"Late hours, Sylvia," said Professor Kelton when they were alone. "It's nearly eleven o'clock and time to turn in."



CHAPTER IV

WE LEARN MORE OF SYLVIA

Andrew Kelton put out his hand to say good-night a moment after Sylvia had vanished.

"Sit down, Andrew," said Mrs. Owen. "It's too early to go to bed. That draft's not good for the back of your head. Sit over here."

He had relaxed after the departure of the dinner guests and looked tired and discouraged. Mrs. Owen brought a bottle of whiskey and a pitcher of water and placed them near his elbow.

"Try it, Andrew. I usually take a thimbleful myself before going to bed."

The novelty of this sort of ministration was in itself sufficient to lift a weary and discouraged spirit. Mrs. Owen measured his whiskey, and poured it into a tall glass, explaining as she did so that a friend of hers in Louisville kept her supplied out of the stores of the Pendennis Club.

"It's off the wood. This bottled drug-store whiskey is poison. I'd just as lief take paregoric. I drew this from my own 'bar'l' this morning. Don't imagine I'm a heavy consumer. A 'bar'l' lasts me a long time. I divide it around among my friends. Remind me to give you some to take home. Try one of those cigars; John Ware keeps a box here. If they're cabbage leaf it isn't my fault."

"No, thanks, Sally. You're altogether too kind to me. It's mighty good to be here, I can tell you."

"Now that you are here, Andrew, I want you to remember that I'm getting on and you're just a trifle ahead of me on the dusty pike that has no turning."

"I wish I had your eternal youth, Sally. I feel about ninety-nine to-night."

"That's the reason I'm keeping you up. You came here to talk about something that's on your mind, and the sooner it's over the better. No use in your lying awake all night."

Professor Kelton played with his glass and moved uneasily in his chair.

"Come right out with it, Andrew. If it's money that worries you, don't waste any time explaining how it happened; just tell me how much. I had my bank book balanced yesterday and I've got exactly twelve thousand four hundred and eighteen dollars and eleven cents down at Tom Adams's bank. If you can use it you're welcome; if it ain't enough I'm about to sell a bunch o' colts I've got on my Lexington place and they're good for six thousand more. I can close the trade by a night telegram right now."

Kelton laughed. The sums she named so lightly represented wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. It afforded him infinite relief to be able to talk to her, and though he had come to the city for the purpose, his adventures of the day with banks and trust companies had given a new direction to his needs. But the habit of secrecy, of fighting out his battles alone, was so thoroughly established that he found it difficult to enter into confidences even when this kind-hearted friend made the way easy for him.

"Come, out with it, Andrew. You're the only person I know who's never come to me with troubles. I'd begun to think you were among the lucky ones who never have any or else you were afraid of me."

"It's not fair to trouble you about this, but I'm in a corner where I need help. When I asked you to let me bring Sylvia here I merely wanted you to look her over. She's got to an age where I can't trust my judgment about her. I had a plan for her that I thought I could put through without much trouble, but I found out to-day that it isn't so easy. I wanted to send her to college."

"You want to send her to college and you thought you would come over and let me give her a little motherly counsel while you borrowed the money of Tom Adams to pay her college bills. Is that what's happened?"

"Just about that, Sally. Adams is all right; he has to protect the bank."

"Adams is a doddering imbecile. How much did you ask him for?"

"Five thousand dollars. I offered to put up my life insurance policy for that amount and some stock I own. He said money was tight just now and they'd want a good name on the paper besides the collateral, and that I'd better try my home bank. I didn't do that, of course, because Montgomery is a small town and—well, I'd rather not advertise my affairs to a whole community. I'm not a business man and these things all seem terribly complicated and embarrassing to me."

"But you tried other places besides Adams? I saw it in your eye when you came home this evening that you had struck a snag. Well, well! So money is tight, is it? I must speak to Tom Adams about that. He told me yesterday they had more money than they could lend and that the banks were cutting down their dividends. He's no banker; he ought to be in the old-clothes business."

"I can't blame him. I suppose my not being in business, and not living here, makes a difference."

"Rubbish! But you ought to have come to me. You spoke of stock; what's that in?"

"Shares in the White River Canneries. I put all I had in that company. Everybody seemed to make money in the canning business and I thought it would be a good investment. It promised well in the prospectus."

"It always does, Andrew," replied the old lady dryly. "Let me see, Morton Bassett was in that."

"I believe so. He was one of the organizers."

"Um."

"Adams told me to-day there had been a reorganization and that my shares were valueless."

"Well, well. So you were one of the suckers that put money into that canning scheme. You can charge it off, Andrew. Let's drop the money question for a minute, I want to talk about the little girl."

"Yes I'm anxious to know what you think of her"

"Well, she's a Kelton; it's in the eyes; but there's a good deal of her Grandmother Evans in her, too. Let me see,—your wife was one of those Posey County Evanses? I remember perfectly. The old original Evans came to this country with Robert Owen and started in with the New Harmony community down there. There was a streak o' genius in that whole set. But about Sylvia. I don't think I ever saw Sylvia's mother after she was Sylvia's age."

"I don't think you did. She was away at school a good many years. Sylvia is the picture of her mother. It's a striking likeness; but their natures are wholly different."

He was very grave, and the despondency that he had begun to throw off settled upon him again.

"Andrew, who was Sylvia's father? I never asked you that question before, and maybe I oughtn't to ask it now; but I've often wondered. Let me see, what was your daughter's name?"

"Edna."

"Just what happened to Edna, Andrew?" she persisted.

Kelton rose and paced the floor. Thrice he crossed the room; then he flung himself down on the davenport beside Mrs. Owen.

"I don't know, Sally; I don't know! She was high-spirited as a girl, a little willful and impulsive, but with the best heart in the world. She lost her mother too soon; and in her girlhood we had no home—not even the half-homes possible to naval officers. She had a good natural voice and wanted to study music, so after we had been settled at Madison College a year I left her in New York with a woman I knew pretty well—the widow of a brother officer. It was a horrible, terrible, hideous mistake. The life of the city went to her head. She wanted to fit herself for the stage and they told me she could do it—had the gift and all that. I ought never to have left her down there, but what could I do? There was nothing in a town like Montgomery for her; she wouldn't listen to it."

"You did your best, Andrew; you don't have to prove that to me. Well—"

"Edna ran off—without giving me any hint of what was coming. It was a queer business. The woman I had counted on to look out for her and protect her seemed utterly astonished at her disappearance and was helpless about the whole matter when I went down there. It was my fault—all my fault!"

He rose and flung up his arms with a gesture of passionate despair.

"Sit down, Andrew, and let's go through with it," she said calmly. "I reckon these things are hard, but it's better for you to tell me. You can't tell everybody and somebody ought to know. For the sake of the little girl upstairs you'd better tell me."

"What I've said to you I've never said to a soul," he went on. "I've carried this thing all these years and have never mentioned it. My friends at the college are the noblest people on earth; they have never asked questions, but they must have wondered."

"Yes; and I've wondered, too, since the first time you came here and told me you had brought your daughter's child home. It's perfectly natural, Andrew, for folks to wonder. Go on and tell me the rest."

"The rest!" he cried. "Oh, that's the hardest part of it! I have told you all I know! She wrote me after a time that she was married and was happy, but she didn't explain her conduct in any way. She signed herself Garrison, but begged me not to try to find her. She said her husband wasn't quite prepared to disclose his marriage to his family, but that it would all be right soon. The woman with whom I had left her couldn't help me to identify him in any way; at least she didn't help me. There had been a number of young men boarding in the neighborhood—medical and law students; but there was no Garrison among them. It was in June that this happened, and when I went down to try to trace her they had all gone. I was never quite sure whether the woman dealt squarely with me or not. But it was my fault, Sally; I want you to know that I have no excuse to offer. I don't want you to try to say anything that would make my lot easier."

It was not Sally Owen's way to extenuate errors of commission or omission. Her mental processes were always singularly direct.

"Are you sure she was married; did you find any proof of it?" she asked bluntly.

He was silent for a moment before he met her eyes.

"I have no proof of it. All I have is Edna's assurance in a letter."

Their gaze held while they read each other's thoughts. She made no comment; there was nothing to say to this, nor did she show surprise or repugnance at the dark shadow his answer had flung across the meagre picture.

"And Garrison—who was he?"

"I don't know even that! From all I could learn I think it likely he was a student in one of the professional schools; but whether law or medicine, art or music—I couldn't determine. The whole colony of students had scattered to the four winds. Probably Garrison was not his real name; but that is wholly an assumption."

"It's clear enough that whoever the man was, and whether it was straight or not, Edna felt bound to shield him. That's just like us fool women. How did Sylvia come to your hands?"

"There was nothing in that to help. About four years had passed since I lost track of her and I had traveled all over the East and followed every clue in vain. I spent two summers in New York walking the streets in the blind hope that I might meet her. Then, one day,—this was twelve years ago,—I had a telegram from the superintendent of a public hospital at Utica that Edna was there very ill. She died before I got there. Just how she came to be in that particular place I have no idea. The hospital authorities knew nothing except that she had gone to them, apparently from the train, seriously ill. The little girl was with her. She asked them to send for me, but told them nothing of herself. She had only hand baggage and it told us nothing as to her home if she had one, or where she was going. Her clothing, the nurse pointed out, was of a style several years old, but it was clean and neat. Most surprising of all, she had with her several hundred dollars; but there was nothing whatever by which to reconstruct her life in those blank years."

"But she wrote to you—the letters would have given a clue of some kind?"

"The few letters she wrote me were the most fragmentary and all in the first year; they were like her, poor child; her letters were always the merest scraps. In all of them she said she would come home in due course; that some of her husband's affairs had to be straightened out first, and that she was perfectly happy. They were traveling about, she said, and she asked me not to try to write to her. The first letters came from Canada—Montreal and Quebec; then one from Albany; then even these messages ceased and I heard no more until the telegram called me to Utica. She had never mentioned the birth of the child. I don't know—I don't even know where Sylvia was born, or her exact age. The nurse at the hospital said Edna called the child Sylvia."

"I overheard Sylvia telling Ware to-night that she was born in New York. Could it be possible—"

"No; she knows nothing. You must remember that she was only three. When she began to ask me when her birthday came—well, Sally, I felt that I'd better give her one; and I told her, too, that she was born in New York City. You understand—?"

"Of course, Andrew. You did perfectly right. She's likely to ask a good many questions now that she's growing up."

"Oh," he cried despairingly, "she's already asked them! It's a heartbreaking business, I tell you. Many a time when she's piped up in our walks or at the table with some question about her father and mother I've ignored it or feigned not to hear; but within the past year or two I've had to fashion a background for her. I've surrounded her origin and antecedents with a whole tissue of lies. But, Sally, it must have been all right—I had Edna's own word for it!" he pleaded brokenly. "It must have been all right!"

"Well, what if it wasn't! Does it make any difference about the girl? All this mystery is a good thing; the denser the better maybe, as long as there's any doubt at all. Your good name protects her; it's a good name, Andrew. But go on; you may as well tell me the whole business."

"I've told you all I know; and as I've told it I've realized more than before how pitifully little it is."

"Well, there's nothing to do about that. I've never seen any sense in worrying over what's done. It's the future you've got to figure on for Sylvia. So you think college is a good thing for girls—for a girl like Sylvia?"

"Yes; but I want your opinion. You're the only person in the world I can talk to; it's helped me more than I can tell you to shift some of this burden to you. Maybe it isn't fair; you're a busy woman—"

"I guess I'm not so busy. I've been getting lazy, and needed a hard jolt. I've been wondering a good deal about these girls' colleges. Some of this new woman business looks awful queer to me, but so did the electric light and the telephone a few years ago and I can even remember when people were likely to drop dead when they got their first telegram. Sylvia isn't"—she hesitated for an instant—"from what you say, Sylvia isn't much like her mother?"

"No. Her qualities are wholly different. Edna had a different mind altogether. There was nothing of the student about her. The only thing that interested her was music, and that came natural to her. I've studied Sylvia carefully,—I'm ashamed to confess how carefully,—fearing that she would grow to be like her mother; but she's another sort, and I doubt if she will change. You can already see the woman in her. That child, Sally, has in her the making of a great woman. I've been careful not to crowd her, but she has a wonderful mind,—not the brilliant sort that half sees things in lightning flashes, but a vigorous mind, that can grapple with a problem and fight it out. I'm afraid to tell you how remarkable I think she is. No; poor Edna was not like that. She hated study."

"Sylvia's very quiet, but I reckon she takes everything in. It's in her eyes that she's different. And I guess that quietness means she's got power locked up in her. Children do show it. Now Marian, my grandniece, is a different sort. She's a forthputting youngster that's going to be hard to break to harness. She looks pretty, grazing in the pasture and kicking up her heels, but I don't see what class she's going to fit into. Now, Hallie,—my niece, Mrs. Bassett,—she's one of these club fussers,—always studying poetry and reading papers and coming up to town to state conventions or federations and speaking pieces in a new hat. Hallie's smart at it. She was president of the Daughters once, by way of showing that our folks in North Carolina fought in the Revolution, which I reckon they did; though I never saw where Hallie proved it; but the speech I heard her make at the Propylaeum wouldn't have jarred things much if it hadn't been for Hallie's feathers. She likes her clothes—she always had 'em, you know. My brother Blackford left her a very nice fortune; and Morton Bassett makes money. Well, as I started to say, there's all kinds of women,—the old ones like me that never went to school much, and Hallie's kind, that sort o' walked through the orchard and picked the nearest peaches, and then starts in at thirty to take courses in Italian Art, and Marian, who gives her teachers nervous prostration, and Sylvia, who takes to books naturally."

"There are all kinds of girls, just as there are all kinds of boys. Good students, real scholars have always been rare in the world—men and women. I should like to see Sylvia go high and far; I should like her to have every chance."

"All right, Andrew; let's do it. How much does a college course cost for a girl?"

"I didn't come here to interest you in the money side of it, Sally; I expected—"

"Answer my question, Andrew."

"I had expected to give her a four-year course for five thousand dollars. The actual tuition isn't so much; it's railroad fare, clothing, and other expenses."

Mrs. Owen turned towards Kelton with a smile on her kind, shrewd face.

"Andrew, just to please me, I want you to let me be partners with you in this. What you've told me and what I've seen of that little girl have clinched me pretty strong. I wish she was mine! My little Elizabeth would be a grown woman if she'd lived; and because of her I like to help other people's little girls; you know I helped start Elizabeth House, a home for working girls—and I'm getting my money back on that a thousand times over. It's a pretty state of things if an old woman like me, without a chick of my own, and with no sense but horse sense, can't back a likely filly like your Sylvia. I want you to let me call her our Sylvia. We'll train her in all the paces, Andrew, and I hope one of us will live to see her strike the home stretch. Come into my office a minute," she said, rising and leading the way.

The appointments of her "office" were plain and substantial. A flat-topped desk stood in the middle of the room—a relic of the lamented Jackson Owen; in one corner was an old-fashioned iron safe in which she kept her account books. A print of Maud S. adorned one wall, and facing it across the room hung a lithograph of Thomas A. Hendricks. Twice a week a young woman came to assist Mrs. Owen with her correspondence and accounts,—a concession to age, for until she was well along in the fifties Sally Owen had managed these things alone.

"You've seen my picture-gallery before, Andrew? Small but select. I knew both the lady and the gentleman," she continued, with one of her humorous flashes. "I went to Cleveland in '85 to see Maud S. She ate up a mile in 2:08-3/4—the prettiest thing I ever saw. You know Bonner bought her as a four-year-old—the same Bonner that owned the 'New York Ledger.' I used to read the 'Ledger' clear through, when Henry Ward Beecher and Fanny Fern wrote for it. None of these new magazines touch it. And you knew Tom Hendricks? That's a good picture. Tom looked like a statesman anyhow, and that's more than most of 'em do."

She continued her efforts to divert his thoughts from the real matter at hand, summoning from the shadows all the Hoosier statesmen of the post-bellum period to aid her, and she purposely declared her admiration of several of these to provoke Kelton's ire.

"That's right, Andrew; jump on 'em," she laughed, as she drew from the desk a check book and began to write. When she had blotted and torn out the check she examined it carefully and placed it near him on the edge of her desk. "Now, Andrew Kelton, there's a check for six thousand dollars; we'll call that our educational fund. You furnish the girl; I put in the money. I only wish I had the girl to put into the business instead of the cash."

"But I don't need the money yet; I shan't need it till fall," he protested.

"That's all right. Fall's pretty close and you'll feel better if you have it. Now, you may count on more when that's gone if you want it. In case anything goes wrong with you or me it'll be fixed. I'll attend to it. I look on it as a good investment. Your note? Look here, Andrew Kelton, if you mention that life insurance to me again, I'll cut your acquaintance. You go to bed; and don't you ever let on to that baby upstairs that I have any hand in her schooling." She dropped her check book into a drawer and swung round in her swivel chair until she faced him. "I don't want to open up that affair of Sylvia's mother again, but there's always the possibility that something may happen. You know Edna's dead, but there's always a chance that Sylvia's father may turn up. It's not likely; but there's no telling about such things; and it wouldn't be quite fair for you to leave her unprepared if it should happen."

"There's one more circumstance I haven't told you about. It happened only a few days ago. It was that, in fact, which crystallized my own ideas about Sylvia's education. A letter was sent to me by a stranger, offering money for Sylvia's schooling. The whole thing was surrounded with the utmost secrecy."

"So? Then some one is watching Sylvia; keeping track of her, and must be kindly disposed from that. You never heard anything before?"

"Never. I was asked to send a verbal answer by the messenger who brought me the letter, accepting or declining the offer. I declined it."

"That was right. But there's no hiding anything in this world; you must have some idea where the offer came from."

"I haven't the slightest, not the remotest idea. The messenger was a stranger to me; from what Sylvia said he was a stranger at Montgomery and had never seen the college before. Time had begun to soften the whole thing, and the knowledge that some one has been watching the child all these years troubles me. It roused all my old resentment; I have hardly slept since it occurred."

"It's queer; but you'd better try to forget it. Somebody's conscience is hurting, I reckon. I wouldn't know how to account for it in any other way. If it's a case of conscience, it may have satisfied itself by offering money; if it didn't, you or Sylvia may hear from it again."

"It's just that that hurts and worries me,—the possibility that this person may trouble Sylvia sometime when I am not here to help her. It's an awful thing for a woman to go out into the world followed by a shadow. It's so much worse for a woman; women are so helpless."

"Some of us, like me, are pretty tough, too. Sylvia will be able to take care of herself; you don't need to worry about her. If that's gnawing some man's conscience—and I reckon it is—you can forget all about it. A man's conscience—the kind of man that would abandon a woman he had married, or maybe hadn't married—ain't going to be a ghost that walks often. You'd better go to bed, Andrew."

Kelton lingered to smoke a cigar in the open. He had enjoyed to-night an experience that he had not known in years—that of unburdening himself to a kindly, sympathetic, and resourceful woman.

While they talked of her, Sylvia sat in her window-seat in the dark above looking at the stars. She lingered there until late, enjoying the cool air, and unwilling to terminate in sleep so eventful a day. She heard presently her grandfather's step below as he "stood watch," marking his brief course across the dim garden by the light of his cigar. Sylvia was very happy. She had for a few hours breathed the ampler ether of a new world; but she was unconscious in her dreaming that her girlhood, that had been as tranquil water safe from current and commotion, now felt the outward drawing of the tide.



CHAPTER V

INTRODUCING MR. DANIEL HARWOOD

On the day following the delivery to Andrew Kelton of the letter in which money for Sylvia's education was offered by an unknown person, the bearer of the message was to be seen at Indianapolis, in the law office of Wright and Fitch, attorneys and counselors at law, on the fourth floor of the White River Trust Company's building in Washington Street. In that office young Mr. Harwood was one of half a dozen students, who ran errands to the courts, kept the accounts, and otherwise made themselves useful.

Wright and Fitch was the principal law firm in the state in the period under scrutiny, as may readily be proved by an examination of the court dockets. The firm's practice was, however, limited. Persons anxious to mulct wicked corporations in damages for physical injuries did not apply to Wright and Fitch, for the excellent reason that this capable firm was retained by most of the public service corporations and had no time to waste on the petty and vexatious claims of minor litigants. Mr. Wright was a Republican, Mr. Fitch a Democrat, and each of these gentlemen occasionally raised his voice loud enough in politics to emphasize his party fealty. In the seventies Mr. Wright had served a term as city attorney; on the other hand, Mr. Fitch had once declined the Italian ambassadorship. Both had been mentioned at different times for the governorship or for the United States Senate, and both had declined to enter the lists for these offices.

Daniel Harwood had been graduated from Yale University a year before we first observed him, and though the world lay before him where to choose, he returned to his native state and gave himself to the study of law by day and earned a livelihood by serving the "Courier" newspaper by night. As Mr. Harwood is to appear frequently in this chronicle, it may be well to summarize briefly the facts of his history. He was born on a farm in Harrison County, and his aversion to farm life had been colored from earliest childhood by the difficulties his father experienced in wringing enough money out of eighty acres of land to buy food and clothing and to pay taxes and interest on an insatiable mortgage held somewhere by a ruthless life insurance company that seemed most unreasonably insistent in its collections. Daniel had two older brothers who, having satisfied their passion for enlightenment at the nearest schoolhouse, meekly enlisted under their father in the task of fighting the mortgage. Daniel, with a weaker hand and a better head, and with vastly more enterprise, resolved to go to Yale. This seemed the most fatuous, the most profane of ambitions. If college at all, why not the State University, to support which the Harwood eighty acres were taxed; but a college away off in Connecticut! There were no precedents for this in Harrison County. No Harwood within the memory of man had ever adventured farther into the unknown world than to the State Fair at Indianapolis; and when it came to education, both the judge of the Harrison County Circuit Court and the presiding elder of the district had climbed to fame without other education than that afforded by the common schools. Daniel's choice of Yale had been determined by the fact that a professor in that institution had once addressed the county teachers, and young Harwood had been greatly impressed by him. The Yale professor was the first graduate of an Eastern university that Daniel had ever seen, and he became the young Hoosier's ideal of elegance and learning. Daniel had acquired at this time all that the county school offered, and he made bold to approach the visitor and ask his advice as to the best means of getting to college.

We need not trace the devious course by which, after much burning of oil during half a dozen winters, Dan Harwood attained to a freshman's dignity at New Haven, where, arriving with his effects in a canvas telescope, he had found a scholarship awaiting him; nor need we do more than record the fact that he had cared for furnaces, taken the night shift on a trolley car, and otherwise earned money until, in his junior year, his income from newspaper correspondence and tutoring made further manual labor unnecessary. It is with profound regret that we cannot point to Harwood as a football hero or the mainstay of the crew. Having ploughed the mortgaged acres, and tossed hay and broken colts, college athletics struck him as rather puerile diversion. He would have been the least conspicuous man in college if he had not shone in debate and gathered up such prizes and honors as were accessible in that field. His big booming voice, recognizable above the din in all 'varsity demonstrations, earned for him the sobriquet of "Foghorn" Harwood. For the rest he studied early and late, and experienced the doubtful glory, and accepted meekly the reproach, of being a grind.

History and the dismal science had interested him immensely. His assiduous attention to the classes of Professor Sumner had not gone unnoticed by that eminent instructor, who once called him by name in Chapel Street, much to Dan's edification. He thought well of belles-lettres and for a time toyed with an ambition to enrich English literature with contributions of his own. During this period he contributed to the "Lit" a sonnet called "The Clam-Digger" which began:—

At rosy dawn I see thine argosy;

and which closed with the invocation:—

Fair tides reward thy long, laborious days.

The sonnet was neatly parodied in the "Record," and that journal printed a gratuitous defense of the fisherman at whom, presumably, the poem had been directed. "The sonnet discloses nothing," said the "Record," "as to the race, color, or previous condition of servitude of the unfortunate clammer to justify a son of Eli in attacking a poor man laudably engaged in a perfectly honorable calling. The sonneteer, coming, we believe, from the unsalt waters of the Wabash, seems to be unaware that the fisherman at whom he has leveled his tuneful lyre is not seeking fair tides but clams. We therefore suggest that the closing line of the sextette be amended to read—

Fair clams reward thy long, laborious days."

Harwood was liked by his fellow students in the law office. Two Yalensians, already established there, made his lot easier, and they combined against a lone Harvardian, who bitterly resented Harwood's habit of smoking a cob pipe in the library at night. The bouquet of Dan's pipe was pretty well dispelled by morning save to the discerning nostril of the harvard man, who protested against it, and said the offense was indictable at common law. Harwood stood stoutly for his rights and privileges, and for Yale democracy, which he declared his pipe exemplified. There was much good-natured banter of this sort in the office.

Harwood was busy filing papers when Mr. Fitch summoned him to his private room on the day indicated. Fitch was short, thin, and bald, with a clipped reddish beard, brown eyes, and a turn-up nose. He was considered a better lawyer than Wright, who was the orator of the firm, and its reliance in dealing with juries. In the preparation of briefs and in oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Fitch was the superior. His personal peculiarities had greatly Interested Harwood; as, for example, Fitch's manner of locking himself in his room for days at a time while he was preparing to write a brief, denying himself to all visitors, and only occasionally calling for books from the library. Then, when he had formulated his ideas, he summoned the stenographer and dictated at one sitting a brief that generally proved to be the reviewing court's own judgment of the case in hand. Some of Fitch's fellow practitioners intimated at times that he was tricky. In conferences with opposing counsel, one heard, he required watching, as he was wary of committing himself and it was difficult to discover what line of reasoning he elected to oppose or defend. In such conferences it was his fashion to begin any statement that might seem even remotely to bind him with the remark, "I'm just thinking aloud on that proposition and don't want to be bound by what I say." The students in the office, to whom he was unfailingly courteous, apostrophized him as "the fox." He called them all "Mister," and occasionally flattered them by presenting a hypothetical case for their consideration.

Fitch was sitting before the immaculate desk he affected (no one ever dared leave anything on it in his absence) when Harwood entered. The lawyer's chair was an enormous piece of furniture in which his small figure seemed to shrink and hide. His hands were thrust into his pockets, as they usually were, and he piped out "Good-Morning" in a high tenor voice.

"Shut the door, please, Mr. Harwood. What have you to report about your errand to Montgomery?"

He indicated with a nod the one chair in the room and Harwood seated himself.

"I found Professor Kelton without difficulty and presented the letter."

"You delivered the letter and you have told no one of your visit to Montgomery."

"No one, sir; no one knows I have been away from town. I handed the letter to the gentleman in his own house, alone, and he gave me his answer."

"Well?"

"No is the answer."

Fitch polished his eyeglasses with his handkerchief. He scrutinized Harwood carefully for a moment, then asked:—

"Did the gentleman—whose name, by the way, you have forgotten—"

"Yes, sir; I have quite forgotten it," Harwood replied promptly.

"Did he show any feeling—indignation, pique, as he read the letter?"

"No; but he read it carefully. His face showed pain, I should say, sir, rather than indignation. He gave his negative reply coldly—a little sharply. He was very courteous—a gentleman, I should say, beyond any question."

"I dare say. What kind of an establishment did he keep?"

"A small cottage, with books everywhere, right by the campus. A young girl let me in; she spoke of the professor as her grandfather. She went off to find him for me in the college library."

"A young person. What did she look like?"

"A dark young miss, with black hair tied with a red ribbon."

Fitch smiled.

"You are sure of the color, are you? This man lives there with his granddaughter, and the place was simple—comfortable, no luxuries. You had no conversation with him."

"I think we exchanged a word about the weather, which was warm."

Fitch smiled again. His was a rare smile, but it was worth waiting for.

"What did the trip cost you?"

Harwood named the amount and the lawyer drew a check book from his impeccable desk and wrote.

"I have added one hundred dollars for your services. This is a personal matter between you and me, and does not go on the office books. By the way, Mr. Harwood, what are you doing out there?" he asked, moving his head slightly toward the outer office.

"I'm reading law."

"Is it possible! The other youngsters in the office seem to be talking politics or reading newspapers most of the time. How do you manage to live?"

"I do some work for the 'Courier' from time to time."

"Ah! You are careful not to let your legal studies get mixed with the newspaper work?"

"Yes, sir. They put me on meetings, and other night assignments. As to the confidences of this office, you need have no fear of my—"

"I haven't, Mr. Harwood. Let me see. It was of you Professor Sumner wrote me last year; he's an old friend of mine. He said he thought you had a sinewy mind—a strong phrase for Sumner."

"He never told me that," said Dan, laughing. "He several times implied quite the reverse."

"He's a great man—Sumner. I suppose you absorbed a good many of his ideas at New Haven."

"I hope I did, sir: I believe in most of them anyhow."

"So do I, Mr. Harwood."

Fitch pointed to a huge pile of manuscript on a table by the window. It was a stenographic transcript of testimony in a case which had been lost in the trial court and was now going up on appeal.

"Digest that evidence and give me the gist of it in not more than five hundred words. That's all."

Harwood's hand was on the door when Fitch arrested him with a word.

"To recur to this private transaction between us, you have not the remotest idea what was in that letter, and nothing was said in the interview that gave you any hint—is that entirely correct?"

"Absolutely."

"Very well. I know nothing of the matter myself; I am merely accommodating a friend. We need not refer to this again."

When the door had closed, the lawyer wrote a brief note which he placed in his pocket, and dropped later into a letter-box with his own hand. Mr. Fitch, of the law firm of Wright and Fitch, was not in the habit of acting as agent in matters he didn't comprehend, and his part in Harwood's errand was not to his liking. He had spoken the truth when he said that he knew no more of the nature of the letter that had been carried to Professor Kelton than the messenger, and Harwood's replies to his interrogatories had told him nothing.

Many matters, however, pressed upon his attention and offered abundant exercise for his curiosity. With Harwood, too, pleased to have for the first time in his life one hundred dollars in cash, the incident was closed.



CHAPTER VI

HOME LIFE OF HOOSIER STATESMEN

In no other place can a young man so quickly attain wisdom as in a newspaper office. There the names of the good and great are playthings, and the bubble reputation is blown lightly, and as readily extinguished, as part of the day's business. No other employment offers so many excitements; in nothing else does the laborer live so truly behind the scenes. The stage is wide, the action varied and constant. The youngest tyro, watching from the wings, observes great incidents and becomes their hasty historian. The reporter's status is unique. Youth on the threshold of no other profession commands the same respect, gains audience so readily to the same august personages. Doors slammed in his face only flatter his self-importance. He becomes cynical as he sees how easily the spot light is made to flash upon the unworthiest figures by the flimsiest mechanism. He drops his plummet into shoal and deep water and from his contemplation of the wreck-littered shore grows skeptical of the wisdom of all pilots.

Harwood's connection with the "Courier" brought him in touch with politics, which interested him greatly. The "Courier" was the organ of the Democratic Party in the state, and though his father and brothers in the country were Republicans, Dan found himself more in sympathy with the views represented by the Democratic Party, even after it abandoned its ancient conservatism and became aggressively radical. About the time of Harwood's return to his native state the newspaper had changed hands. At least the corporation which had owned it for a number of years had apparently disposed of it, though the transaction had been effected so quietly that the public received no outward hint beyond the deletion of "Published by the Courier Newspaper Company" from the head of the editorial page. The "policy" of the paper continued unchanged; the editorial staff had not been disturbed; and in the counting-room there had been no revolution, though an utterly unknown man had appeared bearing the title of General Manager, which carried with it authority in all departments.

This person was supposed to represent the unknown proprietor, about whom there had been the liveliest speculation. The "Courier's" rivals gave much space to rumors, real and imaginary, as to the new ownership, attributing the purchase to a number of prominent politicians in rapid succession, and to syndicates that had never existed. It was an odd effect of the change in the "Courier's" ownership that almost immediately mystery seemed to envelop the editorial rooms. The managing editor, whose humors and moods fixed the tone of the office, may have been responsible, but whatever the cause a stricter discipline was manifest, and editors, reporters and copy-readers moved and labored with a consciousness that an unknown being walked among the desks, and hung over the forms to the very last moment before they were hurled to the stereotypers. The editorial writers—those astute counselors of the public who are half-revered and half-despised by their associates on the news side of every American newspaper—wrote uneasily under a mysterious, hidden censorship. It was possible that even the young woman who gleaned society news might, by some unfortunate slip, offend the invisible proprietor. But as time passed nothing happened. The imaginable opaque pane that separated the owner from the desks of the "Courier's" reporters and philosophers had disclosed no faintest shadow. Occasionally the managing editor was summoned below by the general manager, but the subordinates in the news department were unable, even by much careful study of their subsequent instructions, to grasp the slightest thread that might lead them to the concealed hand which swayed the "Courier's" destiny. It must be confessed that under this ghostly administration the paper improved. Every man did his best, and the circulation statements as published monthly indicated a widening constituency. Even the Sunday edition, long a forbidding and depressing hodge-podge of ill-chosen and ill-digested rubbish, began to show order and intelligence.

In October following his visit to Professor Kelton, Harwood was sent to Fraserville, the seat of Fraser County, to write a sketch of the Honorable Morton Bassett, in a series then adorning the Sunday supplement under the title, "Home Life of Hoosier Statesmen." The object of the series was frankly to aid the circulation manager's efforts to build up subscription lists in the rural districts, and personal sketches of local celebrities had proved potent in this endeavor. Most of the subjects that had fallen to Harwood's lot had been of a familiar type—country lawyers who sat in the legislature, or county chairmen, or judges of county courts. As the "Sunday Courier" eschewed politics, the series was not restricted to Democrats but included men of all faiths. It was Harwood's habit to spend a day in the towns he visited, gathering local color and collecting anecdotal matter.

While this employment cut deeply into his hours at the law office, he reasoned that there was a compensating advantage in the knowledge he gained on these excursions of the men of both political faiths.

Before the train stopped at Fraserville he saw from the car window the name "Bassett" written large on a towering elevator,—a fact which he noted carefully as offering a suggestion for the introductory line of his sketch. As he left the station and struck off toward the heart of the town, he was aware that Bassett was a name that appealed to the eye frequently. The Bassett Block and Bassett's Bank spoke not merely for a material prosperity, rare among the local statesmen he had described in the "Courier," but, judging from the prominence of the name in Fraserville nomenclature, he assumed that it had long been established in the community. Harwood had not previously faced a second generation in his pursuit of Hoosier celebrities, and he breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of a variation on the threadbare scenario of early hardship, the little red schoolhouse, patient industry, and the laborious attainment of meagre political honors—which had begun to bore him.

Harwood sought first the editor of the "Fraser County Democrat," who was also the "Courier's" Fraserville correspondent. Fraserville boasted two other newspapers, the "Republican," which offset the "Democrat" politically, and the "News," an independent afternoon daily whose function was to encourage strife between its weekly contemporaries and boom the commercial interests of the town. The editor of the "Democrat" was an extremely stout person, who sprawled at ease in a battered swivel chair, with his slippered feet thrown across a desk littered with newspapers, clippings, letters, and manuscript. A file hook was suspended on the wall over his shoulder, and on this it was his habit to impale, by a remarkable twist of body and arm, gems for his hebdomadal journal. He wrote on a pad held in his ample lap, the paste brush was within easy reach, and once planted on his throne the editor was established for the day. Bound volumes of the "Congressional Record" in their original wrappers were piled in a corner. A consular report, folded in half, was thrust under the editor's right thigh, easly accessible in ferocious moments when he indulged himself in the felicity of slaughtering the roaches with which the place swarmed. He gave Dan a limp fat hand, and cleared a chair of exchanges with one foot, which he thereupon laboriously restored to its accustomed place on the desk.

"So you're from the 'Courier'? Well, sir, you may tell your managing editor for me that if he doesn't print more of my stuff he can get somebody else on the job here."

Dan soothed Mr. Pettit's feelings as best he could; he confessed that his own best work was mercilessly cut; and that, after all, the editors of city newspapers were poor judges of the essential character of news. When Pettit's good humor had been restored, Dan broached the nature of his errand. As he mentioned Morton Bassett's name the huge editor's face grew blank for a moment; then he was shaken with mirth that passed from faint quivers until his whole frame was convulsed. His rickety chair trembled and rattled ominously. It was noiseless laughter so far as any vocal manifestations were concerned; but it shook the gigantic editor as though he were a mould of jelly. He closed his eyes, but otherwise his fat face was expressionless.

"Goin' to write Mort up, are you? Well, by gum! I've been readin' those pieces in the 'Courier.' Your work? Good writin'; mighty interestin' readin', as old Uncle Horace Greeley used to say. I guess you carry the whitewash brush along with you in your pilgrimages. You certainly did give Bill Ragsdale a clean bill o' health. That must have tickled the folks in Tecumseh County. Know Ragsdale? I've set with Bill in the lower house three sessions, and I come pretty near knowin' him. I don't say that Bill is crooked; but I suspect that if Bill's moral nature could be dug out and exposed to view it would be spiral like a bedspring; just about. It's an awful load on the Republican Party in this state, having to carry Bill Ragsdale. O Lord!"

He pursed his fat lips, and his eyes took on a far-away expression, as though some profound utterance had diverted his thoughts to remote realms of reverie. "So you're goin' to write Mort up; well, my God!"

The exact relevance of this was not apparent. Harwood had assumed on general principles that the Honorable Isaac Pettit, of the "Fraser County Democrat," was an humble and obedient servant of the Honorable Morton Bassett, and would cringe at the mention of his name. To be sure, Mr. Pettit had said nothing to disturb this belief; but neither had the editor manifested that meek submission for which the reporter had been prepared. The editor's Gargantuan girth trembled again. The spectacle he presented as he shook thus with inexplicable mirth was so funny that Harwood grinned; whereupon Pettit rubbed one of his great hands across his three-days' growth of beard, evoking a harsh rasping sound in which he seemed to find relief and satisfaction.

"You don't know Mort? Well, he's all right; he will he mighty nice to you. Mort's one of the best fellows on earth; you won't find anybody out here in Fraser County to say anything against Mort Bassett. No, sir; by God!"

Again the ponderous frame shook; again the mysterious look came into the man's curious small eyes, and Harwood witnessed another seismic disturbance in the bulk before him; then the Honorable Isaac Pettit grew serious.

"You want some facts for a starter. Well, I guess a few facts don't hurt in this business, providin' you don't push in too many of 'em."

He pondered for a moment, then went on, as though summarizing from a biography:—

"Only child of the late Jeremiah Bassett, founder of Bassett's Bank. Old Jerry was pure boiler plate; he could squeeze ten per cent interest out of a frozen parsnip. He and Blackford Singleton sort o' divided things up in this section. Jerry Bassett corralled the coin; Blackford rolled up a couple of hundred thousand and capped it with a United States senatorship. Mort's not forty yet; married only child of Blackford F. Singleton—Jerry made the match, I guess; it was the only way he could get Blackford's money. Mort prepared for college, but didn't go. Took his degree in law at Columbia, but never practiced. Always interested in politics; been in the state senate twelve years; two children, boy and girl. I guess Mort Bassett can do most anything he wants to—you can't tell where he'll land."

"But the next steps are obvious," suggested Harwood, encouragingly—"the governorship, the United States Senate—ever onward and upward."

"Well, yes; but you never know anything from him. We don't know, and you might think we'd understand him pretty well up here. He declined to go to Congress from this district—could have had it without turning a hand; but he put in his man and stayed in the state senate. I reckon he cuts some ice there, but he's mighty quiet. Bassett doesn't beat the tom-tom to call attention to himself. I guess no man swings more influence in a state convention—but he's peculiar. You'll find him different from these yahoos you've been writin' up. I know 'em all."

"A man of influence and power—leading citizen in every sense—" Dan murmured as he scribbled a few notes.

"Yep. Mort's considered rich. You may have noticed his name printed on most everything but the undertaker's and the jail as you came up from the station. The elevator and the bank he inherited from his pap. Mort's got a finger in most everything 'round here."

"Owns everything," said Harwood, with an attempt at facetiousness, "except the brewery."

Mr. Pettit's eyes opened wide, and then closed; again he was mirth-shaken; it seemed that the idea of linking Morton Bassett's name with the manufacture of malt liquor was the most stupendous joke possible. The editor's face did not change expression; the internal disturbances were not more violent this time, but they continued longer; when the strange spasm had passed he dug a fat fist into a tearful right eye and was calm.

"Oh, my God," he blurted huskily. "Breweries? Let us say that he neither makes nor consumes malt, vinous nor spirituous liquor, within the meaning of the statutes in such cases made and provided. He and Ed Thatcher make a strong team. Ed started out as a brewer, but there's nothing wrong about that, I reckon. Over in England they make lords and dukes of brewers."

"A man of rectitude—enshrined in the hearts of his fellow-citizens, popular and all that?" suggested Harwood.

Yes. Mort rather retains his heat, I guess. Some say he's cold as ice. His ice is the kind that freezes to what he likes. Mort's a gentleman if we have one in Fraser County. If you think you're chasin' one of these blue jeans politicians you read about in comic papers you're hitting the wrong trail, son. Mort can eat with a fork without appearin' self-conscious. Good Lord, boy, if you can say these other fellows in Indiana politics have brains, you got to say that Mort Bassett has intellect. Which is different, son; a dern sight different."

"I shall be glad to use the word in my sketch of Mr. Bassett," remarked Dan dryly. "It will lend variety to the series."

Harwood thanked the editor for his courtesy and walked to the door. Strange creakings from the editorial chair caused him to turn. The Honorable Isaac Pettit was in the throes of another convulsion. The attack seemed more severe than its predecessors. Dan waited for him to invoke deity with the asthmatic wheeziness to which mirth reduced his vocal apparatus.

"It's nothin', son; it's nothin'. It's my temperament: I can't help it. Did you say you were from the 'Courier'? Well, you better give Mort a good send-off. He appreciates a good job; he's a sort o' literary cuss himself."

As another mirthful spasm seemed imminent Dan retired, wondering just what in himself or in his errand had so moved the fat editor's risibilities. He learned at the Bassett Bank that Mr. Bassett was spending the day in a neighboring town, but would be home at six o'clock, so he surveyed Fraserville and killed time until evening, eating luncheon and supper with sundry commercial travelers at the Grand Hotel.

Harwood's instructions were in every case to take the subjects of his sketches at their own valuation and to set them forth sympathetically. The ambitions of most of the gentlemen he had interviewed had been obvious—obvious and futile. Nearly every man who reached the legislature felt a higher call to Congress or the governor's chair. Harwood had already described in the "Courier" the attainments of several statesmen who were willing to sacrifice their private interests for the high seat at the state capitol. The pettiness and sordidness of most of the politicians he met struck him humorously, but the tone of his articles was uniformly laudatory.

When the iron gate clicked behind him at the Bassett residence, his notebook was still barren of such anecdotes of his subject as he had usually gathered in like cases in an afternoon spent at the court-house. Stories of generosity, of the kindly care of widows and orphans, gifts to indigent pastors, boys helped through college, and similar benefactions had proved altogether elusive. Either Harwood had sought in the wrong places or Morton Bassett was of tougher fibre than the other gentlemen on whom his pencil had conferred immortality. In response to his ring a boy opened the door and admitted him without parley. He had a card ready to offer, but the lad ran to announce him without waiting for his name and reappeared promptly.

"Papa says to come right in, sir," the boy reported.

Dan caught a glimpse of a girl at the piano in the parlor who turned to glance at him and continued her playing. The lad indicated an open door midway of the long hall and waited for Harwood to enter. A lady, carrying a small workbasket in her hand, bade the reporter good-evening as she passed out. On a table in the middle of the room a checkerboard's white and black belligerents stood at truce, and from the interrupted game rose a thick-set man of medium height, with dark hair and a close-trimmed mustache, who came toward him inquiringly.

"Good-evening. I am Mr. Bassett. Have a chair."

Harwood felt the guilt of his intrusion upon a scene so sheltered and domestic. The father had evidently been playing checkers with his son; the mother's chair still rocked by another table on which stood a reading lamp.

Harwood stated his errand, and Bassett merely nodded, offering none of those protestations of surprise and humility, those pleas of unworthiness that his predecessors on Dan's list had usually insisted upon. Dan made mental note at once of the figure before him. Bassett's jaw was square and firm—power was manifest there, unmistakably, and his bristling mustache suggested combativeness. His dark eyes met Harwood's gaze steadily—hardness might be there, though their gaze was friendly enough. His voice was deep and its tone was pleasant. He opened a drawer and produced a box of cigars.

"Won't you smoke? I don't smoke myself, but you mustn't mind that." And Harwood accepted a cigar, which he found excellent. A moment later a maid placed on the table beside the checkerboard a tray, with a decanter and glasses, and a pitcher of water.

"That's for us," remarked Bassett, nodding toward the glasses. "Help yourself."

"The cigar is all I need; thank you."

The reporter was prepared to ask questions, following a routine he had employed with other subjects, but Bassett began to talk on his own initiative—of the town, the county, the district. He expressed himself well, in terse words and phrases. Harwood did not attempt to direct or lead: Bassett had taken the interview into his own hands, and was imparting information that might have been derived from a local history at the town library. Dan ceased, after a time, to follow the narrative in his absorption in the man himself. Harwood took his politics seriously and the petty politicians with whom he had thus far become acquainted in his newspaper work had impressed him chiefly by their bigotry or venality. It was not for nothing that he had worshiped at Sumner's feet at Yale and he held views that were not readily reconcilable with parochial boss-ships and the meek swallowing of machine-made platforms. Bassett was not the vulgar, intimate good-fellow who slapped every man on the back—the teller of good stories over a glass of whiskey and a cigar. He was, as Pettit had said, a new type, not of the familiar cliche. The decanter was a "property" placed in the scene at the dictates of hospitality; the checkerboard canceled any suggestion of conviviality that might have been conveyed by the decanter of whiskey.

Bassett's right hand lay on the table and Dan found himself watching it. It was broad but not heavy; the fingers that opened and shut quietly on a small paperweight were supple. It was a hand that would deal few blows, but hard ones. Harwood was aware, at a moment when he began to be bored by the bald facts of local history, that Bassett had abruptly switched the subject.

"Parties are necessary to democratic government. I don't believe merely in my own party; I want the opposition to be strong enough to make a fight. The people are better satisfied if there's a contest for the offices. I'm not sorry when we lose occasionally; defeat disciplines and strengthens a party. I have made a point in our little local affairs of not fighting independents when they break with us for any reason. Believing as I do that parties are essential, and that schismatic movements are futile, I make a point of not attacking them. Their failures strengthen the party—and incidentally kill the men who have kicked out of the traces. You never have to bother with them a second time."

"But they help clear the air—they serve a purpose?" suggested Harwood. He had acquired a taste for the "Nation" and the New York "Evening Post" at college, and Bassett's frank statement of his political opinions struck Dan as mediaeval. He was, however, instinctively a reporter, and he refrained from interposing himself further than was necessary to stimulate the talk of the man before him.

"You are quite right, Mr. Harwood. They serve an excellent purpose. They provide an outlet; they serve as a safety valve. Now and then they will win a fight, and that's a good thing too, for they will prove, on experiment, that they are just as human and weak in practical application of their ideas as the rest of us. I'd even go as far as to say that in certain circumstances I'd let them win. They help drive home my idea that the old parties, like old, established business houses, have got to maintain a standard or they will lose the business to which they are rightfully entitled. When you see your customers passing your front door to try a new shop farther up the street, you want to sit down and consider what's the matter, and devise means of regaining your lost ground. It doesn't pay merely to ridicule the new man or cry that his goods are inferior. Yours have got to be superior—or"—and the gray eyes twinkled for the first time—"they must be dressed up to look better in your show window."

Bassett rose and walked the length of the room, with his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, and before he sat down he poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher and drank it slowly, with an air of preoccupation. He moved easily, with a quicker step than might have been expected in one of his figure. The strength of his hand was also in the firm line of his vigorous, well-knit frame. And his rather large head, Dan observed, rested solidly on broad shoulders.

Harwood's thoughts were, however, given another turn at once. Morton Bassett had said all he cared to say about politics and he now asked Dan whether he was a college man, to which prompting the reporter recited succinctly the annals of his life.

"You're a Harrison County boy, are you? So you didn't like the farm, and found a way out? That's good. You may be interested in some of my books."

Dan was immediately on guard against being bored; the library of even an intelligent local statesman like Morton Bassett was hardly likely to prove interesting. One of his earlier subjects had asked him particularly to mention his library, which consisted mainly of government reports.

"I've been a collector of Americana," Bassett remarked, throwing open several cases. "I've gone in for colonial history, particularly, and some of these things are pretty rare."

The shelves rose to the ceiling and Bassett produced a ladder that he might hand down a few of the more interesting volumes for Dan's closer inspection.

"Here's Wainwright's 'Brief Description of the Ohio River, With some Account of the Savages Living Thereon'—published in London in 1732, and there are only three copies in existence. This is Atterbury's 'Chronicle of the Chesapeake Settlements'—the best thing I have. The author was an English sailor who joined the colonists in the Revolution and published a little memoir of his adventures in America. The only other copy of that known to exist is in the British Museum. I fished mine out of a pile of junk in Baltimore about ten years ago. When I get old and have time on my hands I'm going to reprint some of these—wide margins, and footnotes, and that sort of thing. But there's fun enough now in just having them and knowing the other fellow hasn't!"

He flung open a panel of the wainscoting at a point still free of shelves and disclosed a door of a small iron safe which he opened with a key. "This isn't the family silver, but a few little things that are more valuable. These are first editions of American authors. Here's Lowell's 'Fable for Critics,' first edition; and this is Emerson's 'Nature,' 1836—a first. These are bound by Orpcutt; had them done myself. They feel good to the hand, don't they!"

Harwood's pleasure in the beautiful specimens of the binder's art was unfeigned and to his questioning Bassett dilated upon the craftsmanship.

"The red morocco of the Emerson takes the gold tooling beautifully, and the oak-leaf border design couldn't be finer. I believe this olive-green shade is the best of all. This Whittier—a first edition of 'In War Time'—is by Durand, a French artist, and one of the best specimens of his work."

Those strong hands of his touched the beautiful books fondly. Harwood took advantage of a moment when Bassett carried to the lamp Lowell's "Under the Willows" in gold and brown, the better to display the deft workmanship, to look more closely at the owner of these lovely baubles. The iron hand could be very gentle! Bassett touched the volume caressingly as he called attention to its perfection. His face, in the lamp's full light, softened, but there was in it no hint of sensuousness to prepare one for this indulgence in luxurious bibliomania. There was a childlike simplicity in Bassett's delight. A man who enjoyed such playthings could not be hard, and Dan's heart warmed with liking.

"Are you a reader of poetry?" asked Dan, as Bassett carefully collected the books and returned them to the safe.

"No. That is something we leave behind us with our youth," he said; and looking down at the bent head and sturdy shoulders, and watching the strong fingers turning the key, Dan wondered what the man's youth had been and what elements were mixed in him that soft textures of leather and delicate tracings of gold on brown and scarlet and olive could so delight him. His rather jaunty attitude toward the "Home Life of Hoosier Statesmen" experienced a change. Morton Bassett was not a man who could be hit off in a few hundred words, but a complex character he did not pretend to understand. Threads of various hues had passed before him, but how to intertwine them was a question that already puzzled the reporter. Bassett had rested his hand on Dan's shoulder for a moment as the younger man bent over one of the prized volumes, and Dan was not insensible to the friendliness of the act.

Mrs. Bassett and the two children appeared at the door a little later.

"Come in, Hallie," said the politician; "all of you come in."

He introduced the reporter to his wife and to Marian, the daughter, and Blackford, the son.

"The children were just going up," said Mrs. Bassett. "As it's Saturday they have an hour added to their evening. I think I heard Mr. Bassett talking of books a moment ago. It's not often he brings out his first editions for a visitor."

They talked of books for a moment, while the children listened. Then Bassett recurred to the fact, already elicited, that Harwood was a Yale man, whereupon colleges were discussed.

"Many of our small fresh-water colleges do excellent work," remarked Bassett. "Some educator has explained the difference between large and small colleges by saying that in the large one the boy goes through more college, but in the small one more college goes through the boy. Of course I'm not implying, Mr. Harwood, that that was true in your case."

"Oh, I'm not sensitive about that, Mr. Bassett. And I beg not to be taken as an example of what Yale does for her students. Some of the smaller colleges stand for the best things; there's Madison College, here in our own state—its standards are severely high, and the place itself has quality, atmosphere—you feel, even as a casual visitor, that it's the real thing."

"So I've always heard," remarked Mrs. Bassett. "My father always admired Madison. Strange to say, I have never been there. Are you acquainted in Montgomery?"

Bassett bent forward slightly at the question.

"I was there for an hour or so last spring; but I was in a hurry. I didn't even take time to run into my fraternity house, though I saw its banner on the outer wall."

"Your newspaper work must give you many interesting adventures," suggested the politician.

"Not always as pleasant as this, I assure you. But I'm a person of two occupations—I'm studying law, and my visit to Montgomery was on an errand for the office where I'm allowed to use the books in return for slight services of one kind and another. As a newspaper man I'm something of an impostor; I hope I'm only a passing pilgrim in the business."

Dan faced Mrs. Bassett as he made this explanation, and he was conscious, as he turned toward the master of the house, that Bassett was observing him intently. His gaze was so direct and searching that Harwood was disconcerted for a moment; then Bassett remarked carelessly,—

"I should think newspaper work a good training for the law. It drills faculties that a lawyer exercises constantly."

Mrs. Bassett now made it possible for Marian and young Blackford to contribute to the conversation.

"I'm going to Annapolis," announced the boy.

"You've had a change of heart," said his father, with a smile. "It was West Point last week."

"Well, it will be Annapolis next week," the lad declared; and then, as if to explain his abandonment of a military career, "In the Navy you get to see the world, and in the Army you're likely to be stuck away at some awful place on the Plains where you never see anything. The Indians are nearly all killed anyhow."

"We hear a good deal nowadays about the higher education of woman," Mrs. Bassett remarked, "and I suppose girls should be prepared to earn their own living. Mothers of daughters have that to think about."

Miss Marian, catching Dan's eye, smiled as though to express her full appreciation of the humor of her mother's remark.

"Mama learned that from my Aunt Sally," she ventured; and Dan saw that she was an independent spirit, given to daring sayings, and indulged in them by her parents.

"Well, Aunt Sally is the wisest woman in the world," replied Mrs. Bassett, with emphasis. "It would be to your credit if you followed her, my dear."

Marian ignored her mother's rebuke and addressed herself to the visitor.

"Aunt Sally lives in Indianapolis and I go there to Miss Waring's School. I'm just home for Sunday."

"Mrs. Owen is my aunt; you may have heard of her, Mr. Harwood; she was my father's only sister."

"Oh, the Mrs. Owen! Of course every one has heard of her; and I knew that she was Senator Singleton's sister. I am sorry to say I don't know her."

Unconsciously the sense of Morton Bassett's importance deepened. In marrying Mrs. Jackson Owen's niece Bassett had linked himself to the richest woman at the state capital. He had not encumbered himself with a crude wife from the countryside, but had married a woman with important connections. Blackford Singleton had been one of the leading men of the state, and Mrs. Owen, his sister, was not a negligible figure in the background against which the reporter saw he must sketch the Fraserville senator. Harwood had met the wives of other Hoosier statesmen—uninteresting creatures in the main, and palpably of little assistance to ambitious husbands.

It appeared that the Bassetts spent their summers at their cottage on Lake Waupegan and that Mrs. Owen had a farm near them. It was clear that Bassett enjoyed his family. He fell into a chaffing way with his children and laughed heartily at Marian's forwardness. He met his son on the lad's own note of self-importance and connived with him to provoke her amusing impertinences.

Bassett imposed no restrictions upon Harwood's pencil, and this, too, was a novel experience. His predecessors on the list of leaders in Hoosier politics had not been backward about making suggestions, but Bassett did not refer to Harwood's errand at all. When Dan asked for photographs of Mrs. Bassett and the children with which to embellish his article, Bassett declined to give them with a firmness that ended the matter; but he promised to provide photographs of the house and grounds and of the Waupegan cottage and send them to Harwood in a day or two.

* * * * *

Harwood gave to his sketch of Morton Bassett a care which he had not bestowed upon any of his previous contributions to the "Courier's" series of Hoosier statesmen. He remained away from the law office two days the better to concentrate himself upon his task, and the result was a careful, straightforward article, into which he threw shadings of analysis and flashes of color that reflected very faithfully the impression made upon his mind by the senator from Fraser. The managing editor complained of its sobriety and lack of anecdote.

"It's good, Harwood, but it's too damned solemn. Can't you shoot a little ginger into it?"

"I've tried to paint the real Bassett. He isn't one of these raw hayseeds who hands you chestnuts out of patent medicine almanacs. I've tried to make a document that would tell the truth and at the same time please him."

"Why?" snapped the editor, pulling the green shade away from his eyes and glaring at the reporter.

"Because he's the sort of man you feel you'd like to please! He's the only one of these fellows I've tackled who didn't tell me a lot of highfalutin rot they wanted put into the article. Bassett didn't seem to care about it one way or another. I rewrote most of that stuff half a dozen times to be sure to get the punk out of it, because I knew he hated punk."

"You did, did you! Well, McNaughton of Tippecanoe County is the next standard-bearer you're to tackle, and you needn't be afraid to pin ribbons on him. You college fellows are all alike. Try to remember, Harwood, that this paper ain't the 'North American Review'; it's a newspaper for the plain people."

Dan, at some personal risk, saw to it that the illustrations were so minimized that it became unnecessary to sacrifice his text to accommodate it to the page set apart for it. He read his screed in type with considerable satisfaction, feeling that it was an honest piece of work and that it limned a portrait of Bassett that was vivid and truthful. The editor-in-chief inquired who had written it, and took occasion to commend Harwood for his good workmanship. A little later a clerk in the counting-room told him that Bassett had ordered a hundred copies of the issue containing the sketch, and this was consoling. Several other subjects had written their thanks, and Dan had rather hoped that Bassett would send him a line of approval; but on reflection he concluded that it was not like Bassett to do so, and that this failure to make any sign corroborated all that he knew or imagined of the senator from Fraser.



CHAPTER VII

SYLVIA AT LAKE WAUPEGAN

The snow lay late the next year on the Madison campus. It had been a busy winter for Sylvia, though in all ways a happy one. When it became known that she was preparing for college all the Buckeye Lane folk were anxious to help. Professor Kelton would not trust his own powers too far and he availed himself of the offers of members of the faculty to tutor Sylvia in their several branches. Buckeye Lane was proud of Sylvia and glad that the old professor found college possible for her. Happiness reigned in the cottage, and days were not so cold or snows so deep but that Sylvia and her grandfather went forth for their afternoon tramp. There was nothing morbid or anaemic about Sylvia. Every morning she pulled weights and swung Indian clubs with her windows open. A mischievous freshman who had thrown a snowball at Sylvia's heels, in the hope of seeing her jump, regretted his bad manners: Sylvia caught him in the ear with an unexpected return shot. A senior who observed the incident dealt in the lordly way of his kind with the offender. They called her "our co-ed" and "the boss girl" after that. The professor of mathematics occasionally left on his blackboard Sylvia's demonstrations and pointed them out to his class as models worthy of their emulation.

Spring stole into the heart of the Wabash country and the sap sang again in maples and elms. Lilacs and snowballs bloomed, and Professor Kelton went serenely about among his roses. Sylvia passed her examinations, and was to be admitted to Wellesley without conditions,—all the Lane knew and rejoiced! The good news was communicated to Mrs. Owen, who wrote at once to Professor Kelton from the summer headquarters she had established on her farm in northern Indiana that just then required particular attention. It ran:—

I want you to make me a visit. Sylvia must be pretty tired after her long, busy year and I have been tinkering the house here a little bit so you can both be perfectly comfortable. It's not so lonely as you might think, as my farm borders Lake Waupegan, and the young people have gay times. My niece, Mrs. Bassett, has a cottage on the lake only a minute's walk from me. I should like Marian and Sylvia to get acquainted and this will be easy if only you will come up for a couple of weeks. There are enough old folks around here, Andrew, to keep you and me in countenance. I inclose a timetable with the best trains marked. You leave the train at Waupegan Station, and take the steamer across the lake. I will meet you at any time you say.

So it happened that on a June evening they left the train at Waupegan and crossed the platform to the wheezy little steamer which was waiting just as the timetable had predicted; and soon they were embarked and crossing the lake, which seemed to Sylvia a vast ocean. Twilight was enfolding the world, and all manner of fairy lights began to twinkle at the far edges of the water and on the dark heights above the lake. Overhead the stars were slipping into their wonted places.

"You can get an idea of how it is at sea," said her grandfather, smiling at her long upward gaze. "Only you can hardly feel the wonder of it all here, or the great loneliness of the ocean at night."

It was, however, wonder enough, for a girl who had previously looked upon no more impressive waters than those of Fall Creek, Sugar Creek, and White River. The steamer, with much sputtering and churning and not without excessive trepidation on the part of the captain and his lone deck hand, stopped at many frail docks below the cottages that hung on the bluff above. Every cottager maintained his own light or combination of lights to facilitate identification by approaching visitors. They passed a number of sailboats lazily idling in the light wind, and several small power boats shot past with engines beating furiously upon the still waters.

"The Bassetts' dock is the green light; the red, white, and blue is Mrs. Owen's," explained the captain. "We ain't stoppin' at Bassett's to-night."

These lights marked the farthest bounds of Lake Waupegan, and were the last points touched by the boat. Sylvia watched the green light with interest as they passed. She had thought of Marian often since their meeting at Mrs. Owen's. She would doubtless see more of her now: the green light and the red, white and blue were very close together.

Mrs. Owen called to them cheerily from the dock, and waved a lantern in welcome. She began talking to her guests before they disembarked.

"Glad to see you, Andrew. You must be mighty hungry, Sylvia. Don't smash my dock to pieces, Captain; it's only wood."

Mrs. Owen complained after a few days that she saw nothing of Sylvia, so numerous were that young person's engagements. Mrs. Bassett and Marian called promptly—the former a trifle dazed by Sylvia's sudden advent, and Marian genuinely cordial. Mrs. Bassett had heard of the approaching visit with liveliest interest. A year before, when Marian had reported the presence in Mrs. Owen's house at Indianapolis of a strange girl with Professor Kelton, her curiosity had been piqued, but she soon dismissed the matter. Marian had carried home little information, and while Mrs. Bassett saw her aunt often on her frequent excursions to the city, she knew by long experience that Mrs. Owen did not yield gracefully to prodding.

Mrs. Bassett had heard all her life of Professor Kelton and she had met him now and then in the Delaware Street house, but her knowledge of him and his family was only the most fragmentary. Nothing had occurred during the year to bring the Keltons again to her attention; but now, with a casualness in itself disconcerting, they had arrived at Mrs. Owen's farmhouse, where, Mrs. Bassett was sure, no guests had ever been entertained before. The house had just been remodeled and made altogether habitable, a fact which, Mrs. Bassett had been flattering herself, argued for Mrs. Owen's increasing interest in herself and her family. The immediate arrival of the Keltons was disquieting.

Through most of her life Hallie Bassett had assumed that she and her children, as Sally Owen's next of kin, quite filled the heart of that admirable though often inexplicable woman. Mrs. Bassett had herself inherited a small fortune from her father, Blackford F. Singleton, Mrs. Owen's brother, a judge of the Indiana Supreme Court and a senator in Congress, whose merits and services are set forth in a tablet at the portal of the Fraser County Court-House. The Bassetts and the Singletons had been early settlers of that region, and the marriage of Hallie Singleton to Morton Bassett was a satisfactory incident in the history of both families. Six years of Mrs. Bassett's girlhood had been passed in Washington; the thought of power and influence was dear to her; and nothing in her life had been more natural than the expectation that her children would enjoy the fortune Mrs. Owen had been accumulating so long and, from all accounts, by processes hardly less than magical. Mrs. Bassett's humor was not always equal to the strain to which her aunt subjected it. Hallie Bassett had, in fact, little humor of any sort. She viewed life with a certain austerity, and in literature she had fortified herself against the shocks of time. Conduct, she had read, is three fourths of life; and Wordsworth had convinced her that the world is too much with us. Mrs. Bassett discussed nothing so ably as a vague something she was fond of characterizing as "the full life," and this she wished to secure for her children. Her boy's future lay properly with his father; she had no wish to meddle with it; but Marian was the apple of her eye, and she was striving by all the means in her power to direct her daughter into pleasant paths and bright meadows where the "full life" is assured. Hers were no mean standards. She meant to be a sympathetic and helpful wife, the wisest and most conscientious of mothers.

Mrs. Bassett was immensely anxious to please her aunt in all ways; but that intrepid woman's pleasure was not a thing to be counted on with certainty. She not only sought to please her aunt by every means possible, but she wished her children to intrench themselves strongly in their great aunt's favor. The reports of such of Mrs. Owen's public benefactions as occasionally reached the newspapers were always alarming. No one ever knew just how much money Sally Owen gave away; but some of her gifts in recent years had been too large to pass unnoticed by the press. Only a few months before she had established a working-girls' home in memory of a daughter—her only child—who had died in early youth, and this crash from a clear sky had aroused in Mrs. Bassett the gravest apprehensions. It was just so much money said to be eighty thousand dollars—out of the pockets of Marian and Blackford; and, besides, Mrs. Bassett held views on this type of benevolence. Homes for working-girls might be well enough, but the danger of spoiling them by too much indulgence was not inconsiderable; Mrs. Bassett's altruism was directed to the moral and intellectual uplift of the mass (she never said masses) and was not concerned with the plain prose of housing, feeding, and clothing young women who earned their own living. Mrs. Owen, in turning over this home to a board of trustees, had stipulated that music for dancing should be provided every Saturday evening; whereupon two trustees, on whom the Christian religion weighed heavily, resigned; but Mrs. Owen did not care particularly. Trustees were only necessary to satisfy the law and to assure the legal continuity of Elizabeth House, which Mrs. Owen directed very well herself.

Mrs. Bassett encouraged Marian's attentions to Mrs. Owen's young visitor; but it must be said that Marian, on her own account, liked Sylvia and found delight in initiating her into the mysteries of Waupegan life. She taught her to ride, to paddle a canoe, and to swim. There were dances at the casino, and it was remarkable how easily Sylvia learned to dance. Marian taught her a few steps on the first rainy day at the Bassett house, and thereafter no one would have doubted that Sylvia had been to dancing-school with the boys and girls she met at the casino parties. Marian was the most popular girl in the summer colony and Sylvia admired her ungrudgingly. In all outdoor sports Marian excelled. She dived from a spring-board like a boy, she paddled a canoe tirelessly and with inimitable grace, and it was a joy to see her at the tennis court, where her nimbleness of foot and the certainty of her stroke made her easily first in all competitions. At the casino, after a hard round of tennis, and while waiting for cakes and lemonade to be served, she would hammer ragtime on the piano or sing the latest lyrical offerings of Broadway. Quiet, elderly gentlemen from Cincinnati, Louisville, and Indianapolis, who went to the casino to read the newspapers or to play bridge, grinned when Marian turned things upside down. If any one else had improvised a bowling-alley of ginger-ale bottles and croquet-balls on the veranda, they would have complained of it bitterly. She was impatient of restraint, and it was apparent that few restraints were imposed upon her. Her sophistication in certain directions was to Sylvia well-nigh incomprehensible. In matters of personal adornment, for example, the younger girl's accomplishments were astonishing. She taught Sylvia how to arrange her hair in the latest fashion promulgated by "Vogue"; she instructed her in the refined art of manicuring according to the method of the best shop in Indianapolis; and it was amazing how wonderfully Marian could improve a hat by the slightest readjustments of ribbon and feather. She tested the world's resources like a spoiled princess with an indulgent chancellor to pay her bills. She gave a party and ordered the refreshments from Chicago, though her mother protested that the domestic apparatus for making ice-cream was wholly adequate for the occasion. When she wanted new tennis shoes she telegraphed for them; and she kept in her room a small library of mail-order catalogues to facilitate her extravagances.

Marian talked a great deal about boys, and confided to Sylvia her sentimental attachment for one of the lads they saw from day to day, and with whom they played tennis at the casino court. For the first time Sylvia heard a girl talk of men as of romantic beings, and of love as a part of the joy and excitement of life. A young gentleman in a Gibson drawing which she had torn from an old copy of "Life" more nearly approximated Marian's ideal than even the actors of her remote adoration. She had a great number of gowns and was quite reckless in her use of them. She tried to confer upon Sylvia scarf pins, ties, and like articles, for which she declared she had not the slightest use. In the purchase of soda water and candy at the casino, where she scribbled her father's initials on the checks, or at the confectioner's in the village where she enjoyed a flexible credit, her generosity was prodigal. She was constantly picking up other youngsters and piloting them on excursions that her ready fancy devised; and if they returned late for meals or otherwise incurred parental displeasure, to Marian it was only part of the joke. She was always late and ingeniously plausible in excusing herself. "Mother won't bother; she wants me to have a good time. And when papa is here he just laughs at me. Papa's just the best ever."