moonlight silvered her hair, and her face was the face of a spirit;it quickened the sluggish blood in his veins to see her so in themoonlight. 

She said: "I thought that if you knew I should be obliged to pay yourroad-tax if you do not, you would pay. Would you?"

A shadow glided across the moonlight; it was the collie dog, and it cameand looked up into McCloud's shadowy eyes. 

"Yes--I would, " he said; "but I cannot. "

His heart began to beat faster; a tide of wholesome blood stirred andflowed through his veins. It was the latent decency within him awaking. 

"Little path-master, " he said, "I am very poor; I have no money. But Iwill work out my taxes because you ask me. "

He raised his head and looked at the spectral forest where dead pinestowered, ghastly in the moon's beams. That morning he had cut the lastwood on his own land; he had nothing left to sell but a patch ofbrambles and a hut which no one would buy. 

"I guess I'm no good, " he said; "I can't work. "

"But what will you do?" she asked, with pitiful eyes raised. 

"Do? Oh, what I have done. I can shoot partridges. "

"Market-shooting is against the law, " she said, faintly. 

"The law!" he repeated; "it seems to me there is nothing but law in thisGod-forsaken hole!"

"Can't you live within the law? It is not difficult, is it?" she asked. 

"It is difficult for me, " he said, sullenly. The dogged brute in him wasawaking in its turn. He was already sorry he had promised her to workout his taxes. Then he remembered the penalty. Clearly he would have towork, or she would be held responsible. 

"If anybody would take an unskilled man, " he began, "I--I would try toget something to do. "

"Won't they?"

"No. I tried it--once. "

"Only once?"

He gave a short laugh and stooped to pat the collie, saying, "Don'tbother me, little path-master. "

"No--I won't, " she replied, slowly. 

She went away in the moonlight, saying good-night and calling hercollie, and he walked up the slope to the house, curiously at peace withhimself and the dim world hidden in the shadows around. 

He was not sleepy. As he had no candles, he sat down in the moonlight, idly balancing his rifle on his knees. From force of habit he loadedit, then rubbed the stock with the palm of his hand, eyes dreaming. 

Into the tangled garden a whippoorwill flashed on noiseless wings, rested a moment, unseen, then broke out into husky, breathless calling. A minute later the whispering call came from the forest's edge, thenfarther away, almost inaudible in the thickening dusk. 

And, as he sat there, thinking of the little path-master, he becameaware of a man slinking along the moonlit road below. His heart stopped, then the pulses went bounding, and his fingers closed on his rifle. 

There were other men in the moonlight now--he counted five--and hecalled out to them, demanding their business. 

"You're our business, " shouted back young Byram. "Git up an' dust out o'Foxville, you dirty loafer!"

"Better stay where you are, " said McCloud, grimly. 

Then old Tansey bawled: "Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yewair meaner 'n pussley an' meaner 'n quack-root, an' we air bound tew runyew into them mountings, b' gosh!"

There was a silence, then the same voice: "Be yew calculatin' tew mosey, Dan McCloud?"

"You had better stay where you are, " said McCloud; "I'm armed. "

"Ye be?" replied a new voice; "then come aout o' that or we'll snake yeaout!"

Byram began moving towards the house, shot-gun raised. 

"Stop!" cried McCloud, jumping to his feet. 

But Byram came on, gun levelled, and McCloud retreated to his frontdoor. 

"Give it to him!" shouted the game-warden; "shoot his windows out!"There was a flash from the road and a load of buckshot crashed throughthe window overhead. 

Before the echoes of the report died away, McCloud's voice was heardagain, calmly warning them back. 

Something in his voice arrested the general advance. 

"I don't know why I don't kill you in your tracks, Byram, " said McCloud;"I've wanted the excuse often enough. But now I've got it and I don'twant it, somehow. Let me alone, I tell you. "

"He's no good!" said the warden, distinctly. Byram crept through thepicket fence and lay close, hugging his shot-gun. 

"I tell you I intend to pay my taxes, " cried McCloud, desperately. "Don't force me to shoot!"

The sullen rage was rising; he strove to crush it back, to think of thelittle path-master. 

"For God's sake, go back!" he pleaded, hoarsely. 

Suddenly Byram started running towards the house, and McCloud clappedhis rifle to his cheek and fired. Four flashes from the road answeredhis shot, but Byram was down in the grass screaming, and McCloud hadvanished into his house. 

Charge after charge of buckshot tore through the flimsy clapboards; themoonlight was brightened by pale flashes, and the timbered hills echoedthe cracking shots. 

After a while no more shots were fired, and presently a voice broke outin the stillness:

"Be yew layin' low, or be yew dead, Dan McCloud?"

There was no answer. 

"Or be yew playin' foxy possum, " continued the voice, with nasal risinginflection. 

Byram began to groan and crawl towards the road. 

"Let him alone, " he moaned; "let him alone. He's got grit, if he hain'tgot nothin' else. "

"Air yew done for?" demanded Tansey, soberly. 

"No, no, " groaned Byram, "I'm jest winged. He done it, an' he was right. Didn't he say he'd pay his taxes? He's plumb right. Let him alone, orhe'll come out an' murder us all!"

Byram's voice ceased; Tansey mounted the dark slope, peering among thebrambles, treading carefully. 

"Whar be ye, Byram?" he bawled. 

But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in thelong grass. 

With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshotcrashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes ofthe shot died out; silence followed. 

Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, stillclutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fellclattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely. "Up with them hands o' yourn!" he snarled; but McCloud only muttered andbegan to rock and sway in the doorway. 

Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. "Yew hev done fur Byram, " hesaid; "yew air bound to set in the chair for this. "

McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes. 

"It's well enough for you, " he muttered; "you are only a savage; butByram went to college--and so did I--and we are nothing but savages likeyou, after all--nothing but savages--"

He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across thethreshold. 

"I want to see the path-master!" he cried, sharply. 

A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine. 

"She's here, " said the game-warden, soberly. 

But McCloud had started talking and muttering to himself. 

Towards midnight the whippoorwill began a breathless calling from thegarden. 

McCloud opened his eyes. 

"Who is that?" he asked, irritably. 

"He's looney, " whispered Tansey; "he gabbles to hisself. "

The little path-master knelt beside him. He stared at her stonily. 

"It is I, " she whispered. 

"Is it you, little path-master?" he said, in an altered voice. Thensomething came into his filmy eyes which she knew was a smile. 

"I wanted to tell you, " he began, "I will work out mytaxes--somewhere--for you--"

The path-master hid her white face in her hands. Presently the colliedog came and laid his head on her shoulder. 

IN NAUVOO

The long drought ended with a cloud-burst in the western mountains, which tore a new slide down the flank of Lynx Peak and scarred theGilded Dome from summit to base. Then storm followed storm, burstingthrough the mountain-notch and sweeping the river into the meadows, where the haycocks were already afloat, and the gaunt mountain cattlefloundered bellowing. 

The stage from White Lake arrived at noon with the mail, and the driverwalked into the post-office and slammed the soaking mail-sack on thefloor. 

"Gracious!" said the little postmistress. 

"Yes'm, " said the stage-driver, irrelevantly; "them letters is wetteran' I'm madder 'n a swimmin' shanghai! Upsot? Yes'm--in Snow Brook. Road's awash, meadders is flooded, an' the water's a-swashin' an'a-sloshin' in them there galoshes. " He waved one foot about carelessly, scattering muddy spray, then balanced himself alternately on heels andtoes to hear the water wheeze in his drenched boots. 

"There must be a hole in the mail-pouch, " said the postmistress, ingentle distress. 

There certainly was. The letters were soaked; the wrappers on newspaperand parcel had become detached; the interior of the government'smail-pouch resembled the preliminary stages of a paper-pulp vat. But thepostmistress worked so diligently among the débris that by one o'clockshe had sorted and placed in separate numbered boxes every letter, newspaper, and parcel--save one. 

That one was a letter directed to

 "_James Helm, Esq. _ "_Nauvoo_, via _White Lake_. "

and it was so wet and the gum that sealed it was so nearly dissolvedthat the postmistress decided to place it between blotters, pile twovolumes of government agricultural reports on it, and leave it untildry. 

One by one the population of Nauvoo came dripping into the post-officefor the mail, then slopped out into the storm again, umbrellas couchedin the teeth of the wind. But James Helm did not come for his letter. 

The postmistress sat alone in her office and looked out into her garden. It was a very wet garden; the hollyhocks still raised their floweredspikes in the air; the nasturtiums, the verbenas, and the pansies werebeaten down and lying prone in muddy puddles. She wondered whether theywould ever raise their heads again--those delicate flower faces that sheknew so well, her only friends in Nauvoo. 

Through the long drought she had tended them, ministering to theirthirst, protecting them from their enemies the weeds, and from thegreat, fuzzy, brown-and-yellow caterpillars that travelled over thefences, guided by instinct and a raging appetite. Now each frail flowerhad laid its slender length along the earth, and the littlepostmistress watched them wistfully from her rain-stained window. 

She had expected to part with her flowers; she was going away forever ina few days--somewhere--she was not yet quite certain where. But now thather flowers lay prone, bruised and broken, the idea of leaving thembehind her distressed her sorely. 

She picked up her crutch and walked to the door. It was no use; the rainwarned her back. She sat down again by the window to watch her woundedflowers. 

There was something else that distressed her too, although the paradoxof parting from a person she had never met ought to have appealed to hersense of humor. But she did not think of that; never, since she had beenpostmistress in Nauvoo, had she spoken one word to James Helm, nor hadhe ever spoken to her. He had a key to his letter-box; he always cametowards evening. 

It was exactly a year ago to-day that Helm came to Nauvoo--a silent, pallid young fellow with unresponsive eyes and the bearing of agentleman. He was cordially detested in Nauvoo. For a year she hadwatched him enter the post-office, unlock his letter-box, swing on hisheel and walk away, with never a glance at her nor a sign of recognitionto any of the village people who might be there. She heard peopleexchange uncomplimentary opinions concerning him; she heard him sneeredat, denounced, slandered. 

Naturally, being young and lonely and quite free from malice towardsanybody, she had time to construct a romance around Helm--a veryinnocent romance of well-worn pattern and on most unoriginal lines. Into this romance she sometimes conducted herself, blushing secretly ather mental indiscretion, which indiscretion so worried her that shedared not even look at Helm that evening when he came for his mail. Shewas a grave, gentle little thing--a child still whose childhood had beena tragedy and whose womanhood promised only that shadow of happinesscalled contentment which comes from a blameless life and a nature whichaccepts sorrow without resentment. 

Thinking of Helm as she sat there by the window, she heard the officeclock striking five. Five was Helm's usual hour, so she hid her crutch. It was her one vanity--that he should not know that she was lame. 

She rose and lifted the two volumes of agricultural reports from theblotters where Helm's letter lay, then she carefully raised one blotter. To her dismay half of the envelope stuck to the blotting-paper, leavingthe contents of the letter open to her view. 

On the half-envelope lay an object apparently so peculiarly terrifyingthat the little postmistress caught her breath and turned quite white atsight of it. And yet it was only a square bit of paper, perfectly blanksave for half a dozen thread-like lines scattered through its texture. 

For a long while the postmistress stood staring at the half-envelope andthe bit of blank paper. Then with trembling fingers she lighted a lampand held the little piece of paper over the chimney--carefully. When thepaper was warm she raised it up to the light and read the scrawl thatthe sympathetic ink revealed:

 "I send you a sample of the latest style fibre. Look out for the new postmaster at Nauvoo. He's a secret-service spy, and he's been sent to see what you are doing. This is the last letter I dare send you by mail. "

There was no signature to the message, but a signature was not necessaryto tell the postmistress who had written the letter. With set lips andtearless eyes she watched the writing fade slowly on the paper; and whenagain the paper was blank she sank down by the window, laying her headin her arms. 

A few moments later Helm came in wrapped in a shining wet mackintosh. Heglanced at his box, saw it was empty, wheeled squarely on his heels, andwalked out. 

Towards sunset the rain dissolved to mist; a trail of vapor which markedthe course of an unseen brook floated high among the hemlocks. There wasno wind; the feathery tips of the pines, powdered with rain-spray, rosemotionless in the still air. Suddenly the sun's red search-light playedthrough the forest; long, warm rays fell across wet moss, rain-drenchedferns dripped, the swamp steamed. In the east the thunder still boomed, and faint lightning flashed under the smother of sombre clouds; but thestorm had rolled off among the mountains, and already a white-throatedsparrow was calling from the edge of the clearing. It promised to be acalm evening in Nauvoo. 

Meanwhile, Helm walked on down the muddy road, avoiding the puddleswhich the sun turned into pools of liquid flame. He heard the catbirdsmewing in the alders; he heard the evening carol of the robin--thatsweet, sleepy, thrushlike warble which always promises a melody thatnever follows; he picked a spray of rain-drenched hemlock as he passed, crushing it in his firm, pale fingers to inhale the fragrance. Now inthe glowing evening the bull-bats were soaring and tumbling, and thetree-frogs trilled from the darkling pastures. 

Around the bend in the road his house stood all alone, a small, single-storied cottage in a tangled garden. He passed in at his gate, but instead of unlocking the front door he began to examine the house asthough he had never before seen it; he scrutinized every window, he madea cautious, silent tour of the building, returning to stare again at thefront door. 

The door was locked; he never left the house without locking it, and henever returned without approaching the house in alert silence, as thoughit might conceal an enemy. 

There was no sound of his footfalls as he mounted the steps; the nextinstant he was inside the house, his back against the closeddoor--listening. As usual, he heard nothing except the ticking of aclock somewhere in the house, and as usual he slipped his revolver backinto the side pocket of his coat and fitted a key into the door on hisleft. The room was pitch dark; he lighted a candle and held it up, shading his eyes with a steady hand. 

There was a table, a printing-press, and one chair in the room; thetable was littered with engraver's tools, copper plates, bottles ofacid, packets of fibre paper, and photographic paraphernalia. A camera, a reading-lamp, and a dark-lantern stood on a shelf beside anickel-plated clock which ticked sharply. 

The two windows in the room had been sealed up with planks, over whichsheet iron was nailed. The door also had been reinforced withsheet-iron. From a peg above it a repeating-rifle hung festooned withtwo cartridge belts. 

When he had filled his lamp from a can of kerosene he lighted it and satdown to the task before him with even less interest than usual--and hisinterest had been waning for weeks. For the excitement that makes crimeinteresting had subsided and the novelty was gone. There was no longeranything in his crime that appealed to his intellect. The problem ofsuccessfully accomplishing crime was no longer a problem to him; he hadsolved it. The twelve months' work on the plate before him demonstratedthis; the plate was perfect; the counterfeit an absolute fac-simile. Thegovernment stood to lose whatever he chose to take from it. 

As an artist in engraving and as an intelligent man, Helm was, or hadbeen, proud of his work. But for that very reason, because he was anartist, he had tired of his masterpiece, and was already fingering a newplate, vaguely meditating better and more ambitious work. Why not? Whyshould he not employ his splendid skill and superb accuracy in somethingoriginal? That is where the artist and the artisan part company--theartisan is always content to copy; the artist, once master of his tools, creates. 

In Helm the artist was now in the ascendant; he dreamed of engravingliving things direct from nature--the depths of forests shot withsunshine, scrubby uplands against a sky crowded with clouds, and perhapscattle nosing for herbage among the rank fern and tangled briers of ascanty pasture--perhaps even the shy, wild country children, bareheadedand naked of knee and shoulder, half-tamed, staring from the road-sidebrambles. 

It is, of course, possible that Helm was a natural-born criminal, yethis motive for trying his skill at counterfeiting was revenge and notpersonal gain. 

He had served his apprenticeship in the Bureau of Engraving andPrinting. He had served the government for twelve years, through threeadministrations. Being a high salaried employé, the civil service gavehim no protection when the quadrennial double-shuffle changed thepolitics of the administration. He was thrown aside like a shabbygarment which has served its purpose, and although for years he hadknown what ultimate reward was reserved for those whom the republichires, he could never bring himself to believe that years of faithfullabor and a skill which increased with every new task set could meet thecommon fate. So when his resignation was requested, and when, refusingindignantly, he was turned out, neck and heels, after his twelve yearsof faultless service, it changed the man terribly. 

He went away with revenge in his mind and the skill and intelligence toaccomplish it. But now that he had accomplished it, and the plate wasfinished, and the government at his mercy, the incentive to consummatehis revenge lagged. After all, what could he revenge himself on? Thegovernment?--that huge, stupid, abstract bulk! Had it a shape, a formconcrete, nerves, that it could suffer in its turn? Even if it couldsuffer, after all, he was tired of suffering. There was no novelty init. 

Perhaps his recent life alone in the sweet, wholesome woods had sootheda bitter and rebellious heart. There is a balm for deepest wounds in thewind, and in the stillness of a wilderness there is salve for souls. 

As he sat there brooding, or dreaming of the work he might yet do, therestole into his senses that impalpable consciousness of another presence, near, and coming nearer. Alert, silent, he rose, and as he turned heheard the front gate click. In an instant he had extinguished lamp andcandle, and, stepping back into the hallway, he laid his ear to thedoor. 

In the silence he heard steps along the gravel, then on the porch. Therewas a pause; leaning closer to the door he could hear the rapid, irregular breathing of his visitor. Knocking began at last, a verygentle rapping; silence, another uncertain rap, then the sound ofretreating steps from the gravel, and the click of the gate-latch. Withone hand covering the weapon in his coat-pocket, he opened the doorwithout a sound and stepped out. 

A young girl stood just outside his gate. 

"Who are you and what is your business with this house?" he inquired, grimly. The criminal in him was now in the ascendant; he was alert, cool, suspicious, and insolent. He saw in anybody who approached hishouse the menace of discovery, perhaps an intentional and cunningattempt to entrap and destroy him. All that was evil in him came to thesurface; the fear that anybody might forcibly frustrate his revenge--ifhe chose to revenge himself--raised a demon in him that blanched hisnaturally pallid face and started his lip muscles into that curiousrecession which, in animals, is the first symptom of the snarl. 

"What do you want?" he repeated. "Why do you knock and then slink away?"

"I did not know you were at home, " said the girl, faintly. 

"Then why do you come knocking? Who are you, anyway?" he demanded, harshly, knowing perfectly well who she was. 

"I am the postmistress at Nauvoo, " she faltered--"that is, I was--"

"Really, " he said, angrily; "your intelligence might teach you to gowhere you are more welcome. "

His brutality seemed to paralyze the girl. She looked at him as thoughattempting to comprehend his meaning. "Are you not Mr. Helm?" she asked, in a sweet, bewildered voice. 

"Yes, I am, " he replied, shortly. 

"I thought you were a gentleman, " she continued, in the same stunnedvoice. 

"I'm not, " said Helm, bitterly. "I fancy you will agree with me, too. Good-night. "

He deliberately turned his back on her and sat down on the wooden stepsof the porch; but his finely modelled ears were alert and listening, andwhen to his amazement he heard her open his gate again and re-enter, heswung around with eyes contracting wickedly. 

She met his evil glance quite bravely, wincing when he invited her toleave the yard. But she came nearer, crossing the rank, soaking grass, and stood beside him where he was sitting. 

"May I tell you something?" she asked, timidly. 

"Will you be good enough to pass your way?" he answered, rising. 

"Not yet, " she replied, and seated herself on the steps. The next momentshe was crying, silently, but that only lasted until she could touch hereyes with her handkerchief. 

He stood above her on the steps. Perhaps it was astonishment that sealedhis lips, perhaps decency. He had noticed that she was slightly lame, although her slender figure appeared almost faultless. He waited for amoment. 

Far on the clearing's dusky edge a white-throated sparrow calledpersistently to a mate that did not answer. 

If Helm felt alarm or feared treachery his voice did not betray it. "What is the trouble?" he demanded, less roughly. 

She said, without looking at him: "I have deceived you. There was aletter for you to-day. It came apart and--I found--this--"

She held out a bit of paper. He took it mechanically. His face hadsuddenly turned gray. 

The paper was fibre paper. He stood there breathless, his face aghastly, bloodless mask; and when he found his voice it was only theghost of a voice. 

"What is all this about?" he asked. 

"About fibre paper, " she answered, looking up at him. 

"Fibre paper!" he repeated, confounded by her candor. 

"Yes--government fibre. Do you think I don't know what it is?"

For the first time there was bitterness in her voice. She turned partlyaround, supporting her body on one arm. "Fibre paper? Ah, yes--I knowwhat it is, " she said again. 

He looked her squarely in the eyes and he saw in her face that she knewwhat he was and what he had been doing in Nauvoo. The blood slowlystained his pallid cheeks. 

"Well, " he said, coolly, "what are you going to do about it?"

His eyes began to grow narrow and the lines about his mouth deepened. The criminal in him, brought to bay, watched every movement of the younggirl before him. Tranquil and optimistic, he quietly seated himself onthe wooden steps beside her. Little he cared for her and her discovery. It would take more than a pretty, lame girl to turn him from hisdestiny; and his destiny was what he chose to make it. He almost smiledat her. 

"So, " he said, in smooth, even tones, "you think the game is up?"

"Yes; but nothing need harm you, " she answered, eagerly. 

"Harm me!" he repeated, with an ugly sneer; then a sudden, wholesomecuriosity seized him, and he blurted out, "But what do you care?"

Looking up at him, she started to reply, and the words failed her. Shebent her head in silence. 

"Why?" he demanded again. 

"I have often seen you, " she faltered; "I sometimes thought you wereunhappy. "

"But why do you come to warn me? People hate me in Nauvoo. "

"I do not hate you, " she replied, faintly. 

"Why?"

"I don't know. "

A star suddenly gleamed low over the forest's level crest. Night hadfallen in Nauvoo. After a silence he said, in an altered voice, "Am I tounderstand that you came to warn a common criminal?"

She did not answer. 

"Do you know what I am doing?" he asked. 

"Yes. "

"What?"

"You are counterfeiting. "

"How do you know, " he said, with a touch of menace in his sullen voice. 

"Because--because--my father did it--"

"Did what?"

"Counterfeited--what you are doing now!" she gasped. "That is how I knowabout the fibre. I knew it the moment I saw it--government fibre--and Iknew what was on it; the flame justified me. And oh, I could not letthem take you as they took father--to prison for all those years!"

"Your father!" he blurted out. 

"Yes, " she cried, revolted; "and his handwriting is on that piece ofpaper in your hand!"

Through the stillness of the evening the rushing of a distant brookamong the hemlocks grew louder, increasing on the night wind like thesound of a distant train on a trestle. Then the wind died out; a nightbird whistled in the starlight; a white moth hummed up and down thevines over the porch. 

"I know who you are now, " the girl continued; "you knew my father inthe Bureau of Engraving and Printing. "

"Yes. "

"And your name is not Helm. "

"No. "

"Do you not know that the government watches discharged employés of theBureau of Engraving and Printing?"

"I know it. "

"So you changed your name?"

"Yes. "

She leaned nearer, looking earnestly into his shadowy eyes. 

"Do you know that an officer of the secret service is coming to Nauvoo?"

"I could take the plate and go. There is time, " he answered, sullenly. 

"Yes--there is time. " A dry sob choked her. He heard the catch in hervoice, but he did not move his eyes from the ground. His heart seemed tohave grown curiously heavy; a strange inertia weighted his limbs. Fear, anger, bitterness, nay, revenge itself, had died out, leaving not atranquil mind but a tired one. The pulse scarcely beat in his body. After a while the apathy of mind and body appeared to rest him. He wasso tired of hate. 

"Give me the keys, " she whispered. "Is it in there? Where is the plate?In that room? Give me the keys. "

As in a dream he handed her his keys. Through a lethargy which wasalmost a stupor he saw her enter his house; he heard her unlock the doorof the room where his plates lay. After a moment she found a match andlighted the candles. Helm sat heavily on the steps, his head on hisbreast, dimly aware that she was passing and repassing, carrying bottlesand armfuls of tools and paper and plates out into the darknesssomewhere. 

It may have been a few minutes; it may have been an hour before shereturned to him on the steps, breathing rapidly, her limp gown clingingto her limbs, her dark hair falling to her shoulders. 

"The plates and acids will never be found, " she said, breathlessly; "Iput everything into the swamp. It is quicksand. "

For a long time neither spoke. At length she slowly turned away towardsthe gate, and he rose and followed, scarcely aware of what he was doing. 

At the gate she stooped and pushed a dark object out of sight under thebushes by the fence. 

"Let me help you, " he said, bending beside her. 

"No, no; don't, " she stammered; "it is nothing. "

He found it and handed it to her. It was her crutch; and she turnedcrimson to the roots of her hair. 

"Lean on me, " he said, very gently. 

The girl bit her trembling lip till the blood came. "Thank you, " shesaid, crushing back her tears; "my crutch is enough--but you need nothave known it. Kindness is comparative; one can be too kind. "

He misunderstood her and drew back. "I forgot, " he said, quietly, "whatprivileges are denied to criminals. "

"Privilege!" she faltered. After a moment she laid one hand on his arm. 

"I shall be very glad of your help, " she said; "I am more lame than Iwish the world to know. It was only the vanity of a cripple that refusedyou. "

But he thought her very beautiful as she passed with him out into thestarlight. 

MARLITT'S SHOES

I

Through the open window the spring sunshine fell on Calvert's broadback. Tennant faced the window, smoking reflectively. 

"I should like to ask a favor, " he said; "may I?"

"Certainly you may, " replied Calvert; "everybody else asks favors threehundred and sixty-five times a year. "

Tennant, smoking peacefully, gazed at an open window across the narrowcourt-yard, where, in the sunshine, a young girl sat sewing. 

"The favor, " he said, "is this: there is a vacancy on the staff, and Iwish you'd give Marlitt another chance. "

"Marlitt!" exclaimed Calvert. "Why Marlitt?"

"Because, " said Tennant, "I understand that I am wearing Marlitt'sshoes--and the shoes pinch. "

"Marlitt's shoes would certainly pinch you if you were wearing them, "said Calvert, grimly. "But you are not. Suppose you were? Better weareven Marlitt's shoes than hop about the world barefoot. You are asingularly sensitive young man. I come up-town to offer youWarrington's place, and your reply is a homily on Marlitt's shoes!"

Calvert's black eyes began to snap and his fat, pink face turned pinker. 

"Mr. Tennant, " he said, "I am useful to those who are useful to me. I ama business man. I know of no man or syndicate of men wealthy enough toconduct a business for the sake of giving employment to theunsuccessful!"

Tennant smoked thoughtfully. 

"Some incompetent, " continued Calvert, "is trying to make youuncomfortable. You asked us for a chance; we gave you the chance. Youproved valuable to us, and we gave you Marlitt's job. You need notworry: Marlitt was useless, and had to go anyway. Warrington left usto-day, and you've got to do his work. "

Tennant regarded him in silence; Calvert laid one pudgy hand on thedoor-knob. "You know what we think of your work. There is not a man inNew York who has your chance. All I say is, we gave you the chance andyou took it. Keep it; that's what we ask!"

"That is what _I_ ask, " said Tennant, with a troubled laugh. "I amsentimentalist enough to feel something like gratitude towards those whogave me my first opportunity. "

"Obligation's mutual, " snapped Calvert. The hardness in his eyes, however, had died out. "You'd better finish that double page, " he added;"they want to start the color-work by Monday. You'll hear from us ifthere's any delay. Good-bye. "

[Illustration: "'I WISH YOU'D GIVE MARLITT ANOTHER CHANCE'"]

Tennant opened the door for him; Calvert, buttoning his gloves, steppedout into the hallway and rang for the elevator. Then he turned:

"Don't let envy make things unpleasant for you, Mr. Tennant. "

"Nobody has shown me any envy, " said Tennant. 

"I thought you said something about your friend Marlitt--"

"I never saw Marlitt; I only know his work. "

"Oh, " said Calvert, with a peculiar smile, "you only know his work!"

"That is all. Who is Marlitt?"

"The last of an old New York family; reduced circumstances, proud, incompetent, unsuccessful. Why does the artist who signs 'Marlitt'interest you?"

"This is why, " said Tennant, and drew a letter from his pocket. "Do youmind listening?"

"Go on, " said Calvert, with a wry face. And Tennant began:

 "'DEAR MR. TENNANT, --Just a few words to express my keenest interest and delight in the work you are doing--not only the color work, but the pen-and-ink. You know that the public has made you their idol, but I thought you might care to know what the unsuccessful in your own profession think. You have already taught us so much; you are, week by week, raising the standard so high; and you are doing so much for me, that I venture to thank you and wish you still greater happiness and success. MARLITT. '"

Calvert looked up. "Is that all?"

"That is all. There is neither date nor address on the note. I wrote toMarlitt care of your office. Your office forwarded it, I see, but thepost-office returned it to me to-day. .. . What has become of Marlitt?"

Calvert touched the elevator-bell again. "If I knew, " he said, "I'd finda place for--Marlitt. "

Tennant's face lighted. Calvert, scowling, avoided his eyes. 

"I want you to understand, " he said, peevishly, "that there is nosentiment in this matter. "

"I understand, " said Tennant. 

"You think you do, " sneered Calvert, stepping into the elevator. Thedoor slammed; the cage descended; the fat, pink countenance of Calvert, distorted into a furious sneer, slowly sank out of sight. 

II

Tennant entered his studio and closed the door. In the mellow light thesmile faded from his face. Perhaps he was thinking of the unsuccessful, from whose crowded ranks he had risen--comrades preordained tomediocrity, foredoomed to failure--industrious, hopeful, brave youngfellows, who must live their lives to learn the most terrible of alllessons--that bravery alone wins no battles. 

"What luck I have had!" he said, aloud, to himself, walking over to thetable and seating himself before the drawing. For an hour he studied it;touched it here and there, caressing outlines, swinging masses intovigorous composition with a touch of point or a sweeping erasure. Strength, knowledge, command were his; he knew it, and he knew thepleasure of it. 

Having finished the drawing, he unpinned the pencil studies, replacingeach by its detail in color--charming studies executed with soberprecision, yet sparkling with a gayety that no reticence and self-denialcould dim. He dusted the drawing, tacked on tracing-paper, and began totransfer, whistling softly as he bent above his work. 

Sunlight fell across the corner of the table, glittering among glasses, saucers of porcelain, crystal bowls in which brushes dipped in brilliantcolors had been rinsed. To escape the sun he rolled the table back alittle way, then continued, using the ivory-pointed tracing-stylus. Heworked neither rapidly nor slowly; there was a leisurely precision inhis progress; pencil, brush, tracer, eraser, did their errands surely, steadily. Yet already he had the reputation of being the most rapidworker in his craft. 

During intervals when he leaned back to stretch his muscles and light acigarette his eyes wandered towards a window just across the court, where sometimes a girl sat. She was there now, rocking in a dingyrocking-chair, stitching away by her open window. Once or twice sheturned her head and glanced across at him. After an interval he laid hiscigarette on the edge of a saucer and resumed his work. In the goldengloom of the studio the stillness was absolute, save for the delicatestir of a curtain rustling at his open window. A breeze moved the hairon his temples; his eyes wandered towards the window across the court. The window was so close that they could have conversed together had theyknown each other. 

In the court new grass was growing; grimy shrubbery had freshened intogreen; a tree was already in full leaf. Here and there cats sprawled onsun-warmed roofs, sparrows chirked under eaves from whence wisps oflitter trailed, betraying hidden nests. 

Below his window, hanging in heavy twists, a wistaria twined, its longbunches of lilac-tinted blossoms alive with bees. 

His eyes followed the flight of a shabby sparrow. "If I were a bird, " hesaid, aloud, "I'd not be idiot enough to live in a New York back yard. "And he resumed his work, whistling. 

But the languor of spring was in his veins, and he bent forward again, sniffing the mild air. The witchery of spring had also drawn hisneighbor to her window, where she leaned on the sill, cheeks in herhands, listlessly watching the flight of the sparrows. 

The little creatures were nest-building; from moment to moment a birdfluttered up towards the eaves, bearing with it a bit of straw, afeather sometimes, sometimes a twisted end of string. 

"It's spring-fever, " he yawned, passing one hand over his eyes. "I feellike rolling on the grass--there's a puppy in that yard doing it now--"

He washed a badger brush and dried it. Perfume from the wistaria filledhis throat and lungs; his very breath, exhaling, seemed sweetened withthe scent. 

"There's that girl across the way, " he said, aloud, as though making thediscovery for the first time. 

Sunshine now lay in dazzling white patches across his drawing. Heblinked, washed another brush, and leaned back in his chair again, looking across at his neighbor. Youth is in itself attractive; and shewas young--a white-skinned, dark-eyed girl, a trifle colorless, perhaps, like a healthy plant needing the sun. 

"They grow like that in this town, " he reflected, drumming idly on thetable with his pencil. "Who is she? I've seen her there for months, andI don't know. "

The girl raised her dark eyes and gave him a serene stare. 

"Oh yes, " he muttered, "I see your eyes, but they tell me nothing aboutyou. You're all alike when you look at us out of the windows calledeyes. What's behind those eyes? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. "

He dropped his hand on the table and began tracing arabesques with hispencil-point. Then his capricious fancy blossomed into a sketch of hisneighbor--a rapid idealization, which first amused, then enthralled him. 

And while his pencil flew he murmured lazily to himself: "You don't knowwhat I'm doing, do you? I wonder what you'd do if you did know?. .. Thankyou, ma belle, for sitting so still. Won't you smile a little? No?. .. Who are you? What are you?--with your dimpled white hands framing yourface. .. . I had no idea you were half so lovely! . .. Or is it my fancyand my pencil which endow you with qualities that you do not possess?. .. There! you moved. Don't let it occur again. ". .. 

He passed a soft eraser over the sketch, dimming its outline; picked outa brush and began in color, rambling on in easy, listlessself-communion: "I've asked you who you are and you haven't told me. Paschic, ça. There are thousands and thousands of dark-eyed little thingslike you in this city. Did you ever see the streets when the shopsclose? There are thousands and thousands like you in the throng;--somepoor, some poorer; some good, some better; some young, some younger; alltrotting across the world on eager feet. Where? Nobody knows. Why?Nobody knows. Heigh-ho! Your portrait is done, little neighbor. "

He hovered over the delicate sketch, silent a moment, under the spell ofhis own work. "If you were like this, a man might fall in love withyou, " he muttered, raising his eyes. 

The development of ideas is always remarkable, particularly on a sunnyday in spring-time. Sunshine, blue sky, and the perfume of the wistariawere too much for Tennant. 

"I'm going out!" he said, abruptly, and put on his hat. Then he drew onhis gloves, lighted a cigarette, and glanced across at his neighbor. 

"I wish you were going, too, " he said. 

His neighbor had risen and was now standing by her window, hands claspedbehind her, gazing dreamily out into the sunshine. 

"Upon my word, " said Tennant, "you are really as pretty as my sketch!Now isn't that curious? I had no idea--"

A rich tint crept into his neighbor's face, staining the white skin withcarmine. 

"The sun is doing you good, " he said, approvingly. "You ought to put onyour hat and go out. "

She turned, as though she had heard his words, and picked up a big, black straw hat, placing it daintily upon her head. 

"Well!--if--that--isn't--curious!" said Tennant, astonished, as sheswung nonchalantly towards an invisible mirror and passed a long, gilded pin through the crown of her hat. 

"It seems that I only have to suggest a thing--" He hesitated, watchingher. 

"Of course it was coincidence, " he said; "but--suppose it wasn't?Suppose it was telepathy--thought transmitted?"

His neighbor was buttoning her gloves. 

"I'm a beast to stand here staring, " he murmured, as she moved leisurelytowards her window, apparently unconscious of him. "It's a shame, " headded, "that we don't know each other! I'm going to the Park; I wish youwere--I want you to go--because it would do you good! You must go!"

Her left glove was now buttoned; the right gave her some difficulty, which she started to overcome with a hair-pin. 

"If mental persuasion can do it, you and I are going to meet under thewistaria arbor in the Park, " he said, with emphasis. 

To concentrate his thoughts he stood rigid, thinking as hard as a youngman can think with a distractingly pretty girl fastening her gloveopposite; and the effort produced a deep crease between his eyebrows. 

"You--are--going--to--the--wistaria--arbor--in--the Park!" he repeated, solemnly. 

She turned as though she had heard, and looked straight at him. Her facewas bright with color; never had he seen such fresh beauty in a humanface. 

Her eyes wandered from him upward to the serene blue sky; then shestepped back, glanced into the mirror, touched her hair with the tips ofher gloved fingers, and walked away, disappearing into the gloom of theroom. 

An astonishing sense of loneliness came over him--a perfectlyunreasonable feeling, because every day for months he had seen herdisappear from the window, always viewing the phenomenon withdisinterested equanimity. 

"Now I don't for a moment suppose she's going to the wistaria arbor, " hesaid, mournfully, walking towards his door. 

But all the way down in the elevator and out on the street he wascomforting himself with stories of strange coincidences; of how, sometimes, walking alone and thinking of a person he had not seen orthought of for years, raising his eyes he had met that person face toface. And a presentiment that he should meet his neighbor under thewistaria arbor grew stronger and stronger, until, as he turned into thebroad, southeastern entrance to the Park, his heart began beating anuneasy, expectant tattoo under his starched white waist-coat. 

"I've been smoking too many cigarettes, " he muttered. "Things like thatdon't happen. It would be too silly--"

And it was rather silly; but she was there. He saw her the moment heentered the wistaria arbor, seated in a rustic recess. It may be thatshe was reading the book she held so unsteadily in her small, glovedfingers, but the book was upside down. And when his footstep echoed onthe asphalt, she raised a pair of thoroughly frightened eyes. 

[Illustration: "HE SAW HER THE MOMENT HE ENTERED THE WISTARIA ARBOR"]

His expression verged on the idiotic; they were a scared pair, and itwas only when the bright flush of guilt flooded her face that herecovered his senses in a measure and took off his hat. 

"I--I hadn't the slightest notion that you would come, " he stammered. "This is the--the most amazing example of telepathy I ever heard of!"

"Telepathy?" she repeated, faintly. 

"Telepathy! Thought persuasion! It's incredible! It's--it's a--it was adreadful thing to do. I don't know what to say. "

"Is it necessary for you to say anything to--me?"

"Can you ever pardon me?"

"I don't think I understand, " she said, slowly. "Are you asking pardonfor your rudeness in speaking to me?"

"No, " he almost groaned; "I'll do that later. There is something muchworse--"

Her cool self-possession unnerved him. Composure is sometimes theculmination of fright; but he did not know that, because he did not knowthe subtler sex. His fluency left him; all he could repeat was, "I'msorry I'm speaking to you--but there's something much worse. "

"I cannot imagine anything worse, " she said. 

"Won't you grant me a moment to explain?" he urged. 

"How can I?" she replied, calmly. "How can a woman permit a man to speakwithout shadow of excuse? You know perfectly well what conventionrequires. "

Hot, uncomfortable, he looked at her so appealingly that her eyessoftened a little. 

"I don't suppose you mean to be impertinent to me, " she said, coldly. 

He said that he didn't with so much fervor that something perilouslyclose to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and theinformation appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to assume she knewit already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for ayear; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and thesnub completed his discomfiture. 

"I--I was so anxious to know you, " he said, miserably. "That was thebeginning--"

"It is a perfectly horrid thing to say, " she said, indignantly. "Do yousuppose, because you are a public character, you are privileged to speakto anybody?"

He attempted to say he didn't, but she went on: "Of course that is not apalliation of your offence. It is a dreadful condition of affairs if awoman cannot go out alone--"

"Please don't say that!" he cried. 

"I must. It is a terrible comment on modern social conditions, " sherepeated, shaking her pretty head. "A woman who permits it--especially awoman who is obliged to support herself--for if I were not poor I shouldbe driving here in my brougham, and you know it!--oh, it is a hideouslycommon thing for a girl to do!" Opening her book, she appeared to bedeeply interested in it. But the book was upside down. 

Glancing at him a moment later, she was apparently surprised to find himstill standing beside her. However, he had noted two things in thatmoment of respite: she held the book upside down, and on the title-pagewas written a signature that he knew--"Marlitt. "

"Under the circumstances, " she said, coldly, "do you think it decent tocontinue this conversation?"

"Yes, I do, " he said. "I'm a decent sort of fellow, or you would havedivined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanationthat I owe you. "

"You owe me every explanation, " she said, "but I am generous enough tospare you the humiliation. "

"I know what you mean, " he admitted. "I hypnotized you into coming here, and you are aware of it. "

Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straightand stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angrybeauty. And he quailed. 

"Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?" she asked, incredulously. 

"What was it, then?" he muttered. "You did everything I wished for--"

"What did you wish for?"

"I--I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you oughtto go out, you--you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knewyou--I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and--you came. "

"In other words, " she said, disdainfully, "you deliberately planned tocontrol my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horridmanner. "

"I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot, and--and you were tremendously charming--more so than my sketch--"

"_What_ sketch?"

"I--you see, I made a little sketch, " he admitted--"a little picture ofyou--"

Her silence scared him. 

"Do you mind?" he ventured. 

"Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!" she said. 

"Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway--"

"That, " she observed, "would have been the very height of impertinence. "

Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the mostexquisite profile he had ever dreamed of. 

She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despisedhimself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared tohim in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him. 

"As a matter of fact, " he said, "there's nothing criminal in me. I neverimagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I'llgo. There's no use in hoping for pardon. I'll go. "

Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, "I amoffended--deeply hurt--but--"

He waited anxiously. 

"But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought tobe. "

"That is very, very kind of you, " he said, warmly. 

"It is very depraved of me, " she retorted, turning a page. 

After a silence, he said, "Then I suppose I must go. "

It is possible she did not hear him; she seemed engrossed, bending alittle closer over the book on her knee, for the shadows of blossom andfoliage above had crept across the printed page. 

All the silence was in tremulous vibration with the hum of bees; theperfume of the flowers grew sweeter as the sun sank towards the west, flinging long, blue shadows over the grass and asphalt. 

A gray squirrel came hopping along, tail twitching, and deliberatelyclimbed up the seat where she was sitting, squatting beside her, pawsdrooping in dumb appeal. 

"You dear little thing!" said the girl, impulsively. "I wish I had abonbon for you! Have you anything in the world to give this half-starvedsquirrel, Mr. Tennant?"

"Nothing but a cigarette, " muttered Tennant. "I'll go out to the gate ifyou--" He hesitated. "They generally sell peanuts out there, " he added, vaguely. 

"Squirrels adore peanuts, " she murmured, caressing the squirrel, who hadbegun fearlessly snooping into her lap. 

Tennant, enchanted at the tacit commission, started off at a pace thatbrought him to the gate and back again before he could arrange his owndisordered thoughts. 

She was reading when he returned, and she cooled his enthusiasm with astare of surprise. 

"The squirrel? Oh, I'm sure I don't know where that squirrel has gone. Did you really go all the way to the gate for peanuts to stuff thatoverfed squirrel?"

He looked at the four paper bags, opened one of them, and stirred thenuts with his hand. 

"What shall I do with them?" he asked. 

Then, and neither ever knew exactly why, she began to laugh. The firstlaugh was brief; an oppressive silence followed--then she laughedagain; and as he grew redder and redder, she laughed the mostdeliciously fresh peal of laughter he had ever heard. 

"This is dreadful!" she said. "I should never have come alone to thePark! You should never have dared to speak to me. All we need to do nowis to eat those peanuts, and you have all the material for a picture ofcourtship below-stairs! Oh, dear, and the worst part of it all is that Ilaugh!"

"If you'd let me sit down, " he said, "I'd complete the picture and eatpeanuts. "

"You dare not!"

He seated himself, opened a paper bag, and deliberately cracked and atea nut. 

"Horrors! and disillusion! The idol of the public--munching peanuts!"

"You ought to try one, " he said. 

She stood it for a while; but the saving grace of humour warned her ofher peril, and she ate a peanut. 

"To save my face, " she explained. "But I didn't suppose you were capableof it. "

"As a matter of fact, " he said, tranquilly, "a man can do anything inthis world if he only does it thoroughly and appears to enjoy himself. I've seen the Prince Regent of Boznovia sitting at the window of theCrown Regiment barracks arrayed in his shirt-sleeves and absorbing beerand pretzels. "

"But _he_ was the Prince Regent!"

"And I'm Tennant. "

"According to that philosophy you are at liberty to eat fish with yourknife. "

"But I don't want to. "

"But suppose you did want to?"

"That is neither philosophy nor logic, " he insisted; "that isspeculation. May I offer you a stick of old-fashioned circus candyflavored with wintergreen?"

"You may, " she said, accepting it. "If there is any lower depth I mayattain, I'm sure you will suggest it. "

"I'll try, " he said. Their eyes met for an instant; then hers werelowered. 

Squirrels came in troops; she fed the little, fat scamps to repletion, and the green lawn was dotted with squirrels all busily burying peanutsfor future consumption. A brilliant peacock appeared, picking his waytowards them, followed by a covey of imbecile peafowl. She fed themuntil their crops protruded. 

The sun glittered on the upper windows of the clubs and hotels alongFifth Avenue; the west turned gold, then pink. Clouds of tiny moths camehovering among the wistaria blossoms; and high in the sky the metallicnote of a nighthawk rang, repeating in querulous cadence the cries ofwater-fowl on the lake, where mallard and widgeon were restlesslypreparing for an evening flight. 

"You know, " she said, gravely, "a woman who over-steps convention alwayssuffers; a man, never. I have done something I never expected todo--never supposed was in me to do. And now that I have gone so far, itis perhaps better for me to go farther. " She looked at him steadily. "Your studio is a perfect sounding-board. You have an astonishinglyfrank habit of talking to yourself; and every word is perfectly audibleto me when my window is raised. When you chose to apostrophize me as a'white-faced, dark-eyed little thing, ' and when you remarked toyourself that there were 'thousands like me in New York, ' I wasperfectly indignant. "

He sat staring at her, utterly incapable of uttering a sound. 

"It costs a great deal for me to say this, " she went on. "But I amobliged to because it is not fair to let you go on communing aloud withyourself--and I cannot close my window in warm weather. It costs morethan you know for me to say this; for it is an admission that I heardyou say that you were coming to the wistaria arbor--"

She bent her crimsoned face; the silence of evening fell over the arbor. 

"I don't know why I came, " she said--"whether with a vague idea ofgiving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warnyou that your soliloquies were audible to me--whether to tempt you tospeak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousandshop-girls you have observed after the shops close--"

"Don't, " he said, hoarsely. "I'm miserable enough. "

"I don't wish you to feel miserable, " she said. "I have a very exaltedidea of you. I--I understand artists. "

"They're fools, " he said. "Say anything you like before I go. Ihad--hoped for--perhaps for your friendship. But a woman can't respect afool. "

He rose in his humiliation. 

"I can ask no privileges, " he said, "but I must say one thing before Igo. You have a book there which bears the signature of an artist namedMarlitt. I am very anxious for his address; I think I have importantnews for him--good news. That is why I ask it. "

The girl looked at him quietly. 

"What news have you for him?"

"I suppose you have a right to ask, " he said, "or you would not ask. Ido not know Marlitt. I liked his work. Mr. Calvert suggested thatMarlitt should return to resume work--"

"No, " said the girl, "_you_ suggested it. "

He was staggered. "Did you even hear that!" he gasped. 

"You were standing by your window, " she said. "Mr. Tennant, I think thatwas the real reason why I came to the wistaria arbor--to thank you forwhat you have done. You see--you see, I am Marlitt. "

He sank down on the seat opposite. 

"Everything has gone wrong, " she said. "I came to thank you--andeverything turned out so differently--and I was dreadfully rude toyou--"

She covered her face with her hands. 

"Then _you_ wrote me that letter, " he said, slowly. In the silence ofthe gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arborwith silvery radiance. He said:

"If a man had written me that letter I should have desired hisfriendship and offered mine. "

She dropped her hands and looked at him. "Thank you for speaking toCalvert, " she said, rising hastily; "I have been desperately in need ofwork. My pride is quite dead, you see--one or the other of us had todie. "

She looked down with a gay little smile. "If it wouldn't spoil you Ishould tell you what I think of you. Meanwhile, as servitude becomesman, you may tie my shoe for me--Marlitt's shoe that pinched you. .. . Tieit tightly, so that I shall not lose it again. .. . Thank you. "

As he rose, their eyes met once more; and the perilous sweetness in hersfascinated him. 

She drew a deep, unsteady breath. "Will you take me home?" she asked. 

PASQUE FLORIDA

The steady flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the windfreshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes anddead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, thenfaded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous redsmear overhead. 

Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among the reeds and inspected thelandscape. Already the fish-crows and egrets were flying inland, thepelicans had left the sandbar, the eagles were gone from beach and dune. High in the thickening sky wild ducks passed over Flyover Point anddropped into the sheltered marshes among the cypress. 

As Haltren stood undecided, watching the ruddy play of lightning, whichcame no nearer than the horizon, a squall struck the lagoon. Then, amidthe immense solitude of marsh and water, a deep sound grew--the roar ofthe wind in the wilderness. The solemn pæon swelled and died away asthunder dies, leaving the air tremulous. 

"I'd better get out of this, " said Haltren to himself. He felt for thebreech of his gun, unloaded both barrels, and slowly pocketed thecartridges. 

Eastward, between the vast salt river and the ocean, the dunes weresmoking like wind-lashed breakers; a heron, laboring heavily, flappedinland, broad pinions buffeting the gale. 

"Something's due to happen, " said Haltren, reflectively, closing thebreech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now heshoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducksafter it, and embarked among the raft of wind-tossed wooden decoys. 

There were twoscore decoys bobbing and tugging at their anchor-cordsoutside the point. Before he had fished up a dozen on the blade of hisoar a heavier squall struck the lagoon, blowing the boat out into theriver. He had managed to paddle back and had secured another brace ofdecoys, when a violent gale caught him broadside, almost capsizing him. 

"If I don't get those decoys now I never shall!" he muttered, doggedlyjabbing about with extended oar. But he never got them; for at thatmoment a tropical hurricane, still in its infancy, began to develop, andwhen, blinded with spray, he managed to jam the oars into the oar-locks, his boat was half a mile out and still driving. 

For a week the wind had piled the lagoons and lakes south of theMatanzas full of water, and now the waves sprang up, bursting intomenacing shapes, knocking the boat about viciously. Haltren turned hisunquiet eyes towards a streak of green water ahead. 

"I don't suppose this catspaw is really trying to drive me out ofCoquina Inlet!" he said, peevishly; "I don't suppose I'm being blown outto sea. "

It was a stormy end for a day's pleasure--yet curiously appropriate, too, for it was the fourth anniversary of his wedding-day; and the stormthat followed had blown him out into the waste corners of the world. 

Perhaps something of this idea came into his head; he laughed adisagreeable laugh and fell to rowing. 

The red lightning still darted along the southern horizon, no nearer;the wilderness of water, of palm forests, of jungle, of dune, was bathedin a sickly light; overhead oceans of clouds tore through a sombre sky. 

After a while he understood that he was making no headway; then he sawthat the storm was shaping his course. He dug his oars into the thick, gray waves; the wind tore the cap from his head, caught the boat andwrestled with it. 

Somehow or other he must get the boat ashore before he came abreast ofthe inlet; otherwise--

He turned his head and stared at the whitecaps tumbling along the deadlyraceway; and he almost dropped his oars in astonishment to see agasoline-launch battling for safety just north of the storm-sweptchannel. What was a launch doing in this forsaken end of the earth? Andthe next instant developed the answer. Out at sea, beyond the outer bar, a yacht, wallowing like a white whale, was staggering towards the openocean. 

He saw all this in a flash--saw the gray-green maelstrom between thedunes, the launch struggling across the inlet, the yacht plungingseaward. Then in the endless palm forests the roar deepened. Flash!Bang! lightning and thunder were simultaneous. 

"That's better, " said Haltren, hanging to his oars; "there's a fightingchance now. "

The rain came, beating the waves down, seemingly, for a moment, beatingout the wind itself. In the partial silence the sharp explosions of thegasoline-engine echoed like volleys of pistol-shots; and Haltren halfrose in his pitching boat, and shouted: "Launch ahoy! Run under the leeshore. There's a hurricane coming! You haven't a second to lose!"

He heard somebody aboard the launch say, distinctly, "There's a Floridacracker alongside who says a hurricane is about due. " The shrill roar ofthe rain drowned the voice. Haltren bent to his oars again. Then a youngman in dripping white flannels looked out of the wheel-house and hailedhim. "We've grounded on the meadows twice. If you know the channel you'dbetter come aboard and take the wheel. "

Haltren, already north of the inlet and within the zone of safety, rested on his oars a second and looked back, listening. Very far away heheard the deep whisper of death. 

On board the launch the young man at the wheel heard it, too; and hehailed Haltren in a shaky voice: "I wouldn't ask you to come back, butthere are women aboard. Can't you help us?"

"All right, " said Haltren. 

A horrible white glare broke out through the haze; the solid verticaltorrent of rain swayed, then slanted eastward. 

A wave threw him alongside the launch; he scrambled over the low railand ran forward, deafened by the din. A woman in oilskins hung to thecompanion-rail; he saw her white face as he passed. Haggard, staggering, he entered the wheel-house, where the young man in dripping flannelsseized his arm, calling him by name. Haltren pushed him aside. 

"Give me that wheel, Darrow, " he said, hoarsely. "Ring full speed ahead!Now stand clear--"

Like an explosion the white tornado burst, burying deck and wheel-housein foam; a bellowing fury of tumbling waters enveloped the launch. Haltren hung to the wheel one second, two, five, ten; and at lastthrough the howling chaos his stunned ears caught the faint staccatospat! puff! spat! of the exhaust. Thirty seconds more--if the enginescould stand it--if they only could stand it!

They stood it for thirty-three seconds and went to smash. A terrificsquall, partly deflected from the forest, hurled the launch into theswamp, now all boiling in shallow foam; and there she stuck in the good, thick mud, heeled over and all awash like a stranded razor-back after afreshet. 

Twenty minutes later the sun came out; the waters of the lagoon turnedsky blue; a delicate breeze from the southeast stirred the palmettofronds. 

Presently a cardinal-bird began singing in the sunshine. 

 * * * * *

Haltren, standing in the wrecked wheel-house, raised his dazed eyes asDarrow entered and looked around. 

"So that was a white tornado! I've heard of them--but--good God!" Heturned a bloodless visage to Haltren, who, dripping, bareheaded andsilent, stood with eyes closed leaning heavily against the wheel. 

"Are you hurt?"

Haltren shook his head. Darrow regarded him stupidly. 

"How did you happen to be in this part of the world?"

Haltren opened his eyes. "Oh, I'm likely to be anywhere, " he said, vaguely, passing a shaking hand across his face. There was a moment'ssilence; then he said:

"Darrow, is my wife aboard this boat?"

"Yes, " said Darrow, under his breath. "Isn't that the limit?"

Through the silence the cardinal sang steadily. 

"Isn't that the limit?" repeated Darrow. "We came on the yacht--that wasBrent's yacht, the _Dione_, you saw at sea. You know the people aboard. Brent, Mrs. Castle, your wife, and I left the others and took the launchto explore the lagoons. .. . And here we are. Isn't it funny?" he added, with a nerveless laugh. 

Haltren stood there slowly passing his hand over his face. 

"It is funnier than you know, Darrow, " he said. "Kathleen and I--this isour wedding-day. "

"Well, that _is_ the limit, " muttered Darrow, as Haltren turned astunned face to the sunshine where the little cardinal sang with mightand main. 

"Come below, " he added. "You are going to speak to her, of course?"

"If she cared to have me--"

"Speak to her anyway. Haltren; I"--he hesitated--"I never knew why youand Kathleen separated. I only knew what everybody knows. You and sheare four years older now; and if there's a ghost of a chance-- Do youunderstand?"

Haltren nodded. 

"Then we'll go below, " began Darrow. But Major Brent appeared at thatmoment, apoplectic eyes popping from his purple face as he waddledforward to survey the dismantled launch. 

Without noticing either Haltren or Darrow, he tested the slippery angleof the deck, almost slid off into the lagoon, clutched the rail withboth pudgy hands, and glared at the water. 

"I suppose, " he said, peevishly, "that there are alligators in thatwater. I know there are!"

He turned his inflamed eyes on Haltren, but made no sign of recognition. 

"Major, " said Darrow, sharply, "you remember Dick Haltren--"

"Eh?" snapped the major. "Where the deuce did you come from, Haltren?"

"He was the man who hailed us. He took the wheel, " said Darrow, meaningly. 

"Nice mess you made of it between you, " retorted the major, scowling hisacknowledgments at Haltren. 

Darrow, disgusted, turned on his heel; Haltren laughed. The sound of hisown laugh amused him, and he laughed again. 

"I don't see the humor, " said the major. "The _Dione_ is blown half-wayto the Bermudas by this time. " He added, with a tragic gesture of hisfat arms; "Are you aware that Mrs. Jack Onderdonk is aboard?"

The possible fate of Manhattan's queen regent so horrified Major Brentthat his congested features assumed the expression of an alarmedtadpole. 

But Haltren, the unaccustomed taste of mirth in his throat once more, stood there, dripping, dishevelled, and laughing. For four years he hadmissed the life he had been bred to; he had missed even what he despisedin it, and his life at moments had become a hell of isolation. Timedulled the edges of his loneliness; solitude, if it hurts, sometimescures too. But he was not yet cured of longing for that self-forbiddencity in the North. He desired it--he desired the arid wilderness of itstreeless streets, its incessant sounds, its restless energy; he desiredits pleasures, its frivolous days and nights, its satiated security, itsennui. Its life had been his life, its people his people, and he longedfor it with a desire that racked him. 

"What the devil are you laughing at, Haltren?" asked the major, tartly. 

"Was I laughing?" said the young man. "Well--now I will say good-bye, Major Brent. Your yacht will steam in before night and send a boat foryou; and I shall have my lagoons to myself again. .. . I have been here along time. .. . I don't know why I laughed just now. There was, indeed, noreason. " He turned and looked at the cabin skylights. "It's hard torealize that you and Darrow and--others--are here, and that there's awhole yacht-load of fellow-creatures--and Mrs. Van Onderdonk--wobblingabout the Atlantic near by. Fashionable people have never before comehere--even intelligent people rarely penetrate this wilderness. .. . I--Ihave a plantation a few miles below--oranges and things, you know. " Hehesitated, almost wistfully. "I don't suppose you and your guests wouldcare to stop there for a few hours, if your yacht is late. "

"No, " said the major, "we don't care to. "

"Perhaps Haltren will stay aboard the wreck with us until the _Dione_comes in, " suggested Darrow. 

"I dare say you have a camp hereabouts, " said the major, staring atHaltren; "no doubt you'd be more comfortable there. "

"Thanks, " said Haltren, pleasantly; "I have my camp a mile below. " Heoffered his hand to Darrow, who, too angry to speak, nodded violentlytowards the cabin. 

"How can I?" asked Haltren. "Good-bye. And I'll say good-bye to you, major--"

"Good-bye, " muttered the major, attempting to clasp his fat little handsbehind his back. 

Haltren, who had no idea of offering his hand, stood still a moment, glancing at the cabin skylights; then, with a final nod to Darrow, hedeliberately slid over-board and waded away, knee-deep, towards thepalm-fringed shore. 

Darrow could not contain himself. "Major Brent, " he said, "I suppose youdon't realize that Haltren saved the lives of every soul aboard thislaunch. "

The major's inflamed eyes popped out. 

"Eh? What's that?"

"More than that, " said Darrow, "he came back from safety to risk hislife. As it was he lost his boat and his gun--"

"Damnation!" broke out the major; "you don't expect me to ask him tostay and meet the wife he deserted four years ago!"

And he waddled off to the engine-room, where the engineer and hisassistant were tinkering at the wrecked engine. 

Darrow went down into the sloppy cabin, where, on a couch, Mrs. Castlelay, ill from the shock of the recent catastrophe; and beside her stoodan attractive girl stirring sweet spirits of ammonia in a tumbler. 

Her eyes were fixed on the open port-hole. Through that port-hole thelagoon was visible; so was Haltren, wading shoreward, a solitary figureagainst the fringed rampart of the wilderness. 

"Is Mrs. Castle better?" asked Darrow. 

"I think so; I think she is asleep, " said the girl, calmly. 

There was a pause; then Darrow took the tumbler and stirred thecontents. 

"Do you know who it was that got us out of that pickle?"

"Yes, " she said; "my husband. "

"I suppose you could hear what we said on deck. "

There was no answer. 

"Could you, Kathleen?"

"Yes. "

Darrow stared into the tumbler, tasted the medicine, and frowned. 

"Isn't there--isn't there a chance--a ghost of a chance?" he asked. 

"I think not, " she answered--"I am sure not. I shall never see himagain. "

"I meant for myself, " said Darrow, deliberately, looking her full in theface. 

She crimsoned to her temples, then her eyes flashed violet fire. 

"Not the slightest, " she said. 

"Thanks, " said Darrow, flippantly; "I only wanted to know. "

"You know now, don't you?" she asked, a trifle excited, yet realizinginstinctively that somehow she had been tricked. And yet, until thatmoment, she had believed Darrow to be her slave. He had been and wasstill; but she was not longer certain, and her uncertainty confused her. 

"Do you mean to say that you have any human feeling left for thatvagabond?" demanded Darrow. So earnest was he that his tanned face grewtense and white. 

"I'll tell you, " she said, breathlessly, "that from this moment I haveno human feeling left for you! And I never had! I know it now; never!never! I had rather be the divorced wife of Jack Haltren than the wifeof any man alive!"

The angry beauty of her young face was his reward; he turned away andclimbed the companion. And in the shattered wheel-house he faced his owntrouble, muttering: "I've done my best; I've tried to show the pluck heshowed. He's got his chance now!" And he leaned heavily on the wheel, covering his eyes with his hands; for he was fiercely in love, and hehad destroyed for a friend's sake all that he had ever hoped for. 

But there was more to be done; he aroused himself presently and wanderedaround to the engine-room, where the major was prowling about, fussingand fuming and bullying his engineer. 

"Major, " said Darrow, guilelessly, "do you suppose Haltren's appearancehas upset his wife?"

"Eh?" said the major. "No, I don't! I refuse to believe that a woman ofMrs. Haltren's sense and personal dignity could be upset by such a man!By gad! sir, if I thought it--for one instant, sir--for one second--I'dreason with her. I'd presume so far as to express my personal opinion ofthis fellow Haltren!"

"Perhaps I'd better speak to her, " began Darrow. 

"No, sir! Why the devil should you assume that liberty?" demanded MajorBrent. "Allow me, sir; allow me! Mrs. Haltren is my guest!"

The major's long-latent jealousy of Darrow was now fully ablaze; purple, pop-eyed, and puffing, he toddled down the companion on his errand ofconsolation. Darrow watched him go. "That settles him!" he said. Then hecalled the engineer over and bade him rig up and launch the portablecanoe. 

"Put one paddle in it, Johnson, and say to Mrs. Haltren that she hadbetter paddle north, because a mile below there is a camp belonging to aman whom Major Brent and I do not wish to have her meet. "

The grimy engineer hauled out the packet which, when put together, waswarranted to become a full-fledged canoe. 

"Lord! how she'll hate us all, even poor Johnson, " murmured Darrow. "Idon't know much about Kathleen Haltren, but if she doesn't paddle southI'll eat cotton-waste with oil-dressing for dinner!"

At that moment the major reappeared, toddling excitedly towards thestern. 

"What on earth is the trouble?" asked Darrow. "Is there a pizen sarpintaboard?"

"Trouble!" stammered the major. "Who said there was any trouble? Don'tbe an ass, sir! Don't even look like an ass, sir! Damnation!"

And he trotted furiously into the engine-room. 

Darrow climbed to the wheel-house once more, fished out a pair ofbinoculars, and fixed them on the inlet and the strip of Atlanticbeyond. 

"If the _Dione_ isn't in by three o'clock, Haltren will have hischance, " he murmured. 

He was still inspecting the ocean and his watch alternately when Mrs. Haltren came on deck. 

"Did you send me the canoe?" she asked, with cool unconcern. 

"It's for anybody, " he said, morosely. "Somebody ought to take asnap-shot of the scene of our disaster. If you don't want the canoe, I'll take it. "

She had her camera in her hand; it was possible he had noticed it, although he appeared to be very busy with his binoculars. 

He was also rude enough to turn his back. She hesitated, looked up thelagoon and down the lagoon. She could only see half a mile south, because Flyover Point blocked the view. 

"If Mrs. Castle is nervous you will be near the cabin?" she asked, coldly. 

"I'll be here, " he said. 

"And you may say to Major Brent, " she added, "that he need not send mefurther orders by his engineer, and that I shall paddle wherever capriceinvites me. "

A few moments later a portable canoe glided out from under the stern ofthe launch. In it, lazily wielding the polished paddle, sat young Mrs. Haltren, bareheaded, barearmed, singing as sweetly as the littlecardinal, who paused in sheer surprise at the loveliness of song andsinger. Like a homing pigeon the canoe circled to take its bearingsonce, then glided away due _south_. 

Blue was the sky and water; her eyes were bluer; white as the sands herbare arms glimmered. Was it a sunbeam caught entangled in her burnishedhair, or a stray strand, that burned far on the water. 

Darrow dropped his eyes; and when again he looked, the canoe hadvanished behind the rushes of Flyover Point, and there was nothingmoving on the water far as the eye could see. 

 * * * * *

About three o'clock that afternoon, the pigeon-toed Seminole Indian whofollowed Haltren, as a silent, dangerous dog follows its master, laiddown the heavy pink cedar log which he had brought to the fire, andstood perfectly silent, nose up, slitted eyes almost closed. 

Haltren's glance was a question. "Paddl'um boat, " said the Indian, sullenly. 

After a pause Haltren said, "I don't hear it, Tiger. "

"Hunh!" grunted the Seminole. "Paddl'um damn slow. Bime-by you hear. "

And bime-by Haltren heard. 

"Somebody is landing, " he said. 

The Indian folded his arms and stood bolt upright for a moment; then, "Hunh!" he muttered, disgusted. "Heap squaw. Tiger will go. "

Haltren did not hear him; up the palmetto-choked trail from the landingstrolled a girl, paddle poised over one shoulder, bright hair blowing. He rose to his feet; she saw him standing in the haze of the fire andmade him a pretty gesture of recognition. 

"I thought I'd call to pay my respects, " she said. "How do you do? May Isit on this soap-box?"

Smiling, she laid the paddle on the ground and held out one hand as hestepped forward. 

They shook hands very civilly. 

"That was a brave thing you did, " she said. "Mes compliments, monsieur. "

And that was all said about the wreck. 

"It's not unlike an Adirondack camp, " she suggested, looking around atthe open-faced, palm-thatched shanty with its usual hangings of blanketsand wet clothing, and its smoky, tin-pan bric-à-brac. 

Her blue eyes swept all in rapid review--the guns leaning against thetree; the bunch of dead bluebill ducks hanging beyond; the improvisedtable and bench outside; the enormous mottled rattlesnake skin tackedlengthways on a live-oak. 

"Are there many of those about?" she inquired. 

"Very few"--he waited to control the voice which did not sound much likehis own--"very few rattlers yet. They come out later. "

"That's amiable of them, " she said, with a slight shrug of hershoulders. 

There was a pause. 

"I hope you are well, " he ventured. 

"Perfectly--and thank you. I hope you are well, Jack. "

"Thank you, Kathleen. "

She picked up a chip of rose-colored cedar and sniffed it daintily. 

"Like a lead-pencil, isn't it? Put that big log on the fire. The odor ofburning cedar must be delicious. "

He lifted the great log and laid it across the coals. 

"Suppose we lunch?" she proposed, looking straight at the simmeringcoffee-pot. 

"Would you really care to?" Then he raised his voice: "Tiger! Tiger!Where the dickens are you?" But Tiger, half a mile away, squattedsulkily on the lagoon's edge, fishing, and muttering to himself thatthere were too many white people in the forest for him. 

"He won't come, " said Haltren. "You know the Seminoles hate the whites, and consider themselves still unconquered. There is scarcely an instanceon record of a Seminole attaching himself to one of us. "

"But your tame Tiger appears to follow you. "

"He's an exception. "

"Perhaps you are an exception, too. "

He looked up with a haggard smile, then bent over the fire and poked theashes with a pointed palmetto stem. There were half a dozensweet-potatoes there, and a baked duck and an ash-cake. 

"Goodness!" she said; "if you knew how hungry I am you wouldn't be sodeliberate. Where are the cups and spoons? Which is Tiger's? Well, youmay use his. "

The log table was set and the duck ready before Haltren could hunt upthe jug of mineral water which Tiger had buried somewhere to keep cool. 

When he came back with it from the shore he found her sitting at tablewith an exaggerated air of patience. 

They both laughed a little; he took his seat opposite; she poured thecoffee, and he dismembered the duck. 

"You ought to be ashamed of that duck, " she said. "The law is on now. "

"I know it, " he replied, "but necessity knows no law. I'm up herelooking for wild orange stock, and I live on what I can get. Even thesacred, unbranded razor-back is fish for our net--with a fair chance ofa shooting-scrape between us and a prowling cracker. If you will stay todinner you may have roast wild boar. "

"That alone is almost worth staying for, isn't it?" she asked, innocently. 

There was a trifle more color in his sunburned face. 

She ate very little, though protesting that her hunger shamed her; shesipped her coffee, blue eyes sometimes fixed on the tall palms and oaksoverhead, sometimes on him. 

"What was that great, winged shadow that passed across the table?" sheexclaimed. 

"A vulture; they are never far away. "

"Ugh!" she shuddered; "always waiting for something to die! How can aman live here, knowing that?"

"I don't propose to die out-doors, " said Haltren, laughing. 

Again the huge shadow swept between them; she shrank back with a littlegesture of repugnance. Perhaps she was thinking of her nearness to deathin the inlet. 

"Are there alligators here, too?" she asked. 

"Yes; they run away from you. "

"And moccasin snakes?"

"Some. They don't trouble a man who keeps his eyes open. "

"A nice country you live in!" she said, disdainfully. 

"It is one kind of country. There is good shooting. "

"Anything else?"

"Sunshine all the year round. I have a house covered with scented thingsand buried in orange-trees. It is very beautiful. A little lonely attimes--one can't have Fifth Avenue and pick one's own grape-fruit fromthe veranda, too. "

A silence fell between them; through the late afternoon stillness theyheard the splash! splash! of leaping mullet in the lagoon. Suddenly acrimson-throated humming-bird whirred past, hung vibrating before aflowering creeper, then darted away. 

"Spring is drifting northward, " he said. "To-morrow will be EasterDay--Pasque Florida. "

She rose, saying, carelessly, "I was not thinking of to-morrow; I wasthinking of to-day, " and, walking across the cleared circle, she pickedup her paddle. He followed her, and she looked around gayly, swingingthe paddle to her shoulder. 

"You said you were thinking of to-day, " he stammered. "It--it is ouranniversary. "

She raised her eyebrows. "I am astonished that you remembered. .. . Ithink that I ought to go. The _Dione_ will be in before long--"

"We can hear her whistle when she steams in, " he said. 

"Are you actually inviting me to stay?" she laughed, seating herself onthe soap-box once more. 

They became very grave as he sat down on the ground at her feet, and, asilence threatening, she hastily filled it with a description of theyacht and Major Brent's guests. He listened, watching her intently. Andafter a while, having no more to say, she pretended to hear soundsresembling a distant yacht's whistle. 

"It's the red-winged blackbirds in the reeds, " he said. "Now will youlet me say something--about the past?"

"It has buried itself, " she said, under her breath. 

"To-morrow is Easter, " he went on, slowly. "Can there be no resurrectionfor dead days as there is for Easter flowers? Winter is over; PasqueFlorida will dawn on a world of blossoms. May I speak, Kathleen?"

"It is I who should speak, " she said. "I meant to. It is this: forgiveme for all. I am sorry. "

"I have nothing to forgive, " he said. "I was a--a failure. I--I do notunderstand women. "

"Nor I men. They are not what I understand. I don't mean the mob I'vebeen bred to dance with--I understand them. But a real man--" shelaughed, drearily--"I expected a god for a husband. "

"I am sorry, " he said; "I am horribly sorry. I have learned many thingsin four years. Kathleen, I--I don't know what to do. "

"There is nothing to do, is there?"

"Your freedom--"

"I am free. "

"I am afraid you will need more freedom than you have, some day. "

She looked him full in the eyes. "Do _you_ desire it?"

A faint sound fell upon the stillness of the forest; they listened; itcame again from the distant sea. 

"I think it is the yacht, " she said. 

They rose together; he took her paddle, and they walked down the junglepath to the landing. Her canoe and his spare boat lay there, floatingclose together. 

"It will be an hour before a boat from the yacht reaches the wreckedlaunch, " he said. "Will you wait in my boat?"

She bent her head and laid her hand in his, stepping lightly into thebow. 

"Cast off and row me a little way, " she said, leaning back in the stern. "Isn't this lagoon wonderful? See the color in water and sky. How greenthe forest is!--green as a young woodland in April. And the reeds aregreen and gold, and the west is all gold. Look at that great whitebird--with wings like an angel's! What is that heavenly odor from theforest? Oh, " she sighed, elbows on knees, "this is too delicious to bereal!"

A moment later she began, irrelevantly: "Ethics! Ethics! who can teachthem? One must know, and heed no teaching. All preconceived ideas may bewrong; I am quite sure I was wrong--sometimes. "

And again irrelevantly, "I was horribly intolerant once. "

"Once you asked me a question, " he said. "We separated because I refusedto answer you. "

She closed her eyes and the color flooded her face. 

"I shall never ask it again, " she said. 

But he went on: "I refused to reply. I was an ass; I had theories, too. They're gone, quite gone. I will answer you now, if you wish. "

Her face burned. "No! No, don't--don't answer me; don't, I beg of you!I--I know now that even the gods--" She covered her face with her hands. The boat drifted rapidly on; it was flood-tide. 

"Yes, even the gods, " he said. "There is the answer. Now you know. "

Overhead the sky grew pink; wedge after wedge of water-fowl sweptthrough the calm evening air, and their aërial whimpering rush soundedfaintly over the water. 

"Kathleen!"

She made no movement. 

Far away a dull shock set the air vibrating. The _Dione_ was salutingher castaways. The swift Southern night, robed in rose and violet, already veiled the forest; and the darkling water deepened into purple. 

"Jack!"

He rose and crept forward to the stern where she was sitting. Her handshung idly; her head was bent. 

Into the purple dusk they drifted, he at her feet, close against herknees. Once she laid her hands on his shoulders, peering at him with weteyes. 

And, with his lips pressed to her imprisoned hands, she slipped downinto the boat beside him, crouching there, her face against his. 

So, under the Southern stars, they drifted home together. The _Dione_fired guns and sent up rockets, which they neither heard nor saw; MajorBrent toddled about the deck and his guests talked scandal; but what didthey care!

Darrow, standing alone on the wrecked launch, stared at the stars andwaited for the search-boat to return. 

It was dawn when the truth broke upon Major Brent. It broke so suddenlythat he fairly yelped as the _Dione_ poked her white beak seaward. 

It was dawn, too, when a pigeon-toed Seminole Indian stood upon theveranda of a house which was covered with blossoms of Pasque Florida. 

Silently he stood, inspecting the closed door; then warily stooped andpicked up something lying on the veranda at his feet. It was a goldcomb. 

"Heap squaw, " he said, deliberately. "Tiger will go. "

But he never did. 

 * * * * *

THE END

 +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistencies in dialect have been retained as they appear | | in the original book. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+