Further conversation was ended by the swinging of a lantern across the road.

"Ah!" exclaimed the Governor, with a curious rising inflexion. "I've been looking for that."

He slowed up instantly and in a moment halted car. The headlights played upon two men standing belligerently in front of the roadster.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" cried the Governor. "Short of gas or what's the trouble?"

"We're from the Portsmouth police," answered one of the men while the other ran to the rear of the car and swung a lantern over the license tag.

"Maine tag," he shouted.

"Certainly a Maine license," replied the Governor. "We're deputy sheriffs from Cumberland County looking for two crooks who've been robbing houses up our way. Got blank warrants all ready to serve if we catch the scoundrels."

Archie shuddered at the Governor's assurance. The Portsmouth officers manifested the deepest professional interest and sympathy as the Governor with an authoritative air flourished two documents.

"Burglar shot at Bailey Harbor last night," explained one of the officers; "they found his body this morning and we're looking for his accomplice. Guess he didn't come this way; we been on the road all night."

"We've held up everybody that looked suspicious all the way down and haven't seen a soul," the Governor replied in official tones. "Think the chaps we're looking for skipped by train. What did the dead burglar look like?"

"I talked with the Bailey mayor over the telephone and he said the dead man was a big fellow, clean-shaven with the scar of an old knife wound under his left arm. One of the cottagers shot him in his house, but he got away—crawled down on the shore and died. Boston police department's sending a man up to look at the body. Never knew so many burglaries up this way. Must be a whole gang at work."

"Certainly looks like it," the Governor assented. "Well, if you see a tall chap and a short thick-set fellow anywhere nail 'em for us. Old criminals with long records. They've been enjoying themselves up our way. The tall one doesn't say much, but the little chap is a smooth talker—can talk himself right out of jail if you give him a chance."

"We'll shoot first and get an explanation afterward if we see 'em," declared the Portsmouth officer, as his companion buttoned up his coat preparatory to getting back into the car.

"Glad to see you, boys!" exclaimed the Governor, backing the stolen machine and then calling a cheery "Good luck!" as he passed their car.

Archie had been sitting pigeon-toed expecting that at any minute the two officers would discover points in the stolen car to arouse their suspicions; but the Governor's jaunty tone had evidently thrown them entirely off guard. He had hoped that the Governor would press for further details as to the killing of the burglar at the Harbor, but as matters stood he had learned nothing except that a burglar had been shot in one of the Harbor cottages and he was again torn with anxiety as to the identity of the man he had fired at in the Congdon house.

The Governor began to chortle after a quick glance at the vanishing red light of the Portsmouth car.

"Not the first time I've used warrants in that way! And they're good warrants too. I plucked a bunch of such literature from a deputy sheriff who got too inquisitive last summer and I had to grab and tie him to a tree up near Moosehead where I'd gone for a conference with some of the boys who were coming out of Canada. But I guess it's a sure thing those Portsmouth chaps were looking for me! I'd been strolling round quite freely with poor Hoky up the shore. If that chap had stuck his finger into the paint this machine would have gone no further. We'll do well to leave the main road for a while, then step briskly into a train somewhere."

"Your nerve in describing us—you and me, sitting right there before them—to those officers gave me a chill," confessed Archie. "If you'd talked to them much more we'd have been pinched for sure."

"You flatter the intelligence of the police. There are not a half a dozen detectives worthy of the name in the whole country. Possibly we may have a contest of wits with some of them before we close the season."

It had always been Archie's habit to greet courteously the policemen he passed at night in the Avenue, little dreaming that the day would come when he would view the policing of the world with contemptuous disdain. The Governor spoke of policemen and detectives with pity; they were so stupid, he said, though he admitted under Archie's cross-examination that they could be a nuisance at times.

"Make yourself as conspicuous as possible and they're hardly likely to bother you. There are times, of course, when one must hide, but the mistake our boys make is in hiding in places where the police can call them up by telephone and tell them to pay their own taxi fare to the nearest police station. I call on police chiefs in a purely social way now and then, and talk to them about the best way of reforming crooks. It's their philosophy that no crook ever reforms; an absurd idea, of course. But there's no surer way to ingratiate yourself with a big fat detective than to ask how you can help poor repentant sinners, which gives him a chance to discourage you. There's nothing in it, he warns you. You thank him for his advice and ask him out to lunch. I've bought expensive dinners for some of the highest priced crime-ferrets in the game just for the joy of hearing their pessimism. They're all swollen up with the idea of their superior knowledge of human nature. But it serves a good purpose to cultivate them, for you're perfectly safe so long as you listen and don't try to tell them anything."

II

Toward morning the Governor again had recourse to the Elizabethan bards, then he lapsed suddenly into a meditative mood.

"It's always a bad sign when the season opens with the potting of some of the comrades. When there's one such catastrophe there are bound to be others. Now that Hoky's dead you'll hear of the killing of other burglars. Every householder on the coast will buy himself a gun and wait for a chance to shoot some misguided stranger he finds collecting bric-a-brac in the dark watches of the night. But Hoky's death is a loss to the underworld. At his best he could achieve the impossible. Once he spent a week on the roof of police headquarters in Cincinnati; really he did. Good weather and perfectly comfortable; used to stroll down through the building and go out for food; then back again. Chatted with the chief of detectives about his own crime, which was holding up the paymaster of a big factory. Bless me if Hoky didn't bury the money in a graveyard and hurry uptown and live right there with the whole police system right under him. He was a dear fellow, Hoky! By the way, you're mighty lucky that you didn't get a neat little chunk of lead right through the midriff, fooling with that drug store!"

In the rush of his thoughts Archie had forgotten his imaginary exploit at the Harbor drug store and realized that he must have his wits about him if he expected to retain the Governor's regard and confidence. The ease with which the supercrook rode around policemen vastly increased his feeling of reliance in his strange companion, and his only misgiving was that the daring resourceful rogue might abandon him.

As dawn broke the whistle and rumble of a train caused the Governor to stop the car and dive into his pockets for time tables of which he carried a large supply. He scanned one and hummed his satisfaction.

"We'll get rid of this machine right now as there's a station over there a little way where we can pick up a local right into Portsmouth. Don't be nervous. We'll pass for a couple of city men owning farms up here and just riding into town on a little business.

'Virtue is bold and goodness never fearful,'

as well said by old William of Avon. We shall be bold, Archie, but not too bold."

He stopped, opened a gate and ran the car—thoroughly disreputable from its nocturnal bath in mud—through a barnyard and into an empty shed.

"Now for a brisk walk! The owner of this place sleeps late—not a sign of smoke from the kitchen chimney. And yet so many students of farm life wonder at the meager earnings of the honest husbandman! However, we've given that chap an excellent roadster and if he keeps his mouth shut he can run it till it falls to pieces for all anybody will ever know it's a stolen vehicle."

They crossed the railroad and were soon buying tickets from a sleepy stationmaster. The Governor talked briskly through the window as the agent stamped their tickets while Archie cowered at the door marveling that any one could face the problems of a precarious existence so gaily.

They alighted at Portsmouth without mishap, and Archie, recalling the primary object of his travels, stepped to the telegraph office and wired his sister as follows:

"Have been motoring with friend; hence delay in reporting. The house will not do. Plumbing in wretched condition, and house generally out of repair. Sorry but you will have to look further."

Then he wrote a telegram to his office in New York explaining that he had been motoring, which accounted for his failure to call for his passage to Banff, thoughtfully adding that the cost of his unused sleeping car tickets should be charged to his personal account. After composing these messages he redeemed his suitcase in the check room and dropped it beside the Governor's battered kit bag on the platform.

"Ah! Burning the wires a little? I hope you are committing no indiscretion, son. I was admiring your baggage; that suitcase of yours would hold a king's wardrobe. We'll drive to the hotel, get a bath and a solid, old-fashioned breakfast, a hearty meal such as old Ike Walton recommended to fishermen eager for the early worm, and plan our further travels."

The Governor commanded the best service of the inn, obtaining two adjoining rooms with bath. He registered elaborately as Reginald Heber Saulsbury and wrote Archie down as Ashton Comly, dashingly indicating the residence of both as New York. In response to an inquiry for mail for Mr. Saulsbury the clerk made search and threw out a letter which the Governor opened indifferently and after a glance crumpled into his pocket.

"A note from Red Leary," he explained when they had reached their rooms. "He's slipping along slowly toward Brattleboro, where we're to deliver that loot we've got to pick up. You will pardon my cheek in registering for you; unwarrantable assumption. I choose Ashton Comly as a dignified and distinctive alias; sounds a little southern; you may consider yourself for the present a scion of an ancient house of the Carolinas. As for me, Saulsbury's a name I saw chalked on a box-car in the Buffalo yards and Reginald Heber is a fit handle to it. When I was in prep school we had a lecture by an eminent divine on the life of Reginald Heber, hymn writer, and that sort of thing. I'm rather ashamed of myself for borrowing the name of a man of singularly pure life, but it's the devil in me, lad! It's an awful thing to be born with a devil inside of you, but it could hardly be said that my case is unique. Here you are, also the possessor of a nasty little devil, and obviously, like me, a man of good bringing up. That's why I've warmed to you. You tried pulling rough talk on me at our first meeting, but you've got Harvard written all over you. No, not a word! We are two brunette sheep far astray from the home pastures and not apologizing for our color or previous condition of servitude."

Archie had always enjoyed the ease of good inns, and being in a comfortable house with his own effects at hand, he might have forgotten that he was a fugitive if it hadn't been for the propinquity of his companion, who was addressing himself with elaborate ceremonial to the preparation of his bath. The Governor's bag contained an assortment of silk shirts and underwear, a dress suit, a handsome set of toilet articles, and as Archie scrutinized them approvingly the Governor smiled, stepped to the door, and locked it.

"The property of a fastidious gentleman of breeding, you would say! You would never dream that thing has a false bottom!"

Archie would not have dreamed it, but the Governor dumped the remaining contents on the bed, fumbled in the bottom of the bag, lifted a concealed flap, and drew out a long fold of leather.

"You might think it a surgeon's pocket-kit, son, but you would be greatly in error. Drills, jimmies, even a light hammer—and here's a little contrivance that has been known to pluck the secret from most intricate combinations—my own invention. The common yegg habit of pouring an explosive fluid into the cracks of a strong box is obsolete. I hold that such a procedure is vulgar, besides being calculated to make an ugly noise when not perfectly muffled. By George, Archie, it occurs to me that you must have left your kit behind you in that absurd drug store at the Harbor! It is just as well that you are no longer encumbered with those playthings. Trust the Governor in future. I'm yearning for a cool grapefruit, so bestir yourself."

"I want to learn all the modern improvements," said Archie, fingering the burglar tools. "I've been playing the game wrong—decidedly wrong!"

"My favorite pupil!" cried the Governor, from the tub in which he was already rolling and splashing. "You shall be my successor when I pass on to other fields. Destiny has thrown you in my path for this very purpose. You will rank high among the crooks of all history, the king of the underworld, feared and loved by the great comradeship who prey upon the world by night!"

Archie felt very humble under these promises and prophecies, and wondered whether there was really deep down in his soul some moral obliquity that the acute master crook had detected and responded to. There had been clergymen and philanthropists among Archie's forebears, but never murderer or thief, and he was half-persuaded that he was the predestined black sheep that he had always heard gave a spot of color to the whitest flock.

At the breakfast table the Governor scanned a local paper and with a chirrup passed it to Archie, pointing to a double-column headline:

A CARNIVAL OF BURGLARY IN MAINE

Archie's eyes fell upon the bizarre photograph of a dead man with which the page was illustrated, and he choked on a fragment of grapefruit as he read the inscription: "Dead Thief, Identity Unknown."

It was a ghastly thing with which to be confronted; and his perturbation increased as he read an account of the killing. It was in the house of Mr. Waldo S. Cummings, a cottager, that the man had been shot, the mortal wound being inflicted by the householder's son, after an exciting battle. The dead body of the burglar had been found on the shore and the whole coast was being searched for his accomplice.

"That's poor old Hoky all right," murmured the Governor, buttering a piece of toast reflectively. "How indecent to prop up a corpse that way and take a snapshot merely to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a silly public! As you seem to be entranced with the literary style of our Bailey Harbor correspondent, I shall take the liberty of helping you to a fried egg."

However, Archie's appetite was pretty effectually spoiled by this paragraph:

An odd circumstance, more or less remotely connected with the killing of the burglar in the fashionable colony still remains to be explained. Officer Yerkes shortly before two o'clock, the hour at which the thief was shot in Mr. Cummings's home, saw a man hurrying through Water Street. He bore the appearance of a gentleman, and the officer did not accost him, thinking him a yachtsman from one of the boats in the harbor who had been visiting friends ashore. Yerkes says that the man walked oddly, pausing now and then as though in pain, and was carrying his right hand upon his left shoulder. Owing to the poor lighting of Water Street—a matter that has been a subject of frequent complaint to the city authorities—Yerkes was unable to catch a glimpse of the stranger's features. This morning drops of blood were found on the board walk crossed by the stranger where Officer Yerkes had seen him, and it is believed that this was another of the burglar-gang who was wounded in a struggle somewhere in the interior and was seeking the help of his confederate, presumably the man shot in the Cummings house.

As the paper fell from Archie's hand the Governor took it up.

"You seem agitated, Archie! You must learn to conceal your feelings!"

When he had read the paragraph he glanced quickly at Archie, whose fork was beating a queer tattoo on his plate.

"Your work possibly?" murmured the Governor. "Compose yourself. That old lady over there has her eye on you. I'm afraid you lied to me about the drug store, for if you'd done any shooting in that neighborhood you would never have got out of town alive! No!"—he held up his hand warningly—"tell me nothing! But if we've got a murder behind us, we shall certainly be most circumspect in our movements. That's all piffle about Hoky having any confederate except me. And there's not a single one of the great comradeship on this shore—I know that; no one who knows the password of the inner door. You interest me more and more, Archie! I congratulate you on your splendid nerve."

Archie's nerve was nothing he could admire himself, but a second cup of coffee put warmth into his vitals and he recovered sufficiently to pay the breakfast check. If it was Congdon he had shot there was still the hope, encouraged by the newspaper, that the wounded man was in no haste to report his injury to the police. But Archie found little comfort in the thought that somewhere in the world there was a man he had shot and perhaps fatally wounded.

He must conceal his anxious concern from the Governor; for more than ever he must rely upon his strange friend for assistance in escaping from the consequences of the duel in the Congdon cottage.

III

"I was thinking," remarked the Governor, after a long reverie, "that it would be only decent for me to run back to Bailey Harbor and attend poor Hoky's funeral."

Archie stared aghast.

"Hoky was my friend," the Governor continued. "The newspaper says he's to be buried in the Potter's Field this afternoon, and it will only set us back a day in our plans. I can imagine how desperately forlorn the thing will be. Some parson will say a perfunctory prayer for a poor devil he believes to have gone straight to the fiery pit and they'll bury him in a pauper's grave. There will be the usual morbidly curious crowd hanging round, wagging their heads and whispering. I shall go, Archie, and you can wait for me. It will take only a few hours and we can spend the night here and resume our journey tomorrow."

"But a stranger appearing there! It's dangerous!" Archie protested. "I wouldn't go back there for a million dollars!"

"Hoky would have taken the chance for me," said the Governor, firmly. "The whole shore teems with tourists, and I'll leave it to your judgment whether any one would take me for a crook. Be careful of my feelings, Archie; I'm just a little emotional today. Hoky and I have run before the hounds too often for me to desert him now. The people up there may think what they please and go to the devil! Hoky had ideals of a sort; he never squealed on a pal; he was as loyal as the summer sun to ripening corn."

The Governor's interest in Hoky's obsequies was chivalrous beyond question, but Archie resented being left alone. The Governor's departure struck him in all the circumstances as a base desertion, and forlorn and frightened he locked himself in his room, expecting that any moment the police would batter down the door. The waiting for this catastrophe became intolerable and after an hour of it he went downstairs meditating a walk to the wharves. A young woman stood at the desk talking to the clerk, who scanned the pages of the register and shook his head.

"No Mrs. Congdon has registered here within a week, I'm sure. Will you leave any message?"

She said no and asked about trains.

"Did you want something, Mr. Comly?" the clerk asked courteously.

Archie had paused by the desk, staring open-mouthed at the young woman, who was asking the boy who held her bag to summon a taxi. If he was still possessed of his senses the girl in the gray tailored suit was Isabel Perry. The walls of the hotel office appeared to be tipping toward him. Isabel might have come to Portsmouth in answer to the prayer of his heart, but not Isabel asking for Mrs. Congdon. Isabel had glanced carelessly in his direction as the clerk addressed him as Mr. Comly and he had promptly raised his hat, only to be met with a reluctant nod and a look of displeasure with connotations of alarm. Having dramatized himself as appearing before her, a splendid heroic figure, to receive her praise for his exploits, this reception was all but the last straw to his spirit. Moreover, she was walking toward the door as though anxious to escape from him.

He darted after her, resolved to risk another snub before allowing her to slip away ignorant of the vast change that had been wrought in him since their meeting in Washington. A taxi was not immediately forthcoming and she frowned impatiently as he appeared beside her. A frowning Isabel had not entered into his calculations at all; it was a mirthful, light-hearted Isabel he was carrying in his heart. He would affect gaiety; he would let her see that he was a dare-devil, the man she would have him be.

"Really!" he exclaimed, twittering like an imbecile, "isn't it jolly that we've met in this way?"

"I'm not so sure of that! May I ask just why you are here under an assumed name?"

"Well, you know," he began, his lips twitching as he mopped his face, "you told me to throw a brick at the world and I've been following your advice." Under her stoical scrutiny his voice squeaked hysterically. "It's perfectly jolly, the life I'm leading! You never heard of anything so wild and devilish! Miss Perry, behold your handiwork!"

Perspiring, stuttering, with the glitter of madness in his eyes, he was not on the whole an object to be proud of, and there was no pride or joy manifest in Miss Isabel Perry as she observed him critically, with the detachment of one who observes a wild animal in a menagerie. Her silence moved him to further frantic efforts to impress her with the fact that he was now a character molded to her hand.

"You were asking for Mrs. Congdon; Mrs. Putney Congdon, I suppose? Well, I certainly could tell you a story if you would give me time! What I don't know about the Congdon family wouldn't make a large book! Ha, ha! But if I had known Mrs. Congdon was a friend of yours I should have acted differently, very differently indeed."

He was attracting attention. The porter, the bell-boy supporting Isabel's bag, and a few passers-by paused, amused by the spectacle of a heated gentleman earnestly addressing a young woman who seemed greatly annoyed by his attentions.

The taxi drew up and she stepped into it, but he landed beside her, flinging a handful of silver on the walk and taking her suitcase on his knees.

"This is unpardonable! If it hadn't been for making a scene I should have told the porter to throw you out!"

His teeth chattered as he tried to throw a conciliatory tone into his speech without losing his air of bravado.

"You know you're responsible for everything! I see life differently, really I do! And this is so beautifully romantic, running into you here, of all places!"

"I think," she said, sweeping him with a look of scorn, "that you've been following me or were put here to watch me!"

"Oh, that's unkind, most unkind! Purely chance,—the usual way, you know! How do you imagine I should be watching you with anything but the noblest intentions?"

"You went to Bailey Harbor to look at a cottage for Mrs. Featherstone, didn't you? Putney Congdon was there, wasn't he? And why are you loitering here when you were so eager to get away to the Rockies?"

At the mention of Putney Congdon a laugh, the sharp concatenation of a lunatic caused the driver to glance round apprehensively.

"That's the scream of it, you know!" Archie cried. "I don't know for the life of me whether it was Putney Congdon I shot at the Congdon house or Hoky, the burglar. They're burying Hoky today and my partner in crime—wonderful chap—insisted on going to the funeral. You couldn't beat that! And it's so deliciously funny that you should be looking for Mrs. Congdon, who may be a widow for all I know!"

"A widow!" Isabel, with her hand clutching the door, swung upon him with consternation and fear clearly depicted in her face.

Her astonishment moved him to greater hilarity. Seeing that he had at last impressed her, he redoubled his efforts to be entertaining.

"Oh, that's the mystery just at present, whether poor old Putney is dead or not! No great loss, I imagine! But where do you suppose Mrs. Congdon went to hide her children from the brute?"

"That's exactly what I suspected!" she exclaimed furiously. "You are waiting here to find that out! How can you play the spy for him! You talk about shooting a man! Why, you haven't the moral courage to kill a flea! The kindest interpretation I can put upon your actions is to assume that you are hopelessly mad."

They had reached the station, and she jumped out and snatched her bag. He gave the driver a five dollar bill and dashed across the platform only to see her vanish into the vestibule of a Boston train just as it was drawing out.

He walked to the water front firmly resolved to drown himself, but his courage failing he yielded himself luxuriously to melancholy reflections. Instead of expressing delight at finding him reveling in villainy, Isabel had made it disagreeably clear that she not only was not delighted but that she thought him a dreadful liar, a spy upon her actions and possibly other things equally unflattering. Why she should think him capable of spying upon her movements, he did not know, nor was he likely to learn in the future that hung darkly before him. As he pondered there was nothing more startling in the fact that he had not hurried on to Banff than that she should be in Portsmouth when she had told him she was leaving Washington immediately for the girls' camp in Michigan.

Congdon was a name of evil omen. What business could Isabel have with that unhappy lady that would cause her to delay her departure for the West? His intimations that Putney Congdon might be dead had filled her with horror, and yet she had hinted at his sister's dinner that the taking of human life was a small matter. That a girl so wholly charming and persuasive at a dinner table could be so stern and unreasonable at a chance meeting afterward, shook his confidence in her sex, which that memorable meeting had done much to establish upon firm ground. He had been wholly stupid and tactless in pouncing upon her with what he realized, under the calming influences of the brisk sea air, must have struck her as the vaporings of a dangerous lunatic. He had never been clever; he smarted now under the revelation that all things considered he was an immitigable ass.

He went back to the hotel bitter but fortified by a resolution that nothing should check him now in his desperate career. He had quarreled with the inspiration of his new life, but in the end Isabel should have reason to know how unjust she had been. It was something after all to have seen her, perplexed, anxious and angry though she had been. She was still the most wonderful girl he had ever met, the more remarkable for the fact that now she had gone he had not the slightest idea of what had brought her into the strange world inhabited by the quarreling and fleeing Congdons. But men had suffered before for love of woman and he would bear his martyrdom manfully, keeping the humiliating interview carefully from the Governor.

The Governor returned from Hoky's funeral somewhat wistful, but he described the burial with his accustomed enthusiasm.

"It will be one of the satisfactions of my life that I went," he declared. "They didn't have the decency to bring in a minister—fancy it! Blessed if I didn't step into the breach and make a few remarks myself! I did, indeed, Archie, right there in the undertaker's joint, with a lot of bumpkins staring! No man sinks so low that he hasn't got some good in him; that was the burden of my argument. The sheriff came up and wrung my hand when it was all over. He had heard my little sermon and I suppose thought I was some rich and influential philanthropist; so I let it go at that."

IV

The next morning he announced Cornford as their next stopping point, a town, he explained, whose history thrust far back into colonial times. When they were seated in the parlor car he tossed a bundle of magazines into Archie's lap.

"It will amuse you to know that one of the policemen we met on the road looking for Hoky's accomplice is standing on the platform. He's just inspected the day coaches;—never occurs to him that knaves of our degree travel de luxe."

He yawned as the train started and drew a small volume from his pocket.

"I shall lose myself in old Horatius Flaccus for an hour. It's odd but I always do my best concentrating with a poet before me. And what you said yesterday about those new bank notes Leary has hid up here disturbed me just a little. You can't trust fellows of old Leary's type with a matter so delicate as launching new money, where the numbers, as you so sagely remarked, are being looked for by every bank teller in America. I have a hunch that something unusual will happen before the summer's over, and we must be primed for every emergency."

Archie saw that it was really a volume of the Horatian odes in which his singular companion had become engrossed. The Governor was utterly beyond him and he stared out moodily at the flying landscape, hating himself cordially as he thought of Isabel Perry and living over again the exciting moments in the Congdon house that preluded this strange journeying with a scholarly criminal who evidently derived the deepest satisfaction from the perusal of Latin poetry. The Governor broke in upon his reflections occasionally to read him a favorite passage or to ask questions, flattering to Archie's learning, as to possible interpretations of the venerated text.

The Cornford Inn proved to be a quaint old tavern, modernized, and its patrons, the Governor explained, were limited to cultivated people who sought the peace and calm of the hills. After a leisurely luncheon they took their coffee in a pleasant garden on one side of the house.

"One might be in France or Italy," remarked the Governor, lighting a cigar. "An ideal place; socially most exclusive, and I trust we shall have no reason to regret our visit."

"That depends," said Archie, inspecting the end of his cigarette, "on whether we are transferred to the county jail or not."

"Your apprehensions are as absurd as they are groundless, my dear boy. We could cash checks for any reasonable sum in this caravanserai merely on our appearance as men of education and property. Even in stolen clothes you look like a capitalist."

Two men came into the garden and seated themselves at a table on the other side of a screen of shrubbery. They ordered coffee and one of them remarked upon the recent prevalence of crime in New England.

"A thief was shot at Bailey Harbor night before last and there seems to be a band of crooks operating all along the coast."

"We need a better type of men in Congress," said the Governor in a loud tone, with a wink at Archie. "There's a steady deterioration in the quality of our representatives in both houses."

"You are right," Archie responded, remembering with a twinge of conscience his congressman brother-in-law.

The Governor nodded to Archie to keep on talking, while he played the role of eavesdropper.

"You oughtn't to have carried that cash up here," came in a low tone from the hedge. "The old man is a fool or he wouldn't have suggested such a thing."

"Well, he wrote that he was coming here to spend a week and in his characteristic fashion said if I wanted his stock I could bring the currency here and close the transaction. The Congdons are all a lot of cranks, you know. This old curmudgeon carries a small fortune around with him all the time, and never accepts a check in any transaction."

The Governor grew more eloquent in his attempt to convince Archie of the decadence of American statesmanship, while their unseen neighbors, feeling themselves secure, continued their discussion of the errand that had brought them to Cornford.

"You're paying the old skunk a big price for his shares!"

"Well, I've got to to keep them out of hostile hands," said the second voice irritably. "I don't like the idea of carrying yellowbacks around in a satchel just to humor a lunatic. And he's had the nerve to write that he won't be here until tomorrow!"

"But the cash—"

"Oh, it's all safe enough. No one knows but that I'm here just for a rest."

"Let's stroll about a little," said the Governor. "We're not getting our usual amount of exercise and there's a good bit of colonial history tucked away in Cornford."

He led the way through the garden to the street, and bade Archie proceed slowly to the post office while he walked toward the main entrance of the inn.

Archie was buying stamps for which he had no immediate use when the Governor joined him.

"These chaps were quite providentially in the office calling for their keys so I had no trouble in identifying them. Seebrook and Walters are the names. Seebrook, the older chap, has his daughter with him. They have rooms on the floor below us."

"You don't think they've got any considerable sum of money with them, do you?" asked Archie breathlessly.

"That remains to be seen! Did you notice their reference to a man named Congdon? Singular how I keep running into members of that tribe. I'm beginning to think there's a fatality in the name!"

Archie glanced at him covertly. He too felt that there was something decidedly strange in the way the name haunted him, but the Governor had picked up a local guide book and was pointing out objects of interest as they wended their way along the street. Archie's wits had never been so taxed as since he had fired a pistol, more or less with intent to kill, in the house of Putney Congdon, but it was incredible that the Governor could know aught of that matter. The Governor, however, was manifesting the greatest interest in Cornford history, halting citizens to propound inquiries as to landmarks, and pausing before the town hall to make elaborate notes of a tablet struck in memory of the first selectmen.

When they reached the green, which the town's growth had left to one side, he sat down on a bench and directed attention to a church whose history he read impressively from the book.

"That carries us back quite a way beyond the Revolution. No longer used but reverently preserved for its associations. And in the cellar of that simple edifice where the early colonists used to hide from predatory Indians, is hidden fifty thousand dollars. A suitcase all ready to snatch, thrust under the bin where the worshipers of old kept the Sunday wood!"

"I suppose it might rot there and nobody be the wiser?" muttered Archie, glancing at the venerable meeting house with awakened interest.

"Quite true! But it must be saved from destruction. We mustn't fail Leary; he's put his trust in me. It's our job to recover the funds, and if I never ask you to join me in anything more perilous you'll have occasion to congratulate yourself. There are two automobiles at the church door now—tourists, having a look at the relic, and their presence will neatly cover our visit."

They found half a dozen visitors roaming through the church, opening and closing the doors of the old pews. Archie was accosted by a stout lady in quest of just the information he had gained from the guide book. He courteously answered her questions and found the other sightseers pressing round to share in his lecture on the Cornford meeting house. When he had imparted everything he knew and added a few fanciful touches to improve the story, he turned to look for the Governor.

"If you want to see the cellar, don't tumble down the steps as I did," called a cheery voice from the entry; "it's an abominable hole!"

Being an abominable hole the visitors laughingly surged toward the door to explore it, and the Governor struck matches to light their descent.

He brushed the dust from his knees and mopped his face until the voices below receded.

"All safe and sound! Stuck it out through a back window into a lilac bush, and we'll pick it up at our leisure. You may not have noticed that this old pile is built up against an abandoned mill. We shall loiter back to the inn carrying the loot quite boldly with us. You might lug it yourself as I'm a little warm from digging the thing up—Leary had burrowed under the wood bin and hidden it for keeps."

To be sauntering in broad daylight through the principal thoroughfare of a serene New England town carrying a suitcase filled with stolen money was still another experience that made Archie feel that he had indeed entered upon a new manner of life. The Governor with a spray of lilac in his lapel had never been in better spirits.

"That's a very decent suitcase and you can hand it to a bell hop and bid him fly with it to your room. You were a little short of linen and made a few purchases—the thing explains itself. Who could challenge us, Archie! We'd make a plausible front in Buckingham palace."

They followed the suitcase upstairs, where the Governor unlocked it with an implement that looked like a nut pick. Archie's last vestige of doubt as to the Governor's powers vanished when he saw that the bag was filled with packages of bank notes in small denominations.

"One might object to so many of the little fellows," remarked the Governor, "but on the whole we have no reason to complain of Leary's work. The rascal is anxious to settle down in some strictly moral community and open a confectionery shop—one of these little concerns where the neighborhood children bring in their pennies for sodas and chewing-gum, with a line of late magazines on the side. A kind, genial man is Leary, and he swears he'll abandon the road for good."

Archie picked up several bundles of the bills and turned them over, reflecting that to his other crimes he had now added the receipt and concealment of stolen money.

"Dinner in an hour, Archie," said the Governor, who was drawing a diagram of some sort on a sheet of inn paper. "The evening meal is rather a ceremonial affair here and as I notice that you carry a dress suit we shall follow the conventions. Meanwhile I wish you would look in at Barclay & Pedding's garage, just around the comer, and ask if a car has been left there for Mr. Reginald H. Saulsbury. You needn't be afraid of getting pinched, for the machine was acquired by purchase and I'm merely borrowing it from Abe Collins, alias Slippery Abe, the king of all con men. Abe only plays for suckers of financial prominence who'd gladly pay a second time not to be exposed and he's grown so rich that he's retiring this summer. He was to send a machine to me here so I could avoid the petty annoyances of travel in a stolen car We'll leave here like honest men, with the landlord bowing us away from the door."

That there should indeed be a handsome touring car at Barclay & Pedding's, awaiting the pleasure of Mr. Saulsbury, increased enormously Archie's respect and admiration for the Governor. It was a first-class machine worth four or five thousand dollars as it stood, and Archie was cheered by the thought that he enjoyed the friendship of a man who satisfied all his needs with so little trouble.

When he returned the Governor was dressing and manifested no surprise that the car awaited his pleasure.

"Yes, of course," he remarked absently. "You can always rely on Abe. It's time for you to dress, and we must look our prettiest. I caught a glimpse of Miss Seebrook strolling through the garden with her papa a bit ago. It may be necessary for you to cultivate her a trifle. A little flirting now and then is relished by the wisest men."

"If you think—" began Archie warily.

"Of course I think!" the Governor interrupted. "We've got fifty thousand dollars of nice new bills here and we're not going to the trouble of staining and mussing them up for safe circulation if we can dispose of them en bloc, so to speak, in all their pristine freshness. There's to be a dance in the dining hall as soon as dinner is over. The house is quite full and we shall mingle freely in the merry throng. I'll go down ahead of you and test the social atmosphere a little."

When Archie reached the parlors half an hour later he found the Governor engaged in lively conversation with a gentleman he introduced immediately as Mr. Seebrook.

"And Mr. Walters, Mr. Comly, and—"

"Mr. Saulsbury and Mr. Comly, my daughter, Miss Seebrook."

The girl had just joined her father and his friend. She acknowledged the introduction with an inclusive smile and nod. Archie's spirits, which drooped whenever he was deprived of the Governor's enlivening presence for a few minutes, were revived by this fresh demonstration of the rascal's daring effrontery. Seebrook and Walters were apparently accepting him at face value in the fashion of socially inclined travelers who meet in inns. To Archie's consternation the Governor began describing Hoky's funeral, which he did without neglecting any of its poignant features or neglecting to mention the few remarks he had offered to relieve the bleakness of the burglar's obsequies.

"That was pretty fine, wasn't it?" Miss Seebrook remarked to Archie. "Any one would know that Mr. Saulsbury is just the kind of man who would do that."

"There's no limit to his kindness and generosity," Archie replied with unfeigned sincerity.

"You are motoring?" asked the girl. "We drove through here last fall to see the foliage,—it's perfectly wonderful, but I didn't know it could be so sweet at this season. I adore summer; don't you adore summer, Mr. Comly?"

Miss Seebrook was the most obvious of sentimentalists and Archie thought instantly how different she was from Isabel. But being thrown in the company of any girl made possible the concrete comparison of Isabel with the rest of womankind very greatly to Isabel's advantage. Miss Seebrook was about Isabel's age, but she spoke in a languid purring voice that was wholly unlike Isabel's crisp, direct manner of speech. Her father had come up on some tiresome business matter, bringing Mr. Walters, who, it seemed, was his attorney, and she confessed that they talked business a great deal, which bored her immensely.

"I judge, Mr. Comly, that you are one of those fortunate men who can throw business to the winds and have a good time without being bothered with telegrams from a hateful office."

Her assumption flattered Archie. As his immediate concern was to escape the consequences of his folly in shooting a fellow mortal, he assured her that he was always glad of an opportunity to fling business cares aside. She explained that the inn was much affected by cottagers in neighboring summer settlements and that many of the diners had motored in for the dance. Seebrook and Walters were undoubtedly enjoying the Governor, proof of which was immediately forthcoming when Seebrook suggested that they should all dine together.

"You do us much honor," said the Governor. "Mr. Comly and I shall be pleased, I'm sure."

Archie had often eaten alone in just such pleasant little inns from sheer lack of courage to make acquaintances, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world for the Governor to establish himself on terms of intimacy with perfect strangers. Their party was the merriest in the room, and Archie was aware of envious glances from other tables that were not enlivened by a raconteur so affable and amusing as the Governor.

"It's so nice to stumble into a place like this where every one may speak to every one else and be sure, you know!" said Miss Seebrook.

"It does rather strengthen one's faith in the human race," Archie agreed, reflecting that if she had known that upstairs in the amiable Mr. Saulsbury's room reposed fifty thousand dollars of stolen money her confidence in the exclusiveness of the Cornford Inn would have been somewhat shaken. But the ironic humor of the whole thing overmastered his sense of guilt and he managed to hold the table for a little while without the Governor's assistance as he talked of the French chateaux with honest knowledge. The Seebrooks had motored through the chateau country the year before the war and as Archie had once made the excursion with an architect he was on firm ground.

"There's a thorough man for you!" exclaimed the Governor proudly when Archie supplied some dates in French history for which Miss Seebrook fumbled.

They continued their talk over coffee served in the garden. When the music began Seebrook and Walters recalled a bridge engagement and the Governor announced that he must look up an old friend who lived in Cornford. He produced a piece of paper on which he had scratched one of the diagrams he was eternally sketching as though consulting a memorandum of an address.

"I shall be back shortly," he said as they separated in the office.

Seebrook and Walters found their bridge partners and Archie and Miss Seebrook joined the considerable company that were already dancing. Only a few days earlier nothing could have persuaded Archie to dance, but now that he was plunged into a life of adventure the fear of dropping dead from excessive exercise no longer restrained him. Miss Seebrook undoubtedly enjoyed dancing and after a one-step and a fox-trot she declared that she would just love to dance all night. It had been a long time since Archie had heard a girl make this highly unoriginal remark, and in his own joy of the occasion he found it tinkling pleasantly in remote recesses of his memory. As Miss Seebrook pouted when he suggested that she might like him to introduce some of the other men and said that she was perfectly satisfied, he hastened to assure her that the role of monopolist was wholly agreeable to him. In this mad new life a flirtation was only an incident of the day's work, and Miss Seebrook was not at all averse to flirting with him.

She thought it would be fine to take a breath of air, and gathering up her cloak they went into the garden for an ice. This refreshment ordered he was conscious of new and pleasant thrills as he faced her across the table. His youth stirred in him again. It was reassuring to have this proof that one might be a lost sheep dyed to deepest black and yet indulge in philandering under the June stars with a pretty girl—a handsome stately girl she was!—unrestrained by the thought that she would run away screaming for the police if she knew that he was a man who shot people and consorted with thieves and very likely would die on the gallows or be strapped in an electric chair before he got his deserts. His mind had passed through innumerable phases since he left his sister's house in Washington, and now as he shamelessly flirted with Miss Seebrook he knew himself for an unmoral creature, a degenerate who was all the more dangerous for being able to pass muster among decent folk. He had always imagined that citizens of the underworld were limited in their social indulgences to cautious meetings in the back rooms of low saloons, but this he had found to be a serious mistake. It was clear that the elite among the lawless might ride the high crest of social success.

His only nervousness was due to the fear that he might betray himself. It was wholly possible that Miss Seebrook knew some of his friends; in fact she mentioned a family in Lenox that he knew very well. She was expert in all the niceties of flirtation and he responded joyously, as surprised and delighted as a child with a new toy at the ease with which he conveyed to her the idea that his life had been an immeasurable dark waste till she had dawned upon his enraptured vision. Her back was toward the inn and across her shoulders he could see the swaying figures in the ball room. The light from a garden lamp played upon her head and brightened in her fair hair.

Miss Seebrook was speaking of music, and reciting the list of operas she loved best when Archie's gaze was caught and held by a shadow that flitted along an iron fire escape that zigzagged down from the fourth to the first story of the long rambling inn.

"You seem very dreamy," remarked Miss Seebrook. "I know how that is for I can dream for hours and hours."

"Yes; reverie; just floating on clouds, on and on," Archie replied, though the shadow moving on and on along the side of the inn was troubling him not a little.

"The stars were never so near as they are tonight," she said. "Was it Shakspere or Longfellow who said, 'bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art!'"

It was neither, Archie knew, but he said he thought the line occurred in Hamlet.

"Do you think Hamlet was insane?" she asked.

"I sometimes think I am," replied Archie, watching the shadow on the inn wall.

"Why, Mr. Comly, how absurd!"

It was really not so absurd at the moment, but he again had recourse to the poets, devoutly praying that she would not look toward the inn. He had surmised that the Governor's declared purpose to call on an old friend in Cornford was merely to cover his withdrawal from the party; but that he could have meditated a predatory excursion through the inn had not entered into Archie's speculations as to his friend's absence. There was no mistaking the figure that had moved swiftly down the ladder. The Governor for a man of his compact build was amazingly agile and quick of foot and hand. He was now creeping along the little balcony at the third floor. He paused a moment and then vanished into an open window. The Governor had said that the Seebrook party had rooms just under their own; but—

"I have chosen a star for you," Miss Seebrook was murmuring.

Archie, in his preoccupation with the Governor's strange performance, was so slow to respond that Miss Seebrook, thinking that he was deliberating as to which star he should bestow upon her in return, generously broadened the scope of her offer.

"You shall have Orion or Arcturus with his sons."

"I never could find Orion even with a sky map and a telescope," Archie roused himself to protest.

Something very unlike a star but more like the glimmer of a match in a room on the third floor held his fascinated gaze, and it was difficult to be interested in the conversation of even so pretty a girl as Miss Seebrook when an audacious thief was at work only a little way beyond her. For all Archie knew it was her own room that the venturesome Governor was ransacking and at that very moment he might be stuffing his pockets with her belongings.

Venus, Archie gravely announced, had always been his favorite star; and he set her to searching for it in the bright expanse while he watched the Governor reappear, bending low as he crept out of the window and ascended rapidly to the fourth floor. He had risked detection by a dozen people who were idling about the garden. The intermission was over and music floating through the open windows again invited to the dance.

"We must go back, I suppose," said Miss Seebrook with a sigh.

"I shall never forget this," declared Archie, hoping with all his heart that there would be no occasion for regretting the hour spent in the garden.

They danced again, and in the handclapping that followed the first number he turned to find the Governor, calm and with no marks of his escapade upon him, bowing before Miss Seebrook.

"Really, I must break in! Just a little fragment of this waltz! More capricious and jazzy measures have their day but the waltz endures forever! Don't frown at me that way, Comly! My old friend kept me longer than I expected and the night grows old."

The Governor danced with smoothness and ease. Archie, his back to the wall, saw the rogue laughing into his partner's face as lightheartedly as though he had not, within a few minutes, imperiled his freedom in an act of sheerest folly.

He brought the girl back to Archie, and then ingratiated himself with a shy elderly woman who was having a difficult time finding partners for her granddaughters. The Governor introduced himself with a charming deference, a winning courtesy, that gained her heart at once. He not only danced with her young charges but found other partners for them. Archie marveled; a man of the Governor's intelligence and address could hardly have failed to gain a high place in the world, yet his performance on the fire escape proved all the man had said of himself as an outlaw. The Governor was not one man but a dozen different men and in despair Archie gave up trying to account for him.

V

At midnight Seebrook and Walters came in from their card game.

"We've certainly had the best of you, papa! It has been a wonderful evening!" exclaimed Miss Seebrook.

"I knew it was going to be a good party," said the Governor warmly. "I regretted every moment I had to spend with my friends in Putnam Street. And yet should auld acquaintance be forgot, you know!"

"You were perfectly lovely to that nice old lady and her frightened little granddaughters. They will never forget you as long as they live! And I'm afraid Mr. Comly will always remember me as the girl who kept him all to herself for a whole evening."

"I didn't make it a hard job for you," Archie protested. "I shall mark the evening with a white stone on the long journey of life."

"I hope, papa, you will add a word to my invitation to these gentlemen to come and see us at home."

"Certainly," Seebrook assented cordially, drawing out his card-case.

"We shall be ready for a little sociability," remarked the Governor, "when we return from the West. We are motoring from Portland to Portland, with a few little side trips like this, and we ought to have some good yarns to tell when we get back."

"You are not running off immediately?" asked Walters. "Mr. Seebrook and I are really here on business, but we've been delayed and may have another day's time to kill. We'd be glad to play around with you."

"It's most lamentable," replied the Governor, "that we've got to run away tomorrow. It's now the hour when ghosts walk but we shall see you in the morning."

In Archie's room the Governor hummed one of his favorite ballads as he slipped out of his coat and picked a speck from his snowy waistcoat. Then he produced a tiny phial from his pocket and touched his upper lip with a drop of the contents.

"It's a very curious thing about perfumes," he said meditatively. "I carry an assortment of these little bottles. The psychology of the thing is most interesting. Fragrances differ astonishingly as to their reactions upon the nerves. Only two hours ago I fortified myself for a little foolishness that required nevertheless a steady hand by sniffing the bouquet of a rare perfume known only to a few connoisseurs,—a compound based upon attar of roses. But this that I have just had recourse to is soothing and sedative. It is made from a rare flower found only in the most inaccessible fastnesses of the Andes, and is believed by the natives to be a charm against death. At some time I shall be glad to show you a treatise on the plant written by an eminent Spanish botanist. Its effect upon me is instantaneous and yet it might serve you quite differently, as our sensitiveness to these reactions of the olfactory nerve are largely idiosyncratic. Let me tap your upper lip with the cork—ah!"

There was nothing more repulsive to Archie than perfumes and he impatiently jerked his head away. The odor proved, however, to be exceedingly delicate and not the miserable chemical concoction he dreaded. But he was not to be thwarted in his purpose to learn just what the Governor meant by endangering their security so recklessly. He slammed the transom tight and drew down the shades.

"Well?" he demanded sharply.

"It is evident," remarked the Governor good-humoredly, "that you do not react to the soothing influences of the rosa alta. You seem perturbed, anxious, with slight symptoms of paralysis agitans. Pray be seated and I will do my best to restore your peace of mind."

"You needlessly exposed yourself to observation by sneaking down the fire escape of this hotel—I know that!"

"My dear boy, I was merely gathering a few blossoms of the crimson rambler from the ancient walls of the inn. You may have noted that I wore a spray of buds in my lapel when I joined you in the ball room."

"You had no right to plunder the house without warning me! I don't relish the idea of being jailed for your foolishness. And those people were mighty decent to us! If they knew we were two crooks—!"

"They merely yielded to our charms! They feel themselves honored by our acquaintance! Now seat yourself on the bed and I'll tell you the whole story. When I left you I hastened into the village, bought a stick of shaving soap in a drug store and a few cigars in a tobacconist's. In each place I conversed with the clerk, thus laying ample ground for an alibi. Hurrying back to the inn I avoided observation by entering by the side door, skipped up to our rooms—and there you are! I did run a chance, of course, in climbing down the ladder, but all's well that ends well. I exchanged our new bank notes for sixty well-worn one-thousand-dollar gold certificates negotiable in all parts of the republic. That means a net gain in the Red Leary trust fund of ten thousand dollars. Seebrook had the stuff in the collar tray of his trunk. As the trunk was otherwise empty and the lock a special one that gave me a bit of trouble he's not likely to bother with it until old man Congdon turns up to close the stock transaction. When he opens it he will find fifty thousand dollars of good bills neatly piled there and if he has the imagination of a canary he will think the fairies have played a trick on him!"

"My God!" moaned Archie. "You don't think you can get away with this!"

"I think," returned the Governor imperturbably, "that we must and will get away with it." His emphasis on the plural pronoun caused Archie to cringe. "It strikes me as highly amusing that we have unloaded those bills of Leary's on a good sport like Seebrook. As I locked that stuff in his trunk I got to laughing—really, I did—and a chambermaid roaming the hall must have heard me, for the key rattled in the lock just as I slipped out of the window. There's Leary's suitcase and I've packed it with our soiled linen and stuck in a pair of shoes for weight. Seebrook's legal tender is neatly rolled up in my best silken hose in my kit bag. Hark! There's Seebrook tumbling into his bed, which is just beneath mine!"

"You're getting me in pretty deep," mumbled Archie dejectedly.

"How about those blood stains on the sidewalk at Bailey Harbor?" asked the Governor in his blandest tones. "When you speak of getting in deep you forget that some one besides Hoky was shot back yonder. You came to me red-handed from a deed of violence, and I took you in and became your protector, asking no questions. It's the basest ingratitude for you to whimper over a small larceny when you have added assault or murder to the liabilities of our partnership! But don't forget for a moment that we're pals and pledged to see each other through."

The reference to the blood stains reported by the Bailey Harbor police threw Archie back instantly upon the Governor's mercy. Complicity in the robbery of Seebrook was as nothing compared with the haunting fear that the man he had shot in the Congdon house had died from the wound. Unable to determine this question he was floundering in a veritable sea of crimes. The Governor was undressing with provoking indifference to his companion's perturbation.

"Sleep, lad, sleep! You may be sure that nothing will harm us tonight, and I have faith that more stirring adventures are ahead of us. I forgive you your qualms and quavers, the pardonable manifestations of youth and inexperience. We walk in slippery places but we shall not stumble, at least not while the Governor keeps his head!"

Nothing appealed to Archie as of greater importance than the retention by his companion of the head that now lay chastely upon a snowy pillow. A handsome, well-formed head, a head suggestive of family and the pride of race, though filled with the most complicated mental machinery with which a human being had ever been endowed.

"Put out the lights and get you to your couch!" the Governor muttered drowsily.

The man certainly wore his crimes lightly. He was sound asleep before Archie had got into his pajamas.

VI

When they reached the dining-room at ten the next morning they found Seebrook and Walters just finishing breakfast. Miss Seebrook was having coffee in her room, her father explained in response to Archie's polite inquiries.

"We're hoping to get away this afternoon," he continued. "It will take only a few minutes to transact our business when the man I'm waiting for appears; but he's an uncertain quantity, and there's no telling when he'll show up. But we're having a good time and I shan't mind another day or two. If only you gentlemen would bear us company!"

"Ah, you are very kind!" said the Governor; "but we must resume our ramble toward the Pacific. We are more or less dated up for little entertainments on the way."

"I certainly envy you," said Walters ruefully. "Seebrook and I belong to the large class of men who work for a living."

"Well, Comly and I have our own small jobs," the Governor protested. "We're interested in some water power schemes through the West and hope to make our expenses."

Seebrook and Walters lingered in the office as Archie and the Governor paid their account. As they waited for their car to be sent round from the garage a machine drew up and discharged a short, wiry, elderly man in a motor coat that was much too large for him. He was accompanied by an enormous amount of luggage and from the steps of the inn gave orders in a high piping voice as to the manner of its disposal. As the various pieces were hustled into the office he enumerated them in an audible tone as though inviting the cooperation of all the loungers in making an inventory of his effects. When this had been concluded Seebrook stepped up and accosted the newcomer.

"Mr. Congdon, I am very glad to see you. I hope you are not worn out by your drive."

"Worn out!" snapped the little man. "Do you imagine a run of a hundred miles would fatigue a man of my constitution? I assure you that you are greatly mistaken if you think I am feeling my age. Seventy! And I don't feel a day over fifty, not a day, sir. But I shall rest for a few hours as a precaution, a mere precautionary measure and be able to meet you for our little business at two-thirty sharp."

"That will suit me perfectly," replied Seebrook.

Archie hung about impatiently waiting for the Governor to make his farewells to the old lady and her granddaughters on whom he had expended his social talents at the dance. Mr. Congdon was quarreling with the clerk over the location of the room he had reserved; he wanted no room with a western exposure as such rooms were always so baked by the afternoon sun that they were as hot as tropical jungles at night. Having frightened the clerk into readjusting the entire registration to accommodate him, he demanded to know whether his son, Mr. Putney Congdon, was stopping in the house.

"Mind you, I have no reason to believe he is here, but I've been asking for him everywhere along the road."

Assured that Mr. Putney Congdon was not in the inn and hadn't been there within the recollection of the office staff, the senior Congdon exploded violently upon Seebrook and Walters.

"Things have come to a pretty pass in this topsy turvy world when a man can't find his own son! For three days I've been wiring his clubs and all other places he could possibly be without result. And I have learned that his wife has left Bailey Harbor and the house there is closed. Closed! How dare they close that house when I was about to pay them a visit? I spent thirty-five dollars last night in telephoning trying to find out what's become of my son and his family and I got nothing for my money—nothing!"

Seebrook and Walters expressed their sympathy in mild tones that roused the old gentleman to greater fury.

"Can a whole family be obliterated and no trace left behind? Is it possible that they've been murdered in their beds, servants and all, and the police not yet aware of it?"

At the mention of murder Archie began stealthily feeling his way along the cigar counter to a water cooler. He drank two glasses of ice water while he listened to Eliphalet's grievances against all things visible and invisible. There seemed to be no escaping from the Congdons and here was the father of Putney boldly publishing to the whole state of New Hampshire his fear that his son had been murdered.

"I called up everybody I could think of at Bailey Harbor, that dismal rotten hole, and got nothing for my trouble. Nothing! A fool druggist, who pretended to know everything about the place, had the effrontery to tell me Putney hadn't been there for a week and declared that his family had left! Why should they leave? I ask you to tell me why my daughter-in-law should leave a comfortable house at the shore at this season and tell nobody her destination?"

As no member of his growing audience of guests, clerks and bell-hops could answer his questions, Mr. Congdon swept the whole company with a fierce, disdainful glare and began mobilizing the entire day watch of porters and bell-boys to convey his luggage to his room. One of the young gentlemen was engaged at the moment in winking at the girl attendant at the cigar counter when the agitated traveler thrust the point of an enormous umbrella into his ribs with a vigor that elicited a yell of surprise and pain.

The concentration of the hotel staff upon the transfer of Mr. Congdon's luggage to his room left the Governor and Archie to manage the removal of their own effects to the waiting car. Seebrook and Walters obligingly assisted, laughing at Congdon's eccentricities.

"The arrival of that enchanting old crank increases my grief at leaving," declared the Governor. "A delightful person. The son he mentioned with so much feeling was in Boston looking for him a month ago."

Seebrook seized the Governor's kit bag containing the sixty thousand dollars and carried it out to the car. The sight of it in Seebrook's hand gave Archie sensations of nausea that were not relieved by the grin he detected on the Governor's face. Within an hour or two at most the substitution and robbery would be discovered and the country would ring with the demand for their detention. But the Governor was carrying off the departure with his usual gaiety. It was clear that he had made the most favorable impression upon Seebrook and Walters; and in the cordial handshaking and expressions of hope for future meetings Archie joined with the best spirit he could muster. A cheery good-by caused him to look up. Miss Seebrook with a red rose in her hand waved to him from her window.

As he lifted his cap she dropped the rose with a graceful sweep of the arm.

"Like the old stage coach days!" cried the Governor, applauding Archie's catch.

He jumped into the machine and Archie scrambled after him. Archie's last impression of the inn was the blur of a waving handkerchief in Miss Seebrook's window.

"We are a success, my boy! You bore yourself marvelously well," said the Governor testing the gears. "As I remember we pass town hall on right and cross railroad at bridge; then follow telephone poles. We don't need the guide book; it's all in my head. Ah, that little touch of the rose was worth all our perils; nothing in my experience was ever prettier than that! A lovely girl; you might do worse if you were not already plighted. If she had come down to say good-by it would have been much less significant. But the rose, the red, red rose! It wouldn't be a bad idea to stick it in an envelope and mail it to the girl you were telling me about—the one who sent you forth to shatter kingdoms. I guess that would jostle her a little, particularly if you were to enclose a line telling her that it had fallen to your hand from a curtained lattice."

"I don't know her address," mumbled Archie, fastening the flower in his buttonhole.

He still martyrized himself in his thoughts of Isabel. Her contumelious treatment of him at Portsmouth rankled; but he had satisfied himself that it was all his fault. In some way the curse of the Congdons lay upon her as upon him. If he had not burst upon her so idiotically she would probably have listened to his story with some interest if not with admiration. He meant to be very loyal to Isabel in spite of the disheartening contretemps at Portsmouth and he drew the rose from his coat and cast it from him.

"So soon!" exclaimed the Governor. "I rejoice in your fidelity. Hope rides a high horse and I'm confident that in due season we shall find our two adorable ones. But it will do you no harm to indulge in a little affair now and then on the way; merely practice at the approach shot, you know, to keep your hand in. You are undoubtedly thinking of your beloved with a new tenderness because you found Miss Seebrook kind. Such, lad, is the way of love, true love, the love that never dies."

Love as a subject for discussion seemed wholly incongruous in view of the fact that they were running off with Seebrook's money and pursuers might already be hot on their trail. He suggested the dangers of their situation, thinking that here at last was something that would sober the Governor. But the Governor merely laughed as he swung the car round a sharp corner.

"Don't you believe that I hadn't a care for our safe flight! You must learn to use your eyes, son. There was one of the brotherhood of the road right there in the office when we left. I gave him instructions last night. He's a sneak thief of considerable intelligence who gave me the sign as I was pretending to leave for that call on my old friend. I smuggled him upstairs to keep watch for me and he proved himself a fellow of decided merit. He'll be hanging round Cornford today and as the absurd police will be obliged to make an arrest to save their reputations he will put himself in their way and encourage the idea by subtle means that he might have been the malefactor who robbed Seebrook's trunk and left Leary's bills behind. They will be unable to make a case against him but he'll probably get thirty days for loitering. Then he'll walk out and draw a thousand dollars from one of our little private banks further along the road for so chivalrously throwing himself into the breach! There are wheels within wheels in our game, and these fellows who make sacrifice hits are highly useful. They also serve who only go to jail, as John Milton almost said. Even the police recognize the sacrificial artists; and encourage them—on the quiet, of course. It calms public complaint of their inefficiency. I can find you men who will do a year's time to save the men higher up. This satisfies the public as to the zeal of its paid protectors and makes it possible for men of genius like you and me to walk in high places unmolested. A damnable system, Archie, but we learned it from the greedy trust magnates. You take the wheel; it just occurs to me that you said you were a fair driver."

Archie had always imagined that men slip gradually from the straight and narrow path, but he felt himself plunging down a steep toboggan with all the delirious joy of a speed maniac.

Of one thing he was confident: if he ever returned to his old orderly, lawful life, he would be much more tolerant of sinners than he had been in the old tranquil times. He had always found it easy to be good but now he was finding it quite as easy to be naughty, very naughty indeed. His speculations as to just how long he could be imprisoned for his crimes and misdemeanors to date resolved themselves into a question with which he interrupted the Governor in a sonorous recitation of Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.

"If you shoot a man but don't kill him, and pile on top of that receiving stolen goods and complicity in burglary, how much can they hand you?"

The Governor answered with disconcerting promptness.

"Shooting with intent to commit murder—they always put it that way whether you meant the shot as anything more than a little pleasantry or really had murder in your heart—that would be a minimum of ten years in many of the American states and a hard-hearted judge might soak you for twenty. Then pile on that from one to five years for hiding stolen property; and then a first-class burglary, might run you pretty high, particularly if they landed you on all three charges and showed that you were viciously hostile to the forces of society. But there's no cause for worry. If you behaved yourself they'd knock off a generous allowance and a fellow of your enlightenment and tact might be put to work in the warden's office, or set to collecting potato bugs in the prison garden patch. But it's highly unprofessional to bother about such trifles. We haven't been nabbed yet, and if you and I are not smart enough to keep out of trouble we ought to be locked up; that's my philosophy of the situation. You must conquer that morbid strain in you that persists in looking for trouble. I find it highly depressing."

He sang a bar of "Ben Bolt" to test his memory of the words and then urged Archie to join him in the ballad, which he said was endeared to him by the most sacred associations. Archie hadn't indulged in song since he sang "Fair Harvard" at his last class reunion, but the Governor praised his singing and carried him through "Robin Grey" and a few other classics with growing animation.

"You respond to treatment splendidly! The sun and air are bringing a fine color to your face until you don't even remotely suggest a doleful jail bird. We'll soon be able to stroll along Fifth Avenue and pass for members of the leisure class who live on the golf links. You need hardening up and if you stick to me you'll lay up a store of health that will last you forty years."

The Governor was amazingly muscular, and his shapely hands seemed possessed of miraculous strength. When a tire went bad he changed it with remarkable ease and dexterity, scorning Archie's offer of assistance.

"No lost motion! The world spends half its time doing things twice that could as well be done once. I am blessed with an orderly mind, Archie. You will have noticed that virtue in me by the time the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, to quote the Hoosier Theocritus."

And so, to the merry accompaniment of old tunes and mellow rhymes, they crossed the Connecticut.



CHAPTER THREE

I

With all his outward candor the Governor had, Archie found, reserves that were quite unaccountable. He let fall allusions to his past in the most natural fashion, with an incidental air that added to their plausibility, without ever tearing aside the veil that concealed his origin or the manner of his fall, if, indeed, a man who so jubilantly boasted of his crimes and seemed to find an infinite satisfaction and delight in his turpitude, could be said to have fallen. Having mentioned Brattleboro as the point at which they were to foregather with Red Leary, the Governor did not refer to the matter again, but chose routes and made detours without explanation.

As a matter of fact they swung round Brattleboro and saw only the faint blue of its smoke from the western side. It was on the second afternoon out of Cornford that the Governor suddenly bade Archie, whom he encouraged to drive much of the time, pause at a gate.

"We linger here, son. May I suggest that you take your cue from me? Bill Walker is an honest dairyman to all intents and purposes, but really an old crook who got tired of dodging sheriffs and bloodhounds and bought this farm. A sober, industrious family man, you will find him, with a wife and one daughter. This is one of the best stations of the underground railroad; safe as a mother's arms, and you will never believe you're not the favored guest of a week-end party. Walker's an old chum of Leary's. They used to cut up in the most reprehensible fashion out West in old times. You've probably wondered what becomes of old crooks. Walker is of course an unusual specimen, for he knew when the quitting was good, and having salted away a nice little fortune accumulated in express hold-ups, he dwells here in peace and passes the hat at the meeting house every Sunday. You may be dead sure that only the aristocracy of our profession have the entree at Walker's. His herd on the hillside yonder makes a pretty picture of tranquillity. The house is an old timer, but he's made a comfortable place of it, and the wife and daughter set a wonderful table. Here's the old boy now."

A gray-bearded man with a pronounced stoop, clad in faded blue overalls, was waiting for them at the barn.

"Just run the machine right in," he called.

The car disposed of, the Governor introduced Archie as one of his dearest friends, and the hand Archie clasped was undeniably roughened by toil. Walker mumbled a "glad-to-see-ye," and lazily looked him over.

"Always glad to meet any friend of Mr. Saulsbury's," he drawled with a mournful twang. "We've got plenty o' bread and milk for strangers. Somebody's spread the idea we run a hotel here and we're pestered a good deal with folks that want to stop for a meal. We take care o' 'em mostly. The wife and little gal sort o' like havin' folks stop; takes away the lonesomeness."

There was nothing in his speech or manner to suggest that he had ever been a road agent. He assisted them in carrying their traps to the house, talking farmer fashion of the weather, crops and the state of the roads. The house was connected with the barn in the usual New England style. In the kitchen a girl sang cheerily and hearing her the Governor paused and struck an attitude.

"O divinity! O Deity of the Green Hills! O Lovely Daughter of the Stars! O Iphigenia!"

The girl appeared at a window, rested her bare arms on the sill and smilingly saluted them with a cheery "Hello there!"

"Look upon that picture!" exclaimed the Governor, seizing Archie's arm. "In old times upon Olympus she was cup-bearer to the gods, but here she is Sally Walker, and never so charming as when she sits enthroned upon the milking stool. Miss Walker, my old friend, Mr. Comly, or Achilles, as you will!"

A very pretty picture Miss Walker made in the kitchen window, a vivid portrait that immediately enhanced Archie's pleasurable sensations in finding a haven that promised rest and security. Her black hair was swept back smoothly from her forehead and there was the glow of perfect health in her rounded cheeks. Archie noted her dimples and the white even teeth that made something noteworthy and memorable of her smile.

"Well, Mr. Saulsbury, I've read all those books you sent me, and the candy was the finest I ever tasted."

"She remembers! Amid all her domestic cares, she remembers! My dear lad, the girl is one in a million!"

"You'd think Mr. Saulsbury was crazy about me!" she laughed. "But he makes the same speeches to every girl he sees, doesn't he, Mr. Comly?"

"Indeed not," protested Archie, rallying bravely to the Governor's support. "He's been raving about you for days and my only surprise is that he so completely failed to give me the faintest idea—idea—"

"Of your charm, your ineffable beauty!" the Governor supplied. "You see, Sally, my friend is shy with the shyness of youth and inexperience and he is unable to utter the thoughts that do in him rise! I can see that he is your captive, your meekest slave. By the way, will there be cottage cheese prepared by your own adorable hand for supper? Are golden waffles likely to confront us on the breakfast table tomorrow at the hideous hour of five-thirty? Will there be maple syrup from yonder hillside grove?"

"You have said it!" Sally answered. "But you'd better chase yourselves into the house now or pop'll be peeved at having to wait for you."

On the veranda a tall elderly man rose from a hammock in which he had been reading a newspaper and stretched himself. His tanned face was deeply lined but he gave the impression of health and vigor.

"Leary," whispered the Governor in an aside and immediately introduced him.

"The road has been smooth and the sky is high," said the Governor in response to a quick anxious questioning of Leary's small restless eyes.

"Did you find peace in the churches by the way?" asked Leary.

"In one of the temples we found peace and plenty," answered the Governor as though reciting from a ritual.

Leary nodded and gave a hitch to his trousers.

"You found the waters of Champlain tranquil, and no hawks followed the landward passage?"

"The robin and the bluebird sang over all the road," he answered; then with a glance at Archie: "You gave no warning of the second pilgrim."

"The brother is young and innocent, but I find him an apt pupil," the Governor explained.

"The brother will learn first the wisdom of silence," remarked Leary, and then as though by an afterthought he shook Archie warmly by the hand.

They went into the house where Mrs. Walker, a stout middle-aged woman, greeted them effusively.

"We've got to put you both in one room, if you don't mind," she explained, "but there's two beds in it. I guess you can make out."

"Make out!" cried the Governor with a deprecatory wave of his hand. "We should be proud to be permitted to sleep on the porch! You do us much honor, my dear Mrs. Walker."

"Oh, you always cheer us up, Mr. Saulsbury. And Mr. Comly is just as welcome."

The second floor room to which Walker led them was plainly but neatly furnished and the windows looked out upon rolling pastures. The Governor abandoned his high-flown talk and asked blunt questions as to recent visitors, apparently referring to criminals who had lodged at the farm. They talked quite openly while Archie unpacked his bag. The restless activity of the folk of the underworld, their methods of communication and points of rendezvous seemed part of a vast system and he was ashamed of his enormous interest in all he saw and heard. The Governor's cool fashion of talking of the world of crime and its denizens almost legitimatized it, made it appear a recognized part of the accepted scheme of things. Walker aroused the Governor's deepest interest by telling of the visit of Pete Barney, a diamond thief, who had lately made a big haul in Chicago, and had been passed along from one point of refuge to another. The Governor asked particularly as to the man's experiences and treatment on the road, and whether he had complained of the hospitality extended by any of the agents of the underground.

"You needn't worry about him," said Walker, with a shrug. "He asks for what he wants."

"Sorry if he made himself a nuisance. I'll give warning to chain the gates toward the North. Is he carrying the sparks with him?"

"Lets 'em shine like a fool. I told 'im to clear out with 'em."

"You did right. The brothers in the West must be more careful about handing out tickets. Now trot Red up here and we'll transact a little business."

Leary appeared a moment later and Archie was about to leave the room, but the Governor insisted stoutly that he remain.

"I'm anxious for you and Red to know that I trust both of you fully."

"What's the young brother,—a con?" asked Leary with a glance at Archie.

To be referred to as a confidence man by a gentleman of Leary's professional eminence gave Archie a thrill. The Governor answered by drawing up his sleeves and going through the motions of washing his hands.

"Does the hawk follow fast?" Leary asked, as he proceeded to fill his pipe.

"The shadow hasn't fallen, but we watch the sky," returned the Governor.

The brushing of the hands together Archie interpreted as a code sign signifying murder and the subsequent interchange of words he took to be inquiry and answer as to the danger of apprehension. He felt that Leary's attitude toward him became friendlier from that moment. There was something ghastly in the thought that as the slayer of a human being he attained a certain dignity in the eyes of men like Leary. But he became interested in the transaction that was now taking place between the thief and the Governor. The Governor extracted the sixty one-thousand-dollar bills from his bag, and laid them out on the bed. He rapidly explained just how Leary's hidden booty had been recovered, and the manner in which the smaller denominations had been converted into bills that could be passed without arousing suspicion.