The young people were hitting it off wonderfully, and Marian's laughter rang out clearly upon the winter air. Her tall, supple figure, her head capped with a fur toque, and more than all, the indubitable evidence that such a clandestine stroll as this gave her the keenest delight, drove home to Harwood the realization that Marian was no longer a child, but a young woman, obstinately bent upon her own way. Allen was an ill-disciplined, emotional boy, whose susceptibilities in the matter of girls Dan had already noted. The combination had its dangers and his anger rose as he followed them at a safe distance. They prolonged their walk for half an hour, coming at last to the Whitcomb.

Harwood waylaid Allen in the hotel office a moment after Marian had gone to her room. The young fellow's cheeks were unwontedly bright from the cold or from the excitement of his encounter.

"Halloa! I was going to look you up and ask you to have dinner with me."

"You were looking for me in a likely place," replied Harwood coldly. "See here, Allen, I've been laboring under the delusion that you were a gentleman."

"Oh! Have we come to that?"

"You know better than to go loafing through town with a truant school-girl you hardly know. I suppose it's my fault for introducing you to her. I want you to tell me how you managed this. Did you telephone her or write a note? Sit down here now and let's have it out."

They drew away from the crowd and found seats in a quiet corner of the lobby.

Harwood, his anger unabated, repeated his question.

"Out with it; just how did you manage it?"

Allen was twisting his gloves nervously; he had not been conscious of transgressing any law, but he would not for worlds have invited Harwood's displeasure. He was near to tears; but he remained stubbornly silent until Harwood again demanded to know how he contrived the meeting with Marian.

"I'm sorry, old man," Allen answered, "but I can't tell you anything about it. I don't see that my crime is so heinous. She has been cooped up in the hotel all day with her sick mother, and a short walk—it was only a few blocks—couldn't have done her any harm. I think you're making too much of it."

"You were dallying there in the park, in a way to attract attention, with a headstrong, silly girl that you ought to have protected from that sort of thing. You know better than that."

Allen, enfolded in his long ulster, shuffled his feet on the tiling like a school-boy in disgrace. Deep down in his heart, Harwood did not believe that Allen had proposed the walk to Marian; it was far likelier that Marian had sought the meeting by note or telephone. He turned upon Allen with a slight relaxation of his sternness.

"You didn't write her a note or telephone her,—you didn't do either, did you?"

Allen, silent and dejected, dropped his gloves and picked them up, the color deepening in his cheeks.

"I just happened to meet her; that's all," he said, avoiding Dan's eyes.

"She wrote you a note or telephoned you?"

Silence.

"Humph," grunted Harwood.

"She's wonderfully beautiful and strong and so tremendously vivid! I think those nice girls you read of in the Greek mythology must have been like that," murmured Allen, sighing heavily.

"I dare say they were!" snapped Harwood, searching the youngster's thin, sensitive face, and meeting for an instant his dreamy eyes. He was touched anew by the pathos in the boy, whose nature was a light web of finespun golden cords thrilling to any breath of fancy. The superb health, the dash and daring of a school-girl that he had seen but once or twice, had sent him climbing upon a frail ladder of romantic dreams.

Harwood struck his hands together sharply. If he owed a duty to Marian and her family, not less he was bound to turn Allen's thoughts into safe channels.

"Of course it wouldn't do—that sort of thing, you know, Allen. I didn't mean to beat you into the dust. Let's go over to Pop June's and get some oysters. I don't feel up to our usual boarding-house discussion of Christian Science to-night."

At the first opportunity Dan suggested to Bassett, without mentioning Marian's adventure with Allen, that the Whitcomb was no place for her, and that her pursuit of knowledge under his own tutorship was the merest farce; whereupon Bassett sent her back immediately to Miss Waring's.



CHAPTER XIV

THE PASSING OF ANDREW KELTON

Andrew Kelton died suddenly, near the end of May, in Sylvia's senior year at college. The end came unexpectedly, of heart trouble. Harwood read of it in the morning newspaper, and soon after he reached his office Mrs. Owen called him on the telephone to say that she was going to Montgomery at once, and asking him to meet Sylvia as she passed through Indianapolis on her way home. Both of the morning papers printed laudatory articles on Kelton; he had been held in high esteem by all the friends of Madison College, and his name was known to educators throughout the country.

On the same afternoon Bassett appeared in town on the heels of a letter saying that Dan need not expect him until the following week.

"Thought I'd better see Fitch about some receiver business, so I came down a little ahead of time. What's new?"

"Nothing very exciting. There's a good deal of political buzz, but I don't believe anything has happened that you don't know. From the way candidates are turning up for state office our fellows must think they have a chance of winning."

Bassett was unfailingly punctilious in forecasting his appearances in town, and his explanation that legal matters had brought him down was not wholly illuminative. Dan knew that the paper-mill receivership was following its prescribed course, and he was himself, through an arrangement made by Bassett, in touch with Fitch and understood the legal status of the case perfectly. As Bassett passed through the library to his own room he paused to indulge in a moment's banter with Miss Farrell. It was not until he had opened his desk that he replied to Harwood's remark.

"A few good men on our ticket might pull through next time, but it will take us a little longer to get the party whipped into shape again and strong enough to pull a ticket through. But hope springs eternal. You have noticed that I don't talk on national affairs when the reporters come to me. In the state committee I tell them to put all the snap they can into the county organizations, and try to get good men on local tickets. When the boys out West get tired of being licked we will start in again and do business at the old stand. I've always taken care that they shouldn't have a chance to attack my regularity."

"I've just been reading a book of Cleveland's speeches," remarked Dan.

"Solemn, but sound. He will undoubtedly go down as one of the great Presidents. I think Republicans and men of all sorts of political ideas will come to that."

"But I don't feel that all this radicalism is a passing phase. It's eating deeply into the Republicans too. We're on the eve of a revival of patriotism, and party names don't mean what they did. But I believe the Democratic Party is still the best hope of the people, even when the people go clean off their heads."

"You believe in Democracy, but you doubt sometimes whether the Democratic Party is really the custodian of the true faith of Democracy—is that it?"

"That's exactly it. And my young Republican friends feel the same way about their party."

"Well, I guess I stand about where you do. I believe in parties. I don't think there's much gained by jumping around from one party to another; and independent movements are as likely to do harm as good. I don't mind confessing to you that I had a good notion to join the Democratic schism in '96, and support Palmer and Buckner. But I didn't, and I'm not sorry I kept regular and held on. I believed the silver business would pass over; and it's out of sight. They charged me with voting the Republican ticket in '96; but that's a lie. I've never scratched a ticket since I first voted, and"—Bassett smiled his grim smile—"I've naturally voted for a good many rascals. By the way, how much are you seeing of Atwill?"

"I make a point of seeing him once a week or oftener. When I'm downtown at night I usually catch him for a late supper."

"The 'Courier' is regular, all right enough. It's a good property, and when our party gets through chasing meadow-larks and gets down to business again it will be more valuable. Was that your editorial yesterday on municipal government? Good. I'm for trying some of these new ideas. I've been reading a lot of stuff on municipal government abroad, and some of those foreign ideas we ought to try here. I want the 'Courier' to take the lead in those things; it may help"—and Bassett smiled—"it may help to make the high brows see that ours has really been the party of progress through these years when it's marched backward."

Bassett swung round slowly until his gaze fell upon the map, reminding the young man of Thatcher's interest in that varicolored oblong of paper. Dan had never mentioned Thatcher's visit to the office, feeling that if the capitalist were really the bold man he appeared to be, he would show his hand to Bassett soon enough. Moreover, Harwood's confidence in Bassett's powers had never wavered; in the management of the paper-mill receivership the senator from Fraser had demonstrated a sagacity and resourcefulness that had impressed Dan anew. Bassett possessed, in unusual degree, the astuteness and executive force of the successful American business man, and his nice feeling for the things that interest cultivated people lifted him far above the common type of political boss. Dan had yet to see a demonstration of Bassett's political venality; the bank and his other interests at Fraserville were profitable. It must be a craving for power, not money, Dan reasoned, that led Bassett into politics. Bassett turned to his desk with some letters he had taken from his pocket. It occurred to Dan that as Mrs. Owen had suggested that he accompany Sylvia to Montgomery, it would be well to mention the possibility of his leaving town for a day.

"Mrs. Owen telephoned me this morning of Professor Kelton's death. You probably read of it in to-day's papers. Mrs. Owen is an old friend of his, and went to Montgomery on the noon train. She asked me to meet the Professor's granddaughter, Miss Garrison, when she comes through here in the morning on her way home. I know her slightly, and I think I'd better go over to Montgomery with her, if you don't mind."

"Yes, certainly; I was sorry to read of Kelton's death. Mrs. Owen will feel it deeply. It's a blow to these old people when one of them drops out of the ranks. I'm glad the 'Courier' printed that capital sketch of him; much better than the 'Advertiser's.' While I think of it, I wish you would tell Atwill that I like the idea of saying a word editorially for these old citizens as they leave us. It gives the paper tone, and I like to show appreciation of fine characters like Kelton."

Bassett had turned round with a letter in his hand. He unfolded it slowly and went on, scanning it as he talked.

"I'm sorry I never knew Kelton. They say he was a very able mathematician and astronomer. It's rather remarkable that we should have kept him in Indiana. I suppose you may have seen him at Mrs. Owen's; they had a common tie in their Kentucky connections. I guess there's no tie quite like the Kentucky tie, unless it's the Virginian."

He seemed absorbed in the letter—one of a number he had taken from his bag; then he glanced up as though waiting for Dan's reply.

"No, I never saw him at Mrs. Owen's; but I did meet him once, in Montgomery. He was a fine old gentleman. You would hardly imagine him ever to have been a naval officer; he was quite the elderly, spectacled professor in his bearing and manner."

"I suppose even a man bred to the sea loses the look of a sailor if he lives inland long enough," Bassett observed.

"I think my brief interview with him rather indicated that he had been a man of action—the old discipline of the ship may have been in that," remarked Harwood. Then, fearing that he might be laying himself open to questions that he should have to avoid answering, he said: "Kelton wrote a good deal on astronomical subjects, and his textbooks have been popular. Sylvia Garrison, the granddaughter, is something of a wonder herself."

"Bright girl, is she?"

"Quite so; and very nice to look at. I met her on the train when I went to Boston with those bonds in January. She was going back to college after the holidays. She's very interesting—quite different."

"Different?" repeated Bassett vaguely, dropping back in his chair, but again referring absently to the letter.

"Yes," Dan smiled. "She has a lot of individuality. She's a serious young person; very practical-minded, I should say. They tell me she walks through mathematics like a young duchess through the minuet. Some other Wellesley girls were on the train and they did not scruple to attribute miraculous powers to her; a good sign, other girls liking her so much. They were very frank in their admiration."

"Mrs. Owen had her at Waupegan several years ago, and my wife and Marian met her there. Mrs. Bassett was greatly impressed by her fine mind. It seems to me I saw her, too, that summer; but of course she's grown up since then."

He glanced at Harwood as though for confirmation of these details, but Dan's thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking of Sylvia speeding homeward, and of the little cottage beside the campus. His subsequent meetings with Sylvia had caused a requickening of all the impressions of his visit to Professor Kelton, and he had been recalling that errand again to-day. The old gentleman had given his answer with decision; Harwood recalled the crisp biting-off of the negative, and the Professor had lifted his head slightly as he spoke the word. Dan remembered the peace of the cottage, the sweet scents of June blowing through the open windows; and he remembered Sylvia as she had opened the door, and their colloquy later, on the campus.

"You'd better go to Montgomery with Miss Garrison and report to Mrs. Owen for any service you may render her. Does the old gentleman's death leave the girl alone?"

"Quite so, I think. She had lived with him nearly all her life. The papers mentioned no other near relatives."

"I'll be in town a day or two. You do what you can over there for Mrs. Owen."

That evening, returning to the office to clear off his desk in preparation for his absence the next day, Dan found Bassett there. This was unusual; Bassett rarely visited the office at night. He had evidently been deeply occupied with his thoughts, for when Dan entered he was sitting before his closed desk with his hat on. He nodded, and a few moments later passed through the library on his way out.

"Suppose I won't see you to-morrow. Well, I'm going to be in town a few days. Take your time."

* * * * *

Dan Harwood never doubted that he loved Sally Owen after that dark day of Sylvia's home-coming. From the time Sylvia stepped from the train till the moment when, late that same afternoon, just as the shadows were gathering, Andrew Kelton was buried with academic and military honors befitting his two-fold achievements, Mrs. Owen had shown the tenderness of the gentlest of mothers to the forlorn girl. The scene at the grave sank deep into Dan's memory—the patriarchal figure of Dr. Wandless, with the faculty and undergraduates ranged behind him; the old minister's voice lifted in a benediction that thrilled with a note of triumphant faith; and the hymn sung by the students at the end, boys' voices, sweet and clear, floating off into the sunset. And nothing in Dan's life had ever moved him so much as when Mrs. Owen, standing beside Sylvia and representing in her gaunt figure the whole world of love and kindness, bent down at the very end and kissed the sobbing girl and led her away.

Harwood called on Mrs. Owen at the cottage in Buckeye Lane that evening. She came down from Sylvia's room and met him in the little library, which he found unchanged from the day of his visit five years before.

"That little girl is a hero," she began. "I guess she's about the lonesomest girl in the world to-night. Andrew Kelton was a man and a good one. He hadn't been well for years, the doctor tells me; trouble with his heart, but he kept it to himself; didn't want to worry the girl. I tell you everything helps at a time like this. Admiral Martin came over to represent the Navy, and you saw the G.A.R. there; it caught me in the throat when the bugle blew good-night for Andrew. Sylvia will rally and go on and do some big thing. It's in her. I reckon she'll have to go back to college, this being her last year. Too bad the commencement's all spoiled for her."

"Yes; she won't have much heart for it; but she must get her degree."

"She'll need a rest after this. I'll go back with her, and then I'm going to take her up to Waupegan with me for the summer. There are some things to settle about her, and I'm glad you stayed. Andrew owned this house, but I shouldn't think Sylvia would want to keep it: houses in a town like this are a nuisance if you don't live where you can watch the tenants," she went on, her practical mind asserting itself.

"I suppose—" Dan began and then hesitated. It gave him a curious feeling to be talking of Sylvia's affairs in this way.

"Go on, Daniel,"—this marked a departure; she had never called him by his first name before. "I'm closer to that girl than anybody, and I'm glad to talk to you about her affairs."

"I suppose there will be something for her; she's not thrown on her own resources?"

"I guess he didn't make any will, but what he left is Sylvia's. He had a brother in Los Angeles, who died ten years ago. He was a rich man, and left a big fortune to his children. If there's no will there'll have to be an administrator. Sylvia's of age and she won't need a guardian."

Dan nodded. He knew Mrs. Owen well enough by this time to understand that she usually perfected her plans before speaking, and that she doubtless had decided exactly how Andrew Kelton's estate should be administered.

"I'm going to ask the court to appoint you administrator, Daniel. You ever acted? Well, you might as well have the experience. I might take it myself, but I'm pretty busy and there'll be some running back and forth to do. You come back in a day or two and we'll see how things stand by that time. As soon as Sylvia gets rested she'll go back to college to finish up, and then come to me for the summer."

"She might not like my having anything to do with her affairs," Dan suggested. "I shouldn't want to seem to be intruding."

"Oh, Sylvia likes you well enough. The main thing is getting somebody that you've got confidence in. I know some people here, and I guess the court will do about what we want."

"I should have to come over here frequently until everything was settled," Dan added, thinking of his duties in the city. "I suppose if you find it possible for me to serve that I shall have to get Mr. Bassett's consent; he pays for my time, you know."

"That's right, you ask him; but be sure to tell him that I want it to be that way. Morton won't make any fuss about it. I guess you do enough work for him. What's he paying you, Daniel?"

"Eighteen hundred since he got the paper-mill receivership."

She made no comment, but received the intelligence in silence. He knew from the characteristic quick movement of her eyelids that she was pondering the equity of this carefully; and his loyalty to Bassett asserting itself, he added, defensively:—

"It's more than I could begin to make any other way; and he's really generous about my time—he's made it plain that he wants me to keep up my reading."

"They don't read much after they're admitted, do they? I thought when you got admitted you knew it all."

"Not if you mean to be a real lawyer," said Dan, smiling.

"Well, I guess you had better go now. I don't want to leave Sylvia alone up there, poor little girl. I'll let you know when to come back."



CHAPTER XV

A SURPRISE AT THE COUNTRY CLUB

"That's all right. I shall be glad to have you serve Mrs. Owen in any way. It's a good deal of a compliment that she thought of you in that connection. Go ahead, and call on me if I can help you. You'll have to furnish local bondsmen. See what's required and let me know."

Such was Bassett's reply when Harwood asked his permission to serve as administrator of Andrew Kelton's estate. Bassett was a busy man, and his domestic affairs often gave him concern. He had talked to Harwood a good deal about Marian, several times in fits of anger at her extravagance. His wife retired fitfully to sanatoriums, and he had been obliged to undertake the supervision of his children's schooling. Blackford was safe for the time in a military school, and Marian had been tutored for a year at home. The idea of a college course for Marian had been, since Sylvia appeared, a mania with Mrs. Bassett. Marian had not the slightest interest in the matter, and Bassett was weary of the struggle, and sick of the idea, that only by a college career for her could Mrs. Owen's money be assured to his children. Mrs. Bassett being now at a rest cure in Connecticut, and Bassett, much away from home, and seeing nothing to be gained by keeping his daughter at Fraserville, had persuaded Miss Waring to take her as a special student, subject to the discipline of the school, but permitted to elect her own studies. It was only because Bassett was a man she liked to please that the principal accepted Marian, now eighteen years old, on this anomalous basis. Marian was relieved to find herself freed of the horror of college, but she wished to be launched at once upon a social career; and the capital and not Fraserville must be the scene of her introduction. Bassett was merely tiding over the difficult situation until his wife should be able to deal with it. Marian undoubtedly wheedled her father a good deal in the manner of handsome and willful daughters. She had rarely experienced his anger; but the remembrance of these occasions rose before her as the shadowy background of any filial awe she may be said to have had.

Bassett asked Dan to accompany him and Marian to the Country Club for dinner one evening while Harwood still waited for Mrs. Owen's summons to Montgomery. Picking up Marian at Miss Waring's, they drove out early and indulged in a loitering walk along the towpath of the old canal, not returning to the clubhouse until after seven. When they had found a table on the veranda, Dan turned his head slightly and saw Thatcher, Allen, and Pettit, the Fraserville editor, lounging in after-dinner ease at a table in a dim corner.

"Why, there's Mr. Thatcher," exclaimed Marian.

"And if that isn't Mr. Pettit! I didn't know he ever broke into a place like this."

They all bowed to the trio. Thatcher waved his hand.

"Mr. Pettit," observed Bassett dryly, "is a man of the world and likely to break in anywhere."

His manner betrayed no surprise; he asked Marian to order dinner, and bowed to a tableful of golfers, where an acquaintance was whispering his name to some guests from out of town.

It was the least bit surprising that the Honorable Isaac Pettit should be dining at the Country Club with Mr. Edward Thatcher, and yet it was possible to read too much seriousness into the situation. Harwood was immensely interested, but he knew it was Bassett's way to betray no trepidation at even such a curious conjunction of planets as this. Dan was in fact relieved that Bassett had found the men together: Bassett had seen with his own eyes and might make what he pleased of this sudden intimacy.

Marian had scorned the table d'hote dinner, and was choosing, from the "special" offerings, green turtle soup and guinea fowl, as affording a pleasant relief from the austere regimen of Miss Waring's table. The roasting of the guinea hen would require thirty minutes the waiter warned them, but Bassett made no objection. Marian thereupon interjected a postscript of frogs' legs between soup and roast, and Bassett cheerfully acquiesced.

"You seem to be picking the most musical birds offered," he remarked amiably. "I don't believe I'd eat the rest of the olives if I were you."

"Why doesn't Allen Thatcher come over here and speak to us, I'd like to know," asked Marian. "You wouldn't think he'd ever seen us before."

The three men having dined had, from appearances, been idling at the table for some time. Pettit was doing most of the talking, regaling his two auditors with tales from his abundant store of anecdotes. At the end of a story at which Thatcher had guffawed loudly, they rose and crossed the veranda. Hearing them approaching, Bassett rose promptly, and they shook hands all round.

If there were any embarrassments in the meeting for the older men, it was concealed under the cordiality of their greetings. Pettit took charge of the situation.

"Well, sir," he boomed, "I might've known that if I came to town and broke into sassiety I'd get caught at it; you can't get away from home folks! Thatcher has filled me amply with expensive urban food in this sylvan retreat—nectar and ambrosia. I'm even as one who drinks deep of the waters of life and throws the dipper in the well. Just come to town and wander from the straight and narrow path and your next-door neighbor will catch you every time. Fact is I lectured on 'American Humor' in Churubusco last night and am lifting the spirits of Brazil to-morrow. This will be all from Ike Pettit, the Fraserville funny man, until the wheat's safe and our Chautauquas pitch their tents in green fields far away. Reminds me of what Dan Voorhees said once,—dear old Dan Voorhees,—I almost cry when I think o' Dan: well, as I was saying—"

"Didn't know you were in town, Mort," Thatcher interrupted. "I've been in Chicago a week and only got back this evening. I found your esteemed fellow townsman about to hit a one-arm lunch downtown and thought it best to draw him away from the lights of the great city."

This was apology or explanation, as one chose to take it. Bassett was apparently unmoved by it.

"I've been in town a day or two. I don't live in sleeping-cars the way you do, Ed. I keep to the main traveled road—the straight and narrow path, as our brother calls it," said Bassett.

"Well, I'm going to quit working myself to death. It's getting too hot for poker, and I'm almost driven to lead a wholesome life. The thought pains me, Mort."

Marian had opened briskly upon Allen. She wanted to know whether he had passed the school the night before with a girl in a blue hat; she had been sure it was he, and his denial only intensified her belief that she had seen him. She had wagered a box of caramels with her roommate that it was Allen; how dare he deny it and cause her to lose a dollar of her allowance? Allen said the least he could do would be to send the candy himself; a proposition which she declared, in a horrified whisper, he must put from his thoughts forever. Candy, it appeared, was contraband at Miss Waring's! Bassett, ignoring the vivacious colloquy between his daughter and Allen, continued to exchange commonplaces with Thatcher and Pettit. Marian's ease of manner amused Harwood; Allen was bending over her in his eager way; there was no question but that he admired her tremendously. The situation was greatly to her liking, and she was making the most of it. It was in her eye that she knew how to manage men. Seeing that Mr. Thatcher was edging away, she played upon him to delay his escape.

"I wish you would come up to Waupegan this summer, Mr. Thatcher. You and father are such friends, and we should all be so glad to have you for a neighbor. There are always houses to be rented, you know."

"Stranger things have happened than that, Miss Marian," replied Thatcher, eying her boldly and quite satisfied with her appearance. "My women folks want Allen and me to come across for the summer; but we like this side of the big water. Little Old United States—nothing touches it! Allen and I may take a run up into Canada sometime when it gets red hot."

"Reminds me—speaking of the heat—back in the Hancock campaign—" Pettit was beginning, but Thatcher was leaving and the editor and Allen followed perforce. In a moment they heard Thatcher's voice peremptorily demanding his motor from the steps of the entrance.

"Pettit's lecture dates must be multiplying," observed Dan carelessly.

"They seem to be," Bassett replied, indifferently.

"I can find out easily enough whether he lectured at Churubusco last night or not, or is going to invade Brazil to-morrow," Dan suggested.

"Easy, but unnecessary. I think I know what's in your mind," Bassett answered, as Marian, interested in the passing show, turned away, "but it isn't of the slightest importance one way or another."

"That was Miss Bosworth," announced Marian—"the one in the white flannel coat; she's certainly grand to look at."

"Please keep your eyes to the front," Bassett admonished; "you mustn't stare at people, Marian." And then, having dismissed Pettit, and feeling called upon to bring his daughter into the conversation, he said: "Marian, you remember the Miss Garrison your aunt is so fond of? Her grandfather died the other day and Miss Garrison had to come home. Your Aunt Sally is in Montgomery with her now. Mr. Harwood went to the funeral."

"That's too bad," said Marian, at once interested. "Sylvia's a mighty nice girl, and I guess her grandfather had just about raised her, from what she told me. I wonder what she's going to do?" she asked, turning to Harwood.

"She's going back to college to take her degree, and then Mrs. Owen is going to have her at Waupegan this summer."

"Oh! I didn't know Aunt Sally was going to open her house this summer!" said Marian, clearly surprised. "It must be just that she wants to have Sylvia with her. They're the best kind of pals, and of course Aunt Sally and the old professor were friends all their lives. I'm glad Sylvia's going to be at the lake; she will help some," she concluded.

"You don't mean that you're tired of the lake?" asked Harwood, noting the half-sigh with which she had concluded. "I thought all Waupegan people preferred it to the Maine coast or Europe."

"Oh, I suppose they do," said Marian. "But I think I could live through a season somewhere else. It will be good fun to have Aunt Sally's house open again. She must be making money out of that farm now. I suppose Sylvia's grandfather didn't have much money. Still Sylvia's the kind of girl that wouldn't much mind not having money. She isn't much for style, but she does know an awful lot."

"Don't you think a girl may be stylish and know a lot, too?" asked her father.

"I suppose it is possible," the girl assented, with a reluctance that caused both men to laugh.

"Let me see: Papa, you didn't see Sylvia that summer she was at the lake. That was the summer you played a trick on us and only spent a day at Waupegan. Yes; I remember now; you came home from Colorado and said hello and skipped the next morning. Of course you didn't see Sylvia."

"Oh, yes, I did," replied Bassett. "I remember her very well, indeed. I quite agree with your mother and Aunt Sally that she is an exceedingly fine girl."

"She certainly discouraged me a good deal about college. Four years of school after you're seventeen or eighteen! Not for Marian!" and she shook her head drolly.

Bassett was either absorbed in thought or he chose to ignore Marian's remark. He was silent for some time, and the girl went on banteringly with Harwood. She availed herself of all those immunities and privileges which the gods confer upon young women whom they endow with good looks. In the half-freedom of the past year she had bought her own clothes, with only the nominal supervision of Miss Waring's assistant; and in her new spring raiment she was very much the young lady, and decidedly a modish one. Dan glanced from her to the young people at a neighboring table. Among the girls in the party none was prettier or more charmingly gowned than Marian. In the light of this proximity he watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too, studied her covertly, as though realizing that he had a grown daughter on his hands. Her way with Harwood was not without coquetry; she tapped his arm with her fan lightly when he refused to enter into a discussion of his attentions, of which she protested she knew much, to Miss Bosworth. He admitted having called on Miss Bosworth once; her brother was a Yale man, and had asked him to the house on the score of that tie; but Marian knew much better. She was sure that he was devoting himself to Miss Bosworth; every one said that he was becoming a great society man.

She had wearied of his big-brother attitude toward her. Except the callow youth of Fraserville and the boys she had known all the summers of her life at Waupegan, Harwood and Allen Thatcher were the only young men she knew. In her later freedom at school she had made the office telephone a nuisance to him, but he sympathized with her discreetly in her perplexities. Several times she had appealed to him to help her out of financial difficulties, confiding to him tragically that if certain bills reached Fraserville she would be ruined forever.

Marian found the Country Club highly diverting; it gave her visions of the social life of the capital of which she had only vaguely dreamed. She knew many people by sight who were socially prominent, and she longed to be of their number. It pleased her to find that her father, who was a non-resident member and a rare visitor at the club, attracted a good deal of attention; she liked to think him a celebrity. The Speaker of the House in the last session of the general assembly came out and asked Bassett to meet some men with whom he had been dining in the rathskeller; while her father was away, Marian, with elbows resting on the table, her firm, round chin touching her lightly interlaced fingers, gave a capital imitation of a girl making herself agreeable to a young man. Dan was well hardened to her cajoleries by this time; he was confident that she would have made "sweet eyes at Caliban." Harwood, smoking the cigar Bassett had ordered for him, compared favorably with other young men who had dawned upon Marian's horizon. Like most Western boys who go East to college, he had acquired the habit of careful pressing and brushing and combing; his lean face had a certain distinction, and he was unfailingly courteous and well-mannered.

"This will be tough on mama," she observed casually.

"Pray, be more explicit!"

"Oh, Aunt Sally having Sylvia up there at the lake again."

"Why shouldn't she have her there if she wants her? I thought your mother admired Sylvia. I gathered that ray of light somewhere, from you or Mrs. Owen."

"Oh, mama was beautiful to her; but I shall always think, just between you and me and that spoon, that it was Aunt Sally asking Sylvia to the lake that time that gave mama nervous prostration."

"Nonsense! I advise you, as an old friend, not to say such things: you'd better not even think them."

"Well, it was after that, when she saw that Aunt Sally had taken up Sylvia, that mama got that bug about having me go to college. She got the notion that it was Sylvia's intellectual gifts that interested Aunt Sally; and mama thought I'd better improve my mind and get into the competition."

"You thought your mother was jealous? I call that very unkind; it's not the way to speak of your mother."

"Well, if you want to be nasty and lecture me, go ahead, Mr. Harwood. You must like Sylvia pretty well yourself; you took her back to college once and had no end of a lark,—I got that from Aunt Sally, so you needn't deny it."

"Humph! Of course I like Sylvia; any one's bound to."

"But if Aunt Sally leaves her all her money, just because she's so bright, and educated, and cuts me off, then what would be the answer?"

"I shouldn't have anything to say about it; it would be Mrs. Owen that did the saying," laughed Dan. "Why didn't you meet the competition and go to college? You have brains, but you don't seem interested in anything but keeping amused."

"I suppose," she answered petulantly, "it would please you to see me go to teaching a kindergarten or something like that. Not for Marian! I'm going to see life—" and she added ruefully—"if I get the chance! Why doesn't papa leave Fraserville and come to the city? They say he can have any political office he wants, and he ought to run for governor or something like that, just on my account."

"I dare say he's just waiting for you to suggest it. Why not the presidency? You could get a lot of fun out of the White House, ordering the army around, and using the battleships to play with. The governorship and trifles like that would only bore you."

"Don't be silly. The newspapers print most horrible things about papa—"

"Which aren't true."

"Of course they're newspaper lies; but if he lets them say all those things he ought to get something to pay for it. He's only a state senator from the jayest county in Indiana. It makes me tired."

The girl's keen penetration had often surprised and it had sometimes appalled Harwood in the curious intimacy that had grown up between them. Her intuitions were active and she had a daring imagination. He wondered whether Bassett was fully aware of the problem Marian presented. Dan had never ventured to suggest a sharper discipline for the girl, except on the occasion when he had caught her walking with Allen in the park. He had regretted his interference afterward; for Bassett's anger had seemed to him out of all proportion to the offense. Like most indifferent or indulgent parents, Bassett was prone to excesses in his fitful experiments in discipline. Dan had resolved not to meddle again; but Marian was undeniably a provoking young person. It had been suggested to him of late by one or two of his intimates that in due course of events he would of course marry his employer's daughter. As she faced him across the table, the pink light of the candle-shade adding to the glow of health in her pretty cheeks, she caused him to start by the abruptness with which she said:—

"I don't see much ahead of me but to get married; do you?"

"If you put it up to me, I don't see anything ahead of you, unless you take a different view of life; you never seem to have a serious thought."

"Mr. Harwood, you can be immensely unpleasant when you choose to be. You talk to me as though I were only nine years old. You ought to see that I'm very unhappy. I'm the oldest girl at Miss Waring's—locked up there with a lot of little pigeons that coo every time you look at them. They treat me as though I were their grandmother."

"Why don't you say all these things to your father?" asked Harwood, trying to laugh. "I dare say he'll do anything you like. But please cheer up; those people over there will think we're having a terrible quarrel."

The fact that they were drawing the glances of Miss Bosworth's party pleased her; she had been perfectly conscious of it all the time.

"Well, they won't think you're making love to me, Mr. Harwood; there's that to console you." And she added icily, settling back in her chair as her father approached, "I hope you understand that I'm not even leading you on!"



CHAPTER XVI

"STOP, LOOK, LISTEN"

Bassett and Atwill held a conference the next day and the interview was one of length. The manager of the "Courier" came to the office in the Boordman Building at eleven o'clock, and when Harwood went to luncheon at one the door had not been opened. Miss Farrell, returning from her midday repast, pointed to the closed door, lifted her brows, and held up her forefinger to express surprise and caution. Miss Farrell's prescience was astonishing; of women she held the lightest opinion, Dan had learned; her concern was with the affairs of men. Harwood, intent upon the compilation of a report of the paper-mill receivership, was nevertheless mindful of the unwonted length of the conference. When he returned from luncheon, Bassett had gone, but he reappeared at three o'clock, and a little later Atwill came back and the door closed again. This second interview was short, but it seemed to leave Bassett in a meditative frame of mind. Wishing to discuss some points in the trial balance of the receiver's accountant, Harwood entered and found Bassett with his hat on, slowly pacing the floor.

"Yes; all right; come in," he said, as Harwood hesitated. He at once addressed himself to the reports with his accustomed care. Bassett carried an immense amount of data in his head. He understood bookkeeping and was essentially thorough. Dan constantly found penciled calculations on the margins of the daily reports from the paper-mill, indicating that Bassett scrutinized the figures carefully, and he promptly questioned any deviation from the established average of loss and gain. Bassett threw down his pencil at the end of half an hour and told Dan to proceed with the writing of the report.

"I'd like to file it personally so I can talk over the prospect of getting an order of sale before the judge goes on his vacation. We've paid the debts and stopped the flow of red ink, so we're about ready to let go."

While they were talking Miss Farrell brought in a telegram for Harwood; it was the summons from Mrs. Owen that he had been waiting for; she bade him come to Montgomery the next day. He handed the message to Bassett.

"Go ahead. I'll go over there if you like and find you the necessary bondsmen. I know the judge of the circuit court at Montgomery very well. You go in the morning? Very well; I'll stay here till you get back. Mrs. Bassett will be well enough to leave the sanatorium in a few days, and I'm going up to Waupegan to get the house ready."

"It will be pleasant for Mrs. Bassett to have Mrs. Owen there this summer. Anybody is lucky to have a woman of her qualities for a neighbor."

"She's a noblewoman," said Bassett impressively, "and a good friend to all of us."

On the train the next morning Harwood unfolded the day's "Courier" in the languidly critical frame of mind that former employees of newspapers bring to the reading of the journals they have served. He scanned the news columns and opened to the editorial page. The leader at once caught his eye. It was double-leaded,—an emphasis rarely employed at the "Courier" office, and was condensed in a single brief paragraph that stared oddly at the reader under the caption "STOP, LOOK, LISTEN." It held Harwood's attention through a dozen amazed and mystified readings. It ran thus:—

It has long been Indiana's proud boast that money unsupported by honest merit has never intruded in her politics. A malign force threatens to mar this record. It is incumbent upon honest men of all parties who have the best interests of our state at heart to stop, look, listen. The COURIER gives notice that it is fully advised of the intentions, and perfectly aware of the methods, by which the fair name of the Hoosier State is menaced. The COURIER, being thoroughly informed of the beginnings of this movement, whose purpose is the seizure of the Democratic Party, and the manipulation of its power for private ends, will antagonize to the utmost the element that has initiated it. Honorable defeats the party in Indiana has known, and it will hardly at this late day surrender tamely to the buccaneers and adventurers that seek to capture its battleflag. This warning will not be repeated. Stop! Look! Listen!

From internal evidence Harwood placed the authorship readily enough: the paragraph had been written by the chief editorial writer, an old hand at the game, who indulged frequently in such terms as "adventurer" and "buccaneer." It was he who wrote sagely of foreign affairs, and once caused riotous delight in the reporters' room by an editorial on Turkish politics, containing the phrase, "We hope the Sultan—" But not without special authority would such an article have been planted at the top of the editorial page, and beyond doubt these lines were the residuum of Bassett's long interview with Atwill. And its aim was unmistakable: Mr. Bassett was thus paying his compliments to Mr. Thatcher. The encounter at the Country Club might have precipitated the crisis, but, knowing Bassett, Dan did not believe that the "Courier's" batteries would have been fired on so little provocation. Bassett was not a man to shoot wildly in the dark, nor was he likely to fire at all without being sure of the state of his ammunition chests. So, at least, Harwood reasoned to himself. Several of his fellow passengers in the smoking-car were passing the "Courier" about and pointing to the editorial. All over Indiana it would be the subject of discussion for a long time to come; and Dan's journalistic sense told him that in the surrounding capitals it would not be ignored.

"If Thatcher and Bassett get to fighting, the people may find a chance to sneak in and get something," a man behind Dan was saying.

"Nope," said another voice; "there won't be 'no core' when those fellows get through with the apple."

"I can hear the cheering in the Republican camp this morning," remarked another voice gleefully.

"Oh, pshaw!" said still another speaker; "Bassett will simply grind Thatcher to powder. Thatcher hasn't any business in politics anyhow and doesn't know the game. By George, Bassett does! And this is the first time he's struck a full blow since he got behind the 'Courier.' Something must have made him pretty hot, though, to have let off a scream like that."

Harwood was interested in these remarks because they indicated a prevalent impression that Bassett dominated the "Courier," in spite of the mystery with which the ownership of the paper was enveloped. The only doubt in Harwood's own mind had been left there by Bassett himself. He recalled now Bassett's remark on the day he had taken him into his confidence in the Ranger County affair. "I might have some trouble in proving it myself," Bassett had said. Harwood thought it strange that after that first deliberate confidence and his introduction to Atwill, Bassett had, in this important move, ignored him. It was possible that his relations with Allen Thatcher, which Bassett knew to be intimate, accounted for the change; or it might be due to a lessening warmth in Bassett's feeling toward him. He recalled now that Bassett had lately seemed moody,—a new development in the man from Fraser,—and that he had several times been abrupt and unreasonable about small matters in the office. Certain incidents that had appeared trivial at the time of their occurrence stood forth disquietingly now. If Bassett had ceased to trust him, there must be a cause for the change; slight manifestations of impatience in a man so habitually calm and rational might be overlooked, but Dan had not been prepared for this abrupt cessation of confidential relations. He was a bit piqued, the more so that this astounding editorial indicated a range and depth of purpose in Bassett's plans that Dan's imagination had not fathomed. He tore out the editorial and put it away carefully in his pocketbook as Montgomery was called.

A messenger was at the station to guide him to the court-house, where he found Mrs. Owen and Sylvia waiting for him in the private room of the judge of the circuit court. Mrs. Owen had, in her thorough fashion, arranged all the preliminaries. She had found in Akins, the president of the Montgomery National Bank, an old friend, and it was her way to use her friends when she needed them. At her instance, Akins and another resident freeholder had already signed the bond when Dan arrived. Dan was amused by the direct manner in which Mrs. Owen addressed the court; the terminology pertaining to the administration of estates was at her fingers' ends, and there was no doubt that the judge was impressed by her.

"We won't need any lawyer over here, Daniel; you can save the estate lawyer's fees by acting yourself. I guess that will be all right, Judge?"

His Honor said it would be; people usually yielded readily to Mrs. Owen's suggestions.

"You can go up to the house now, Sylvia, and I'll be along pretty soon. I want to make a memorandum for an inventory with Daniel."

At the bank Akins gave them the directors' room, and Andrew Kelton's papers were produced from his box in the safety vault. Akins explained that Kelton had been obliged to drop life insurance policies for a considerable amount; only one policy for two thousand dollars had been carried through. There were a number of contracts with publishers covering the copyrights in Kelton's mathematical and astronomical textbooks. The royalties on these had been diminishing steadily, the banker said, and they could hardly be regarded as an asset.

"Life insurance two thousand, contracts nothing, and the house is worth two with good luck. Take it all in—and I reckon this is all—we'll be in luck to pinch a little pin-money out of the estate for Sylvia. It's more than I expected. You think there ain't anything else, Mr. Akins?"

"The Professor talked to me about his affairs frequently, and I have no reason to think there's anything more. He had five thousand dollars in government bonds, but he sold them and bought shares in that White River Canneries combination. A lot of our Montgomery people lost money in that scheme. It promised fifteen per cent—with the usual result."

"Yes. Andrew told me about that once. Well, well!"

"He had money to educate his granddaughter; I don't know how he raised it, but he kept it in a special account in the bank. He told me that if he died before she finished college that was to be applied strictly to her education. There is eight hundred dollars left of that."

"Sylvia's going to teach," said Mrs. Owen. "I've been talking to her and she's got her plans all made. She's got a head for business, that girl, and nothing can shake her idea that she's got a work to do in the world. She knows what she's going to do every day for a good many years, from the way she talks. I had it all fixed to take her with me up to Waupegan for the summer; thought she'd be ready to take a rest after her hard work at college, and this blow of her grandpa dying and all; but not that girl! She's going to spend the summer taking a normal course in town, to be ready to begin teaching in Indianapolis next September. I guess if we had found a million dollars in her grandpa's box it would have been the same. When you talk about health, she laughs; I guess if there's a healthy woman on earth it's that girl. She says she doubled all her gymnasium work at college to build herself up ready for business. You know Dr. Wandless's daughter is a Wellesley woman, and keeps in touch with the college. She wrote home that Sylvia had 'em all beat a mile down there; that she just walked through everything and would be chosen for the Phi Beta Kappa—is that right, Daniel? She sort o' throws you out of your calculations, that girl does. I'd counted on having a good time with her up at the lake, and now it looks like I'd have to stay in town all summer if I'm going to see anything of her."

It was clear enough that Mrs. Owen was not interesting herself in Sylvia merely because the girl was the granddaughter of an old friend; she admired Sylvia on her own account and was at no pains to disguise the fact. The Bassett expectations were, Dan reflected, scarcely at a premium to-day!

Mr. Akins returned the papers to the safety box, and when Mrs. Owen and Harwood were alone, she closed the door carefully.

"Now, Daniel," she began, opening her hand-satchel, "I always hold that this is a funny world, but that things come out right in the end. They mostly do; but sometimes the Devil gets into things and it ain't so easy. You believe in the Devil, Daniel?"

"Well, my folks are Presbyterians," said Dan. "My own religion is the same as Ware's. I'm not sure he vouches for the Devil."

"It's my firm conviction that there is one, Daniel,—a red one with a forked tail; you see his works scattered around too often to doubt it."

Dan nodded. Mrs. Owen had placed carefully under a weight a paper she had taken from her reticule.

"Daniel,"—she looked around at the door again, and dropped her voice,—"I believe you're a good man, and a clean one. And Fitch says you're a smart young man. It's as much because you're a good man as because you've got brains that I've called on you to attend to Sylvia's business. Now I'm going to tell you something that I wouldn't tell anybody else on earth; it's a sacred trust, and I want you to feel bound by a more solemn oath than the one you took at the clerk's office not to steal Sylvia's money."

She fixed her remarkably penetrating gaze upon him so intently that he turned uneasily in his chair. "It's something somebody who appreciates Sylvia, as I think you do, ought to know about her. Andrew Kelton told me just before Sylvia started to college. The poor man had been carrying it alone till it broke him down; he had never told another soul. I reckon it was the hardest job he ever did to tell me; and I wouldn't be telling you except somebody ought to know who's in a position to help Sylvia—sort o' look out for her and protect her. I believe"—and she put out her hand and touched his arm lightly—"I believe I can trust you to do that."

"Yes, Mrs. Owen."

She waited until he had answered her, and even then she was silent, lost in thought.

"Professor Kelton didn't know, Daniel," she began gravely, "who Sylvia's father was." She minimized the significance of this by continuing rapidly. "Andrew had quit the Navy soon after the war and came out here to Madison College to teach, and his wife had died and he didn't know what to do with his daughter. Edna Kelton was a little headstrong, I reckon, and wanted her own way. She didn't like living in a country college town; there wasn't anything here to interest her. I won't tell you all of Andrew's story, but it boils down to just this, that while Edna was in New York studying music she got married without telling where, or to whom. Andrew never saw her till she was dying in a hospital and had a little girl with her,—that's Sylvia. Now, whether there was any disgrace about it Andrew didn't know; and we owe it to that dead woman and to Sylvia to believe it was all right. You see what I mean, Daniel? Now that brings me down to what I want you to know. Somebody has been keeping watch of Sylvia,—Andrew told me that."

She was thinking deeply as though pondering just how much more it was necessary to tell him, and before she spoke she picked up the folded paper and read it through carefully. "When Andrew got this it troubled him a lot: the idea that somebody had an eye on the girl, and took enough interest in her to do this, made him uneasy. Sylvia never knew anything about it, of course; she doesn't know anything about anything, and she won't ever need to."

"As I understand you, Mrs. Owen, you want some friend of hers to be in a position to protect her if any one tries to harm her; you want to shield her from any evil that might follow her from her mother's errors, if they were indeed errors. We have no right to assume that she had done anything to be ashamed of. That's the only just position for us to take in such a matter."

"That's right, Daniel. I knew you'd see it that way. It looks bad, and Andrew knew it looked bad; but at my age I ain't thinking evil of people if I can help it. If a woman goes wrong, she pays for it—keeps on paying after she's paid the whole mortgage. That's the blackest thing in the world—that a woman never shakes a debt like that the way a man can. You foreclose on a woman and take away everything she's got; put her clean through bankruptcy, and the balance is still against her; but we can't make over society and laws just sitting here talking about it. I reckon Edna Kelton suffered enough. But we don't want Sylvia to suffer. She's entitled to a happy life, and we don't want any shadows hanging over her. Now that her grandpa's gone she can't go behind what he told her,—poor man, he had trouble enough answering the questions she had a right to ask; and he had to lie to her some."

"Yes; I suppose she will be content now; she will feel that what he didn't tell her she will never know. She's not a morbid person, and won't be likely to bother about it."

"No; I ain't afraid of her brooding on what she doesn't know. It's the fear it may fly up and strike her when she ain't looking that worries me, and it worried the Professor, too. That was why he told me. I guess when he talked to me that time he knew his heart was going to stop suddenly some day. And he'd got a hint that somebody was interested in watching Sylvia—sort o' keeping track of her. And there was conscience in it; whoever it is or was hadn't got clean away from what he'd done. Now I had a narrow escape from letting Sylvia see this letter. It was stuck away in a tin box in Andrew's bedroom, along with his commissions in the Navy. I was poking round the house, thinking there might be things it would be better not to show Sylvia, and I struck this box, and there was this letter, stuck away in the middle of the package. I gave Sylvia the commissions, but she didn't see this. I don't want to burn it till you've seen it. This must have been what Andrew spoke to me about that time; it was hardly before that, and it might have been later. You see it isn't dated. He started to tear it up, but changed his mind, so now we've got to pass on it."

She pushed the letter across the table to Harwood, and he read it through carefully. He turned it over after the first reading, and the word "Declined," written firmly and underscored, held him long—so long that he started when Mrs. Owen roused him with "Well, Daniel?"

He knew before he had finished reading that it was he who had borne the letter to the cottage in Buckeye Lane, unless there had been a series of such communications, which was unlikely on the face of it. Mrs. Owen had herself offered confirmation by placing the delivery of the dateless letter five years earlier. The internal evidence in the phrases prescribing the manner in which the verbal reply was to be sent, and the indorsement on the back of the sheet, were additional corroboration. It was almost unimaginable that the letter should have come again to his hand. He realized the importance and significance of the sheet of paper with the swiftness of a lightning flash; but beyond the intelligence conveyed by the letter itself there was still the darkness to grope in. His wits had never worked so rapidly in his life; he felt his heart beating uncomfortably; the perspiration broke out upon his forehead, and he drew out his handkerchief and mopped his face.

"It's certainly very curious, very curious indeed," he said with all the calmness he could muster. "But it doesn't tell us much."

"It wasn't intended to tell anything," said Mrs. Owen. "Whoever wrote that letter, as I told you, was troubled about Sylvia. I reckon it was a man; and I guess it's fair to assume that he felt under obligations, but hadn't the nerve to face 'em as obligations. Is that the way it strikes you?"



"That seems clear enough," he replied lamely. He made a pretense of rereading the letter, but only detached phrases penetrated to his consciousness. His imagination was in rebellion against the curbing to which he strove to subject it. When he had borne his answer back to Fitch's office and been discharged with the generous payment of one hundred dollars for his services as messenger, just what had been the further history of the transaction? He had so far controlled his agitation that he was able to continue discussing the letter formally with the kind old woman who had placed the clue in his hands. He was little experienced in the difficult art of conversing with half a mind, and a direct question from Mrs. Owen roused him to the necessity of heeding what she was saying. He had resolved, however, that he would not tell her of his own connection with the message that lay on the table before them. He needed time in which to consider; he must not add a pebble's weight to an avalanche that might go crashing down upon the innocent. His training had made him wary of circumstantial evidence; after all it was possible that this was not the letter he had carried to Professor Kelton. It would be very like Mrs. Owen, if she saw that anything could be gained by such a course, to go direct to Fitch and demand to know the source of the offer that had passed through his hands so mysteriously; but Fitch had not known the contents of the letter, or he had said as much to Harwood. There was also the consideration, and not the lightest, that Dan was bound in honor to maintain the secrecy Fitch had imposed upon him. The lawyer had confided the errand to him in the belief that he would accept the mission in the spirit in which it was entrusted to him, and his part in the transaction was a matter between himself and Fitch and did not concern Mrs. Owen in any way whatever. No possible benefit could accrue to Sylvia from a disclosure of his suspicion that he had borne the letter to her grandfather. Mrs. Owen had given him the letter that he might be in a position to protect Sylvia, and there was nothing incompatible between this confidence and his duty to Fitch, who continued to be a kind and helpful friend. He dreaded the outcome of an interview between this shrewd, penetrating, and indomitable woman and the lawyer. The letter, cold and colorless in what it failed to say, and torn half across to mark the indecision of the old professor, had in it a great power for mischief.

While Harwood's mind was busy with these reflections he had been acquiescing in various speculations in which Mrs. Owen had been indulging, without really being conscious of their import.

"I don't know that any good can come of keeping the letter, Daniel. I reckon we might as well tear it up. You and I know what it is, and I've been studying it for a couple of days without seeing where any good can come of holding it. You might burn it in the grate there and we'll both know it's out of the way. I guess that person feels that he done his whole duty in making the offer and he won't be likely to bother any more. That conscience was a long time getting waked up, and having done that much it probably went to sleep again. There's nothing sleeps as sound as a conscience, I reckon, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if mine took a nap occasionally. Better burn that little document, Daniel, and we'll be rid of it and try to forget it."

"No; I don't believe I'd do that," he said slowly. "It might be better to hold on to it, at least until the estate is closed up. You can't tell what's behind it." And then, groping for a plausible reason, he added: "The author of the letter may be in a position to annoy Sylvia by filing a claim against the Professor's estate, or something of that kind. It's better not to destroy the only thing we have that might help if that should occur. I believe it's best to hold on to it till the estate's settled."

This was pretty lame, as he realized, but his caution pleased her, and she acquiesced. She was anxious to leave no ground for anyone to rob Sylvia of her money, and if there was any remote possibility that the letter might add to the girl's security she was willing that it should be retained. She sent Dan out into the bank for an envelope, and when it was brought, sealed up the letter and addressed it to Dan in her own hand and marked it private.

"You take good care of that, Daniel, and when you get the estate closed up you burn it."

"Yes, it can do no harm to hold it a little while," he said with affected lightness.



CHAPTER XVII

A STROLL ACROSS THE CAMPUS

Dan joined Mrs. Owen and Sylvia at the cottage later. He was to see them off in the morning; and he exerted himself to make Sylvia's last evening in Buckeye Lane as happy as possible. The cottage was to be left in the care of the old servant until it could be disposed of; Mary herself was to be provided for in some way—Sylvia and Mrs. Owen had decided that this was only fair and right.

After tea Mrs. Owen said she had letters to write and carried her portfolio to the library for the purpose. Dan and Sylvia being thus left to themselves, he proposed a stroll across the campus.

"There's something about a campus," he said, as they started out;—"there's a likeness in all of them, or maybe it's sentiment that binds them together. Wellesley speaks to Yale, and the language of both is understood by Madison. Ah—there's the proof of it now!"

Integer vitae, scelerisque purus!

A dozen students lounging on the steps of the library had begun to sing the Latin words to a familiar air. Dan followed in his deep bass to the end.

"The words are the words of Horace, but the tune is the tune of Eli with thanks to Dr. Fleming," he remarked. "It's that sort of thing that makes college worth while. I'll wager those are seniors, who already feel a little heartache because their college years are so nearly over. I'm getting to be an old grad myself, but those songs still give me a twinge."

"I understand that," said Sylvia. "I'll soon be saying good-bye to girls I may never see again, or when I meet them at a reunion in five or ten years, they'll be different. College is only the beginning, after all."

"It's only the beginning, but for some fellows it's the end, too. It scares me to see how many of my classmates are already caught in the undertow. I wonder sometimes whether I'm not going under myself."

Sylvia turned toward him.

"I rather imagine that you're a strong swimmer. It would surprise me if you didn't do something pretty big. Mrs. Owen thinks you will; she's not a person for any one to disappoint."

"Oh, she has a way of thinking in large totals of people she likes, and she does like me, most unaccountably."

"She has real illusions about me," laughed Sylvia. "She has an idea that colleges do things by magic; and I'm afraid she will find out that the wand didn't touch me."

"You didn't need the wand's magic," he answered, "for you are a woman of genius."

"Which sounds well, Mr. Harwood; no one ever used such words to me before! I've learned one thing, though: that patience and work will make up for a good many lacks. There are some things I'm going to try to do."

They loitered in the quiet paths of the campus. "Bright College Years" followed them from the singers at the library. If there's any sentiment in man or woman the airs of a spring night in our midwestern country will call it out. The planets shone benignantly through the leaves of maple and elm; and the young grass was irregular, untouched as yet by the mower—as we like it best who love our Madison! A week-old moon hung in the sky—ample light for the first hay-ride of the season that is moving toward Water Babble to the strains of guitar and banjo and boy and girl voices. It's unaccountable that there should be so much music in a sophomore—or maybe that's a fraternity affair—Sigma Chi or Delta Tau or Deke. Or mayhap those lads wear a "Fiji" pin on their waistcoats; I seem to recall spring hay-rides as an expression of "Fiji" spirit in my own days at Madison, when I myself was that particular blithe Hellenist with the guitar, and scornful of all Barbarians!

Sylvia was a woman now. AEons stretched between to-night and that afternoon when she had opened the door for Harwood in Buckeye Lane. His chivalry had been deeply touched by Mrs. Owen's disclosure at the bank, and subsequent reflection had not lightened the burden of her confidence. Such obscurities as existed in the first paragraph of the first page of Sylvia's life's record were dark enough in any circumstances, but the darkness was intensified by her singular isolation. The commission he had accepted in her behalf from Mrs. Owen carried a serious responsibility. These things he pondered as they walked together. He felt the pathos of her black gown; but she had rallied from the first shock of her sorrow, and met him in his key of badinage. She was tall—almost as tall as he; and in the combined moon- and star-light of the open spaces their eyes met easily.

He was conscious to-night of the charm in Sylvia that he had felt first on the train that day they had sped through the Berkshires together. No other girl had ever appealed to him so strongly. It was not the charm of cleverness, for she was not clever in the usual sense; she said few bright, quotable things, though her humor was keen. She had carried into womanhood the good looks of her girlhood, and she was a person one looked at twice. Her eyes were fine and expressive, and they faced the world with an engaging candor. They had learned to laugh since we saw her first—college and contact with the world had done that for her. Her face was long, her nose a compromise of good models, her mouth a little large, but offering compensations when she smiled in her quick, responsive fashion. One must go deeper, Harwood reflected, for Sylvia's charm, and it dawned upon him that it was in the girl's self, born of an alert, clear-thinking mind and a kind and generous heart. Individuality, personality, were words with which he sought to characterize her; and as he struggled with terms, he found that she was carrying the burden of the talk.

"I suppose," she was saying, in her voice that was deeper than most women's voices, and musical and agreeable to hear,—"I suppose that college is designed to save us all a lot of hard knocks; I wonder if it does?"

"If you're asking me personally, I'll say that there are lumps on my brow where I have bumped hard, in spite of my A.B. degree. I'm disposed to think that college only postpones the day of our awakening; we've got to shoot the chutes anyhow. It is so written."

She laughed at his way of putting it.

"Oh, you're not so much older that you can frighten me. People on the toboggan always seem to be having a good time; the percentage of those whose car jumps the track isn't formidable."

"Just enough fatalities to flavor the statistics. The seniors over there have stopped singing; I dare say they're talking about life in large capital letters."

"Well, there are plenty of chances. I'm rather of the opinion that we're all here to do something for somebody. Nobody's life is just his own. Whether we want it that way or not, we are all links in the chain, and it's our business not to be the weakest."

"I'm an individualist," he said, "and I'm very largely concerned in seeing what Daniel Harwood, a poor young lawyer of mediocre abilities, can do with this thing we hear mentioned as life."

"Oh, but there's no such thing as an individualist; the idea is purely academic!" and she laughed again, but less lightly. "We're all debtors to somebody or something—to the world itself, for example."

"For the stars up there, for grass and trees, for the moon by night and the sun by day—for the gracious gift of friends?"

"A little, yes; but they don't count so much. I owe my debt to people—real human beings, who may not be as lucky as I. For a good many thousand years people have been at work trying to cheer up the world—brighten it and make it a better place to live in. I owe all those people something; it's not merely a little something; it's a tremendous lot, and I must pay these other human beings who don't know what they're entitled to. You have felt that; you have felt it just as I have, I'm sure."

"You are still in college, and that is what undergraduates are taught to call ideals, Miss Garrison. I hope you will hold on to them: I had mine, but I'm conscious of late that I'm losing my grip on them. It's inevitable, in a man's life. It's a good thing that women hold on to them longer; without woman's faith in such things the world would be a sad old cinder, tumbling aimlessly around in the void."

She stopped abruptly in the path, very tall and slim in the dusk of starlight and moonlight. He had been carrying his hat in his hand and he leaned on his stick wondering whether she were really in earnest, whether he had displeased her by the half-mocking tone in which he had spoken.

"Please don't talk this old, romantic, mediaeval nonsense about women! This is the twentieth century, and I don't believe for a minute that a woman, just by being a woman, can keep the world sweet and beautiful. Once, maybe; but not any more! A woman's ideals aren't a bit better than a man's unless she stands up for them and works for them. You don't have to take that from a college senior; you can ask dear Mrs. Owen. I suppose she knows life from experience if any woman ever did, and she has held to her ideals and kept working away at them. But just being a woman, and being good, and nice, and going to church, and belonging to a missionary society—well, Mr. Harwood?"

She had changed from earnestness to a note of raillery.

"Yes, Miss Garrison," he replied in her own key; "if you expect me to take issue with you or Mrs. Owen on any point, you're much mistaken. You and she are rather fortunate over many of the rest of us in having both brains and gentle hearts—the combination is irresistible! When you come home to throw in your lot with that of about a quarter of a million of us in our Hoosier capital, I'll put myself at your disposal. I've been trying to figure some way of saving the American Republic for the plain people, and I expect to go out in the campaign this fall and make some speeches warning all good citizens to be on guard against corporate greed, invasions of sacred rights, and so on. My way is plain, the duty clear," he concluded, with a wave of his stick.

"Well," said Sylvia, "if you care enough about it to do that you must still have a few ideals lying around somewhere."

"I don't know, to be honest about it, that it's so much my ideals as a wish to help my friend Mr. Bassett win a fight."

"I didn't know that he ever needed help in winning what he really wanted to win. I have heard of him only as the indomitable leader who wins whenever it's worth while."

"Well," Dan answered, "he's got a fight on hand that he can't afford to lose if he means to stay in politics."

"I must learn all about that when I come home. I never saw Mr. Bassett but once; that was at Waupegan when I was up there with Mrs. Owen nearly five years ago. He had just come back from the West and spent only a day at the lake."

"Then you don't really know him?"

"No; they had counted on having him there for the rest of the summer, but he came one day and left the next. He didn't even see Mrs. Owen; I remember that she expressed surprise that he had come to the lake and gone without seeing her."

"He's a busy man and works hard. You were getting acquainted with Marian about that time?"

"Yes; she was awfully good to me that summer. I liked Mr. Bassett, the glimpse I had of him; he seemed very interesting—a solid American character, quiet and forceful."

"Yes, he is that; he's a strong character. He's shown me every kindness—given me my chance. I should be ashamed of myself if I didn't feel grateful to him."

They had made the complete circuit of the campus several times and Sylvia said it was time to go back. The remembrance of Bassett had turned her thoughts to Marian, and they were still talking of her when Mrs. Owen greeted them cheerily from the little veranda. They were to start for Boston in the morning, and Harwood was to stay in Montgomery a day or two longer on business connected with the estate. "Don't let my sad philosophy keep you awake, Mr. Harwood!—I've given him all my life programme, Mrs. Owen. I think it has had a depressing influence on him."

"It's merely that you have roused me to a sense of my own general worldliness and worthlessness," he replied, laughing as they shook hands.

"I guess Sylvia can tell you a good many things, Daniel," said Mrs. Owen. "I wish you'd call Myers—he's my Seymour farmer—on the long distance in the morning, and tell him not to think I won't be down to look at his corn when I get back. Tell him I've gone to college, but I'll be right down there when I get home."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD

Harwood reached the capital on the afternoon of the second day after Mrs. Owen and Sylvia had gone East, and went at once to the Boordman Building. Miss Farrell was folding and sealing letters bearing Bassett's signature.

"Hello, little stranger; I'd begun to think you had met with foul play, as the hero says in scene two, act three, of 'The Dark Switch-Lantern'—all week at the Park Theatre at prices within the reach of all. Business has been good, if you press me for news, but that paper-mill hasn't had much attention since you departed this life. Everybody's saying 'Stop, Look, Listen!' When in doubt you say that,—the white aprons in the one-arm lunch rooms say it now when you kick on the size of the buns. You will find your letters in the left-hand drawer. I told that collector from the necktie foundry that he needn't wear himself to a shadow carrying bills up here; that you paid all your bills by check on the tenth of the month. As that was the twenty-ninth, you'd better frame some new by-laws to avoid other breaks like that. I can't do much lying at my present salary."

She stood with her hands clasping her belt, and continued to enlighten him on current history as he looked over his letters.

"That young Allen Thatcher has been making life a burden to me in your lamented absence. Wanted to know every few hours if you had come back, and threatened to call you up on the long distance at Montgomery, but I told him you were trying a murder case over there, and that if he didn't want to get nailed for contempt of court he'd better not interrupt the proceedings."

"You're speaking of Mr. Allen Thatcher, are you, Miss Farrell?" asked Harwood, in the tone to which the girl frequently drove him.

"The same, like the mind reader you are! Say, that boy isn't stuck on you or anything. He came up here yesterday afternoon when the boss was out and wanted to talk things over. He seemed to think I hadn't anything to do but be a sister to him and hear his troubles. Well, I've got embarrassments of my own, with that true sport his papa sending me an offer of a hundred per month to work for him. One hundred dollars a month in advance! This, Mr. Harwood, is private and confidential. I guess I haven't worked at the State House without learning a few tricks in this mortal vale of politics."

She had calculated nicely the effect of this shot. Harwood might treat her, as she said, like a step-child with a harelip, but occasionally she made him sit up. He sat up now. He remarked with the diplomatic unconcern that it was best to employ with her:—

"Refused the offer, did you, Miss Farrell?"

"I certainly did. As between a fat old sport like Ed Thatcher and a gentleman like Mr. Bassett, money doesn't count—not even with a p.w.g., or poor working girl, like me. Hush!—are we quite alone?" She bent toward the door dramatically. "What he was playing for, as neat as a hatpin in your loved one's eye, was some facts about the boss's committee work in that last session I worked at the State House. Cute of Thatcher? Well, not so awful bright! He doesn't know what he's up against if he thinks Mort Bassett can be caught on flypaper, and you can be dead sure I'm not going to sprinkle the sugar to catch our boss with. All that Transportation Committee business was just as straight as the way home; but"—Miss Farrell tapped her mouth daintily with her fingers to stifle an imaginary yawn—"but little Rose brought down her shorthand notebooks marked 'M.B. personal,' and the boss and I burned them yesterday morning early, right there in that grate in his room. That's what I think of Mr. Ed Thatcher. A pearl necklace for my birthday ought to be about right for that."

Harwood had been drinking this in as he opened and sorted his letters. He paused and stared at her absently.

"You referred to a caller a moment ago—the gentleman who annoyed you so much on the telephone. Was I to call him or anything like that?"

"He left a good many orders, but I think you were to eat food with him in the frosty halls of the University Club almost at once. He's in a state of mind. In love with the daughter of his father's enemy—just like a Park Theatre thriller. Wants you to tell him what to do; and you will pardon me for suggesting that if there's to be an elopement you write it up yourself for the 'Courier.' I was talking to a friend of mine who's on the ding-ding desk at the Whitcomb and she says the long-distance business in that tavern is painful to handle—hot words flying over the state about this Thatcher-Bassett rumpus. You may take it from me that the fight is warm, and I guess somebody will know more after the convention. But say—!"

"Um," said Harwood, whose gaze was upon the frame of a new building that was rising across the street. He was thinking of Allen. If Marian and Allen were subjects of gossip in connection with the break between their fathers he foresaw trouble; and he was sorry, for he was sincerely devoted to the boy; and Marian he liked also, in spite of her vagaries. A great many people were likely to be affected by the personal difficulties of Thatcher and Bassett. Even quiet Montgomery was teeming, and on the way from the station he had met half a dozen acquaintances who had paused to shake hands and say something about the political situation. His ignorance of Bassett's real intentions, which presumably the defiance of the "Courier" merely cloaked, was not without its embarrassment. He had been known as a Bassett man; he had received and talked to innumerable politicians of Bassett's party in the Boordman Building; and during the four years of his identification with Bassett he had visited most of the county seats on political and business errands. The closeness of their association made all the more surprising this sudden exclusion.

"I said 'say,'" repeated Miss Farrell, lightly touching the smooth cliff of yellow hair above her brow with the back of her hand. "I was about to give you a message from his majesty our king, but if you're on a pipe dream don't let me call you home."

"Oh, yes; pardon me. What were you about to say?"

"Mr. Bassett said that if you came in before I quit to ask you to come over to the Whitcomb. Mrs. Bassett blew in to-day from that sanatorium in Connecticut where they've been working on her nerves. Miss Marian brought her back, and they've stopped in town to rest. And say,"—here Miss Farrell lowered her voice,—"the Missis must try his soul a good deal! I wonder how he ever picked her out of the bunch?"

"That will do!" said Harwood sharply. "I'll find Mr. Bassett at the Whitcomb and I shan't have anything for you to-day."

There had been a meeting of the central committee preliminary to the approaching state convention. A number of candidates had already opened headquarters at the Whitcomb; members of Congress, aspirants for the governor's seat, to be filled two years hence, and petty satraps from far and near were visible at the hotel. If Bassett's star was declining there was nothing to indicate it in the conduct of the advance guard. If any change was apparent it pointed to an increase of personal popularity. Bassett was not greatly given to loafing in public places; he usually received visitors at such times in an upper room of the hotel; but Harwood found him established on a settee in the lobby in plain view of all seekers, and from the fixed appearance of the men clustered about him he had held this position for some time. Harwood drew into the outer edge of the crowd unnoticed for a moment. Bassett was at his usual ease; a little cheerfuler of countenance than was his wont, and yet not unduly anxious to appear tranquil. He had precipitated one of the most interesting political struggles the state had ever witnessed, but his air of unconcern before this mixed company of his fellow partisans, among whom there were friends and foes, was well calculated to inspire faith in his leadership. Some one was telling a story, and at its conclusion Bassett caught Harwood's eye and called to him in a manner that at once drew attention to the young man.