Allen appeared in Dan's office unexpectedly one hot morning and sat down on a chair piled with open lawbooks. Allen had benefited by his month's sojourn in the Adirondacks, and subsequent cruises in his motor car had tanned his face becomingly. He was far from rugged, but he declared that he expected to live forever.

"I'm full of dark tidings! Much has happened within forty-eight hours. See about our smash-up in Chicago! Must have read it in the newspapers?"

"A nice, odorous mess," observed Dan, filling his pipe. "I'm pained to see that you go chasing around with the plutocrats smashing lamp-posts in our large centres of population. That sort of thing is bound to establish your reputation as the friend of the oppressed. Was the chauffeur's funeral largely attended?"

"Pshaw; he was only scratched; we chucked him into the hospital to keep him from being arrested, that was all. Look here, old man, you don't seem terribly sympathetic. Maybe you didn't notice that it was my car that got smashed! It looked like a junk dealer's back yard when they pulled us out. I told them to throw it into the lake: I've just ordered a new car. I never cared for that one much anyhow."

"Another good note for the boys around Lueders's joint! You're identified forever with the red-necked aristocrats who smash five thousand dollar motors and throw them away. You'd better go out in the hall and read the sign on the door. I'm a lawyer, not a father confessor to the undeserving rich."

"This is serious, Dan," Allen remonstrated, twirling his straw hat nervously. "All that happened in connection with the smash-up didn't get into the newspapers."

"The 'Advertiser' had enough of it: they printed, published, and uttered an extra with Marian's picture next to yours on the first page! You can't complain of the publicity you got out of that light adventure. How much space do you think it was worth?"

"Stop chaffing and hear me out! I'm up against a whole lot of trouble, and I came to get your advice. You see, Dan, the Bassetts didn't know Marian was going on that automobile trip. Her mother had written her to leave the Willings' and go home—twice! And her father telegraphed—after we left the farm. She never got the telegram. Then, when Mr. Bassett read of the smash in the papers, I guess he was warm clear through. You know he doesn't cut loose very often; and—"

"And he jumped on the train and went to Chicago to snatch Marian away from the Willings? I should think he would have done just that."

"No; oh, no! He sent Sylvia!" cried Allen. "Sylvia came up on the night train, had a few words privately with Marian, took luncheon with the Willings, all as nice as you please, and off she went with Marian."

Harwood pressed his thumb into his pipe-bowl and puffed in silence for a moment. Allen, satisfied that he had at last caught his friend's attention, fanned himself furiously with his hat.

"Well," said Dan finally, "there's nothing so staggering in that. Sylvia's been staying at the lake: I suppose Mrs. Bassett must have asked her to go up and bring Marian home when the papers screamed her daughter's name in red ink. I understand that Mrs. Bassett's ill, and I suppose Bassett didn't like to leave her. There's nothing fuddlesome in that. Sylvia probably did the job well. She has the habit. What is there that troubles you about it, Allen?"

His heart had warmed at the mention of Sylvia, and he felt more kindly toward Allen now that she had flashed across his vision. Many times a day he found Sylvia looking up at him from the pages of his books; this fresh news brought her near. Sylvia's journey to Chicago argued an intimacy with the Bassetts that he did not reconcile with his knowledge of her acquaintance with the family. He was aroused by the light touch of Allen's hand on his knee. The young man bent toward him with a bright light in his eyes.

"You know," he said, "Marian and I are engaged!"

"You're what?" bellowed Dan.

"We're engaged, old man; we're engaged! It happened there at the Willings'. You know I think I loved her from the very first time I saw her! It's the beautifullest thing that ever came into my life. You don't know how happy I am: it's the kind of happiness that makes you want to cry. Oh, you don't know; nobody could ever know!"

Dan rose and paced the floor, while Allen stood watching him eagerly and pouring his heart out. Dan felt that tragedy loomed here. He did not doubt Allen's sincerity; he was not unmoved by his manner, his voluble description of all the phases of his happiness. Allen, with all his faults and weaknesses, had nevertheless a sound basis of character. Harwood's affection for him dated from that first encounter in the lonely Meridian Street house when the boy had dawned upon him in his overalls and red silk stockings. He had never considered Allen's interest in Marian serious; for Allen had to Dan's knowledge paid similar attentions to half a dozen other girls. Allen's imagination made a goddess of every pretty girl, and Dan had settled down to the belief that his friend saw in Marian only one of the many light-footed Dianas visible in the city thoroughfares, whom he invested with deific charms and apostrophized in glowing phrases. But that he should marry Marian—Marian, the joyous and headstrong; Marian the romping, careless Thalia of Allen's bright galaxy! She was ill-fitted for marriage, particularly to a dreamy, emotional youngster like Allen. And yet, on the other hand, if she had arrived at a real appreciation of Allen's fineness and gentleness and had felt his sweetness and charm, why not?

Dan's common sense told him that quite apart from the young people themselves there were reasons enough against it. Dan had imagined that Allen was content to play at being in love; that it satisfied the romantic strain in him, just as his idealization of the Great Experiment and its actors expressed and satisfied his patriotic feelings. The news that he had come to terms of marriage with Marian was in all the circumstances dismaying, and opened many dark prospects. Allen stood at the window staring across the roofs beyond. He whirled round as Dan addressed him.

"Have you spoken to Mr. Bassett? You know that will be the first thing, Allen."

"That's exactly what I want you to help me about? He's at Waupegan now, and of course I've got to see him. But you know this row between him and dad makes it hard. You know dad would do anything in the world for me—dear old dad! Of course I've told him. And you'd be surprised to see the way he took it. You know people don't know dad the way I do. They think he's just a rough old chap, without any fine feeling about anything. And mother and the girls leaving him that way has hurt him; it hurts him a whole lot. And when I told him last night, up at that big hollow cave of a house, how happy I was and all that, it broke him all up. He cried, you know—dad cried!"

The thought of Edward G. Thatcher in tears failed to arrest the dark apprehensions that tramped harshly through Dan's mind. As for Bassett, Dan recalled his quondam chief's occasional flings at Allen, whom the senator from Fraser had regarded as a spoiled and erratic but innocuous trifler. Mrs. Bassett, Dan was aware, valued her social position highly. As the daughter of Blackford Singleton she considered herself unassailably a member of the upper crust of the Hoosier aristocracy. And Dan suspected that Bassett also harbored similar notions of caste.

Independently of the struggle in progress between Thatcher and Bassett, it was quite likely that the Bassetts would look askance at the idea of a union between their daughter and Edward Thatcher's son, no matter what might be said in Allen's favor. Bassett's social acceptance was fairly complete, and he enjoyed meeting men of distinction. He was invariably welcomed to the feasts of reason we are always, in our capital, proffering to the great and good of all lands who pause for enlightenment and inspiration in our empurpled Athens. He was never ignored in the choice of those frock-coated and silk-hatted non-partisan committees that meet all trains at the Union Station, and quadrennially welcome home our eternal candidates for the joyous office of Vice-President of the Republic. He kept his dress suit packed for flight at Fraserville free of that delicate scent of camphor that sweetens the air of provincial festivals. Thatcher never, to the righteous, sensitive, local consciousness, wholly escaped from the maltster's taint, in itself horrible and shocking; nor did his patronage of budding genius in the prize ring, or his adventures (often noisily heralded) as a financial pillar of comic opera, tend to change or hide the leopard's spots in a community where the Ten Commandments haven't yet been declared unconstitutional, save by plumbers and paperhangers. Women who had never in their lives seen Mrs. Thatcher admired her for remaining in exile; they knew she must be (delectable phrase!) a good woman.

"You know dad has had an awful lonely time of it, Dan, and if he has done things that haven't sounded nice, he's as sorry as anybody could ask. You know dad never made a cent in his life at poker, and his horses have come near busting him lots of times. And sentiment against breweries over here would astonish people abroad. It's that old Puritan strain, you know. You understand all that, Dan."

Dan grinned in spite of himself. It was hardly less than funny to attempt a defense of Ed Thatcher by invoking the shades of the Puritans. But Thatcher did love his boy, and Dan had always given him full credit for that.

"Never mind the breweries; tell me the rest of it."

"Well," Allen continued, "dad always tells me everything, and when I spoke of Marian he told me a lot of things. He wants to put Bassett out of business and go to the Senate. Dad's set his heart on that. I didn't know that any man could hate another as he hates Bassett. That business in the state convention cut him deep;—no, don't you say a word! Dad hasn't any feeling against you; he thinks you're a fine fellow, and he likes to feel that when you quit Bassett you put yourself on his side. Maybe he's wrong, but just for my sake I want you to let him think so. But he's got it in for Bassett; he's got his guns all loaded and primed. Dad's deeper than you think. They used to say that dad was only second fiddle to Bassett, but you'll see that dad knows a thing or two."

Dan drummed his desk. This reference to Thatcher's ambitions only kindled his anger and he wished that Allen would end his confidences and take himself off. But he pricked up his ears as Allen went on.

"I'm telling you this just to show you how it mixes up things for Marian and me. I came to you for help, old man; and I want you to see how hard it is for me to go to Mr. Bassett and tell him I want to marry Marian."

"Just a minute, Allen. Are you quite sure that Marian has made up her mind to marry you; that she really wants to marry anybody?"

"I tell you it's all fixed! You don't imply that Marian is merely amusing herself at my expense! It wouldn't be like you to think that. I have always thought you liked Marian and saw how superb she is."

"Of course I like Marian," said Dan hastily. "My one hope is that both of you will be happy; and the difficulties you have suggested only make that more important. You will have to wait. I'm not sure but that you had better keep this to yourselves for a while—maybe for a long time. It would be wise for you to talk to Aunt Sally. She's a good friend of yours, and one of the wisest of women."

It was not in Allen's eye that he sought wisdom. With him, as with most people who ask advice, advice was the last thing he wanted. It was his way to unbosom himself, however, and he forged ahead with his story, with what seemed to Harwood a maddening failure to appreciate its sinister import. "You remember that when we were up there on the Kankakee, John Ware told a story one night—a mighty good story about an experience he had once?"

"Yes; he told a lot of stories. Which one do you mean?"

"Oh, the best one of all—about the woman in the Adirondacks. You haven't forgotten that?"

"No; I do remember something about it."

"You may not have noticed that while Ware was telling the story dad got up from the bed in the corner and walked over to the stove, after Ware had asked you—it was you, wasn't it?—to reach into the pocket of his coat over your head and get the book he was talking about—it was you he spoke to, wasn't it?"

"Yes; it comes back to me now," replied Dan, frowning.

"Well, I remember, because it struck me as odd that dad should be interested; it was Emerson, you know; and dad looked at the book in the light from the stove and asked me what the name was down in the inside of the cover. It was the binder's name in small letters,—Z. Fenelsa. Well, there's a long story about that. It's a horrible story to know about any man; but dad had been trying to find something he could use on Bassett. He's had people—the sort you can get to do such jobs—going over Bassett's whole life to find material. Dad says there's always something in every man's life that he wants to hide, and that if you keep looking you can find it. You see—"

"I don't like to see," growled Harwood. "It's an ugly idea." And then, with sudden scorn for Thatcher's views on man's frailty, he said with emphasis: "Now, Allen, it's all right for you to talk to me about Marian, and your wish to marry her; but don't mix scandal up in it. I'm not for that. I don't want to hear any stories of that kind about Bassett. Politics is rotten enough at best without tipping over the garbage can to find arguments. I don't believe your father is going to stoop to that. To be real frank with you, I don't think he can afford to."

"You've got to hear it; you can't desert me now. I'm away up in the air this morning, and even if you do hate this kind of thing, you've got to see where dad's hatred of Bassett puts Marian and me."

"It puts you clean out of it; away over the ropes and halfway home! That's where it puts you," boomed Harwood.

"Well, you've got to listen, and you've got to tell me what to do. Dad had already investigated Bassett's years in New York, when he was a young man studying in the law school down there. But they could get about so far and no farther. It's a long time ago and all the people Bassett knew at that time had scattered to the far corners of the earth. But that book struck dad all of a heap. It fitted into what he had heard about Bassett as a dilettante book collector; even then Bassett was interested in such things. And you know in that account of him you wrote in the 'Courier' that I told you I had read on the other side that first time we met? Well, when dad and I went to the Adirondacks it was only partly on my account; he met a man up there who had been working up Bassett's past, and dad went over all the ground himself. It was most amazing that it should all come out that way, but he found the place, and the same man is still living at the house where the strange woman stayed that Ware told about. I know it's just as rotten as it can be, but dad's sure Bassett was the man who took that woman there and deserted her. It fits into a period when Bassett wasn't in New York and he wasn't at Fraserville. They've found an old file of the Fraserville paper at the State Library that mentions the fact that Bassett's father was very ill—had a stroke—and they had hard work locating Bassett, who was the only child. There's only one missing link in the chain of evidence, and that's the woman herself, and her child that was born up there. Ware told us that night how he failed to get track of them later, and dad lost the trail right there too. But that's all I need tell you about it. That's what I've got hanging over me. And dad won't promise not to use it on Bassett if he has to."

Harwood's face had gone white, but he smiled and knit his fingers together behind his head with an air of nonchalance that he did not feel. He knew that Thatcher meant to drive Bassett out of politics, but he had little faith in Thatcher's ability to do so. He discredited wholly the story Allen had so glibly recited. By Allen's own admission the tale was deficient in what Harwood's lawyer's instinct told him were essentials. The idea that Bassett could ever have been so stupid as to leave traces of any imaginable iniquities plain enough for Thatcher to find them after many years was preposterous. The spectacle of the pot calling the kettle black, never edifying, aroused Dan's ire against Thatcher. And Bassett was not that sort; his old liking for the man stirred to life again. Even the Rose Farrell incident did not support this wretched tissue of fabrication. He had hated Bassett for that; but it was not for the peccable Thatcher to point a mocking finger at Achilles's heel.

"Well," said Allen impatiently.

"Well," Dan blurted contemptuously, "I think your father's stooped pretty low, that's all. You can tell him for me that if he's digging in the muck-pile for that sort of thing, I'm done with him; I'm not only done with him, but if he attempts to use any such stuff as that, I'll fight him; I will raise a war on him that won't be forgotten in this state through all eternity. You tell him that; tell him you told me your story and that's what I said about it."

"But, Dan, old man—" began Allen pleadingly.

Harwood shook his head until his cowlick bobbed and danced.

"You'd better get out of here, Allen. If you think you can marry Morton Bassett's daughter with that kind of a scandal in your pocket, I tell you you're mad—you've plumb gone insane! Great God, boy, you don't know the meaning of the words you use. You handle that thing like a child with a loaded pistol. Don't you see what that would mean—to Marian, to Blackford, to Mrs. Bassett—to Aunt Sally! Now, you want my advice, or you said you did, and I'm going to give you some. You go right down to that bank over there on the corner and buy a steamer ticket and a long letter of credit. Then take the first train for New York and go back to your mother and stay there till I send for you to come home. I mean that—every word of it. If you don't skip I'm damned if I don't go to Bassett and tell him this whole rotten story."

Allen, the tears glistening in his frightened eyes, turned toward the door.

"Good-bye, Dan, old man; I'm sorry it had to end this way. I'm disappointed, that's all."

He paused after opening the door, hoping to be called back, but Harwood had walked to the window and stood with his hands in his pockets staring into the street.



CHAPTER XXIX

A SONG AND A FALLING STAR

This was on Friday, and Harwood took the afternoon train for Waupegan. He had found that when he was tired or lonely or troubled he craved the sight of Sylvia. Sylvia alone could restore his equanimity; Sylvia who worked hard but never complained of weariness; Sylvia who saw life steadily and saw it whole, where he caught only fitful, distorted glimpses. Yes; he must see Sylvia. Not only must he see her but there were things he meant to say to her.

He needed Sylvia. For several months he had been sure of that. He loved her and he meant to marry her. Since leaving college he had indulged in several more or less ardent flirtations, but they had ended harmlessly; it was very different with Sylvia! He had realized all that spring that she was becoming increasingly necessary to him; he needed her solace and her inspiration. He thrust one or two new books on the prevailing social unrest into his suit case and added a box of candy, smiling at the combination. Sylvia with all her ideals was still so beautifully human. She was quite capable of nibbling bon-bons to the accompaniment of a vivacious discussion of the sorrows of the world—he had seen her do just that! With her ideals of life and service, she would not be easily won; but he was in the race to win. Yes, there were things he meant to say to Sylvia, and in the tedious journey through the hot afternoon to Waupegan he formulated them and visualized the situations in which he should utter them.

Dan reached Waupegan at six o'clock and went to one of the little inns at the lakeside near the village. He got into his flannels, ate supper, and set off for Mrs. Owen's with his offerings on the seven o'clock boat. In the old days of his intimacy with Bassett he had often visited Waupegan, and the breach between them introduced an element of embarrassment into his visit. He was very likely to meet his former chief, who barely bowed to him now when they met in hotels or in the streets of the capital.

Jumping aboard the steamer just as it was pulling out, he at once saw Bassett sitting alone in the bow. There were only a few other passengers, and hearing Dan's step on the deck behind him, Bassett turned slightly, nodded, and then resumed his inspection of the farther shore lines. A light overcoat lay across his knees, and the protruding newspapers explained his visit to the village. Dan found a seat on the opposite side of the deck, resolved to accept Bassett's own definition of their relations—markedly expressed in Bassett's back and shoulders that were stolidly presented to him. Dan, searching out the lights that were just beginning to blink on the darkling shores, found the glimmering lanterns of Mrs. Owen's landing. Sylvia was there! It was Sylvia he had come to see, and the coldness with which Morton Bassett turned his back upon him did not matter in the least. It was his pliability in Bassett's hands, manifested at the convention where he had appeared as the boss's spokesman, that had earned him Sylvia's first rebuke.

He was thinking of this and of Sylvia when Bassett left his chair and crossed the deck. Dan barely turned his head, thinking he was merely changing his seat for a better view; but as Bassett stopped in front of him, Dan rose and pushed forward a chair.

"No, thank you; I suppose you came up on the evening train. I just wondered whether you saw Fitch to-day."

"No, sir; I didn't see him; I didn't know he wanted to see me."

"He was here yesterday and probably hadn't had time to see you before you left town. He had a proposition to make in that Canneries case."

"I didn't know that, of course, or I should have waited. I've never had any talk with him about the Canneries business."

"So he said."

Bassett clapped his hand savagely upon his hat suddenly to save it from the breeze that had been roused by the increasing speed of the boat. He clearly disliked having to hold his hat on his head. Dan marked his old chief's irritation. There were deep lines in Bassett's face that had only lately been written there.

"I'll see him Monday. I only ran up for a day or two. It's frightfully hot at home."

Neither the heat, nor Harwood's enterprise in escaping from it, interested Bassett, who lifted his voice above the thumping of the machinery to say:—

"I told Fitch to talk to you about that suit of yours and fix it up if we can come to terms. I told him what I'd stand for. I'm not afraid of the suit, and neither is Fitch, and I want you to understand that. My reasons for getting rid of it are quite apart from the legal questions."

"It will save time, Mr. Bassett, if you tell Fitch that the suit won't be dropped until all the claims I represent are paid in full. Several of your associates in the reorganization have already sounded me on that, and I've said no to all of them."

"Oh, you have, have you?" There was a hard glitter in Bassett's eyes and his jaws tightened.

"All right, then; go ahead," he added, and walked grimly back to his chair.

When the steamer stopped at his landing, Bassett jumped off and began the ascent to his house without looking at Harwood again. Dan felt that it had been worth the journey to hear direct from Bassett the intimations of a wish to compromise the Canneries case. And yet, while the boat was backing off, it was without exultation that he watched Bassett's sturdy figure slowly climbing the steps. The signs of wear, the loss of the politician's old elasticity, touched a chord of pity in Harwood's breast. In the early days of their acquaintance it had seemed to him that Bassett could never be beaten; and yet Dan had to-night read defeat in his face and manner. The old Morton Bassett would never have yielded an inch, never have made overtures of compromise. He would have emerged triumphant from any disaster. Harwood experienced something of the sensations of a sculptor, who, having begun a heroic figure in the grand manner of a Michael Angelo, finds his model shrinking to a pitiful pygmy. As Bassett passed from sight he turned with a sigh toward the red, white and blue lanterns that advertised Mrs. Owen's dock to the mariner.

"Well, well, if it isn't Daniel," exclaimed Mrs. Owen, as Harwood greeted her and Sylvia on her veranda. "One of the farm hands quit to-day and you can go to work in the morning, Daniel."

"Not if I'm strong enough to run, Aunt Sally. I'm going to have forty-eight hours' vacation if I starve to death the rest of my life."

Rose Farrell had told him that Mrs. Owen was entertaining the Elizabeth House girls in installments, and he was not surprised to find the veranda filled with young women. Some of them he knew and Sylvia introduced him to the others.

"When's Rose coming up?" asked Sylvia, balancing herself on the veranda rail. "You know she's expected."

"Do I know she's expected? Didn't I have a note from you, Aunt Sally, ordering me to send her up? She's coming just as soon as I get back, but I think of staying forever."

"A man has come and he's come to stay forever," murmured one of the young women.

"Oh, you're an event!" laughed Sylvia. "But don't expect us to spoil you. The sport for to-morrow is tomato pickles, and the man who skipped to-day left because Aunt Sally wanted him to help scald and peel the tomats. Your job is cut out for you."

"All right," he replied humbly. "I'll do anything you say but plough or cut wood. My enchanted youth on the farm was filled with those delights, and before I go back to that a swift Marathon runner must trip me."

He was aware presently that one by one the girls were slipping away; he saw them through the windows settling themselves at the round table of the living-room, where Mrs. Owen was reading a newspaper. Not more than a quarter of an hour had passed when he and Sylvia found themselves alone.

"I haven't scarlet fever or anything," he remarked, noting the flight with satisfaction.

"I suppose we might go inside, too," suggested Sylvia obtusely.

"Oh, I came up for the fresh air! Most of my nights lately have been spent in a hot office with not even a June bug for company. How are the neighbors?"

"The Bassetts? Oh, Mrs. Bassett is not at all well; Marian is at home now; Blackford is tutoring and getting ready to take the Annapolis examinations the first chance he gets."

"I saw Allen to-day," he remarked carelessly.

She said nothing. He moved his chair nearer.

"He told me things that scared me to death—among others that he and Marian are engaged."

"Yes, Marian told me that."

"Ah! She really takes it seriously, does she?"

"Yes, she takes it seriously; why shouldn't she?"

"It's the first time she ever took anything seriously; that's all."

"Please don't speak of her like that, Dan. You know she and I are friends, and I thought you and she were friends too. She always speaks of you in the very kindest way. Your leaving Mr. Bassett didn't make any difference with her. And you are the greatest of Blackford's heroes next to Nelson and Farragut."

Dan laughed.

"So it isn't Napoleon, and Grant and Custer any more? I'm glad he's settled down to something."

"He's a fine boy with a lot of the right stuff in him. We've been having some lessons together."

"Tutoring Blackford? You'll have to explain the psychological processes that brought that about."

"Oh, they're simple enough. He hadn't done well in school last year; Mrs. Bassett was troubled about it. I take him for a couple of hours every morning. Mrs. Bassett engaged me, and Mr. Bassett approved of the plan. Allen probably told you all the news, but he didn't know just how I came to go to Chicago cago to bring Marian home. It was to keep the news of that automobile smash from Mrs. Bassett, and to save Marian's own dignity with the Willings."

"Oh! You went at her father's instance, did you?"

"Yes. I offered to go when I found that he was very angry and likely to deal severely and ungenerously with Marian. I thought it would be better for me to go."

"As near as I can make out, you've taken the Bassetts on your shoulders. I didn't suppose Aunt Sally would stand for that."

"Aunt Sally doesn't know why I went to Chicago. I assume Mrs. Bassett knows I went to bring Marian home, but I don't know what Mr. Bassett told her about it, and I haven't seen her since. It's possible my going may have displeased her. Blackford came here for his lessons this morning."

Dan moved uneasily. The domestic affairs of the Bassetts did not interest him save as they involved Sylvia. It was like Sylvia to help them out of their scrapes; but Sylvia was not a person that he could scold or abuse.

"You needed rest and it's too bad you've had to bother with their troubles. Bassett was on the boat as I came over. He had a grouch. He doesn't look like a happy man."

"I don't suppose he is altogether happy. And I've begged Marian not to tell him she wants to marry Allen. That would certainly not cheer him any, right now."

"I'm glad you had a chance to do that. I told Allen to skip right out for Europe and hang on to his mother's apron strings till I send for him. This old Capulet and Montague business doesn't ring quite true in this twentieth century; there's something unreal about it. And just what those youngsters can see in each other is beyond me."

"You must be fair about that. We haven't any right to question their sincerity."

"Oh, Allen is sincere enough; but you'll have to show me the documents on Marian's side of it. She sees in the situation a great lark. The fact that her father and Thatcher are enemies appeals to her romantic instincts."

"I think better of it than that, Dan. She's a fine, strong, loyal girl with a lot of hard common sense. But that doesn't relieve the situation of its immediate dangers. She's promised me not to speak to her father yet—not until she has my consent. When I see that it can't be helped, I'm going to speak to Mr Bassett about it myself."

"You seem to be the good angel of the Bassett household," he remarked sullenly. A lover's jealousy stirred in his heart, he did not like to think of Sylvia as preoccupied with the affairs of others, and he saw no peace or happiness ahead for Marian and Allen. "It's all more wretched than you imagine. This war between Thatcher and Bassett has passed the bounds of mere political rivalry. There's an implacable hatred there that's got to take its course. Allen told me of it this morning when he was trying to enlist me in his cause with Marian. It's hideous—a perfectly rotten mess. Thatcher is preparing a poisoned arrow for Bassett. He's raked up an old scandal, an affair with a woman. It makes my blood run cold to think of its possibilities."

"But Mr. Thatcher wouldn't do such a thing; he might threaten, but he wouldn't really use that sort of weapon!"

"You don't know the man, Sylvia. He will risk anything to break Bassett down. There's nothing respectable about Thatcher but his love for Allen, and that doesn't redeem everything."

"But you won't let it come to that. You have influence enough yourself to stop it. Even if you hated him you would protect Mrs. Bassett and the children."

"I could do nothing of the kind, Sylvia. Now that I've left Bassett my influence has vanished utterly. Besides, I'm out of politics. I hate the game. It's rotten—rotten clean through."

"I don't believe it's quite true that you have lost your influence. I read the newspapers, and some of them are saying that you are the hope of your party, and that you have a large following. But you wouldn't do that, Dan; you wouldn't lend yourself to such a thing as that!"

"I'm not so sure," he replied doggedly, angry that they should be discussing the subject at all, though to be sure he had introduced it. "A man's family has got to suffer for his acts; it's a part of the punishment. I'd like to see Bassett driven out of politics, but I assure you that I don't mean to do it. There's no possibility of my having the chance. He put me in the legislature to use me; and I'm glad that's all over. As I tell you, I'm out of the game."

"I don't sympathize with that at all, Dan; you not only ought to stay in, but you ought to do all you can to make it impossible for men like Bassett and Thatcher to have any power. The honor of the state ought to be dear to all of us; and if I belonged to a party I think I should have a care for its honor too."

The time was passing. It was not to discuss politics that he had gone to Waupegan.

"Come," he said. "Let's find a canoe and get out under the stars."

Sylvia went for a wrap, and they had soon embarked, skimming along in silence for a time till they were free of the shores. There was no moon, but the stars shone brilliantly; a fitful west wind scarcely ruffled the water. Along the deep-shadowed shores the dock lanterns twinkled, and above and beyond them the lamps of the cottages flashed and vanished. Dan paddled steadily with a skilled, splashless stroke. The paddle sank noiselessly and rose to the accompaniment of a tinkling drip as the canoe parted the waters. There is nothing like a canoe flight under stars to tranquilize a troubled and perplexed spirit, and Dan was soon won to the mood he sought. It seemed to him that Sylvia, enfolded in the silvery-dim dusk in the bow, was a part of the peace of sky and water. They were alone, away from the strifes and jars of the world, shut in together as completely as though they had been flung back for unreckoned ages into a world of unbroken calm. The peace that Wordsworth sought and sang crept into their blood, and each was sensible that the other knew and felt it and that it was grateful to them both.

Sylvia spoke, after a time, of immaterial things, or answered his questions as to the identity of the constellations mapped in the clear arch above.

"I dream sometimes of another existence," she said, "as I suppose every one does, when I knew a quiet lake that held the stars as this does. I even think I remember how it looked in winter, with the ice gleaming in the moonlight, and of snow coming and the keen winds piling it in drifts. It's odd, isn't it? those memories we have that are not memories. The metempsychosis idea must have some substance. We have all been somebody else sometime, and we clutch at the shadows of our old selves, hardly believing they are shadows."

"It's a good deal a matter of imagination, isn't it?" asked Dan, idling with the paddle.

"Oh, but I haven't a bit of that. That's one thing I'm not troubled with, and I'm sorry for it. When I look up at the stars I think of the most hideous formula for calculating their distances from the earth. When I read in a novel that it was a night of stars, I immediately wonder what particular stars. It used to make dear Grandfather Kelton furiously indignant to find a moon appearing in novels contrary to the almanac; he used to check up all the moons, and he once thought of writing a thesis on the 'Erroneous Lunar Calculations of Recent Novelists,' but decided that it didn't really make any difference. And of course it doesn't."

As they discussed novels new and old, he drew in his paddle and crept nearer her. It seemed to him that all the influences of earth and heaven had combined to create this hour for him. To be talking to her of books that interpreted life and of life itself was in itself something sweet; he wished such comradeship as this, made possible by their common interests in the deep, surging currents of the century in which they lived, to go on forever.

Their discussion of Tolstoy was interrupted by the swift flight of a motor boat that passed near, raising a small sea, and he seized the paddle to steady the canoe. Then silence fell upon them.

"Sylvia" he said softly, and again, "Sylvia!" It seemed to him that the silence and the beauty of the night were his ally, communicating to her infinite longings hidden in his heart which he had no words to express. "I love you, Sylvia; I love you. I came up to-night to tell you that."

"Oh, Dan, you mustn't say it—you must never say it!"

The canoe seemed to hang between water and stars, a motionless argosy in a sea of dreams.

"I wanted to tell you before you came away," he went on, not heeding; "I have wanted to tell you for a long time. I want you to marry me. I want you to help me find the good things; I want you to help me to stand for them. You came just when I needed you; you have already changed me, made a different man of me. It was through you that I escaped from my old self that was weak and yielding, and I shall do better; yes, I shall prove to you that I am not so weak but that I can strive and achieve. Every word you ever spoke to me is written on my heart. I need you, Sylvia!"

"You're wrong, you're terribly wrong about all that; and it isn't fair to let you say such things. Please, Dan! I hoped this would never come—that we should go on as we have been, good friends, talking as we were a while ago of the fine things, the great things. And it will have to be that way—there can be nothing else."

"But I will do my best, Sylvia! I'm not the man you knew first; you helped me to see the light. Without you I shall fall into the dark again. I had to tell you, Sylvia. It was inevitable that I should tell you; I wonder I kept it to myself so long. Without you I should go adrift—no bearings, no light anywhere."

"You found yourself, Dan; that was the way of it. I saw it and appreciated it—it meant more to me than I can tell you. I knew exactly how it was that you started as you did; it was part of your fate; but it made possible the finer thing. It's nothing in you or what you've done or may do. But I have my own work to do. I have cut a pattern for my own life, and I must try to follow it. I think you understand about that—I told you that night when we talked of our aims and hopes on the campus at Montgomery that I wanted to do something for the world. And I must still go on trying to do that. It's a poor, tiny little gleam; but I must follow the gleam."

"But there's nothing in that that we can't do together. We can go on seeking it together," he pleaded.

"I hope it may be so. We must go on being the good friends we are now. You and Aunt Sally are all I have—the best I have. I can't let you spoil that," she ended firmly, as though, after all, this were the one important thing.

There was nothing here, he reasoned, that might not be overcome. The work that she had planned to do imposed no barrier. Men and women were finding out the joy of striving together; she need give up nothing in joining her life to his. He touched the hand that lay near and thrilled to the contact of her lingers.

"Please, Dan!" she pleaded, drawing her hand away. "I mean to go on with my life as I have begun it. I shall never marry, Dan,—marriage isn't in my plan at all. But for you the right woman will come some day—I hope so with all my heart. We must understand all this now. And I must be sure, oh, very sure, that you know how dear it is to have had you say these things to me."

"But I shall say them again and always, Sylvia! This was only the beginning; I had to speak to-night; I came here to say these things to you. I am able to care for you now—not as I should like to, but I'm going to succeed. I want to ease the way for you; I mean that you mustn't go back to teaching this fall!"

"There, you see"—and he knew she smiled in her patient, sweet way that was dear to him—"you want to stop my work before it's begun! You see how impossible it would be, Dan!"

"But you can do other things; there are infinite ways in which you can be of use, doing the things you want to do. The school work is only a handicap,—drudgery that leads to nothing."

He knew instantly that he had erred; and that he must give her no opportunity to defend her attitude toward her work. He returned quickly to his great longing and need.

"Without you I'm a failure, Sylvia. If it hadn't been for you I should never have freed myself of that man over there!" And he lifted his arm toward the lights of the Bassett landing on the nearer shore.

"No; you would have saved yourself in any case; there's no questioning that. You were bound to do it. And it wasn't the man; it was the base servitude that you came to despise."

"Not without you! It was your attitude toward me, after that cheap piece of melodrama I figured in in that convention, that brought me up with a short turn. It all came through you—my wish to measure up to your ideal."

"That's absurd, Dan. If I believed that I should think much less of you; I really should!" she exclaimed. "It was something finer and higher than that; it was your own manhood asserting itself. That man over there," she went on more quietly, "is an object of pity. He's beset on many sides. It hurt him to lose you. He's far from happy."

"He has no claim upon happiness; he doesn't deserve happiness," replied Dan doggedly.

"But the break must have cost you something; haven't you missed him just a little bit?"

It was clear from her tone that she wished affirmation of this. The reference to his former employer angered him. He had been rejoicing in his escape from Morton Bassett, and yet Sylvia spoke of him with tolerance and sympathy. The Bassetts were coolly using her to extricate themselves from the embarrassments resulting from their own folly; it was preposterous that they should have sent Sylvia to bring Marian home. And his rage was intensified by the recollection of the pathos he had himself felt in Bassett that very evening, as he had watched him mount the steps of his home. Sylvia was causing the old chords to vibrate with full knowledge that, in spite of his avowed contempt for the man, Morton Bassett still roused his curiosity and interest. It was unfair for Sylvia to take advantage of this.

"Bassett's nothing to me," he said roughly.

"He seems to me the loneliest soul I ever knew," replied Sylvia quietly.

"He deserves it; he's brought himself to that."

"I don't believe he's altogether evil. There must be good in him."

"It's because he's so evil that you pity him; it's because of that that I'm sorry for him. It's because we know that he must be broken upon the wheel before he realizes the vile use he has made of his power that we are sorry for him. Why, Sylvia, he's the worst foe we have—all of us who want to do what we call the great things—ease the burdens of the poor, make government honest, catch the gleam we seek! Even poor Allen, when he stands on the Monument steps at midnight and spouts to me about the Great Experiment, feels what Morton Bassett can't be made to feel."

"But he may yet see it; even he may come to see it," murmured Sylvia.

"He's a hard, stubborn brute; it's in the lines of his back—I was studying him on the boat this evening, and my eyes followed him up the steps after they dropped him at his dock. It's in those strong, iron hands of his. I tell you, what we feel for him is only the kind of pity we have for those we know to be doomed by the gods to an ignominious end. He's not worth our pity. He asks no mercy and he won't get any."

He was at once ashamed of the temper to which he had yielded, and angry at himself for having broken the calm of the night with these discordant notes. Sylvia's hand touched the water caressingly, waking tiny ripples.

"Sylvia," he said when he was calm again, "I want you to marry me."

"I have told you, Dan, that I can never marry any one; and that must be the end of it."

"But your work can go on—" he began, ready for another assault upon that barrier.

A sailboat loitering in the light wind had stolen close upon them, and passed hardly a paddle's length away. Dan, without changing his position, drove the canoe toward the shore with a few strokes of the paddle, then steadied himself to speak again. Sylvia's eyes watched the sails vanishing like ghosts into the dark.

"That won't do, Sylvia: that isn't enough. You haven't said that you don't care for me; you haven't said that you don't love me! And I can't believe that your ambitions alone are in the way. Believe me, that I respect them; I should never interfere with them. There must be some other reason. I can't take no for an answer; this night was made for us; no other night will ever be just like this. Please, dear, if there are other reasons than my own poor spirit and the little I can offer, let me know it. If you don't care, it will be kinder to say it now! If that is the reason—even if there's some other man—let me know it now. Tell me what it is, Sylvia!"

It was true that she had not said she did not care. Her silence now at the direct question stirred new fears to life in his breast, like the beat of startled wings from a thicket in November.

Only the lights of the sailboat were visible now, but suddenly a girl's voice rose clear and sweet, singing to the accompaniment of guitar and mandolin. The guitar throbbed; and on its deep chords the mandolin wove its melody. The voice seemed to steal out of the heart of the night and float over the still waters. The unseen singer never knew the mockery of the song she sang. It was an old song and the air was one familiar the world round. And it bore the answer to Dan's question which Sylvia had carried long in her heart, but could not speak. She did not speak it then; it was ordained that she should never speak it. And Dan knew and understood.

"Who is Sylvia, what is she, That all the swains adore her?"

"Who is Sylvia?" Dan knew in that hour the answer of tears!

The song ceased. When Dan saw Sylvia's head lift, he silently took the paddle and impelled the canoe toward the red, white, and blue lanterns that defined Mrs. Owen's landing. They were within a hundred yards of the intervening green light of the Bassett dock when a brilliant meteor darted across the zenith, and Dan's exclamation broke the tension. Their eyes turned toward the heavens—Sylvia's still bright with tears, Dan knew, though he could not see her face.

"Poor lost star!" she murmured softly.

Dan was turning the canoe slightly to avoid the jutting shore that made a miniature harbor at the Bassett's when Sylvia uttered a low warning. Dan, instantly alert, gripped his paddle and waited. Some one had launched a canoe at the Bassett boathouse. There was a stealthiness in the performance that roused him to vigilance. He cautiously backed water and waited. A word or two spoken in a low tone reached Dan and Sylvia: two persons seemed to be embarking.

A canoe shot out suddenly from the dock, driven by a confident hand.

"It must be Marian; but there's some one with her," said Sylvia.

Dan had already settled himself in the stern ready for a race.

"It's probably that idiot Allen," he growled. "We must follow them."

Away from the shore shadows the starlight was sufficient to confirm Dan's surmise as to the nature of this canoe flight. It was quite ten o'clock, and the lights in the Bassett house on the bluff above had been extinguished. It was at once clear to Dan that he must act promptly. Allen, dismayed by the complications that beset his love-affair, had proposed an elopement, and Marian had lent a willing ear.

"They're running away, Sylvia; we've got to head them off." He bent to his paddle vigorously. "They can't possibly get away."

But it was not in Marian's blood to be thwarted in her pursuit of adventure. She was past-mistress of the canoeist's difficult art, and her canoe flew on as though drawn away into the dark on unseen cords.

"You'd better lend a hand," said Dan, and Sylvia turned round and knelt, paddling Indian fashion. The canoe skimmed the water swiftly. It was in their thoughts that Marian and Allen must not land at Waupegan, where their intentions would be advertised to the world. The race must end before the dock was reached. At the end of a quarter of an hour Dan called to Sylvia to cease paddling.

"We've passed them; there's no doubt of that," he said, peering into the dark.

"Maybe they're just out for fun and have turned back," suggested Sylvia.

"I wish I could think so. More likely they're trying to throw us off. Let's check up for a moment and see if we hear them again."

He kept the canoe moving slowly while they listened for some sign of the lost quarry. Then suddenly they heard a paddle stroke behind them, and an instant later a canoe's bow brushed their craft as lightly as a hand passing across paper. Dan threw himself forward and grasped the sides firmly; there was a splashing and wobbling as he arrested the flight. A canoe is at once the most docile and the most intractable of argosies. Sylvia churned the water with her paddle, seeking to crowd the rocking canoes closer together, while Marian endeavored to drive them apart.

"Allen!" panted Dan, prone on the bottom of his canoe and gripping the thwarts of the rebellious craft beside him, "this must end here."

"Let us go!" cried Allen stridently. "This is none of your business. Let us go, I say."

Finding it impossible to free her canoe, Marian threw down her paddle angrily. They were all breathless; Dan waited till the canoes rode together quietly. Sylvia had brought an electric lamp which Dan now flashed the length of the captive canoe. It searched the anxious, angry faces of the runaways, and disclosed two suit cases that told their own story.

"I told you to keep away from here, Allen. You can't do this. It won't do," said Dan, snapping off the light; "you're going home with us, Marian."

"I won't go back; you haven't any right to stop me!"

"You haven't any right to run away in this fashion," said Sylvia, speaking for the first time. "You would cause endless trouble. It's not the way to do it."

"But it's the only way out," stormed Allen. "There's no other way. Dan told me himself I couldn't speak to Mr. Bassett, and this is the only thing we could do."

"Will you kindly tell me just what you intended doing?" asked Dan, still gripping the canoe.

"I'd spoken to the minister here in the village. Marian was going to spend the night at his house and we were to be married in the morning as soon as I could get a license."

"You can't get a marriage license in Waupegan; your minister ought to know that."

"No; but we could have driven over early to the county seat and got it; I tell you I had it all fixed. You let go of that canoe!"

"Stand by, Sylvia," said Dan with determination.

He steadied himself a moment, stepped into Marian's canoe, and caught up her paddle.

"Wait here, Sylvia. I'm going to land Allen over there at that dock with the two white lights, and I'll come back with Marian and we'll take her home. Flash the light occasionally so I shan't lose you."

A few minutes later when Allen, sulky and breathing dire threats, had been dropped ashore, Harwood paddled Marian home, Sylvia trailing behind.

It was near midnight when Sylvia, having hidden Marian's suit case in Mrs. Owen's boathouse, watched the tearful and wrathful Juliet steal back into her father's house.

Allen lodged at the inn with Dan that night and, duly urged not to make a fool of himself again, went home by the morning train.



CHAPTER XXX

THE KING HATH SUMMONED HIS PARLIAMENT

The Great Seal of the Hoosier Commonwealth, depicting a sturdy pioneer felling a tree while behind him a frightened buffalo gallops madly into oblivion, was affixed to a proclamation of the governor convening the legislature in special session on the 20th of November. It was Morton Bassett's legislature, declared, the Republican press, brought back to the capital to do those things which it had left undone at the regular session. The Democratic newspapers proved conclusively that the demands of the state institutions said to be in dire need were the fruit of a long period of Republican extravagance, for which the Democratic Party, always prone to err on the side of frugality, was in no wise responsible. The Republican governor had caused the legislative halls to be reopened merely to give a false impression of Democratic incompetence, but in due season the people would express their opinion of that governor. So reasoned loyal Democrats. Legislatures are not cheap, taken at their lowest valuation, and a special session, costing something like one hundred thousand of the people's dollars, is an extravagance before which a governor may well hesitate. This particular convocation of the Hoosier lawmakers, summoned easily enough by a stroke of the pen, proved to be expensive in more ways than one.

On the third day of the special session, when the tardiest member, hailing from the remote fastnesses of Switzerland County, was just finding his seat, and before all the others had drawn their stationery and registered a generous computation of their mileage, something happened. The bill for an act entitled an act to lift the lid of the treasure chests was about to be read for the first time when a page carried a telegram to Morton Bassett in the senate chamber.

Senator Bassett read his message once and again. His neighbors on the floor looked enviously upon the great man who thus received telegrams without emotion. It seemed, however, to those nearest him, that the bit of yellow paper shook slightly in Bassett's hand The clerk droned on to an inattentive audience. Bassett put down the telegram, looked about, and then got upon his feet. The lieutenant-governor, yawning and idly playing with his gavel, saw with relief that the senator from Fraser wished to interrupt the proceedings.

"Mr. President."

"The senator from Fraser."

"Mr. President, I ask leave to interrupt the reading of the bill to make an announcement."

"There being no objection, the senator will make his announcement."

Senators who had been smoking in the cloakroom, or talking to friends outside the railing, became attentive. The senator from Fraser was little given to speech, and it might be that he meant at this time to indicate the attitude of the majority toward the appropriations asked by the governor. In any event, it was always wise to listen to anything Morton Bassett had to say.

The senator was unusually deliberate. Even when he had secured the undivided attention of the chamber he picked up the telegram and read it through again, as though to familiarize himself with its contents.

"Mr. President, I have just received the following message from a personal friend in Washington: 'The Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield, United States Senator from Indiana, while on a hunting trip in Chesapeake Bay with a party of Baltimore friends, died suddenly this morning. The death occurred at a point remote from the telegraph. No particulars have yet been received at Washington.' It is with profound sorrow, Mr. President, that I make this announcement. Though Senator Ridgefield had long been my political antagonist, he had also been, for many years, a valued personal friend. The Republican Party has lost one of its great leaders, and the State of Indiana a son to whom men of all parties have given their ungrudging admiration. Mr. President, I move that the senate do now adjourn to meet at ten o'clock to-morrow morning."

Even before the motion could be put, Bassett was passing about among the desks. The men he spoke to nodded understandingly. A mild, subdued excitement reigned in the chamber. It flashed through the mind of every Democratic member that that death in the Chesapeake had brought a crisis in the war between Bassett and Thatcher. In due course the assembly, convened in joint session, would mourn decorously the death of a statesman who had long and honorably represented the old Hoosier State in the greatest tribunal on earth; and his passing would be feelingly referred to in sonorous phrases as an untoward event, a deplorable and irreparable loss to the commonwealth. To Republicans, however, it was a piece of stupendous ill-luck that the Senator should have indulged in the childish pastime of duck shooting at an inconvenient season when the Democratic majority in the general assembly would be able to elect a successor to complete his term of office.

When the gavel fell, adjourning the senate, gentlemen were already seeking in the Federal Constitution for the exact language of the section bearing upon this emergency. If the Republican governor had not so gayly summoned the legislature he might have appointed a Senator of his own political faith to serve until the next regular session, following the elections a year hence. It was ungenerous and disloyal of Roger B. Ridgefield to have taken himself out of the world in this abrupt fashion. Before the first shock had passed, there were those about the State House who, scanning the newspaper extras, were saying that a secret fondness for poker and not an enthusiasm for ducks had led the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield to the remote arm of the Chesapeake, where he had been the guest of a financier whose influence in the upper house of Congress was notoriously pernicious. This did not, however, alter the immediate situation. The language of the Federal and State Constitutions was all too explicit for the Republican minority; it was only in recess that a governor might fill a vacancy; and beyond doubt the general assembly was in town, lawfully brought from the farm, the desk, the mine, and the factory, as though expressly to satisfy the greed for power of a voracious Democracy.

Groups of members were retiring to quiet corners to discuss the crisis. Bassett had already designated a committee room where he would meet his followers and stanch adherents. Thatcher men had gone forth to seek their chief. The Democrats would gain a certain moral strength through the possession of a Senator in Congress. The man chosen to fill the vacancy would have an almost irresistible claim upon the senatorship if the Democrats should control the next legislature. It was worth fighting for, that dead man's seat!

The full significance of the news was not wasted upon Representative Harwood. The house adjourned promptly, and Dan hastened to write telegrams. He wired Colonel Ramsay, of Aurora, to come to the capital on the first train. Telegrams went flying that afternoon to every part of Indiana.

Thatcher read the evening papers in Chicago and kept the wires hot while he waited for the first train for Indianapolis.

One of his messages, addressed to Harwood, read:

"Breakfast with me to-morrow morning at my house. Strictly private. This is your big chance."

Harwood, locked in his office in the Law Building, received this message by telephone, and it aroused his ire. His relations with Thatcher did not justify that gentleman in tendering him a strictly private breakfast, nor did he relish having a big chance pointed out to him by Mr. Thatcher. It cannot be denied that Dan, too, felt that Senator Ridgefield had chosen a most unfortunate season for exposing himself to the ravages of the pneumococcus. He kept away from the State House and hotels that evening, having decided to take no part in the preliminary skirmishes until he had seen Ramsay, who would bring a cool head and a trained hand to bear upon this unforeseen situation.

He studied the newspapers as he ate breakfast alone at the University Club early the next morning. The "Advertiser" had neatly divided its first page between the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield, dead in a far country, and the Honorable Morton Bassett, who, it seemed, was very much alive at the Hoosier capital. A double column headline conveyed this intelligence:—

BASSETT IS HIMSELF AGAIN

Harwood, nibbled his toast and winnowed the chaff of speculation from the grains of truth in this article. He had checked off the names of all the Bassett men in both houses of the assembly, and listed Thatcher's supporters and the doubtful members. Bassett would undoubtedly make a strong showing in a caucus, but whether he would be able to command a majority remained to be seen. There were men among the doubtful who would be disposed to favor Thatcher because he had driven a wedge into the old Bassett stone wall. No one else had ever succeeded in imperiling the security of that impregnable stronghold. The thought of this made Harwood uncomfortable. It was unfortunate from every standpoint that the legislature should be called upon to choose a Senator without the usual time for preparation. Dan had already been struck by the general air of irresponsibility that prevailed among the legislators. Many of the members had looked upon the special session as a lark; they seemed to feel that their accountability to their constituents had ended with the regular session.

The "Courier," Dan observed, printed an excellent biographical sketch of the dead Senator, and its news article on the Democratic opportunity was seemly and colorless. The state and federal statutes bearing upon the emergency were quoted in full, but the names of Bassett and Thatcher did not appear, nor were any possible successors to Ridgefield mentioned. Dan opened to the editorial page, and was not surprised to find the leading article a dignified eulogy of the dead Senator. Then his eye fastened upon an article so placed that it dominated the whole page. It was the old "Stop, Look, Listen!" editorial, reproduced with minute citation of the date of original publication.

Dan flinched as though a cupful of ice water had struck him in the face. Whatever scandalous knowledge touching Bassett's public or private life Thatcher might possess, it was plain that Bassett was either ignorant of it or knew and did not fear exposure. In either event, the republication of the "Stop, Look, Listen!" article was an invitation to battle.

It was in no happy frame of mind that Harwood awaited the coming of Ramsay.



CHAPTER XXXI

SYLVIA ASKS QUESTIONS

The Wares had asked Sylvia to dine with them on Friday evening a fortnight later, and Harwood was to call for her at the minister's at nine o'clock. Sylvia went directly to the Wares' from school, and on reaching the house learned that Mrs. Ware had not come home and that the minister was engaged with a caller in the parlor. Sylvia, who knew the ways of the house well, left her wraps in the hall and made herself comfortable in the study, that curious little room that was never free from the odor of pipe smoke, and where an old cavalry sabre hung above the desk upon which in old times many sermons had been written. A saddle, a fishing-rod, and a fowling-piece dwelt together harmoniously in one corner, and over the back of a chair hung a dilapidated corduroy coat.

It had been whispered in orthodox circles that Ware had amused himself one winter after his retirement by profanely feeding his theological library into the furnace. However true this may be, few authors were represented in his library, and these were as far as possible compressed in one volume. Shakespeare, Milton, Emerson, Arnold, and Whittier were always ready to his hand; and he kept a supply of slender volumes of Sill's "Poems" in a cupboard in the hall and handed them out discriminatingly to his callers. The house was the resort of many young people, some of them children of Ware's former parishioners, and he was much given to discussing books with them; or he would read aloud—"Sohrab and Rustum," Lowell's essay on Lincoln, or favorite chapters from "Old Curiosity Shop"; or again, it might be a review article on the social trend or a fresh view of an old economic topic. The Wares' was the pleasantest of small houses and after Mrs. Owen's the place sought oftenest by Sylvia.

"There's a gentleman with Mr. Ware: he's been here a long time," said the maid, lingering to lay a fresh stick of wood on the grate fire.

Sylvia, warming her hands at the blaze, heard the faint blur of voices from the parlor. She surveyed the room with the indifference of familiarity, glanced at a new magazine, and then sat down at the desk and picked up a book she had never noticed before. She was surprised to find it a copy of "Society and Solitude" that did not match the well-thumbed set of Emerson—one of the few "sets" Ware owned. She passed her hand over the green covers, that were well worn and scratched in places. The fact that the minister boasted in his humorous way of never wasting money on bindings caused Sylvia to examine this volume with an attention she would not have given it in any other house. On the fly leaf was written in pencil, in Ware's rough, uneven hand, an inscription which covered the page, with the last words cramped in the lower corner. These were almost illegible, but Sylvia felt her way through them slowly, and then turned to the middle of the book quickly with an uncomfortable sense of having read a private memorandum of the minister's. The margins of his books she knew were frequently scribbled over with notes that meant nothing whatever to any one but Ware himself. After a moment her eyes sought again irresistibly the inscription. She re-read it slowly:—

"The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings; they have made them crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Tramping in Adirondacks. Baptized Elizabeth at Harris's."

It was almost like eavesdropping to come in this way upon that curiously abrupt Ware-like statement of the minister's: "Tramping in Adirondacks. Baptized Elizabeth at Harris's."

The discussion in the parlor had become heated, and occasionally words in a voice not Ware's reached Sylvia distinctly. Some one was alternately beseeching and threatening the minister. It was clear from the pauses in which she recognized Ware's deep tones that he was yielding neither to the importunities nor the threats of his blustering caller. Sylvia had imagined that the storms of life had passed over the retired clergyman, and she was surprised that such an interview should be taking place in his house. She was about to retreat to the dining-room to be out of reach of the voices when the parlor door opened abruptly and Thatcher appeared, with anger unmistakably showing in his face, and apparently disposed to resume in the hall the discussion which the minister had terminated in the library. Thatcher seemed balder and more repellent than when she had first seen him on the floor of the convention hall on the day Harwood uttered Bassett's defiance. Sylvia rose with the book still in her hand and walked to the end of the room; but any one in the house might have heard what Thatcher was saying.

"That's the way with you preachers; you talk about clean politics, and when we get all ready to clean out a bad man, you duck; you're a lot of cowardly dodgers. I tell you, I don't want you to say a word or figure in this thing at all; but you give me that book and I'll scare Mort Bassett out of town. I'll scare him clean out of Indiana, and he'll never show his head again. Why, Ware, I've been counting on it, that when you saw we were in a hole and going to lose, you'd come down from your high horse and help me out. I tell you, there's no doubt about it; that woman's the woman I'm looking for! I guessed it the night you told that story up there in the house-boat."

"Quit this business, Ed," the minister was saying; "I'm an old friend of yours. But I won't budge an inch. I'd never breathed a word of that story before and I shouldn't have told it that night. It was so far back that I thought it was safe. But your idea that Bassett had anything to do with that is preposterous. Your hatred of him has got the better of you, my friend. Drop it: forget it. If you can't whip him fair, let him win."

"Not much I won't; but I didn't think you'd go back on me; I thought better of you than that!"

Thatcher strode to the door and went out, slamming it after him.

The minister peered into the library absently, and then, surprised to find Sylvia, advanced to meet her, smiling gravely. He took both her hands, and held them, looking into her face.

"What's this you've been reading? Ah, that book!" The volume slipped into his hands and he glanced at it, frowning impatiently. "Poor little book. I ought to have burned it years ago; and I ought to have learned by this time to keep my mouth shut. They've always said I look like an Indian, but an Indian never tells anything. I've told just one story too many. Mea maxima culpa!"

He sat down in the big chair beside his desk, placed the book within reach, and kept touching it as he talked.

"I saw Mr. Thatcher," said Sylvia. "He seemed very much aroused. I couldn't help hearing a word now and then."

"That's all right, Sylvia. I've known Thatcher for years, and last fall I went up to his house-boat on the Kankakee for a week's shooting. Allen and Dan Harwood were the rest of the party—and I happened to tell the story of this little book—an unfinished story. We ought never to tell stories until they are finished. And it seems that Thatcher, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, has been raking up the ashes of an old affair of Bassett's with a woman, and he's trying to hitch it on to the story I told him about this book. He says by shaking this at Bassett he can persuade him that he's got enough ammunition to blow him out of the water. But I don't believe a word of it; I won't believe such a thing of Morton Bassett. And even if I did, Thatcher can't have that book. I owe it to the woman whose baby I baptized up there in the hills to keep it. And the woman may be living, too, for all I know. I think of her pretty often. She was game; wouldn't tell anything. If a man had deceived her she stood by him. Whatever she was—I know she was not bad, not a bit of it—the spirit of the hills had entered into her—and those are cleansing airs up there. I suppose it all made the deeper impression on me because I was born up there myself. When I strike Adirondacks in print I put down my book and think a while. It's a picture word. It brings back my earliest childhood as far as I can remember. I call words that make pictures that way moose words; they jump up in your memory like a scared moose in a thicket and crash into the woods like a cavalry charge. I can remember things that happened when I was three years old: one day father shot a deer in our cornfield and I recall it perfectly. The general atmosphere of the old place steals over me yet. The very thought of the pointed spruces, the feathery tamaracks, all the scents and sounds of summer, and the long, white winters, does my soul good now. The old Hebrews understood the effect of landscape on character. They knew most everything, those old chaps. 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.' Any strength there is in me dates back to the hills of my youth. I'd like to go back there to die when the bugle calls."

Mrs. Ware had not yet come in. Ware lighted the lamp and freshened the fire. While he was doing this, Sylvia moved to a chair by the table and picked up the book. What Ware had said about the hills of his youth, the woods, the word tamarack that he had dropped carelessly, touched chords of memory as lightly as a breeze vibrates a wind harp. Was this merely her imagination that had been stirred, or was it indeed a recollection? Often before she had been moved by similar vague memories or longings, whatever they were. They had come to trouble her girlhood at Montgomery, when the snow whitened the campus and the wind sang in the trees. She was grateful that the minister had turned his back. Her hands trembled as she glanced again at the scribbled fly leaf; and more closely at the words penciled at the bottom: "Baptized Elizabeth at Harris's." Thatcher wanted this book to use against Bassett. Bassett was a collector of fine bindings; she had heard it spoken of in the family. It was part of Marian's pride in her father that he was a bookish man. When the minister returned to his seat Sylvia asked as she put down the book:—

"Who was Elizabeth?"

And then, little by little, in his abrupt way, he told the story, much as he had told it that night on the Kankakee, with pauses for which Sylvia was grateful—they gave her time for thought, for filling in the lapses, for visualizing the scene he described. And the shadow of the Morton Bassett she knew crept into the picture. She recalled their early meetings, that first brief contact on the shore of the lake; their talk on the day following the convention when she had laughed at him; that wet evening when they met in the street and he had expressed his interest in Harwood and the hope that she might care for the young lawyer. With her trained habits of reasoning she rejected this or that bit of testimony as worthless; but even then enough remained to chill her heart. Her hands were cold as she clasped them together. Who was Elizabeth? Ah, who was Sylvia? The phrase of the song that had brought her to tears that starry night on the lake when Dan Harwood had asked her to marry him smote her again. Her grandfather's evasion of her questions about her father and mother, and the twinges of heartache she had experienced at college when other girls spoke of their homes, assumed now for the first time a sinister meaning. Had she, indeed, come into the world in dishonor, and had she in truth known that far hill country, with its evergreens and glistening snows?

Ware had finished his story, and sat staring into the crackling fire. At last he turned toward Sylvia. In the glow of the desk lamp her face was white, and she gazed with unseeing eyes at the inscription in the book.

The silence was still unbroken when a few minutes later Mrs. Ware came in with Harwood, whom she had met in the street and brought home to dinner.

Dan was full of the situation in the legislature, and the table talk played about that topic.

"We're sparring for time, that's all, and the people pay the freight! The deadlock is clamped on tight. I never thought Thatcher would prove so strong. I think we could shake loose enough votes from both sides to precipitate a stampede for Ramsay, but he won't hear to it. He says he wants to do the state one patriotic service before he dies by cleaning out the bosses, and he doesn't want to spoil the record by taking the senatorship himself. Meanwhile Bassett stands fast and there's no telling when he'll break through Thatcher's lines."

"Thatcher was here to see me to-day—the third time. He won't come back. You know what he's after?" said Ware.

"Yes; I understand," Dan answered.

"There won't be anything of that kind, will there, Dan?"

Dan shrugged his shoulders, and glanced at Sylvia and Mrs. Ware.

"Mrs. Ware knows about it; I had to tell her," remarked the minister, chuckling. "When Ed Thatcher makes two calls on me in one week, and one of them at midnight, there's got to be an explanation. And Sylvia heard him raving before I showed him out this afternoon."

Sylvia's plate was untouched; her eyes searched those of the man who loved her before she spoke.

"That's an ethical point, Mr. Ware. If it were necessary to use that,—if every other resource failed,—would you use it?"

"No! Not if Bassett's success meant the utter destruction of the state. I don't believe a word of it. I haven't the slightest confidence in Thatcher's detective work, and the long arm of coincidence has to grasp something firmer than my pitiful little book to convince me."

Dan shook his head.

"He doesn't need the book, Mr. Ware. I've seen the documents in the case. Most of the evidence is circumstantial, but you remember what your friend Thoreau said about circumstantial evidence—something to the effect that it's sometimes pretty convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk."

"But has Thatcher found the trout?"

"Well, no; he hasn't exactly found the trout, but there's enough, there's altogether too much!" ended Dan despairingly. "The caucus doesn't meet again till to-morrow night, when Thatcher promises to show his hand. I'm going to put in the time trying to persuade Ramsay to come round."

"You might take it yourself, Dan," suggested Mrs. Ware.

"Oh, I'm not eligible; I'm a little shy of being old enough! And besides, I couldn't allow Ramsay to prove himself a better patriot than I am. There are plenty of fellows who have no such scruples, and we've got to look out or Bassett will shift suddenly to some man of his own if he finds he can't nominate himself."

"But do you think he has any idea what Thatcher has up his sleeve?" asked Ware.

"It's possible; I dare say he knows it. He's always been master of the art of getting information from the enemy's camp. But Thatcher has shown remarkable discretion in managing this. He tells me solemnly that nobody on earth knows his intentions except you, Allen, and me. He's saving himself for a broadside, and he wants its full dramatic effect."

Sylvia had hardly spoken during this discussion; but the others looked at her curiously as she said:—

"I don't think he has it to fire; it's incredible; I don't believe it."

"Neither do I, Sylvia," said the minister earnestly.

The talk at the Wares' went badly that evening. Harwood's mind was on the political situation. As he sat in the minister's library he knew that in upper chambers of the State House, and in hotels and boarding-houses, members of the majority in twos and threes, or here and there a dozen, were speculating and plotting. The deadlock was becoming intolerable. Interest in the result was keen in all parts of the country, and the New York and Chicago newspapers had sent special representatives to watch the fight. Dan was sick of the sight and sound of it. In the strict alignment of factions he had voted with Thatcher, yet he told himself he was not a Thatcher man. He had personally projected Ramsay's name one night in the hope of breaking the Bassett phalanx, but the only result was to arouse Thatcher's wrath against him. Bassett's men believed in Bassett. The old superstition as to his invulnerability had never more thoroughly possessed the imaginations of his adherents. Bassett was not only himself again, but his iron grip seemed tighter than ever He was making the fight of his life, and he was beyond question a "game" fighter, the opposition newspapers that most bitterly opposed Bassett tempered their denunciations with this concession Dan fumed at this, such bosses were always game fighters, they had to be, and the readiness of Americans to admire the gameness of the Bassetts deepened his hostility. The very use of sporting terminology in politics angered him. In his mind the case was docketed not as Thatcher versus Bassett, but as Thatcher and Bassett versus the People. It all came to that. And why should not the People—the poor, meek, long-suffering People, the "pee-pul" of familiar derision—sometimes win? His pride in the state of his birth was strong; his pride in his party was only second to it. He would serve both if he could. Not only must Bassett be forever put down, but Thatcher also; and he assured himself that it was not the men he despised, but the wretched, brutal mediaeval system that survived in them. And so pondering, it was no wonder that Dan brought no joy to John Ware's library that night. The minister himself seemed unwontedly preoccupied; Sylvia stared at the fire as though seeking in the flames answers to unanswerable questions. Mrs. Ware sought vainly to bring cheer to the company:

Shortly after eight o'clock, Sylvia rose to leave.

"Aunt Sally got home from Kentucky this afternoon, and I must drop in for a minute, Dan, if you don't mind."

Sylvia hardly spoke on the way to Mrs. Owen's. Since that night on the lake she had never been the same, or so it seemed to Dan. She had gone back to her teaching, and when they met she talked of her work and of impersonal things. Once he had broached the subject of marriage,—soon after her return to town,—but she had made it quite clear that this was a forbidden topic. The good comradeship ship and frankness of their intercourse had passed, and it seemed to his despairing lover's heart that it could never be regained. She carried her head a little higher; her smile was not the smile of old. He shrank from telling her that nothing mattered if she cared for him as he believed she did. She gave him no chance, for one thing, and he had never in his bitter self-communing found any words in which to tell her so. More than ever he needed Sylvia, but Sylvia had locked and barred the doors against him.

Mrs. Owen received them in her office, and the old lady's cheeriness was grateful to both of them.

"So you've been having supper with the Wares, have you, while I ate here all by myself? A nice way to treat a lone old woman,—leaving me to prop the 'Indiana Farmer' on the coffee pot for company! I had to stay at Lexington longer than I wanted to, and some of my Kentucky cousins held me up in Louisville. I notice, Daniel, that there are some doings at the State House. I must say it was a downright sin for old Ridgefield to go duck shooting at his time of life and die just when we were getting politics calmed down in this state. When I saw that old 'Stop, Look, Listen!' editorial printed like a Thanksgiving proclamation in the 'Courier,' I knew there was trouble. I must speak to Atwill. He's letting the automobile folks run the paper again."

She demanded to know when Dan would have time to do some work for her; she had disposed of her Kentucky farm and was going ahead with her scheme for a vocational school to be established at Waupegan. This was the first that Dan had heard of this project, and its bearing upon the hopes of the Bassetts as the heirs apparent of Mrs. Owen's estate startled him.

"I want you to draw up papers covering the whole business, Daniel, but you've got to get rid of your legislature first. I thought of a good name for the school, Sylvia. We'll call it Elizabeth House School, to hitch it on to the boarding-house. I want you and Daniel to go down East with me right after Christmas to look at some more schools where they do that kind of work. We'll have some fun next spring tearing up the farm and putting up the new buildings. Are Hallie and Marian in town, Sylvia?"

"No, they're at Fraserville," Sylvia replied. "And I had a note from Blackford yesterday. He's doing well at school now."

"Well, I guess you did that for him, Sylvia. I hope they're all grateful for that."

"Oh, it was nothing; and they paid me generously for my work."

"Humph!" Mrs. Owen sniffed. "Children, there are things in this world that a check don't settle."

There were some matters of business to be discussed. Dan had at last received an offer for the Kelton house at Montgomery, and Mrs. Owen thought he ought to be able to screw the price up a couple of hundred dollars.

"I'm all ready to close the estate when the sale is completed," said Dan. "Practically everything will be cleaned up when the house is sold. That Canneries stock that we inventoried as worthless is pretty sure to pan out. I've refused to compromise."

"That's right, Daniel. Don't you compromise that case. This skyrocket finance is all right for New York, but we can't allow it here in the country where folks are mostly square or trying to be."

"It seems hard to let the house go," said Sylvia. "It's given Mary a home and we'll have to find a place for her."

"Oh, that's all fixed," remarked Mrs. Owen. "I've got work for her at Elizabeth House. She can do the darning and mending. Daniel, have you brought the papers from Andrew's safety box over here?"

"Yes, Aunt Sally; I did that the last time I was in Montgomery. I wanted to examine the abstract of title and be ready to close this sale if you and Sylvia approved of it."

"Well, well," Mrs. Owen said, in one of those irrelevances that adorned her conversation.

Dan knew what was in her mind. Since that night on Waupegan, blessed forever by Sylvia's tears, the letter found among Professor Kelton's papers had led him through long, intricate mazes of speculation. It was the torn leaf from a book that was worthless without the context; a piece of valuable evidence, but inadmissible unless supported and illuminated by other testimony.



Sylvia had been singularly silent, and Mrs. Owen's keen eyes saw that something was amiss. She stopped talking, as much as to say, "Now, if you young folks have anything troubling you, now's your time to come out with it."

An old clock on the stair landing boomed ten. Mrs. Owen stirred restlessly. Sylvia, sitting in a low chair by the fire, clasped her hands abruptly, clenched them hard, and spoke, turning her head slowly until her eyes rested upon Dan.

"Dan," she asked, "did you ever know—do you know now—what was in the letter you carried to Grandfather Kelton that first time I saw you—the time I went to find grandfather for you?"

Dan glanced quickly at Mrs. Owen.

"Answer Sylvia's question, Daniel," the old lady replied.

"Yes; I learned later what it was. And Aunt Sally knows."

"Tell me; tell me what you know about it," commanded Sylvia gravely, and her voice was clear now.

Dan hesitated. He rose and stood with his arm resting on the mantel.

"It's all right, Daniel. Now that Sylvia has asked, she must know just what we know," said Mrs. Owen.

"The letter was among your grandfather's papers. It was an offer to pay for your education. It was an unsigned letter."

"But you know who wrote it?" asked Sylvia, not lifting her head.

"No; I don't know that," he replied earnestly; "we haven't the slightest idea."

"But how did you come to be the messenger? Who gave you the letter?" she persisted quietly.

"Daniel never told me that, Sylvia. But if you want to know, he must tell you. It might be better for you not to know; you must consider that. It can make no difference now of any kind."

"It may make a difference," said Sylvia brokenly, not lifting her head; "it may make a great deal of difference. That's why I speak of it; that's why I must know!"

"Go on, Daniel; answer Sylvia's question."

"Mr. Fitch gave it to me. It had been entrusted to him for delivery by a personal friend or a client: I never knew. He assured me that he had no idea what the letter contained; but he knew of course where it came from. He chose me for the errand, I suppose, because I was a new man in the office, and a comparative stranger in town. I remember that he asked me if I had ever been in Montgomery, as though to be sure I had no acquaintances there. I carried back a verbal answer—which was stipulated in the letter. The answer was 'No,' and in what way Mr. Fitch passed it on to his client I never knew."

"You didn't tell me those things when we found the letter, Daniel," said Mrs. Owen reproachfully.

The old lady opened a drawer, found a chamois skin, and polished her glasses slowly. Dan walked away as though to escape from that figure with averted face crouching by the fire. But without moving Sylvia spoke again, with a monotonous level of tone, and her question had the empty ring of a lawyer's interrogatory worn threadbare by repetition to a succession of witnesses:—

"At that time was Mr. Bassett among the clients of Wright and Fitch, and did you ever see him in the office then, or at any time?"

Mrs. Owen closed the drawer deliberately and raised her eyes to Dan's affrighted gaze.

"Daniel, you'd better run along now. Sylvia's going to spend the night here."

Sylvia had not moved or spoken again when the outer door closed on Harwood.



CHAPTER XXXII

"MY BEAUTIFUL ONE"

Miss Farrell was surprised to find her employer already in his office when she unlocked the door at eight o'clock the next morning, and her surprise was increased when Harwood, always punctilious in such matters, ignored the good-morning with which she greeted him. The electric lights over Dan's desk were burning, a fact not lost upon his stenographer. It was apparent that Harwood had either spent the night in his office or had gone to work before daylight. Rose's eyes were as sharp as her wits, and she recognized at a glance the file-envelopes and papers relating to the Kelton estate, many of them superscribed in her own hand, that lay on Harwood's desk.

She snapped off the lights with an air that implied reproof, or could not have failed of that effect if the man at the desk had been conscious of the act. He was hopelessly distraught and his face appeared no less pallid in daylight than in the electric glare in which Rose had found him. As the girl warmed her hands at the radiator in the reception room the telephone chimed cheerily. The telephone provides a welcome companionship for the office girl: its importunities and insolences are at once her delight and despair. Rose took down the receiver with relief. She parleyed guardedly with an unseen questioner and addressed Harwood from the door in the cautious, apologetic tone with which wise office girls break in upon the meditations of their employers.

"Pardon me, Mr. Harwood. Shall I say you're engaged. It's Mr. Thatcher."

Dan half-turned and replied with a tameness Rose had not expected.

"Say what you please, Rose; only I don't want to talk to him or see him, or anybody."

The clock in the court-house tower boomed nine sombrely. Dan distrusted its accuracy as he distrusted everything in the world that morning. He walked listlessly to the window and compared the face of the clock with his watch. He had thought it must be noon; but the hour of the day did not matter greatly.

"It's all right," said Rose meekly from the door. "I told him you were probably at the State House."

"Whom? Oh, thank you, Rose." And then, as though to ease her conscience for this mild mendacity, he added: "I believe I did have an engagement over there at nine."

"He said—" Rose began warily; and then gave him an opportunity to cut her short.

"What did he say?"

"Oh, he was hot! He said if you came in before he found you, to say that if you and Ramsay didn't help him deliver the freight to-day he would get action to-morrow; that that's the limit."

"He said to-morrow, did he? Very well, Rose. That's all."

Rose, virtuously indexing the letter-book, saw Harwood as he idly ranged the rooms try the hall door to make sure it was bolted. Then he stood at the window of his own room, staring at nothing. The telephone chimed cheerfully at intervals. Ramsay sought him; Thatcher had stationed one of his allies at a telephone booth in the State House corridor to call the office at regular intervals. Newspaper reporters demanded to know where Harwood could be found; the governor, rankling under the criticism he had brought upon his party by the special session, wished to see Harwood to learn when, if possible, the legislature would take itself home. To these continual importunities Rose replied in tones of surprise, regret, or chagrin, as the individual case demanded, without again troubling her employer. The index completed, she filed papers, smoothed her yellow hair at the wash stand, exchanged fraternal signals with a girl friend in the office opposite, and read the "Courier's" report of the senatorial struggle with complete understanding of its intricacies.

"Rose!"

It was twelve o'clock when Harwood called her. He had brushed aside the mass of documents she had noted on her arrival, and a single letter sheet lay before him. Without glancing up he bade her sit down. She had brought her notebook prepared to take dictation. He glanced at it and shook his head. The tired, indifferent Harwood she had found at the end of his night vigil had vanished; he was once more the alert, earnest young man of action she admired.

"Rose, I want to ask you some questions. I think you will believe me if I say that I shouldn't ask them if they were not of importance—of very great importance."

"All right, Mr. Harwood."

Her eyes had fallen upon the letter and her lids fluttered quickly. She touched her pompadour with the back of her hand and tightened the knot of her tie.

"This is on the dead, Rose. It concerns a lot of people, and it's important for me to know the truth. And it's possible that you may not be able to help; but if you can't the matter ends here."

He rose and closed the door of his room to shut out the renewed jingle of the telephone.

"I want you to look at this letter and tell me whether you ever saw it before."

She took it from him, glanced at the first line indifferently, looked closely at the paper, and gave it back, shaking her head.

"We never had anything like that in the office, paper or machine either. That's heavier than the stationery you had over in the Boordman Building, and that's a black ribbon; we've always used purple copying-ribbons. And that letter wasn't copied; you can tell that."

"That doesn't answer my question, Rose. I want to know whether you ever saw that letter before. Perhaps you'd better take another look at it."

"Oh, I can tell any of my work across the street! I don't know anything about that letter, Mr. Harwood."

Her indifference had yielded to respectful indignation. She set her lips firmly, and her blue eyes expressed surprise that her employer should be thus subjecting her to cross-examination.

"I understand perfectly, Rose, that this is unusual, and that it is not quite on the square. But this is strictly between ourselves. It's on the dead, you understand."

"Oh, I'd do anything for you that I'd do for anybody, yes, sir—I'd do more: but I refused ten thousand dollars for what I know about what happened in the Transportation Committee that winter I was its stenog. That's a lot of money; it would take care of me for the rest of my life; and you know Thatcher kept after me until I had to tell him a few things I'd do to him if he didn't let me alone. I'll answer your question straight," and she looked him in the eye, "I never saw that letter before, and I don't know anything about it. Is that all?"

"To go back again, Rose," resumed Dan patiently, "not many girls would have the strength to resist a temptation like that, as you did. But this is a very different case. I need your help, but it isn't for myself that I'm trying to trace that letter. If it weren't a matter of actual need I shouldn't trouble you—be sure of that."

"I always thought you were on the square, but you're asking me to do something you wouldn't do yourself. And I've told you again that I don't know anything about that letter; I never saw it before."

She tapped the edge of the desk to hide the trembling of her fingers. The tears shone suddenly in her blue eyes.

Dan frowned, but the frown was not for Rose. She had already betrayed herself; he was confident from her manner that she knew. The prompt denial of any knowledge of the fateful sheet of paper for which he had hoped all night had not been forthcoming. But mere assumptions would not serve him; he had walked in darkness too long not to crave the full light. The pathos of this girl's loyalty had touched him; her chance in life had been the slightest, she had been wayward and had erred deeply, and yet there were fastnesses of honor in her soul that remained unassailable.