But the recollection of those days, so vivid and so sweet, is one of her choicest treasures. Of course things were not as she saw them. Jake Dolan was only in his forties then, and considered himself a young man. But the child remembers him as a tall, brown-eyed man whom she saw on state occasions in his faded blue army clothes, and to her he has always been the picture of a veteran. Some one must have told her—though she cannot remember who it was—that as Jake Dolan gently descended the social and political scale, he sloughed off his worldly goods, and as he moved about in the court-house from the sheriff's office to the deputy's office, and from the deputy's to the bailiff's, and from the bailiff's to the constable's, and from the constable's to the janitor's room in the basement, he carried with him the little bundle that contained all his worldly goods, the thin blue uniform, spotless and trim, and his lieutenant's commission, and mustering-out papers from the army. It is odd, is it not, that this prosaic old chap, who smoked a clay pipe, and whose only accomplishment was the ability to sing "The Hat me Father Wore," under three drinks, and the "Sword of Bunker Hill," under ten, should have epitomized all that was heroic in this child's memory. As for General Philemon Ward,—a dear old crank who, when Jeanette was born, was voting with the Republican party for the first time since the war, and who ran twice for President on some strange issue before she was in long dresses,—General Ward, whose children's ages could be guessed by the disturbers of the public peace, whose names they bore,—Eli Thayer, Mary Livermore, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, Neal Dow, Belva Lockwood, and Helen Gougar,—General Ward, who scorned her father's offer of ten thousand dollars a year as state counsel for the National Provisions Company, and went out preaching fiat money and a subtreasury for the farmers' crops, trusting to God and the flower garden about his little white house, to keep the family alive—it is odd that Jeanette's childish impression was that General Ward was a man of consequence in the world. Perhaps his white necktie, his long black coat, and his keen lean face, or his prematurely gray hair, gave her some sort of a notion of his dignity, but whatever gave her that notion she kept it, and though in her later life there came a passing time when she hated him, she did not despise him. And what with the song that she heard the bands playing all over the country, the song that the bands sometimes played for Americans in Europe, very badly, as though it was being translated from English into broken French or Italian, what with Watts McHurdie's fame and with his verses that appeared in the Banner on formal occasions, the girl built a fancy of him as one of the world's great poets—some one like Shakespeare or Milton; and she was well into her teens before she realized the truth, that he was an excellent harness maker who often brought out of his quaint little dream world odd-shaped fancies in rhyme,—some grotesque, some ridiculous, and some that seemed pretty for a moment,—and who under the stress of a universal emotion had rhymed one phase of our common nature and set it to a simple tune that moved men deeply without regard to race or station. So she lived in her child world—a world quite different from the real world—a world gilded by the sunrise of consciousness; and because the angels loved her and kept her heart clean, the gilding never quite wore off her heroes. And nothing that Heaven gives us in this world is so blessed as to have the gilding stick to the images of our youth. In Jeanette's case even Lige Bemis—Judge Bemis, she had been taught to call him—never showed the tar under the gilding to her eyes. Her first memory of him was in her father's office in the big City. He was a tall man, with gray hair that became him well, with sharp black eyes, and enough flesh on his bones to carry the frock-coats he always wore and give him a corporosity just escaping the portly. She remembers seeing the name "E. W. Bemis" in gold letters on the door of his room, and not being able to figure out how a man whose name began with "E" or "W" could be called Lige. He was General Counsel of the Corn Belt Railroad in those days, when her father was president of the road, and she knew that he was a man always to be considered. And when, as a woman grown, she learned the truth about Lige Bemis, it was hard to believe, for all she could find against him was his everlasting smile.

It is a curious and withal a beautiful thing to see a child come into the worn and weary world that we grownups have made, and make it over into another world altogether. Perhaps the child's eye and the child's heart, fresh from God, see and feel more clearly and more justly than we do. For this much is sure—Jeanette was right in keeping to the end the image of Colonel Martin Culpepper as a knight-errant, who needed only a bespangled steed, a little less avoirdupois, and a foolish cause to set him battling in the tourney. As it was, in this humdrum world, the colonel could do nothing more heroic than come rattling down Main Street into the child's heart, sitting with some dignity in his weather-beaten buggy, while instead of shining armour and a glistening helmet he wore nankeen trousers, a linen coat, and a dignified panama hat. Moreover, it is stencilled into her memory indelibly that the colonel was the first man in this wide world to raise his hat to her.

Now it should not be strange that this world was a sad jumble of fiction and of facts to a child's eyes; for to many an older pair of eyes it has all seemed a puzzle. Even the shrewd, kind brown eyes of Jacob Dolan often failed to see things as they were, and what his eyes did see sometimes bewildered him. By day Dolan saw Robert Hendricks, president of the Exchange National Bank, president and manager of the Sycamore Ridge Light, Heat, and Power Company, proprietor of the Hendricks Mercantile Company, treasurer and first vice-president of the new Western Wholesale Grocery, and chairman of his party's congressional central committee, and Dolan's eyes saw a hard, busy man—a young man, it is true; a tall, straight, rather lean, rope-haired young man in his thirties, with frank blue eyes, that turned rather suddenly upon one as if to frighten out a secret. The man seemed real enough to Dolan, from the wide crown of his slightly bald, V-shaped head, to his feet with the hard click in the heels; and yet that man paid no particular attention to Dolan. It was "Hello, Jake," with a nod, as they passed, maybe only an abstracted stare and a grunt. But at night, as they walked together over the town under the stars or moon, a lonely soul rose out of the tall body and spread over the face.

Dolan kept to his pipe and Hendricks to his cigar. But these were the only marks of caste between them. One night Hendricks led the way across the bridge down the river road and into the fields. They walked far up the stream and their conversation had consisted largely of "Watch out," "All right," "I see," "This is the best way." They loitered down a dark lane shaded by hedgerows until they came to a little wooden bridge and sat down. Dolan looked at the stars, while a pipe and a cigar had burned out before Hendricks spoke, "Well, chatterbox?"

"I was bothered with a question of mistaken identity," replied Dolan. To the silence he answered: "Me myself. I'm the man. Do you happen to know who I am?" Hendricks broke a splinter from the wood under him, and Dolan continued: "Of course you don't, and neither do I. For example, I go down into Union township before election and visit with the boys. I bring a box of cigars and maybe a nip under the buggy seat, and maybe a few stray five-dollar bills for the lads that drive the wagons that haul the voters to the polls. I go home, and I says to myself: 'I have that bailiwick to a man. No votes there against Jake.' But the morning after election I see Jake didn't get but two votes in the township. Very well. Now who did they vote against? Surely not against the genial obliging rollicking Irish lad whose face I shave every other morning. What could they possibly have against him? No—they voted against that man Dolan, who got drunk, at the Fair and throwed the gate receipts into the well, and tried to shoo the horses off the track into the crowd at the home-stretch of the trotting race. He's the man they plugged. And there's another one—him that confesses to Father Van Sandt." Dolan shook his head sadly and sighed. "He's a black-hearted wretch. If you want to see how a soul will look in its underwear, get an Irishman to confess to a Dutchman." The chirp of crickets arose in the silence, and after a time Dolan concluded, "And now there abideth these three, me that I shave, me that they vote against, and me that the Father knows; and the greatest of these is charity—I dunno."

The soul beside him on the bridge came back from a lilac bower of other years, with a girl's lips glowing upon his and the beat of a girl's heart throbbing against his own. The soul was seared with images that must never find spoken words, and it moved the lips to say after exhaling a deep breath from its body, "Well, let's go home." There, too, was a question of identity. Who was Robert Hendricks? Was he the man chosen to lead his party organization because he was clean above reproach and a man of ideals; was he the man who was trusted with the money of the people of his town and county implicitly; or was he the man who knew that on page 234 of the cash ledger for 1879 in the county treasurer's office in the Garrison County court-house there was a forgery in his own handwriting to cover nine thousand dollars of his father's debt? Or was he the man who for seven years had crept into a neighbour's garden on a certain night in April to smell the lilac blossoms and always had found them gone, and had stood there rigid, with upturned face and clenched fists, cursing a fellow-man? Or was he the man who in the county convention of his party had risen pale with anger, and had walked across the floor and roared his denunciation of Elijah W. Bemis as a boodler and a scoundrel squarely to the man's gray, smirking face and chattering teeth, and then had reached down, and grabbed the trapped bribe-giver by the scruff of the neck and literally thrown him out of the convention, while the crowd went mad with applause? As he went home that night following the convention, walking by the side of Dolan in silence, he wondered which of all his aliases he really was. At the gate of the Hendricks home the two men stopped. Hendricks smiled quizzically as he asked: "Well, I give it up, Jake. By the way, did you ever meet me?"

The brown eyes of the Irishman beamed an instant through the night, before he hurried lightly down the street.

And so with all of this hide-and-seek of souls, now peering from behind eyes and now far away patting one—two—three upon some distant base, with all these queer goings-on inside of people here in this strange world, it is no wonder that when the angels brought Jeanette to the Barclays, they left her much to learn and many things to study about. So she had to ask questions. But questions often reveal more than answers. At least once they revealed much, when she sat on the veranda of the Barclay home a fine spring evening with all the company there. Aunt Molly was there; and Uncle Bob Hendricks was there, the special guest of Grandma Barclay. Uncle Adrian was away on a trip somewhere; but Uncle Colonel and Grandma Culpepper and all the others were there listening to father's new German music-box, and no one should blame a little girl, sitting shyly on the stone steps, trying to make something out of the absurd world around her, if she piped out when the talk stopped:—

"Mother, why does Aunt Molly cut off her lilac buds before they bloom?"

And when her mother assured her that Aunt Molly did nothing of the kind, and when Uncle Bob Hendricks looked up and saw Aunt Molly go pale under her powder, and when Aunt Molly said, "Why, Jane—the child must have dreamed that," no one in this wide world must blame a little girl for opening her eyes as wide as she could, and lifting her little voice as strongly as she could, and saying: "Why, Aunt Molly, you know I saw you last night—when I stayed with you. You know I did, 'cause I looked out of the window and spokened to you. You know I did—don't you remember?" And no one must blame the mother for shaking her finger at Jeanette, and no one must blame Jeanette for sitting there shaking a protesting head, and screwing up her little face, trying to make the puzzle out.

And when, later in the evening, Daddy Barclay went over to the mill with his work, and Uncle Bob left in the twilight, and Aunt Molly and mother were alone in mother's room, how should a little girl know what the crying was all about, and how should a little girl understand when a small woman, looking in a mirror, and dabbing her face with a powder rag, said to mother, who knows everything in the world, and all about the angels that brought you here: "Oh, Jane, Jane, you don't know—you don't understand. There are things that I couldn't make you understand—and I mustn't even think of them."

Surely it is a curious world for little girls—a passing curious world, when there are things in it that even mothers cannot understand.

So Jeanette turned her face to the wall and went to sleep, leaving Aunt Molly powdering her nose and asking mother, "Does it look all right now—" and adding, "Oh, I'm such a fool." In so illogical a world, the reader must not be allowed to think that Molly Brownwell lamented the folly of mourning for a handsome young gentleman in blue serge with white spats on his shoes and a Byronic collar and a fluffy necktie of the period. Far be it from her to lament that sentiment as folly; however, when she looked at her eyes in the mirror and saw her nose, she felt that tears were expensive and reproached herself for them. But so long as these souls of ours, whatever they may be, are caged in our bodies, our poor bodies will have to bear witness to their prisoners. If the soul smiles the body shines, and if the soul frets the body withers. And Molly Brownwell saw in the looking-glass that night more surely than ever before that her face was beginning to slump. Her cheeks were no longer firm, and at her eyes were the stains of tears that would not wipe off, but crinkled the skin at the temples and deepened the shadows into wide salmon-coloured lines that fell away from each side of the nose so that no trick could hide them. Moreover, the bright eyes that used to flash into Bob Hendricks' steady blue eyes had grown tired, and women who did not know, wondered why such a pretty girl had broken so.

The Culpeppers had remained with the Barclays for dinner, and the hour was late for the Ridge—after nine o'clock, and as the departing guests went down the long curved walk of Barclay pride to the Barclay gate, they saw a late April moon rising over the trees by the mill. They clanged the tall iron gate behind them, and stood a moment watching the moon. For the colonel never grew too old to notice it. He put his arms about his wife and his daughter tenderly, and said before they started up the street, "It never grows old—does it?" And he pressed his wife to him gently and repeated, "Does it, my dear—it's the same old moon; the one we used to have in Virginia before the war, isn't it?"

His wife smiled at him placidly and said, "Now, pa—"

Whereupon the colonel squeezed his daughter lustily, and exclaimed, "Well, Molly still loves me, anyway. Don't you, Molly?" And the younger woman patted his cheek, and then they started for home.

"Papa, how much money has John?" asked the daughter, as they walked along.

A man always likes to be regarded as an authority in financial matters, and the colonel stroked his goatee wisely before replying: "U-h-m-m, let me see—I don't exactly know. Bob and I were talking about it the other day—after I bought John's share in College Heights—last year, to be exact. Of course he's got the mill and it's all paid for—say a hundred thousand dollars—and that old wheat land he got back in the seventies—he's cleaned all of that up. I should say that and the mill were easily worth half a million, and they're both clear. That's all in sight." The colonel ruminated a moment and then continued: "About the rest—it's a guess. Some say a million, some say ten. All I know in point of fact, my dear, to get right down to bed-rock, is that Lycurgus says they are turning out two or three car-loads of the strips a year. I wouldn't believe Lycurgus on a stack of Bibles as high as his head, but little Thayer Ward, who works down there in the shipping department, told the general the same thing, and Bob says he knows John gets ten dollars apiece for them now, so that's a million dollars a year income he's got. He handles grain and flour way up in Minnesota, and back as far as Ohio, and west to California. But what he actually owns,—that is, whether he rents the mills or, to be exact, steals them,—I haven't any idea—not the slightest notion in the world, in point of fact—not the slightest notion."

As they passed through Main Street it was deserted, save in the billiard halls, and as no one seemed inclined to talk, the colonel took up the subject of Barclay: "Say we call it five million—five million in round numbers; that's a good deal of money for a man to have and haggle a month over seventy-five dollars the way he did with me when he sold me his share of College Heights. But," added the colonel, "I suppose if I had that much I'd value it more." The women were thinking of other things, and the colonel addressed the night: "Man gets an appetite for money just as he does for liquor—just like the love for whiskey, I may say." He shook his sides as he meditated aloud: "But as for me—I guess I've got so I can take it or let it alone. Eh, ma?"

"I didn't catch what you were saying, pa," answered his wife. "I was just thinking whether we had potatoes enough to make hash for breakfast; have we, Molly?"

As the women were discussing the breakfast, two men came out of a cross street, and the colonel, who was slightly in advance of his women, hailed the men with, "Hello there, Bob—you and Jake out here carrying on your illicit friendship in the dark?"

The men and the Culpeppers stopped for a moment at the corner. Molly Brownwell's heart throbbed as they met, and she thought of the rising moon, and in an instant her brain was afire with a hope that shamed her. Three could not walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk up the hill, and when she heard Hendricks say after the group had parleyed a moment, "Well, Jake, good night; I'll go on home with the colonel," she managed the pairing off so that the young man fell to her, and the colonel and Mrs. Culpepper walked before the younger people, and they all talked together. But at Lincoln Avenue, the younger people disconnected themselves from the talk of the elders, and finally lagged a few feet behind. When they reached the gate the colonel called back, "Better come in and visit a minute, Bob," and Molly added, "Yes, Bob, it's early yet."

But what she said with her voice did not decide the matter for him. It was her eyes. And what he said with his voice is immaterial—it was what his eyes replied that the woman caught. What he said was, "Well, just for a minute, Colonel," and the party walked up the steps of the veranda, and Bob and Molly and the colonel sat down.

Mrs. Culpepper stood for a moment and then said, "Well, Bob, you must excuse me—I forgot to set my sponge, and there isn't a bit of bread in the house for Sunday." Whereupon she left them, and when the colonel had talked himself out he left them, and when the two were alone there came an awkward silence. In the years they had been apart a thousand things had stirred in their hearts to say at this time, yet all their voices spoke was, "Well, Molly?" and "Well, Bob?" The moon was in their faces as it shone through the elm at the gate. The man turned his chair so that he could look at her, and after satisfying his eyes he broke the silence with, "Seven years."

And she returned, "Seven years the thirteenth of April."

The man played a tune with his fingers and a foot and said nothing more. The woman finally spoke. "Did you know it was the thirteenth?"

"Yes," he replied, "father died the ninth. I have often counted it up." He added shortly after: "It's a long time—seven years! My! but it has been a long time!"

"I have wondered if you have thought so," a pause, "too!"

Their hearts were beating too fast for thoughts to come coherently. The fever of madness was upon them, and numbed their wills so that they could not reach beneath the surface of their consciousnesses to find words for their emotions. Then also there was in each a deadening, flaming sense of guilt. Shame is a dumb passion, and these two, who in the fastnesses of a thousand nights had told themselves that what they sought was good and holy, now found in each other's actual presence a gripping at the tongue's root that held them dumb.

"Yes, I—" the man mumbled, "yes, I—I fancied you understood that well enough."

"But you have been busy?" she asked; "very busy, Bob, and oh, I've been so proud of all that you've done." It was the woman's tongue that first found a sincere word.

The man replied, "Well—I—I am glad you have."

It seemed to the woman a long time since her father had gone. Her conscience was making minutes out of seconds. She said, "Don't you think it's getting late?" but did not rise.

The man looked at his watch and answered, "Only 10.34." He started to rise, but she checked him breathlessly.

"Oh, Bob, Bob, sit down. This isn't enough for these long years. I had so many things to say to you." She hesitated and cried, "Why are we so stupid now—now when every second counts?"

He bent slightly toward her and said in a low voice, "So that's why your lilacs have never bloomed again."

She looked at her chair arm and asked, "Did you know they hadn't bloomed?"

"Oh, Molly, of course I knew," he answered, and then went on: "Every thirteenth of April I have slipped through the fence and come over here, rain or shine, at night, to see if they were blooming. But I didn't know why they never bloomed!"

The woman rose and walked a step toward the door, and turned her head away. When she spoke it was after a sob, "Bob, I couldn't bear it—I just couldn't bear it, Bob!"

He groaned and put his hands to his forehead and rested his elbow on the chair arm. "Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly," he sighed, "poor, poor little Molly." After a pause he said: "I won't ever bother you again. It doesn't do any good." A silence followed in which the woman turned her face to him, tear-stained and wretched, with the seams of her heart all torn open and showing through it. "It only hurts," the man continued, and then he groaned aloud, "Oh, God, how it hurts!"

She sank back into her chair and buried her face in the arm farthest from him and her body shook, but she did not speak. He stared at her dry-eyed for a minute, that tolled by so slowly that he rose at the end of it, fearful that his stay was indecorously long.

"I think I should go now," he said, as he passed her.

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Not yet, not just yet." She caught his arm and he stopped, as she stood beside him, trembling, haggard, staring at him out of dead, mad eyes. There was no colour in her blotched face, and in the moonlight the red rims of her eyes looked leaden, and her voice was unsteady. At times it broke in sobbing croaks, and she spoke with loose jaws, as one in great terror. "I want you to know—" she paused at the end of each little hiccoughed phrase—"that I have not forgotten—" she caught her breath—"that I think of you every day—" she wiped her eyes with a limp handkerchief—"every day and every night, and pray for you, though I don't believe—" she whimpered as she shuddered—"that God cares much about me."

He tried to stop her, and would have gone, but she put a hand upon his shoulder and pleaded: "Just another minute. Oh, Bob," she cried, and her voice broke again, "don't forget me. Don't forget me. When I was so sick last year—you remember," she pleaded, "I raved in delirium a week." She stopped as if afraid to go on, then began to shake as with a palsy. "I raved of everything under God's sun, and through it all, Bob—not one word of you. Oh, I knew that wouldn't do." She swayed upon his arm. "I kept a little corner of my soul safe to guard you." She sank back into her chair and chattered, "Oh, I guarded you."

She was crying like a child. He stood over her and touched her dishevelled hair with the tips of his fingers and said: "I oughtn't to stay, Molly."

And she motioned him away with her face hidden and sobbed, "No—I know it."

He paused a moment on the step before her and then said, "Good-by, Molly—I'm going now." And she heard him walking down the yard on the grass, so that his footsteps would not arouse the house. It seemed to them both that it was midnight, but time had moved slowly, and when the spent, broken woman crept into the house, and groped her way to her room, she did not make a light, but slipped into bed without looking at her scarred, shameful face.



CHAPTER XVIII

In the sunshine of that era of world-wide prosperity in the eighties, John Barclay made much hay. He spent little time in Sycamore Ridge, and his private car might be found in Minnesota to-day and at the end of the week in California. As president of the Corn Belt Road and as controlling director in the North Lake Line, he got rates on other railroads for his grain products that no competitor could duplicate. And when a competitor began to grow beyond the small fry class, Barclay either bought him out or built a mill beside the offender and crushed him out. Experts taught him the value of the chaff from the grain. He had a dozen mills to which he shipped the refuse from his flour and heaven only knows what else, and turned the stuff into various pancake flours and breakfast foods. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising—in a day when large appropriations for advertising were unusual. And the words "Barclay's Best" glared at the traveller from crags in the Rocky Mountains and from the piers of all the great harbour bridges. He used Niagara to glorify the name of Barclay, and "Use Barclay's Best" had to be washed off the statue of the Goddess of Liberty in New York Harbour. The greenish brown eyes of the little man were forever looking into space, and when he caught a dream, instead of letting it go, he called a stenographer and made it come true. In those days he was beginning to realize that an idea plus a million dollars will become a fact if a man but says the word, whereas the same idea minus a million remains a dream. The great power of money was slowly becoming part of the man's consciousness. During the years that were to come, he came to think that there was nothing impossible. Any wish he had might be gratified. Such a consciousness drives men mad.

But in those prosperous days, while the millions were piling up, Barclay kept his head. All the world was buying then, but wherever he could Barclay sold. He bought only where he had to, and paid cash for what he bought. He did not owe a dollar for anything. He had no equities; his titles were all good. And as he neared his forties he believed that he could sell what he had at forced sale for many millions. He was supposed to be much richer than he was, but the one thing that he knew about it was that scores of other men had more than he. So he kept staring into space and pressing the button for his stenographer, and at night wherever his work found him, whether in Boston or in Chicago or in San Francisco, he hunted up the place where he could hear the best music, and sat listening with his eyes closed. He always kept his note-book in his hand, when Jane was not with him, and when an idea came to him inspired by the music, he jotted it down, and the next day, if it stood the test of a night's sleep, he turned the idea into an event.

In planning his work he was ruthless. He learned that by bribing men in the operating department of any railroad he could find out what his competitors were doing. And in the main offices of the National Provisions Company two rooms full of clerks were devoted to considering the duplicate way-bills of every car of flour or grain or grain product not shipped by the Barclay companies. Thus he was able to delay the cars of his competitors, and get his own cars through on time. Thus he was able to bribe buyers in wholesale establishments to push his products. And with Lige Bemis manipulating the railroad and judiciary committees in the legislatures of ten states, no laws were enacted which might hamper Barclay's activities.

"Do you know, Lucy," said General Ward to his wife one night when they were discussing Barclay and his ways and works, "sometimes I think that what that boy saw at Wilson's Creek,—the horrible bloodshed, the deadly spectacle of human suffering at the hospital wagon, some way blinded his soul's eye to right and wrong. It was all a man could stand; the picture must have seared the boy's heart like a fire."

Mrs. Ward, who was mending little clothes in the light of the dining-room lamp, put down her work a moment and said: "I have always thought the colonel had some such idea. For once when he was speaking of the way John stole that wheat land, he said, 'Well, poor John, he got a wound at Wilson's Creek that never will heal,' and when I asked if he meant his foot, the colonel smiled like a woman and said gently, 'No, Miss Lucy, not there—not there at all; in his heart, my dear, in his heart!'"

And the general's eyes met the eyes of a mother wandering toward a boy of nine sleeping, tired out, on a couch near by; he was a little boy with dark hair, and red tanned cheeks, and his mouth—such a soft innocent mouth—curved prettily, like the lips of children in old pictures, and as he slept he smiled, and the general, meeting the mother's eyes coming back from the little face, wiped his glasses and nodded his head in understanding; in a moment they both rose and stood hand in hand over their child, and the mother said in a trembling voice, "And his mother prayed for him, too—she has told me so—so many times."

But the people of Sycamore Ridge and of the Mississippi Valley did not indulge in any fine speculations upon the meaning of life when they thought of John Barclay. He had become considerable of a figure in the world, and the Middle West was proud of him. For those were the days of tin cornices, false fronts, vain pretences, and borrowed plumes bought with borrowed money. Other people's capital was easy to get, and every one was rich. Debt was regarded as an evidence of prosperity, and the town ran mad with the rest of the country. It is not strange then that Mrs. Watts McHurdie, she who for four years during the war dispensed "beefsteak—ham and eggs—breakfast bacon—tea—coffee—iced tea—or—milk" at the Thayer House, and for ten years thereafter sold dry-goods and kept books at Dorman's store, should have become tainted with the infection of the times. But it is strange that she could have inoculated so sane a little man as Watts. Still, there were Delilah and Samson, and of course Samson was a much larger man than Watts, and Nellie McHurdie was considerably larger than Delilah; and you never can tell about those things, anyway. Also it must not be forgotten that Nellie McHurdie since her marriage had become Grand Preceptress in one lodge, Worthy Matron in another, Senior Vice Commander in a third, and Worshipful Benefactress in a fourth, to say nothing of positions as corresponding secretary, delegate to the state convention, Keeper of the Records and Seals, Scribe,—and perhaps Pharisee,—in half a dozen others, all in the interests of her husband's political future; and with such obvious devotion before him, it is small wonder after all that he succumbed.

But he would not run for office. He had trouble every spring persuading her, but he always did persuade her, that this wasn't his year, that conditions were wrong, and that next year probably would be better. But he allowed her to call their home "The Bivouac," and have the name cut in stone letters on the horse-block; and he sat by meekly for many long years at lodges, at church entertainments, at high school commencement exercises, at public gatherings of every sort, and heard her sing a medley of American patriotic songs which wound up with the song that made him famous. It was five drinks in Jake Dolan that stopped the medley, when the drinks aforesaid inspired him to rise grandly from his chair at the front of the hall at an installation of officers of Henry Schnitzler Post of the Grand Army, and stalk majestically out of the room, while the singing was in progress, saying as he turned back at the door, before thumping heavily down the stairs, "Well, I'm getting pretty damn tired of that!" Mrs. McHurdie insisted that Watts should whip Dolan, and it is possible that at home that night Watts did smite his breast and shake his head fiercely, for in the morning the neighbours saw Mrs. McHurdie walk to the gate with him, talking earnestly and holding his arm as if to restrain him; moreover, when Watts had turned the corner of Lincoln Avenue and had disappeared into Main Street, she hurried over to the Culpeppers' to have the colonel warn Dolan that Watts was a dangerous man. But when Dolan, sober, walked into the harness shop that afternoon to apologize, the little harness maker came down the aisle of saddles in his shop blinking over his spectacles and with his hand to his mouth to strangle a smile, and before Dolan could speak, Watts said, "So am I—Jake Dolan—so am I; but if you ever do that again, I'll have to kill you."

It happened in the middle eighties—maybe a year before the college was opened—maybe a year after, though Gabriel Carnine, talking of it some twenty years later, insists that it happened two years after the opening of the college. But no one ever has mentioned the matter to Watts, so the exact date may not be recorded, though it is an important date in the uses of this narrative, as will be seen later. All agree—the colonel, the general, Dolan, Fernald, and perhaps two dozen old soldiers who were at the railroad station waiting for the train to take them to the National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic,—that it was a fine morning in September. Of course John Barclay contributed the band. He afterwards confessed to that, explaining that Nellie had told him that Watts never had received the attention he should receive either in the town or the state or the nation, and so long as Watts was a National Delegate for the first time in his life, and so long as she had twice been voted for as National President of the Ladies' Aid, and might get it this time, the band would be, as she put it, "so nice to take along"; and as John never forgot the fact that Nellie asked him to sing at her wedding, he hired the band. Thus are we bound to our past. But the band was not what caused the comrades to gasp, though its going was a surprise. And when they heard it turn into Main Street far up by Lincoln Avenue, playing the good old tune that the town loved for Watts' sake and for the sake of the time and the place and the heroic deeds it celebrated,—when they heard the band, the colonel asked the general, "Where's Watts?" and they suspected that the band might be bringing him to the depot.

Heaven knows the town had bought uniforms and new horns for the band often enough for it to do something public-spirited once in a while without being paid for it. So the band did not come to the town as a shock in and of itself. Neither for that matter did the hack—the new glistening silver-mounted hack, with the bright spick-and-span hearse harness on the horses; in those bustling days a quarter was nothing, and you can ride all over the Ridge for a quarter; so when the comrades at the depot, in their blue soldiers' clothes their campaign hats, and their delegates' badges, saw the band followed by the hack, they were of course interested, but that was all. And when some of the far-sighted ones observed that the top of the hack was spread back royally, they commented upon the display of pomp, but the comment was not extraordinary. But when from the street as the band stopped, there came cheers from the people, the boys at the station felt that something unusual was about to come to them. So they watched the band march down the long sheet-iron-covered station walk, and the hack move along beside the band boys; and the poet's comrades-in-arms saw him sitting beside the poet's wife,—the two in solemn state. And then the old boys beheld Watts McHurdie,—little Watts McHurdie, with his grizzled beard combed, with his gold-rimmed Sunday glasses far down on his nose so that he could see over them, and—wonder of wonders, they saw a high shiny new silk hat wobbling over his modest head.

He stumbled out of the open hack with his hand on the great stiff awkward thing, obviously afraid it would fall off, and she that was Nellie Logan, late of the Thayer House and still later of Dorman's store, and later still most worshipful, most potent, most gorgeous and most radiant archangel of seven secret and mysterious covenants, conclaves, and inner temples, stood beaming at the pitiful sight, clearly proud of her shameless achievement. Watts, putting his hand to his mouth to cover his smile, grabbed the shiny thing again as he nodded cautiously at the crowd. Then he followed her meekly to the women's waiting room, where the wives and sisters of the comrades were assembled—and they, less punctilious than the men, burst forth with a scream of joy, and the agony was over.

And thus Watts McHurdie went to his greatest earthly glory. The delegation from the Ridge, with the band, had John Barclay's private car; that was another surprise which Mrs. McHurdie arranged, and when they got to Washington, where the National Encampment was, opinions differ as to when Watts McHurdie had his high tide of happiness. The colonel says that it was in the great convention, where the Sycamore Ridge band sat in front of the stage, and where Watts stood in front of the band and led the great throng,—beginning with his cracked little heady tenor, and in an instant losing it in the awful diapason of ten thousand voices singing his old song with him; and where, when it was over, General Grant came down the platform, making his way rather clumsily among the chairs, and at last in front of the whole world grasped Watts McHurdie's hands, and the two little men, embarrassed by the formality of it all, stood for a few seconds looking at each other with tears glistening in their speaking eyes.

But Jake Dolan, who knows something of human nature, does not hold to the colonel's view about the moment of McHurdie's greatest joy. "We were filing down the Avenue again, thousands and ten thousands of us, as we filed past the White House nearly twenty years before. And the Sycamore Ridge band was cramming its lungs into the old tune, when up on the reviewing stand, beside all the big bugs and with the President there himself, stood little Watts, plug hat in hand, bowing to the boys. 'Twas a lovely sight, and he had been there for two mortal hours before we boys got down—there was the Kansas boys and the Iowa boys and some from Missouri, carrying the old flag we fought under at Wilson's Creek. Watts saw us down the street and heard the old band play; a dozen other bands had played that tune that day; but Billy Dorman's tuba had its own kind of a rag in it, and Watts knew it. I seen him a-waving his hat at the boys, almost as soon as they saw him, and as the band came nearer and nearer I saw the little man's face begin to crack, and as he looked down the line and saw them Kansas and Iowa soldiers, I seen him give one whoop, and throw that plug hat hellwards over the crowd and jump down from that band stand like a wild man and make for the gang. He was blubbering like a calf when he caught step with me, and he yelled so as to reach my ears above the roar of the crowds and the blatting of the bands—yelled with his voice ripped to shreds that fluttered out ragged from the torn bosom of him, 'Jake—Jake—how I would like to get drunk—just this once!' And we went on down the avenue together—him bareheaded, hay-footing and straw-footing it the same as in the old days."

Jake always paused at this point and shook his head sorrowfully, and then continued dolefully: "But 'twas no use; he was caught and took away; some says it was to see the pictures in the White House, and some says it was to a reception given by the Relief Corps to the officers elect of the Ladies' Aid, where he was pawed over by a lot of old girls who says, 'Yes, I'm so glad—what name please—oh, —McHurdie, surely not the McHurdie; O dear me—Sister McIntire, come right here, this is the McHurdie—you know I sang your song when I was a little girl'—which was a lie, unless Watts wrote it for the Mexican War, and he didn't. And then some one else comes waddling up and says, 'O dear me, Mr. McHurdie—you don't know how glad I am to see the author of "Home, Sweet Home,"' and Watts blinks his eyes and pleads not guilty; and she says, 'O dear, excuse the mistake; well, I'm sure you wrote something?' And Watts, being sick of love, as Solomon says in his justly celebrated and popular song, Watts looks through his Sunday glasses and doesn't see a blame thing, and smiles and says calmly, 'No, madam, you mistake—I am a simple harness maker.' And she sidles off looking puzzled, to make room for the one from Massachusetts, who stares at him through her glasses and says, 'So you're Watts McHurdie—who wrote the—' 'The same, madam,' says Watts, courting favour. 'Well,' says the high-browed one, 'well—you are not at all what I imagined.' And 'Neither are you, madam,' returns Watts, as sweet as a dill pickle; and she goes away to think it over and wonder if he meant it that way. No—that's where Nellie made her mistake. It wouldn't have hurt him—just once. But what's done's done, and can't be undone, as the man said when he fished his wife out of the lard vat."

Now this all seems a long way from John Barclay—the hero of this romance. Yet the departure of Watts McHurdie for his scene of glory was on the same day that a most important thing happened in the lives of Bob Hendricks and Molly Brownwell. That day Bob Hendricks walked one end of the station platform alone. The east-bound train was half an hour late, and while the veterans were teasing Watts and the women railing at Mrs. McHurdie, Hendricks discovered that it was one hundred and seventy-eight steps from one end of the walk to the other, and that to go entirely around the building made the distance fifty-four steps more. It was almost train time before Adrian Brownwell arrived. When the dapper little chap came with his bright crimson carnation, and his flashing red necktie, and his inveterate gloves and cane, Hendricks came only close enough to him to smell the perfume on the man's clothes, and to nod to him. But when Hendricks found that the man was going with the Culpeppers as far as Cleveland, as he told the entire depot platform, "to report the trip," Hendricks sat on a baggage truck beside the depot, and considered many things. As he was sitting there Dolan came up, out of breath, and fearful he should be late.

"How long will you be gone, Jake?" asked Hendricks.

"The matter of a week or ten days, maybe," answered Dolan.

"Well, Jake," said Hendricks, looking at Dolan with serious eyes, yet rather abstractedly, "I am thinking of taking a long trip—to be gone a long time—I don't know exactly how long. I may not go at all—I haven't said anything to the boys in the store or the bank or out at the shop about it; it isn't altogether settled—as yet." He paused while a switch engine clanged by and the crowd surged out of the depot, and ebbed back again into their seats. "Did you deliver my note this morning?"

"Yes," replied Dolan, "just as you said. That's what made me a little late."

"To the lady herself?"

"To the lady herself," repeated Dolan.

"All right," acquiesced Hendricks. "Now, Jake, if I give it out that I'm going away on a trip, there'll be a lot of pulling and hauling and fussing around in the bank and in the store and at the shop and—every place, and then I may not go. So I've gone over every concern carefully during the past week, and have set down what ought to be done in case I'm gone. I didn't tell my sister even—she's so nervous. And, Jake, I won't tell any one. But if, when you get back from Washington, I'm not here, I'm going to leave this key with you. Tell the boys at the bank that it will open my tin box, and in the tin box they'll find some instructions about things." He smiled, and Dolan assented. Hendricks uncoiled his legs from the truck, and began to get down. "I won't mix up with the old folks, I guess, Jake. They have their own affairs, and I'm tired. I worked all last night," he added. He held out his hand to Dolan and said, "Well, good-by, Jake—have a good time."

The elder man had walked away a few steps when Hendricks called him back, and fumbling in his pockets, said: "Well, Jake, I certainly am a fool; here—" he pulled an envelope marked "Dolan" from his inside pocket—"Jake, I was in the bank this morning, and I found a picture for you. Take it and have a good time. It's a long time till pension day—so long."

The Irishman peeped at the bill and grinned as he said, "Them holy pictures from the bank, my boy, have powerful healing qualities." And he marched off with joy in his carriage.

Hendricks then resumed his tramp; up and down the long platform he went, stepping on cracks one way, and avoiding cracks the next, thinking it all out. He tried to remember if he had been unfair to any one; if he had left any ragged edges; if he had taken a penny more than his honest due. The letter to the county treasurer, returning the money his father had taken, was on top of the pile of papers in his tin box at the bank. He had finally concluded, that when everything else was known, that would not add much to his disgrace. And then it would be paid, and that page with the forged entry would not always be in his mind. There were deeds, each witnessed by a different notary, so that the town would not gossip before he went, transferring all of his real estate to his sister, and the stock he had sold to the bank was transferred, and the records all in the box; then he went over the prices again at which he had disposed of his holdings to the bank, and he was sure he had made good bargains in every case for the bank. So it was all fair, he argued for the thousandth time—he was all square with the world. He had left a deposit subject to his check of twenty thousand dollars—that ought to do until they could get on their feet somewhere; and it was all his, he said to himself—all his, and no one's business.

And when he thought of the other part, the voice of Adrian Brownwell saying, "Well, come on, old lady, we must be going," rose in his consciousness. It was not so much Brownwell's words, as his air of patronage and possession; it was cheerful enough, quite gay in fact, but Hendricks asked himself a hundred times why the man didn't whistle for her, and clamp a steel collar about her neck. He wondered cynically if at the bottom of Brownwell's heart, he would not rather have the check for twelve thousand dollars which Hendricks had left for Colonel Culpepper, to pay off the Brownwell note, than to have his wife. For seven years the colonel had been cheerfully neglecting it, and now Hendricks knew that Adrian was troubling him about the old debt.

As he rounded the depot for the tenth time he got back to their last meeting. There stood General Ward with his arm about the girlish waist of Mrs. Ward, the mother of seven. There was John Barclay with Jane beside him, and they were holding hands like lovers. The Ward children were running like rabbits over the broad lawn under the elms, and there, talking to the wide, wide world, was Adrian Brownwell, propounding the philosophy of the Banner, and quoting from last week's editorials. And there sat Bob and Molly by the flower bed that bordered the porch.

"I am going to the city to hear Gilmore," he said. That was simple enough, and her sigh had no meaning either. It was just a weary little sigh, such as women sometimes bring forth when they decide to say something else. So she had said: "I'll be all alone next week. I think I'll visit Jane—if she's in town."

Then something throbbed in his brain and made him say:—

"So you'd like to hear Gilmore, too?"

She coloured and was silent, and the pulse of madness that was beating in her made her answer:—

"Oh—I can't—you know the folks are going to Washington to the encampment, and Adrian is going as far as Cleveland with the delegation to write it up."

An impulse loosened his tongue, and he asked:—

"Why not? Come on. If you don't know any one up there, go to the Fifth Avenue; it's all right, and I'll get tickets, and we'll go every night and both matinees. Come on!" he urged.

She was aflame and could not think. "Oh—don't, Bob, don't—not now. Please don't," she begged, in as low a tone as she dared to use.

Adrian was thundering on about the tariff, and the general was wrangling with him. The Barclays were talking to themselves, and the children were clattering about underfoot, and in the trees overhead. Bob's eyes and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw of pathos and yearning, and he said: "Well, why not? It's no worse to go than to want to go. What's wrong about it—Molly, do you think—"

He did not finish the sentence, for Adrian had ceased talking, and Molly, seeing his jealous eyes upon her, rose and moved away. But before they left that night she found occasion to say, "I've been thinking about it, Bob, and maybe I will."

In the year that had passed since Hendricks had left her sobbing in the chair on the porch of the Culpepper home, a current between them had been reestablished, and was fed by the chance passing in a store, a smile at a reception, a good morning on the street, and the current was pulsing through their veins night and day. But that fine September morning, as she stood on the veranda of her home with a dust-cap on her head, cleaning up the litter her parents had made in packing, she was not ready for what rushed into her soul from the letter Dolan left her, as he hurried away to overtake the band that was turning from Lincoln Avenue into Main Street. She sat in a chair to read it, and for a moment after she had read it, she held it open in her lap and gazed at the sunlight mottling the blue grass before her, through the elm trees. Her lips were parted and her eyes wide, and she breathed slowly. The tune the band was playing—McHurdie's song—sank into her memory there that day so that it always brought back the mottled sunshine, the flowers blooming along the walk, and the song of a robin from a lilac bush near by. She folded the letter carefully, and put it inside her dress, and then moving mechanically, took it out and read it again:—

"MY DARLING, MY DARLING: There is no use struggling any more. You must come. I will meet you in the city at the morning train, the one that leaves the Ridge here at 2.35 A.M. We can go to the parks to-morrow and be alone and talk it all out, before the concert—and then—oh, Molly, core of my soul, heart of my heart, why should we ever come back! BOB."

All that she could feel as she sat there motionless was a crashing "no." The thing seemed to drive her mad by its insistence—a horrible racking thing that all but shook her, and she chattered at it: "Why not? Why not? Why not?" But the "no" kept roaring through her mind, and as she heard the servant rattling the breakfast dishes in the house, the woman shivered out of sight and ran to her room. She fell on her knees to pray, but all she could pray was, "O God, O God, O God, help me!" and to that prayer, as she said it, the something in her heart kept gibbering, "Why not? Why not? Why not?" From an old box hidden in a closet opening out of her mother's room she took Bob Hendricks' picture,—the faded picture of a boy of twenty,—and holding it close to her breast, stared open-lipped into the heart of an elm tree-top. The whistle of the train brought her back to her real world. She rose and looked at herself in the mirror, at the unromantic face with its lines showing faintly around her eyes, grown quiet during the dozen years that had settled her fluffy hair into sedate waves. She smiled at the changes of the years and shook her head, and got a grip on her normal consciousness, and after putting away the picture and closing the box, she went downstairs to finish her work.

On the stairs she felt sure of herself, and set about to plan for the next day, and then the tumult began, between the "no" and her soul. In a few minutes as she worked the "no" conquered, and she said, "Bob's crazy." She repeated it many times, and found as she repeated it that it was mechanical and that her soul was aching again. So the morning wore away; she gossiped with the servant a moment; a neighbour came in on an errand; and she dressed to go down town. As she went out of the gate, she wondered where she would be that hour the next day, and then the struggle began again. Moreover, she bought some new gloves—travelling gloves to match her gray dress.

In the afternoon she and Jane Barclay sat on the wide porch of the Barclay home. "Gilmore's going to be in the city all this week," said Jane, biting a thread in her sewing.

"Is he?" replied Molly. "I should so like to hear him. It's so poky up at the house."

"Why don't you?" inquired Jane. "Get on the train and go on up."

"Do you suppose it would be all right?" replied Molly.

"Why, of course, girl! Aren't you a married woman of lawful age? I would if I wanted to."

There was a pause, and Molly replied thoughtfully, "I have half a notion to—really!"

But as she walked home, she decided not to do it. People from the Ridge might be there, and they wouldn't understand, and her finger-tips chilled at the memory of Adrian Brownwell's jealous eyes. So as she ate supper, she went over the dresses she had that were available. And at bedtime she gave the whole plan up and went upstairs humming "Marguerite" as happily as the thrush that sang in the lilacs that morning. As she undressed the note fell to the floor. When she picked it up, the flash of passion came tearing through her heart, and the "no" crashed in her ears again, and all the day's struggle was for nothing. So she went to bed, resolved not to go. But she stared through the window into the night, and of a sudden a resolve came to her to go, and have one fair day with Hendricks—to talk it all out forever, and then to come home, and she rose from her bed and tiptoed through the house packing a valise. She left a note in the kitchen for the servant, saying that she would be back for dinner the next evening, and when she struck a match in the front hall to see what time it was, she found that it was only one o'clock. For an hour she sat in the chill September air on the veranda, thinking it all over—what she would say; how they would meet and part; and over and over again she told herself that she was doing the sensible thing. As the clock struck two she picked up her valise—it was heavier than she thought, and it occurred to her that she had put in many unnecessary things, and that she had time to lighten it. But she stopped a moment only, and then walked to the gate and down a side street to the station. It was 2.20 when she arrived, and the train was marked on the blackboard by the ticket window on time. She kept telling herself that it was best to have it out; that she would come right back; but she remembered her heavy valise, and again the warning "no" roared through her soul. She walked up and down the long platform, and felt the presence of Bob Hendricks strong and compelling; she knew he had been there that very day, and wondered where he sat. Then she thought perhaps she would do better not to go. She looked into the men's waiting room, and it was empty save for one man; his back was turned to her, but she recognized Lige Bemis. A tremble of guilt racked and weakened her. And with a thrill as of pain she heard the faint whistle of a train far up the valley. The man moved about the room inside. Apparently he also heard the far-off whistle. She shrank around the corner of the depot. But he caught sight of her dress, and slowly sauntered up and down the platform until he passed near enough to her to identify her in the faint flicker of the gas. He spoke, and she returned his greeting. The train whistled again—much nearer it seemed to her, but still far away, and her soul and the "no" were grappling in a final contest. Suddenly it came over her that she had not bought her ticket. Again the train whistled, and far up the tracks she could see a speck of light. She hurried into the waiting room to buy the ticket. The noise of the train was beginning to sound in her ears, She was frightened and nervous, and she fumbled with her purse and valise. Nearer and nearer came the train, and the "no" fairly screamed in her ears, and her face was pallid, with the black wrinkles standing out upon it in the gaslight. The train was in the railroad yards, and the glare of the headlight was in the waiting room. Bemis came in and saw her fumbling with her ticket, her pocket book, and her valise.

"You'll have to hurry, Mrs. Brownwell, this is the limited—it only stops a minute. Let me help you."

He picked up the valise and followed her from the room. The rush of the incoming train shattered her nerves. They pulsed in fear of some dreadful thing, and in that moment she wondered whether or not she would ever see it all again—the depot, the familiar street, the great mill looming across the river, and the Barclay home half a mile above them. In a second she realized all that her going meant, and the "no" screamed at her, and the "why not" answered feebly. But she had gone too far, she said to herself. The engine was passing her, and Bemis was behind her with the heavy valise. She wondered what he would say when Bob met her at the train in the city. All this flashed across her mind in a second, and then she became conscious that the rumbling thing in front of her was not the limited but a cattle train, and the sickening odour from it made her faint. In the minute while it was rushing by at full speed she became rigid, and then, taking her valise from the man behind her, turned and walked as fast as she could up the hill, and when she turned the corner she tried to run. Her feet took her to the Barclay home. She stood trembling in terror on the great wide porch and rang the bell. The servant admitted the white-faced, shaking woman, and she ran to Jane Barclay's room.

"Oh, Jane," chattered Molly, "Jane, for God's love, Jane, hold me—hold me tight; don't let me go. Don't!" She sank to the floor and put her face in Jane's lap and stuttered: "I—I—have g-g-got to t-t-tell you, Jane. I've g-g-ot to t-t-t-ell you, J-J-Jane." And then she fell to sobbing. "Hold me, don't let me go out there. When it whistles ag-g-gain h-h-hold me t-t-tight."

Jane Barclay's strong kind hands stroked the dishevelled hair of the trembling woman. And in time she looked up and said quietly, "You know—you know, Jane, Bob and I—Bob and I were going to run away!" Molly looked at Jane a fearful second with beseeching eyes, and then dropped her head and fell to sobbing again, and lay with her face on the other woman's knees.

When she was quiet Jane said: "I wouldn't talk about it any more, dear—not now." She stroked the hair and patted the face of the woman before her. "Shall we go to bed now, dear? Come right in with me." And soon Molly rose, and her spent soul rested in peace. But they did not go to bed. The dawn found the two women talking it out together—clear from the beginning.

And when the day came Molly Brownwell went to Jane Barclay's desk and wrote. And when Bob Hendricks came home that night, his sister handed him a letter. It ran:—

"MY DEAR BOB: I have thought it all out, dear; it wouldn't do at all. I went to the train, and something, I don't know what, caught me and dragged me over to Jane's. She was good—oh, so good. She knows; but it was better that she should than—the other way.

"It will never do, Bob. We can't go back. The terrible something that I did stands irrevocably between us. The love that might have made both our lives radiant is broken, Bob—forever broken. And all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot ever put it together again. I know it now, and oh Bob, Bob, it makes me sadder than the pain of unsatisfied love in my heart.

"It just can't be; nothing ever can make it as it was, and unless it could be that way—the boy and girl way, it would be something dreadful. We have missed the best in the world, Bob; we cannot enjoy the next best together. But apart, each doing his work in life as God wills it, we may find the next best, which is more than most people know.

"I have found during this hour that I can pray again, Bob, and I am asking God always to let me hope for a heaven, into which I can bring a few little memories—of the time before you left me. Won't you bring yours there, too, dear? Until then—good-by.

"MOLLY."

The springs that move God's universe are hidden,—those that move the world of material things and those that move the world of spiritual things, and make events creep out of the past into the future so noiselessly that they seem born in the present. It is all a mystery, the half-stated equation of life that we call the scheme of things. Only this is sure, that however remote, however separated by time and space, the tragedy of life has its root in the weakness of men, and of all the heart-breaking phantasms that move across the panorama of the day, somewhere deep-rooted in our own souls' weakness is the ineradicable cause. Even God's mercy cannot separate the punishment that follows sin, and perhaps it is the greatest mercy of His mercy that it cannot do so. For when we leave this world, our books are clear. If our souls grow—we pay the price in suffering; if they shrivel, we go into the next world, poorer for our pilgrimage.

So do not pity Molly Brownwell nor Robert Hendricks when you learn that as she left the station at Sycamore Ridge that night, Lige Bemis went to a gas lamp and read the note from Robert Hendricks that in her confusion she had dropped upon the floor. Only pity the miserable creature whose soul was so dead in him that he could put that note away to bide his time. In this wide universe, wherein we are growing slowly up to Godhood, only the poor leprous soul, whitened with malice and hate, deserves the angels' tears. The rest of us,—weak, failing, frail, to whom life deals its sorrows and its tears, its punishments and its anguish,—we leave this world nearer to God than when we came here, and the journey, though long and hard, has been worth the while.



CHAPTER XIX

Back in the days when John Barclay had become powerful enough to increase the price of his door strips to the railroad companies from five dollars to seven and a half, he had transferred the business of the factory that made the strips from Hendricks' Exchange National to the new Merchants' State Bank which Gabriel Carnine was establishing. For Carnine and Barclay were more of a mind than were Barclay and Hendricks; Carnine was bent on getting rich, and he had come to regard Barclay as the most remarkable man in the world. Hendricks, on the other hand, knew Barclay to the core, and since the quarrel of the seventies, while they had maintained business relations, they were merely getting along together. There were times when Barclay felt uncomfortable, knowing that Hendricks knew much about his business, but the more Carnine knew, the more praise Barclay had of him; and so, even though Jane kept her own account with Hendricks, and though John himself kept a personal account with Hendricks, the Economy Door Strip Company and the Golden Belt Wheat Company did business with Carnine, and Barclay became a director of the Merchants' State Bank, and greatly increased its prestige thereby. And Bob Hendricks sighed a sigh of relief, for he knew that he would never become John Barclay's fence and be called upon to dispose of stolen goods. So Hendricks went his way with his eyes on a level and his jaw squared with the world. And when he knew that Jane knew the secret of his soul, about the only comfort he had in those black days was the exultation in his heart that John—whatever he might know—could not turn it into cash at the Exchange National Bank.

As he walked alone under the stars that first night after Molly Brownwell's note came to him, he saw his life as it was, with things squarely in their relations. Of course this light did not stay with him always; at times in his loneliness the old cloud of wild yearning would come over him, and he would rattle the bars of his madhouse until he could fight his way out to the clean air of Heaven under the stars. And at such times he would elude Dolan, and walk far away from the town in fields and meadows and woods struggling back to sanity—sometimes through a long night. But as the years passed, this truth came to be a part of his consciousness—that in some measure the thing we call custom, or law, or civilization, or society, with all its faults, is the best that man, endowed as he is to-day, can establish, and that the highest service one can pay to man or to God is found in conforming to the social compact, at whatever cost of physical pain, or mental anguish, if the conformation does not require a moral breach. That was the faith he lived by, that by service to his fellows and by sacrifice to whatever was worthy in the social compact, he would find a growth of soul that would pay him, either here or hereafter. So he lent money, and sold light, and traded in merchandise, and did a man's work in politics—playing each game according to the rules.

But whatever came to him, whatever of honour or of influence, or of public respect, in his own heart there was the cloud—he knew that he was a forger, and that once he had offered to throw everything he had aside and take in return—But he was not candid enough even in his own heart to finish the indictment. It made him flush with shame, and perhaps that was why on his face there was often a curious self-deprecating smile—not of modesty, not of charity, but the smile of the man who is looking at a passing show and knows that it is not real. As he went into his forties, and the flux of his life hardened, he became a man of reserves—a kind, quiet, strong man, charitable to a fault for the weaknesses of others, but a man who rarely reflected his impulses, a listener in conversation, a dreamer amid the tumult of business, whose success lay in his industry and caution, and who drew men to him not by what he promised, but by the faith we chattering daws have in the man who looks on and smiles while we prattle.

His lank bones began to take on flesh, and his face rounded at the corners, and the eagerness of youth passed from him. He always looked more of a man than John Barclay. For Barclay was a man of enthusiasms, who occasionally liked to mouth a hard jaw-breaking "damn," and who followed his instincts with womanly faith in them—so that he became known as a man of impulse. But Hendricks' power was in repression, and in Sycamore Ridge they used to say that the only reason why Bob Hendricks grew a mustache was to chew it when people expected him to talk. It wasn't much of a mustache—a little blond fuzz about as heavy as his yellow eyebrows over his big inquiring blue eyes, and he once told Dolan that he kept it for a danger signal. When he found himself pulling at it, he knew he was nervous and should get out into the open. They tell a story in the Ridge to the effect that Hendricks started to run to a fire, and caught himself pulling at his mustache, and turned around and went out to the power-house instead.

It was the only anecdote ever told of Hendricks after he was forty—for he was not a man about whom anecdotes would hang well, though the town is full of them about John Barclay. So Hendricks lived a strong reticent man, who succeeded in business though he was honest, and who won in politics by choosing his enemies from the kind of noisy men who make many mistakes, and let every one know it. The time came when he did not avoid Molly Brownwell; she felt that he was not afraid to see her in any circumstances, and that made her happy. Sometimes she went to him in behalf of one of her father's charges,—some poor devil who could not pay his note at the bank and keep the children in school, or some clerk or workman at the power-house who had been discharged. At such times they talked the matter in hand over frankly, and it ended by the man giving way to the woman, or showing her simply that she was wrong.

Only once in nearly a score of years did a personal word pass between them. She had come to him for his signature to a petition for a pardon for a man whose family suffered while he was in the penitentiary. Hendricks signed the paper and handed it back to her, and his blue eyes were fixed impersonally upon her, and he smiled his curious, self-deprecatory smile and sighed, "As we forgive our debtors." Then he reached for a paper in his desk and seemed oblivious to her presence. No one else was near them, and the woman hesitated a moment before turning to go and repeated, "Yes, Bob—as we forgive our debtors." She tried to show him the radiance in her soul, but he did not look up and she went away. When she had gone, he pushed aside his work and sat for a moment looking into the street; he began biting his mustache, and rose, and went out of the bank and found some other work.

That night as Hendricks and Dolan walked over the town together, Dolan said: "Did you ever know, Robert"—that was as near familiarity as the elder man came with Hendricks—"that Mart Culpepper owed his son-in-law a lot of money?"

"Well," returned Hendricks, "he borrowed a lot fifteen years ago or such a matter; why?"

"Well," answered Dolan, "I served papers on Mart to-day in a suit for—I dunno, a lot of money—as I remember it about fifteen thousand dollars. That seems like a good deal."

Hendricks grunted, and they walked on in silence. Hendricks knew from Brownwell's overdraft that things were not going well with him, and he believed that matters must have reached a painful crisis in the Culpepper family if Brownwell had brought suit against the colonel.

The next morning Colonel Martin Culpepper came into the bank. He had grown into a large gray man—with gray hair, gray mustaches of undiminished size, and chin whiskers grayed and broadened with the years. His fine black eyes were just beginning to lose their lustre, and the spring was going out of his stride. As he came into the bank, Hendricks noticed that the colonel seemed to shuffle just a little. He put out his fat hand, and said:—

"Robert, will you come into the back room with me a moment? It isn't business—I just want to talk with you." He smiled apologetically and added, "Just troubles, Robert—just an old man wants to talk to some one, in point of fact."

Hendricks followed the colonel into the directors' room, and without ceremony the colonel sank heavily into a fat leather chair, facing the window, and Hendricks sat down facing the colonel. The colonel looked at the floor and fumbled his triangular watch-charm a moment, and cleared his throat, as he spoke, "I don't know just how to begin—to get at it—to proceed, as I may say, Robert." Hendricks did not reply, and the colonel went on, "I just wanted to talk to some one, that's all—to talk to you—just to you, sir, to be exact."

Hendricks looked kindly at the colonel, whose averted eyes made the younger man feel uncomfortable. Then he said gently, "Well, Colonel, don't be backward about saying what you want to to me." It was a long speech for Hendricks, and he felt it, and then qualified it with, "But, of course, I don't want to urge you."

The colonel's face showed a flush of courage to Hendricks, but the courage passed, and there was a silence, and then a little twitch under his eyes told Hendricks that the colonel was contemplating a flank attack as he spoke, "Robert, may I ask you in confidence if Adrian Brownwell is hard up?"

Hendricks believed the truth would bring matters to a head, and he answered, "Well, I shouldn't wonder, Colonel."

"Very hard up?" pressed the colonel.

Hendricks remembered Brownwell's overdraft and half a dozen past due notes to cover other overdrafts and answered, "Well, Colonel, not desperate, but you know the Index has been getting the best of the Banner for two or three years."

There was a pause, and then the colonel blurted out, "Well, Bob, he's sued me."

"I knew that, Colonel," returned Hendricks, anxious to press the matter to its core. "Jake told me yesterday."

"I was going to pay him; he's spoken about it several times—dunned me, sir, in point of fact, off and on for several years. But he knew I was good for it. And now the little coward runs off up to Chicago to attend the convention and sues me while he's gone. That's what I hate." Hendricks could see that the object of the colonel's visit was still on his mind, and so he left the way open for the colonel to talk. "You know how Mrs. Culpepper feels and how Molly feels—disgraced, sir, humiliated, shamed, to be exact, sir, in front of the whole town. What would you do, Robert? What can a man do in a time like this—I ask you, what can he do?"

"Well, I'd pay him, Colonel, if I were you," ventured the younger man.

The colonel straightened up and glared at Hendricks and exclaimed: "Bob Hendricks, do you think, sir, that Martin Culpepper would rest for a minute, while he had a dollar to his name, or a rag on his back, under the imputation of not paying a debt like that? It is paid, sir,—settled in full this morning, sir. But what am I going to do about him, sir—the contemptible scamp who publicly sued his own wife's father? That's what I came to you for, Robert. What am I going to do?"

"It'll be forgotten in a week, Colonel—I wouldn't worry about it," answered Hendricks. "We all have those little unpleasantnesses."

The colonel was silent for a time, and then he said: "Bob—" turning his eyes to meet Hendricks' for the first time during their meeting—"that scoundrel said to me yesterday morning before leaving, 'If I hadn't the misfortune of being your son-in-law, you wouldn't have the honour of owing me this money.' Then he sneered at me—you know the supercilious way he has, the damn miserable hound-pup way he has of grinning at you,—and says, 'I regarded it as a loan, even though you seemed to regard it as a bargain.' And he whirled and left me." The colonel's voice broke as he added: "In God's name, Bob, tell me—did I sell Molly? You know—you can tell me."

The colonel was on his feet, standing before Hendricks, with, his hands stretched toward the younger man. Hendricks did not reply at once, and the colonel broke forth: "Bob Hendricks, why did you and my little girl quarrel? Did she break it or did you? Did I sell her, Bob, did I sell my little girl?" He slipped back into the chair and for a moment hid his face, and shook with a great sob, then pulled himself together, and said, "I know I'm a foolish old man, Bob, only I feel a good deal depends on knowing the truth—a good deal of my attitude toward him."

Hendricks looked at the colonel for an abstracted moment, and then said: "Colonel, Adrian Brownwell is hard up—very hard up, and you don't know how he is suffering with chagrin at being beaten by the Index. He is quick-tempered—just as you are, Colonel." He paused a moment and took the colonel by the hand,—a fat, pink hand, without much iron in it,—and brought him to his feet. "And about that other matter," he added, as he put his arm about the colonel, "you didn't sell her. I know that; I give you my word on that. It was fifteen years ago—maybe longer—since Molly and I were—since we went together as boy and girl. That's a long time ago, Colonel, a long time ago, and I've managed to forget just why we—why we didn't make a go of it." He smiled kindly at the colonel as he spoke—a smile that the colonel had not seen in Hendricks' face in many years. Then the mask fell on his face, and the colonel saw it fall—the mask of the man over the face of the boy. A puzzled, bewildered look crept into the gray, fat face, and Hendricks could see that the doubt was still in the colonel's heart. The younger man pressed the colonel's hand, and the two moved toward the door. Suddenly tears flushed into the dimmed eyes of the colonel, and he cried, through a smile, "Bob Hendricks, I believe in my soul you're a liar—a damn liar, sir, but, boy, you're a thoroughbred—God bless you, you're a thoroughbred." And he turned and shuffled from the room and out of the bank.

When Colonel Martin Culpepper left Robert Hendricks at the door of the directors' room of the Exchange National Bank, the colonel was persuaded in his heart that his daughter had married Adrian Brownwell to please her parents, and the colonel realized that day that her parents were pleased with Brownwell as a suitor for their daughter, because in time of need he had come to their rescue with money, and incidentally because he was of their own blood and caste—a Southern gentleman of family. The colonel went to the offices of the Culpepper Mortgage and Loan Company and went over his bank-book again. The check that he drew would take all but three hundred and forty-five dollars out of the accounts of his company, and not a dollar of it was his. The Culpepper Mortgage Company was lending other people's money. It had been lending money on farm mortgages for ten years. Pay-day on many mortgages was coming due, and of the fifteen thousand dollars he checked out to pay Adrian Brownwell's debt, thirteen thousand dollars was money that belonged to the Eastern creditors of the company—men and women who had sent their money to the company for it to lend; and the money checked out represented money paid back by the farmers for the release of their mortgages. Some of the money was interest paid by farmers on their mortgages, some of it was partial payments—but none of it was Colonel Culpepper's money.

"Molly," said the colonel, as his daughter came into the office, "I've given a check for that—that money, you know, to Adrian—paid it in full, my dear. But—" the colonel fumbled with his pencil a moment and added, "I'm a trifle shy—a few thousand in point of fact, and I just thought I'd ask—would you borrow it of Bob, if you were me?"

He looked at her closely, and she coloured and shook her head vehemently as she replied: "Oh, no, father—no, can't you get it somewhere else? Not from Bob—for that! I mean—oh—I'd much rather not."

The colonel looked at his daughter a moment and drew a deep breath, and sighed, and smiled across his sigh, and took her hand and put it around his neck and kissed it, and when she was close to him he put his arm about her, and their eyes met for a fleeting instant, and they did not speak. But in a moment from across his desk the daughter spoke, "Why don't you go to John or Carnine, father?"

"Well, Gabe—you know Gabe. I'm borrowed clear to the limit there, now. And John—you know John, Molly—and the muss, the disagreeable muss,—the row, in point of fact, we had over that last seventy-five dollars settling up the College Heights business—you remember? Well, I just can't go to John. But," he added cheerfully, "I can get it elsewhere, my dear—I have other resources, other resources, my dear." And the colonel smiled so gayly that he deceived even his daughter, and she went home as happy as a woman with eyelids as red as hers were that day might reasonably expect to be.

As for the colonel, he sat figuring for an hour upon a sheet of white paper. His figures indicated that by putting all of his property except his home into the market, and reserving all of his commissions on loans that would fall due during the three years coming, he could pay back the money he had taken, little by little, and be square with the company's creditors in three years—or four at the most. So he let the check stand, and did not try to borrow money of the banks to make it good, but trusted to to-morrow's receipts to pay yesterday's debts of the company. Knowing that several mortgages of more than three thousand each would fall due in a few weeks, and that the men carrying them, expected to pay them, the colonel wrote dilatory letters to the Eastern creditors whose money he had taken, explaining that there was some delay in the payment of the notes, and that the matter would be straightened out in a few weeks. When the money came in from the mortgages falling due the next month, he paid those already due, and delayed the payment of Peter until Paul paid up. It was a miserable business, and Colonel Culpepper knew that he was a thief. The knowledge branded him as one, and bent his eyes to the ground, and wrenched his proud neck so that his head hung loosely upon it. Always when he spoke in public, or went among his poor on errands of mercy, at his elbow stood the accusing spectre, and choked his voice, and unnerved his hand. And trouble came upon the Culpeppers, and the colonel's clothes, which, had always been immaculate, grew shabby. As that year and the next passed and mortgages began falling due, not only in the colonel's company but all over the county, all over the state, all over the Missouri Valley, men found they could not pay. The cycle of business depression moved across the world, as those things come and go through the centuries. Moreover, General Ward was riding on the crest of a wave of unrest which expressed in terms of politics what the people felt in their homes. Debts were falling due; crops brought small returns; capital was frightened; men in the mills lost their work; men on the farms burned their corn; and Colonel Martin Culpepper sank deeper and deeper into the mire.

Those years of the panic of the early nineties pressed all the youth out of his step, dimmed the lustre of his eyes, and slowly broke his heart. His keenest anguish was not for his own suffering, but because his poor, the people at the Mission, came trooping to him for help, and he had to turn so many away. The whole town knew that he was in trouble, though no one knew or even suspected just what it was. For the people had their own troubles in those days, and the town and the county and the state and the whole world grew shabby.

One day in the summer of '93, Colonel Culpepper was sitting in his office reading a letter from Vermont demanding a long-deferred interest payment on a mortgage. There were three hundred dollars due, and the colonel had but half that amount, and was going to send what he had. Jake Dolan came into the office and saw the colonel sitting with the letter crumpled in his hands, and with worry in the dull old eyes.

"Come in, Jake, come in," cried the colonel, a little huskily. "What's the trouble, comrade—what's wrong?"

But let Dolan tell it to Hendricks three days later, as the two are sitting at night on the stone bridge across the Sycamore built by John Barclay to commemorate the battle of Sycamore Ridge. "'Well, Mart,' says I, 'I'm in vicarious trouble,' says I. 'It's along of my orphan asylum,' says I. 'What orphan asylum?' says he. 'Well, it's this way, Mart,' says I. 'You know they found Trixie Lee guilty this afternoon in the justice court, don't you?' Mart sighs and says, 'Poor Trixie, I supposed they would sooner or later, poor girl—poor girl. An' old Cap Lee of the Red Legs was her father; did you know that, Jake?' he asks. 'Yes, Mart,' says I, 'and Lady Lee before her. She comes by it honestly.' Mart sat drumming with his fingers on the table, looking back into the years. 'Poor Jim,' he says, 'Jim was a brave soldier—a brave, big-hearted, generous soldier—he nursed me all that first night at Wilson's Creek when I was wounded. Poor Jim.' 'Yes,' says I, 'and Trixie has named her boy for him—Jim Lord Lee Young; that was her husband's name—Young,' says I. 'And it's along of the boy that I'm here for. The nicest bright-eyed little chap you ever saw; and he seems to know that something is wrong, and just clings to his mother and cries—seven years old, or maybe eight—and begs me not to put his mother in jail. And,' says I to Mart, 'Mart, I just can't do it. The sheriff he's run, and so has the deputy; they can't stand the boy crying, and damn it to hell, Mart, I can't, either; so I just left 'em in the office and locked the door and come around to see you. I'd 'a' gone to see Bob, only he's out of town this week,' I says. 'I can throw up the job, Mart—though I'd have to go on the county; but Mart, they ain't a soul for the boy to go to; and it ain't right to put him in jail with the scum that's in there.'"