By the time the Arthur B. Grover had warped in, Carey had brought his launch to within a dozen yards of the tug, and his companion was standing up anxiously scrutinizing the men on board.

"Prisoners!" he bawled; "every one of you a prisoner! I know you, Perky; and you needn't try any tricks on me or it'll be the worse for you. And don't you fellows on that wharf try any funny business with me!"

Perky, busily getting the crane in working order, paid no heed whatever to these threats uttered in the authoritative tone of one who is confident of the support of the army and navy of the United States. Carey loudly seconded the detective's demand for the immediate and unconditional surrender of the tug.

"Trapped! Lost!" cried Eliphalet, tragically.

"You're mighty right you're lost!" yelled the officer. "You're a nice old scoundrel, to be circulating plugged gold pieces, and a rich man at that! You're pinched; do you understand? You're under arrest!"

The effect of this shot was to cause Eliphalet to attempt to climb from the tug to the wharf but the Governor seized a paddle and gently urged him back.

"I beg of you, Mr. Congdon, don't be disturbed. That person in the launch can't harm you in the least. He may be annoying, yes; and his voice is extremely disagreeable, but really his utterances are unworthy of the attention of honest men."

"Who the deuce are you?" demanded Eliphalet, leveling his umbrella at the Governor. "It occurs to me we have met before."

"Thanks for the compliment!" the Governor answered, dodging a heavy crate, the first of the freight to be swung ashore.

Perky was thoroughly prepared for the expeditious delivery of his cargo, even to wheelbarrows in which three men now began trundling supplies up the wharf and along the beach to the camp store house. The work was proceeding rapidly, without noise or confusion, and Archie and the Governor were busily assisting when the shore was startled by a yell.

Leary and Congdon in the row boat had been stealing up behind Carey's launch. Leary sprang aboard while the two occupants were watching the landing of the stores.

Carey, diving under Leary's arms, seized a club and knocked him overboard. The detective jumped into the water and swam to the wharf, where he was immediately overpowered and hauled aboard the tug. By this time Carey was steering for the middle of the bay, where he watched the tug for a while and then retired toward his camp.

Leary had crawled upon the pier and was disconsolately shaking the water out of his shoes.

"It was a good try, old man," said the Governor cheerily. "That fellow's not going to be easy to bag, but we've got a detective on our hands," he chuckled, "and I don't know just how we're going to let loose of him."

Putney Congdon had rowed close to the wharf to pick up Leary. As the Governor had predicted, Eliphalet Congdon emitted a loud and not wholly melodious howl as he recognized his son.

"Hey there! You've been following me! I told you to stay at the farm and here you come sneaking after me away up here where I've come for rest."

"You were never more mistaken in your life!" replied Putney. "I came up here to see Edith and found that that fellow you saw in the launch was trying to starve out this camp."

"Edith here? Who says Edith's here? You're out of your senses! You know perfectly well the child's in Ohio!"

"Break in on that dialogue," said the Governor to Archie. "Those men will never get anywhere yelling at each other. I'll attend to Eliphalet after we land the freight."

"If that wife of yours has stolen Edith I'll have the law on her!" screamed Eliphalet. "She's not fit to have the care of children!"

Archie walked to the edge of the wharf and commanded Eliphalet to hold his peace.

"Putney, row out a few hundred yards and watch Carey. You needn't worry about your father. We'll find some way of getting him out of his scrapes."

The detective, who had been lashed to the pilot house, reused himself to shout:

"You'll make a nice mess of it trying to get him away from the Government. The whole lot of you are crooks, and you're holding me at your peril."

The discharge of freight had not ceased during this colloquy. The crane swung over the wharf at regular intervals, and the men with the wheelbarrows trotted back and forth with the spirit and agility of men intent upon finishing an honest day's work. As Putney Congdon, mystified but obedient, rowed away, his father began begging Perky to leave the place and steer for Canada.

"You promised to protect me but you've made a fool of me," the old man wailed. "You betrayed me to the police; you—"

The Governor flung a sack of potatoes into a wheelbarrow, and surveyed the infuriated Eliphalet for a moment.

"Pray calm yourself, Mr. Congdon, and please be careful how you charge people with serious crimes. It seems to be an obsession with you that everybody on earth is a crook. The proposition interests me psychologically. When I get through with this freight I'll look at your data. Meanwhile I solemnly warn you to make no charge against me or any friends of mine that you can't prove."

It was five o'clock when the last of the cargo was landed in the store house. The engineer (a gentleman whose grimy face and mournful eyes belied his record as a hold-up man) sounded the whistle.

Ruth ran down to the shore and Archie and the Governor went to meet her.

"O you angels!" she cried. "I've just taken a peep into the store house and you've given us enough food to last all next summer. It's perfectly splendid. I wasn't watching—really, I wasn't—for I had to keep the girls busy; but you did have trouble of some sort?"

"Nothing of the slightest consequence," the Governor answered. "We tried to catch Carey but he was too quick for us. But we did pick up a friend of his—the gentleman you see giving an exhibition of haughty disdain out there on the tug. Keep everybody well under cover tonight and don't be alarmed by anything you hear. We'll soon be through with this business."

"Who's that funny little man on the tug? He seems anxious to attract attention!"

Eliphalet Congdon was engaged in an argument with the detective, who, being helpless, was obliged to endure a tirade the old gentleman was delivering to the accompaniment of an occasional prod of the inevitable umbrella.

"That," said the Governor, "is Edith Congdon's paternal grandfather; an estimable person fallen upon evil times."

"You don't mean Mr. Eliphalet Congdon!"

"Most emphatically I do."

"And have he and his son settled their differences?"

"Not so you would notice it! But they'll be loving each other when I get through with them."

"Do you know," said the girl, looking wonderingly into the Governor's eyes, "I don't suppose I could ever learn to know when you're fooling and when you're not."

"After we're married I shall never attempt to fool you. By the way," he added hastily as she frowned and shrugged her shoulders, "when does the camp close?"

"August twenty, if Mr. Carey doesn't close it sooner."

"The date shall stand without reference to Carey's wishes, intentions or acts. Please write your father to be here on that last day and bring his episcopal robes with him. And by the way, you spoke of your embarrassments about mail. We'll send to the Calderville post-office for all the Heart o' Dreams mail; a boat will deliver it tonight and pick up the camp mail bag. Have you anything to add, Archie?"

"You might say to Isabel," said Archie slowly, "that August twenty strikes me as the happiest possible date for our wedding."

"You two talk of weddings as though we were not in the midst of battle, murder and sudden death!"

She folded her arms and regarded them with an odd little smile, half wistful, half questioning, playing about her lips. The tug was drawing away from the wharf. Perky sat on the rail placidly sucking an orange, a noble picture of an unrepentant sinner. From the woods floated the far, faint cries and light-hearted laughter of the camp youngsters at play. In spite of his attempt to imitate the Governor's jauntiness Archie felt again, as so often since he left Bailey Harbor, the unreality of the events through which he had been projected with his singular companion, who had drawn him so far out of his orbit that it was hard to believe that he would ever slip into it again. Their affairs had never presented so many problems as now, when the Governor was predicting and planning the end with so much assurance. In the few seconds that Ruth deliberated he plunged to the depths in his despair that Isabel would ever seriously consider him as a lover.

"I was just thinking," said the girl, stepping back a little into a path that led from the beach to the woods, "how we seem to be living in the good old times, when knights hastened by land or water to the rescue of ladies in distress. This is all very pretty and be sure we all appreciate what you have done for us. But I don't quite see through to the end!" The smile was gone and there was no doubt of the sincerity of the anxiety that darkened her eyes as she ended with a little, quavering, despairing note: "Something serious and dreadful threatens us, one and all of us maybe! It's only—what do you call such a thing—a presentiment!"

"Please don't think of it!" pleaded Archie; "things are bound to come out all right. You mustn't lose faith in us."

"Yes; it will be only a little longer," muttered the Governor listlessly.

He had responded instantly to Ruth's confession of her premonition of impending evil, and Archie, troubled by his friend's change of mood, hastened to end the interview.

"We're not going to lose!" he declared. "It's when the world is brightest that the shadow of a cloud sometimes makes us fear to trust our happiness. Good-by and good luck!"

She was not reassured, however, and as she shook hands with them there were tears in her eyes.

V

The Governor quickly recovered his spirits and with characteristic enthusiasm began putting the new launch through its paces. Like everything that pleased him, the launch was wonderful. He called upon Archie to bear witness to its unsurpassed merits, and they ran out to the row boat to invite the admiration of Putney and Leary. Putney, they found, was skilled in the handling of such craft, and the Governor cheerfully turned the launch over to him.

"You take it and run up to Calderville, where you'd better get supper. Pick up the Heart o' Dreams mail and bring it back to Huddleston, and meet us on the wharf at nightfall. We've got a heavy night's work ahead of us. Carey's probably jarred a good deal to find that we've got a tug and a launch to play with."

"That's all right, and I'll obey orders, of course," said Congdon, wiping the oil from his hands; "but don't forget that my father's out there on that tug. I don't know what trouble he's in, but I can't forget that he's my father—"

Archie, touched by his display of feeling, turned with a pleading glance to the Governor, but the Governor needed no prompting to be kind.

"My dear boy," he said, "you may rely upon me to extricate your father from his embarrassments. Archie and I are going aboard the tug to study his case carefully. If we don't do anything else this summer we're going to take the kink out of your family affairs."

"There's no reason why you should—" Putney began.

"Reason!" exclaimed the Governor, snapping his fingers contemptuously, "reasons for things are a horrible bore. In this pretty good old world we must apologize for our sins and weaknesses but not for our kind intentions."

As they boarded the Arthur B. Grover Eliphalet made no attempt to speak to Putney though he leaned over the side and shook his umbrella at the launch as it drew away. The Governor told Perky to produce food and invited Eliphalet and the detective to supper. The officer, churlish from his bath in the bay and his enforced appearance in jumper and overalls during the drying of his garments, replied to a polite inquiry that his name was Briggs but that his credentials had been lost in his tumble into the water.

"We shall waive all formalities," said the Governor, "as my guest your official connections, real or fictitious, concern me not at all."

Corned beef, crackers, fruit and coffee composed the supper, and Eliphalet Congdon, Briggs, Archie and the Governor sat cross-legged on the deck and partook of it picnic fashion.

"A truce to our difficulties, gentlemen!" the Governor cried, lifting his tin cup of coffee. "I'm sure there are misunderstandings involving all of us that time will clear up. It's mighty lucky for you, Briggs, that we succeeded in detaching you from that chap who brought you here. If you had remained in his company you would certainly have come to grief. With murderous intent he ran down two women right here in the bay last night. We saved their lives by sheer good luck. You were not with him, I suppose, and I'll charitably assume you don't know his purpose in attacking them."

"He says the girls' camp is on his land and he's only trying to drive 'em off," replied Briggs. "Whatever his game is it's none of my business."

"It's any man's business to protect women and innocent children from the malice of a madman. To let you into a dark secret, he's got the idea that there's buried treasure somewhere on the land occupied by Heart o' Dreams Camp."

"Treasure!" exclaimed Eliphalet. "Do you mean to say there's money buried there?"

"That's the idea," said the Governor with a grim smile at the sudden glint of greed in the old man's eyes. He told the story, told it with flourishes and decorations that pleased Archie immensely.

"It sounds pretty fishy," Briggs remarked, "but there may be something in it."

"You never can tell," muttered Eliphalet. "It would have been natural for one of those old southerners who hadn't any confidence in Jeff Davis to plant his money in some lonely place like this."

"In one way or another we are all seekers of buried treasure," remarked the Governor sententiously.

His story had cleared the air, giving, as Archie reflected, a fresh illustration of the power of romance to soften the harshness of even so realistic a situation as confronted the tug's passengers. Eliphalet's imagination had been stirred, and he asked many questions about the treasure. Briggs lost his hostile air and showed himself the possessor of an unsuspected amiability.

"You seem to be a good fellow," remarked the Governor; "and your interest in the Arthur B. Grover is legitimate enough, I daresay. If you will promise to behave and not try to leave the tug or molest any one on board you're free to do as you like. But I want you to play fair."

"I seem to be at your mercy. You've got to consider that my reputation is at stake. It's my duty to land Mr. Congdon and that chap you call Perky in the nearest jail and report their arrest to Washington."

"Washington," replied the Governor, drawing his hand across his face, "is a beautiful city; but it's a long way from here. Be assured that I'm no anarchist and the delicate matter of your professional standing is something that shall engage my most earnest thought. Please make yourself comfortable."

He bade Archie follow him to the bow where Eliphalet was moodily gazing into the water.

"Mr. Congdon," the Governor began in his blandest tones, "as a mere looker-on at the passing show I'm persuaded that you're not getting much out of life. A mistake, sir; a mistake it grieves me to see you making."

"What I do or do not do," cried the old man, lifting his umbrella belligerently, "is none of your infernal business."

"An error, sir; an error of considerable magnitude, if you will pardon me! I wish my friend here to bear witness that I am qualified to offer you excellent advice based on exact information as to your intimate domestic affairs. You're a meddlesome person, Mr. Congdon, with a slight element of cruelty in your makeup, of which let us hope you are not wholly conscious. Morally you are skidding, but this I charitably attribute to your lack of a wholesome and healthy interest in life. Incidentally you've done all you could to destroy the happiness of your son, who is a fine fellow and a gentleman."

"And his wife, your daughter-in-law, is one of the noblest women in the world!" interjected Archie, seeing that the Governor's arraignment was not without its effect on the odd, crumpled little figure. However, the mention of Mrs. Congdon instantly aroused Eliphalet's ire.

"That woman ordered me out of her house—a house I bought and paid for! She did her best to make my son hate me! She compelled him to quit the businesses I started for the sole purpose of providing him employment!"

"Your trouble is that you never knew when Putney grew up," declared the Governor. "You tried to boss him even after his marriage, and if Mrs. Congdon turned you out of her house she did only what any self-respecting woman would do. As the result of your miserly ways, your meddlesomeness and your selfishness, you've just about ruined your life. The penitentiary yawns for you." Eliphalet shuddered, and a look of fear not pleasant to see crossed his face. "But," the Governor went on, "in spite of your cowardly conduct I'm rather disposed to pull you out of the hole."

"You will help; you really will help me?"

"Not if you cringe and whine like that. If you will stand square on your feet and listen to me I'll make you a proposition. Don't flinch; I don't want any of your money! I've heard that you make a habit of carrying your will around in that umbrella, for the ludicrous reason that you think you are not one of us absent-minded mortals who forget our umbrellas. And you like to have the will handy so you can rewrite it when the mood strikes you. Give me that thing!"

Eliphalet hesitated, but the Governor said, "If you please, Mr. Congdon," with all possible shadings of courteous insistence, and gently pried it from the old man's fingers.

It was a heavy, bulgy, disreputable-looking umbrella with a battered curved handle. The canopy was held together by a piece of twine. Rather than be seen with so monstrous a thing any self-respecting person would cheerfully take a drenching. The Governor opened it, shook out a number of manilla envelopes, all carefully sealed, and flung the umbrella from him as though it were an odious and hateful thing. As it struck the water it spread open and the wind seized it and bore it gaily away. The Governor watched it for a moment with an ironic grin, then began opening the envelopes and scanning the contents.

"I began life as a lawyer," he said coolly, "so you needn't fear that I'll not respect the sanctity of these experiments in the testamentary art."

Archie, taking and refolding the wills as the Governor finished reading them, marveled at this unexpected revelation of his friend's profession let fall in the most casual fashion, as was the Governor's way.

"It's evident from the dates of these wills that you've been steadily cutting down the amount of your bequest to your son," the Governor was saying, "so that if you died tonight he'd receive only a hundred thousand dollars, the remaining million or two going to humane societies, and one fat plum, I notice, to the Home for Outcast Cats. The eccentricities of testators have never impressed me by their humor, particularly when hatred and revenge are behind them. You would malevolently cut off your own blood merely because your daughter-in-law doesn't like your manners, which are bad, or because your son wouldn't fall in with your fantastic schemes of making money dishonestly. I suppose you've had a good time flourishing these wills before your son and his wife when you were peeved, to let them know how you planned to punish them. Watch me, Archie, so you can bear witness to the destruction of these things; they're all going to feed the fishes except this earliest one, which divides the property in generous lumps between Putney Congdon and his children, with a handsome personal recognition of Mrs. Congdon. That shall be preserved."

Eliphalet sullenly watched the Governor as he tore the papers into bits and flung them to the breeze, all save the one, which he again scanned with sophisticated care and stowed away carefully in his pocket.

"Now, sir; let us get down to business! If you will promise me never to make another will without consulting me, but will let this one I've kept stand, and if you agree not to interfere any further with your son's family or his wife or his children or his ox or his ass or anything that is his, for the rest of your natural life, I'll guarantee that in due season you'll leave this tug a free man."

"You can do that; you are sure you can save me?" Eliphalet's voice shook and his hands, thrust out appealingly, trembled pitifully as he turned from the Governor to Archie.

"My friend can do what he says," said Archie. "You may trust him."

"I promise," said the old man steadily. "But I must see Putney and explain about the coins. It was more in a spirit of playfulness, a curiosity to know how such things are done that I got mixed up in that business."

"I daresay it was and I'm sure you'll not repeat the offense," said the Governor, lighting a cigarette. "As to Putney, I'll arrange the meeting as soon as possible."

Eliphalet Congdon was the last man Archie would have expected to yield to the Governor's wizardry, or hypnotism, or whatever it was that caused people to submit to him; but the old man's face expressed infinite relief now that the Governor had so insolently assumed the role of dictator in his affairs. The pathos of the weazened little figure now stripped of its arrogance, and the assertion of a long-latent kindliness in his countenance, encouraged the hope that happier times were in store for all the Congdons.



CHAPTER SEVEN

I

The Governor and Archie were waiting on the Huddleston wharf when Putney and Leary returned from Calderville, bringing two sacks of Heart o' Dreams mail. Putney had loafed about the Calderville post-office and made purchases in several shops to learn if possible whether Carey's purpose in establishing himself in the woods was known to the villagers. He had, it seemed, represented himself as an investigator for a lumber company engaged in appraising timber. This was the story he had told in Calderville and the villagers had not questioned it.

"That's all right," said the Governor, "and serves our purpose well. Archie, you and Leary take the launch and carry the mail over to Heart o' Dreams. The tug will be within call in case you need help. At twelve o'clock meet me about a quarter of a mile this side of Carey's barricade; Leary's got the place spotted so he can find it in the dark. Use a canoe; no noise and no lights. Hurry along but don't blow up the launch."

"I have a surprise for you," said Ruth when Archie delivered the mail at the camp office. "I'm going to be busy sorting this mail, but if you will step to the door, bear left ten yards and stop by a bench under our tallest pine, some one you pretend to like rather particularly may appear, but just for a moment, remember! You ought to be eternally grateful to me for this; I had to overcome both the doctor and the nurse and the prejudices and suspicions of the particular person—"

"Isabel!" he exclaimed. He hadn't dreamed that he might see Isabel.

She came toward him out of the shadows, wrapped in a long cloak, carrying a lantern, and paused by the bench.

"These old-fashioned lanterns are a lot nicer than the electric flash things," she remarked.

They sat down with the lantern between them, her right hand resting upon its wire guard for a moment. The glow emphasized its fine length and firmness. The left hand was bandaged and he saw her thrust it quickly out of sight.

"You haven't let me say how happy I am that you are able to be up, or how grateful I am for this glimpse of you. It's always just glimpses."

"Maybe it's better that way! But so much happens between our meetings; there was never anything like it in all the world. Never was an acquaintance so pursued by storms! I wonder where the blow will fall next?"

"Not on your head," he answered decisively, "not if the Governor and I can prevent it. But let us not waste time on that; I want your assurance that you are really well."

"Oh, perfectly; not an ache from the ducking; only this little reminder my hand will carry for a day or two; but that's nothing to worry about!"

There was a restraint upon them, due perhaps to the calming influence of the stars, the murmurings of the shore in conference with the pines.

"The things that have happened since we first met would make a large book," he said with an accession of courage, "but a separate volume would have to be written about your hands."

She fell back at once upon her defenses.

"Oh, are they as large as that!"

"They are as dear as that!"

"How absurd you are! Here we are with only a few minutes to talk; not more than ten—that's official from the doctor; and you're talking foolishness. If I were extremely sensitive I might imagine that my face was displeasing to you!"

"The face is too remote, too sacred; I wouldn't dare let myself think about it. The hand encourages belief in our common humanity; but the face is divine, a true key to the soul. The hand we think of commonly as a utilitarian device of nature, and in your case we know it to be skilled in many gracious arts, but beyond its decorative values—"

"Dear me! Just what are you quoting?"

"Please suffer the rest of it! Your hands, I was about to say, not only awaken admiration by their grace and symmetry, but the sight of them does funny things to my heart."

"That heart of yours! How did it ever manage to survive the strain and excitement of last night?"

"Oh, it functioned splendidly. But it was at work in a good cause. Pray permit me to continue. Your hands are adorable; I am filled with tenderest longings to possess them. If I should touch them I might die, so furious would be my palpitations!"

"The minutes fly and you are delivering an oration on the human hand, which in the early processes of evolution was only a claw. If you are not careful you'll be writing poetry next!"

"The future tense does me an injustice. I've already committed the unpardonable rhyme! I never made a verse before in my life, and this hasn't been confided to paper. I thought it out at odd moments in my recent travels. The humming of the wheels on the sleeper coming up gave me the tune. If you will encourage me a little I think I can recite it. It needs smoothing out in spots, but it goes something like this:

"I view with awe and wonder Her hands so slim and long,— I must not make the blunder Of clasping them—in song!

"But sweet the memory lingers Of happy fleeting times When I have kissed her fingers And folded them in rhymes.

"Hands shouldn't be so slender, So dear and white and strong, To waken thoughts so tender That fold them like a song!"

"Charming! I never thought when I talked to you that night at your sister's that I was addressing my inanities to a poet. Those are very nice jingles. I'm struck by the imagination they show—in the second verse I think it is—?"

He repeated the verse.

"Are you daring me?" he asked.

"I dared you once and got you into a lot of trouble. Please remember that we are unchaperoned and the dear little girls asleep in those tents back yonder would be shocked—"

"I shall make the shock as gentle as possible," he said and kissed her unresisting hand.

"The poem seems in a way to have been prophetic!" she remarked. "I must run now or the doctor will scold me, or I shall be scolding you! I must say one thing before we part. I've had time today to do a good deal of thinking, and my opinion of myself isn't very high. Out of sheer contrariness that night in Washington I teased you into doing things that led you into grave danger—and the danger is still all about us. I'm sorry; with all my heart I'm sorry! If anything should happen to you, it would be my fault—my very grievous sin! And maybe there are other men that I may have said similar things to—oh, you were not the first!" she laughed forlornly. "They, too, may have plunged into the same pit I dug for you. Oh, how foolish I've been!"

There was no questioning the sincerity of her dejection and contrition, and he felt moved to tell her of Putney's confession in the park at Chicago, that they might laugh together at the curious fling of fate that had brought two of her victims together In deadly combat. But her mood did not encourage the idea that she would view the matter in a humorous light.

"I wish you could tell me truly," she went on, "that what I said that night really didn't impress you; that it wasn't responsible for your giving up your plans for going to the Rockies?"

"Honestly, I can't say anything of the kind! And if we hadn't had the talk, and if you hadn't sent the verse, I shouldn't be here trying to help you now."

"But it was flirting; it was the silliest kind of flirting!"

"That is always a legitimate form of entertainment, a woman's right and privilege! Please put all this out of your mind!"

"It's not a thing to be dismissed so lightly. I'm very unhappy about it; I'm deeply ashamed of myself!"

"You exaggerate the whole matter," he urged. "You are making me out a miserable weakling indeed when you think I ambled off toward perdition just because you dared me to assert myself a little!"

"I want you to promise," she said slowly, "that you won't in any way interfere with my cousin here. I can't have you taking further risks. After last night I doubt whether he bothers us. Ruth feels as I do about it; you must go away. You will promise, please—"

"You would have us run just as the game grows interesting! Of course we're not going to quit the field and leave that fellow here to annoy you! He's a dangerous character and we're going to get rid of him."

She was depressed, much as Ruth had been a few hours earlier and his efforts to win her to a happier frame of mind were unavailing.

"I love you; I love you!" he said softly.

"You must never say that to me again," she said slowly and determinedly. "After my stupid, cruel thoughtlessness you must hate me—"

"But, Isabel—"

She seized the lantern and hurried away, her head bowed, the cloak billowing about her. He watched the lantern till its gleam was swallowed up in the darkness.

It was ten o'clock. Leary had got the outgoing mail—a week's accumulation, and they crossed to Huddleston where one of Perky's men was waiting with a machine to carry it to Calderville.

"The Governor didn't want the launch goin' up there ag'in," Leary explained. "He dug up that car somewhere."

"The Governor's a great man," said Archie.

"The greatest in the world!" Leary solemnly affirmed.

II

Shortly before midnight Archie and Leary left the Arthur B. Grover and paddled cautiously toward the point fixed by the Governor for their rendezvous. They were fortified with a repeating rifle, a shotgun (this was Leary's preference) and several packets of rockets for use in signaling the tug. It was the strangest of all expeditions, the more exciting from the fact that it was staged in the very heart of the country. For all that shore or water suggested of an encompassing civilization, the canoe driven by the taciturn Leary might have been the argosy of the first explorer of the inland seas.

Archie, keenly alive to the importance of the impending stroke, was aware that the Governor had planned it with the care he brought to the most trifling matters, though veiled by his indifference, which in turn was enveloped in his superstitious reliance on occult powers. Whether through some gift of prevision the Governor anticipated needs and dangers in his singular life, or whether he was merely a favorite of the gods of good luck, Archie had never determined, but either way the man who called himself Saulsbury seemed able to contrive and direct incidents with the dexterity of an expert stage hand. The purchase of the Arthur B. Grover had seemed the most fantastic extravagance, but the tug had already proved to be of crucial importance in the prosecution of their business. The seizure of Eliphalet Congdon had been justified; Perky and Leary were valuable lieutenants and the crew of jailbirds was now to be utilized as an offensive army.

Leary, restless because he couldn't smoke, spoke only once, to inquire Archie's judgment as to the passage of time. The old fellow, long accustomed to lonely flights after his plunderings, possessed the acutely developed faculties of a predatory animal; and the point at which they were to debark having been fixed in his mind in a daylight survey he paddled toward it with certainty. He managed his paddle so deftly that there was hardly a drip that could announce their proximity to any one lying in wait on the bay. Several minutes before Archie caught the listless wash of calm water on a beach, Leary heard it and paused, peering at the opaque curtain of the woodland beyond the lighter shadow of the shore.

"We struck it right," he announced, returning from an examination of the shore markings.

They carried the canoe into the wood and lay down beside it, communicating in whispers.

"That girls' camp's on th' right; Carey's place to the left. Hear that!" His quick ear caught the faint moan of a locomotive whistle far to the south. It was a freight crossing a trestle, he said, though Archie had no idea of how he reached this conclusion.

"Th' rest o' th' boys are away off yonder," and he lifted Archie's hand to point.

"How many?" asked Archie, who had never known the number of men dropped from the tug to make the swing round Carey's fortress.

"Ten; and a purty sharp bunch! You be dead sure they're right er ole Governor wouldn't have 'em!"

Leary's confidence in the Governor as a judge of character reenforced Archie's own opinion of the leader's fitness to command. That he should have been received into the strange brotherhood of the road, which the Governor controlled with so little friction, never ceased to puzzle him. He was amused to find himself feeling very humble beside Leary, a poor, ignorant, unmoral creature, whose loyalty as manifested in his devotion to the Governor was probably the one admirable thing in his nature.

"Somebody may get hurt if we come to a scrimmage," he suggested. "What do you think of the chances?"

"When ole Governor's bossin' things I don't do no thinkin'," the old man answered. He raised his head, catching a sound in the gloom, and tapped Archie's shoulder. "It's him, I reckon."

An instant later the Governor threw himself on the ground beside them. He was breathing hard and lay on his back, his arms flung out, completely relaxed, for several minutes. Archie had often wondered at his friend's powers of endurance; he rarely complained of fatigue, and very little sleep sufficed him. He sat up suddenly and said crisply:

"Well, boys, everything's ready!"

One by one his little army assembled, rising from the ground like specters. They gathered stolidly about the Governor, who flashed his electric lamp over their faces,—evil faces and dull faces, with eyes bold or shrinking before the quick stab of the gleam.

"Remember, you're not to shoot except in self-defense," said the Governor. "It's Carey, the leader, we're after. Those poor fools he's got with him think there's big money in this; I've told you all about that. They may run and they may put up a fight, but Carey must be taken prisoner. Spread out four paces apart for the advance, and move in a slow walk. When you hear me yell I'll be on top of the barricade. That's your signal for the dash to go over and get him."

Leary was already deploying the men. The Governor laid his hand on Archie's shoulder. In the contact something passed between them, such a communication as does not often pass from the heart of one man to another.

"If it comes to the worst for me, you and Isabel will look out for Ruth. I needn't ask you that. Use the tug quickly to clear things up here; there must be nothing left to tell the tale. See that old man Congdon keeps his promise. That will of his is in my blue serge coat in the closet of my room. If I die, bury me on the spot; no foolishness about that. I died to the world seven years ago tonight, so a second departure will call for no flowers!"

Tears welled in Archie's eyes as he grasped his friend's hand there in the dark wood under the world-old watch of the stars.

Leary reported everything in readiness, and the signal to go forward was given by a hand-clasp repeated along the line. Archie kept at the Governor's heels as they advanced, pausing every fifty paces for a methodical inspection of the company by Leary and Perky, the latter having left the tug in charge of the engineer and joined the party last of all.

When they reached the little stream that defined the boundary of Heart o' Dreams territory the Governor, Archie and Leary got in readiness for their dash across the bridge and over the barricade. The purl of water eager for its entrance into the bay struck upon Archie's ear with a spiteful insistence.

"There must be no chance of these fellows breaking past us and frightening the women at Heart o' Dreams," said the Governor. "We've got to make a clean sweep. But it's Carey we want, preferably alive!"

There was not a sound from the farther side of the stream. They crawled across the bridge and Archie ran his hand over the frame of logs against which stones had been heaped in a rough wall, as the Governor had explained to him. Archie had determined to thwart his friend's purpose to lead the assault, but while he was seeking a footing in the crevices the Governor swung himself to the top. His foot struck a stone perched on the edge and it rolled down into the camp with a great clatter.

As though it had touched a trigger a shotgun boomed upon the night, indicating that Carey had not been caught napping. Orders given in a shrill voice and answering shouts proclaimed the marshaling of his forces. Archie and Leary reached the Governor as he was crawling over the stones. Some one threw a shovelful of coals upon a heap of wood that evidently had been soaked in inflammable oil, for the flames rose with a roar.

It may have been that Carey had grown wary of murder as a means of gaining his end after the escapade of the previous night, for the first move of his men was to attempt to drive out the invaders with rifles swung as clubs. Carey screamed at them hysterically, urging them to greater efforts.

"Fight for the gold, boys! Fight for the gold!"

It seemed impossible that the men he had lured to his camp with the promise of gold would not see that he was mad. He flung himself first upon one and then another of the attacking party, a fanatical gleam in his eyes. Once, with two of his supporters at his back, he directed his fury against Archie. This invited a general scrimmage in which weapons were cast aside and fists dealt hard blows. When it ended Archie lay with friends and enemies piled upon him in a squirming mass. He got upon his feet, his face aching from a blow from a brawny fist, and found the two sides taking account of injuries and maneuvering for the next move.

The great bonfire kept the belligerents constantly in sight of each other, skulking, dodging, engaging in individual encounters poorly calculated to bring victory to either side. One of Carey's men lay near the barricade, insensible from a crack over the head from a rifle butt. His plight was causing uneasiness among his comrades, who began drawing back toward the shadows. Carey, seeing that their pluck was ebbing, cursed them. Only seven of the Governor's party had entered the barricade, the others having been left outside to prevent a retreat toward Heart o' Dreams in case the enemy attempted flight.

"We ain't gettin' nowhere!" growled Leary at the end of a third inconclusive hand-to-hand struggle with only a few battered heads as the result.

"There's gold for all of you!" screamed Carey to his men, and urged them to another attack.

They advanced again, but Archie was quick to see that they came into the light reluctantly and precipitated themselves half-heartedly into the struggle. The Governor, too, was aware of their diminished spirit and got his men in line for a charge.

"We'll clean 'em up this time, boys!" he called encouragingly.

He took the lead, walking forward calmly, and in a low tone pointing out the individual that each should attack. The quiet orderliness of the movement, or perhaps it was a sense of impending defeat, roused Carey to a greater fury than he had yet shown. As the invaders broke line for the assault, he leaped at the Governor and swung at him viciously with a rifle. The Governor sprang aside and the gun slipped from Carey's hands and clattered against the barricade.

Angered by his failure, and finding his men yielding, Carey abruptly changed his tactics. He ran back beyond the roaring fire and caught up another rifle. Leary began circling round the flames in the hope of grappling with him, but he was too late. Without taking time for aim, Carey leveled the weapon and fired through the flames.

Archie, struggling with a big woodsman, beat him down and turned as the shot rang out. The Governor was standing apart, oddly and strangely alone it seemed to Archie, and he was an eternity falling. He raised himself slightly, carrying his rifle high above his head, and his face was uplifted as though in that supreme moment he invoked the stars of his dreams. Then he pitched forward and lay very still.

Carey's shot seemed to have broken the tacit truce against a resort to arms. There was a sharp fusillade, followed by a scramble as the belligerents sought cover. The men who had been left outside now leaped over the barricade. The appearance of reenforcements either frightened Carey or the success of his shot had awakened a new rage in his crazed mind, for he emptied his rifle, firing wildly as he danced with fantastic step toward the prone figure of the Governor.

Archie, his heart a dead weight in his breast, resolved that the Governor's last charge to him should be kept. He saw Congdon beyond the light of the conflagration taking aim at Carey with careful calculation. Carey must not be killed; no matter what the death toll might be, the man responsible for it must be taken alive. He raised his hand as a signal to Congdon not to fire, and waited, hanging back in the shadows, watching the wild gyrations of the madman. Carey seemed now to be oblivious to everything that was happening about him as he continued his dance of triumph. In the midst of this weird performance, suddenly widening the circumference of his operations, he stumbled. As he reeled Archie rushed in, gripping his throat and falling upon him.

The breath went out of the man as he struck the ground, and Archie jumped up and left him to Congdon and Leary.

Perky was kneeling beside the Governor tearing open his shirt which was already crimson from a fast-flowing wound.

"He's hurt bad; it's the end of him!" muttered the old man helplessly.

"There's nothing to be done here," said Archie, tears coursing down his cheeks as he felt the Governor's faltering pulse. "We must cross to Huddleston as quickly as possible."

At Carey's downfall his men fled through the woods, pursued by several of the Governor's party. Perky seized the rockets and touched one after the other to the flames of the bonfire. The varicolored lights were still bright in the sky when the answering signal rose from the bay.

"The tug's moving up," said Perky.

A thousand and one things flitted through Archie's mind. The Governor had not opened his eyes; his breath came in gasps, at long, painful intervals. To summon aid through the usual channels would be to invite a scrutiny of their operations that could only lead to complications with the law and a resulting publicity that was to be avoided at any hazard. If a doctor were summoned from Calderville, he would in all likelihood feel it to be his duty to report to the authorities the fact that he had a wounded patient. It was hardly fair to call upon the young woman physician at Heart o' Dreams, and yet this was the only safe move. While Perky and Leary were fashioning a litter he knelt beside the Governor, laving his face with water from the brook. He despatched two messengers to Heart o' Dreams, one through the woods and the other in a canoe.

They would make the crossing in Carey's launch, while the tug, now showing its lights close inshore could be sent for the doctor. Two men had already started for the beach with Carey bound and gagged and he was to be kept on the tug until some way could be found of disposing of him.

"I'll stay behind; I gotta clean up here; you don't need to know nothin' about it," said Leary gruffly.

One of Carey's men had been shot and instantly killed and another still lay unconscious near the barricade from his battering on the head early in the fight. Leary grimly declared that the others would not be likely to talk of their night's adventure.

It had been a foolhardy undertaking, with potentialities of exposure and danger that added fear to the grief in Archie's heart at the Governor's fall. At best the thing was horrible, and but for the coolness with which Leary and Perky were meeting the situation Archie would have been for abandoning any attempt at secrecy.

"It was th' ole Governor's way o' doin' it," said Leary, as though reading Archie's thoughts. "Ole Governor never made no mistakes. We ain't agoin' to make no mistakes now, doin' what he tole us not to do. I'll go back and bury that poor devil and cover up the place. I guess he's luckier bein' dead anyhow. An' then I'll wake up that other cuss an' get rid of 'im. All you gotta do is t' ferget about it and take care o' ole Governor."

III

Archie was very humble as he reflected that he hadn't done justice to the intelligence and charm, to say nothing of the professional skill of Dr. Katherine Reynolds in his hurried glimpse of her at Heart o' Dreams. His fears that a woman doctor, who was really only a girl of the age of Ruth and Isabel, would not be equal to the emergency were dismissed an hour after she reached Huddleston. She brought the camp nurse with her and was fortified with bags of instruments and hospital supplies.

She went about her examination without a question; made it as though she were daily in the habit of dealing with wounded men; specifically called for boiling water, laid out sponges and bottles and oddly shaped trinkets of steel, and the Governor's room in the ramshackle hotel was quickly transformed into a surgery. Perky had gone aboard the tug, which was to remain in the bay until the outcome of the Governor's injury could be learned. Putney Congdon kept Archie company in the hall outside the sick room.

The morning was breaking when the door opened.

"There's about one chance in a thousand," said Dr. Reynolds, looking very tired but smiling bravely; "but we've taken the chance. There are reasons, I assume, why this matter should be kept quiet, and of course you know the danger,—to you and all of us!"

"It's splendid of you to accept the responsibility; be sure I appreciate it!"

"But I have no right to take it. I've done all I know how to do, but there should be another head and a surer hand. Dr. Mosgrove of Chicago has a summer home twenty miles from Heart o' Dreams. He's an old friend of my family and one of the most skilful surgeons in America. I've written him a note and I'm sure he will come instantly."

The note was sent to the tug for delivery and at eight o'clock the surgeon was at Huddleston. He was in the sick room for a long, a very long time. Archie pounced upon him eagerly when he reappeared. He eyed the young man quizzically, apparently immensely amused about something.

"What does all this mean?" he whispered. "Pirates in these waters where I've been summering for years! Men shot and the police not notified! A girl doctor attending the case! May I trouble you for your name, sir?"

Archie replied with all possible dignity that his name was Ashton Comly, and demanded a professional opinion as to the sick man's chances of recovery. The doctor became instantly serious.

"The bullet pierced the right chest wall and of course there was immediate and copious hemorrhage. You needn't trouble about the delay in getting to the doctor; nature went to work at once, forming clots that plugged automatically the gaping mouth of the severed vessels. You men were fortunate to find Dr. Reynolds; she has handled the case admirably. Dear me! I'm constantly astonished at these girls! You don't know perhaps that your attending physician is a society girl who studied medicine over the solemn protest of her family? Sat on my knee as a child, and it tickles me immensely to see how coolly she takes this. I approve of her work in every particular."

"Thank you," cried Archie. "Oh, thank you for that! One thing more: would you advise me to summon the patient's sister, his only close relative, I believe? I must do it at once if you think, possibly—"

"Yes. There being always the uncertainties, I should certainly do so. I'll run up in my launch this evening."

Archie accompanied Dr. Mosgrove aboard the tug and gave Perky the hopeful news of the Governor's condition. Eliphalet Congdon demanded to know what had happened in the night, and when he was to be released, and Archie spent some time trying to satisfy him that his solemn covenant with the Governor would be carried out in every particular.

Leary, who had returned to the Arthur B. Grover shortly after daylight, showed the strain of the night.

"It was kind o' lonesome buryin' that poor devil over yonder. There wasn't a thing on 'im to tell who he was. That other chap came to and I did the best I could fer 'im, and gave him money; tole him to clear out and keep his mouth shet or he'd do a lot o' time for mixin' up with Carey. I tore down that lunatic's fort and Carey wouldn't know the place himself."

The old fellow's succinct report gave to the burial of the victim of the night's encounter an added gruesomeness. A dead man hidden away under cover of darkness, without benefit of clergy, meant nothing to Leary, who smoked his pipe, and asked in mournful accents what was to be done with old man Congdon and Carey. These questions troubled Archie not a little, but when he suggested that the detective had also to be disposed of Leary grinned broadly.

"Ole Governor don't do nothin' like nobody else; y' must a-learned that by this time. That chap ain't no detective; he's a gun man we sent to chum with Carey."

Archie bared his head to the cool morning air. It was almost too much to learn that Briggs, who had so gallantly played the part of a government detective, was really an ally, shrewdly introduced into the Governor's strategy to awaken fear in Eliphalet Congdon.

"Perky ain't no baby," Leary said, "an' you don't ketch 'im runnin' into no detective."

"But Perky wired the Governor that he thought he was being watched?"

Leary grinned again.

"Ole Governor was foolin' you. That telegram was jes' to let Governor know Briggs was on the job. Got t' have his little joke, ole Governor. It tickles 'im t' fool us boys."

Archie went at once to the Huddleston station, where he satisfied himself that the lonely agent knew nothing of the transactions of the night. The receipt and despatch of telegrams by the Governor had been a welcome relief from the routine business of the office, and recognizing Archie as a friend of his patron Mr. Saulsbury, he expressed the hope that they were finding the fishing satisfactory.

Archie drew from the breast pocket of his waistcoat the envelope the Governor's sister had given him the night she dined in the New York house. In his subsequent adventures he had guarded it jealously as containing his one clue to the Governor's identity. Now that the evil hour the woman dreaded had come, Archie found himself hesitating as he listened to the agent's complaint of the fate that had stranded him in so desolate a spot. The man turned to answer the importunity of the instrument which was sounding his call and Archie tore open the envelope. In a flowing hand which expressed something of the grace and charm of the woman who had given it to him in circumstances so remarkable, he read:

Mrs. Julia Van Doren Graybill Until October 1, Southampton, L. I.

The agent was taking a train order and was unaware of the agitation of the man at the window. It was the Van Doren that burnt itself into Archie's consciousness. It was an old name of honorable connotations, one with which he had been familiar all his life. It was chiseled in the wall of the church near the pew held for a hundred years by his own family; it was a name of dignity, associated with the best traditions of Manhattan Island; and this, presumably, was the Governor's name. Graybill was unfamiliar, and this puzzled him, for he knew and could place half a dozen Van Dorens, probably relatives in some degree of the Governor, but he recalled no woman of the family who had married a Graybill. Julia had said at the Governor's that she remembered him; but even now with her name before him he could not place her.

He made his message as brief as possible:

Regret that I must act on my promise of several weeks ago and use the address given in confidence. Encouraged to believe that the patient will recover. Suggest, however, that you come at once.

To this he added instructions as to the most direct route to Huddleston, and signed himself Ashton Comly.

He and Congdon were at the supper table when he received the answer:

Thank you. I am just leaving. J. V. D. G.

Archie was not permitted to enter the sick room, but from time to time he received assurances that the patient's condition was "satisfactory," and at intervals Dr. Reynolds recited with professional brevity data as to temperature, respiration and the like. A second nurse was imperatively needed, but when they were considering the danger of adding to the number of persons who knew that a wounded man was fighting for his life in the abandoned village, Mrs. Leary suggested Sally—Sally who had been in tears from the moment the Governor was carried into the house. Dr. Reynolds accepted Sally on sight and the girl quickly adjusted herself to the routine of the sick chamber.

At eleven o'clock Archie saw the Heart o' Dreams launch approaching Huddleston and leaving Congdon to answer any call from the Governor's bedside, hurried to meet it.

Ruth and Isabel had crossed alone and their stress of mind and heart was manifest before they landed.

"I felt it; I knew that it would come!" cried Ruth. "If only you hadn't gone there! It wasn't worth the sacrifice."

"But we have every reason to hope! We must support him with our faith that he will come out of it!"

"I should never have permitted either of you to come to this place," said Isabel. "I shall always feel that it was my fault."

The obligation to cheer them raised his own spirits as he explained the nature of the Governor's injury while they sat on the hotel veranda. He described the fight at the barricade with reservations, mentioning not at all the fact that a man had died as the result. They understood as fully as he that the whole affair must be suffered to slip into oblivion as quickly as possible.

"The complications are so endless!" said Isabel with a sigh. "In that mass of mail you delivered last night I found a letter from Mrs. Congdon saying that she would arrive today—almost at once, in fact!"

"The prospect isn't wholly pleasing!" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "I've played the very devil in the Congdons' affairs. I suppose I should lift my hat politely as she steps from the train and tell her that I'm the brute who attempted to make her a widow. She will of course recognize me instantly as the gentleman who escaped with her in a taxi after the kidnaping of her daughter."

"It seems to me," said Isabel soberly, "that from the very moment you and I unfolded our napkins on the tragic night of your sister's dinner the world has been upside down. If we should ever tell all that has happened, and how we have been whirled about and made to do things I'm sure we were never intended to do, there wouldn't be one sane person anywhere who'd believe it. I feel like crying all the time! And I'm not sure that I'm not responsible for all of it, every bit of it! Why, I may as well tell you now that I, poor, weak, foolish I, bade Putney Congdon take horse and ride gaily through the world, carving people with his stout sword! And I played the same trick on you!"

"Oh, he told me all about that!" laughed Archie, glad of something to relieve the tension. "He told me without shame that he had almost fallen in love with you as a distraction from his troubles. But I didn't confess that you had started me for the penitentiary. There's the train, and you must permit me to satisfy Mrs. Congdon that her husband is in a mood for immediate reconciliation before I break the news that he is here."

Mrs. Putney Congdon more than justified the impression he had formed of her in their encounter in Central Park by the manner in which she heard his story. He told it with all brevity on the station platform. First assuring her of Edith's safety, he made a clean breast of the Bailey Harbor visit, but skipped discreetly all that had occurred between that calamitous excursion and his meeting with her in New York.

It was so incredible that it was not until he described his journey to Huddleston in Putney's company that she was able to see any humor in the series of events that had led them all into the north.

"Poor dear Putney! And he doesn't know yet that you nearly killed him!"

"Oh, there are a lot of things he doesn't know. Your father-in-law has given his solemn promise that he will not again attempt to meddle in your affairs. The umbrella that symbolized his tyranny is at the bottom of the lake and if he should die you and your children wouldn't be thrown upon charity."

"This is all too wonderful to be true," she exclaimed. "After all the misery I've endured it can't be possible that happiness is just ahead of me. I had become resigned—"

"Your resignation after Edith was snatched away from you there in the park struck me as altogether charming! Your conduct pleased me mightily. We were both awful frauds, fooling the police and running away!"

"It was delicious! I had always had a wild wicked desire to fool a policeman. Isn't that a dreadful confession! What must you think of me for admitting such a thing!"

"My own derelictions make me very humble; it's only a survival of the primitive in all of us. I shouldn't worry about it. It's terribly easy to become a lost sheep, even a black one. But this is not an hour for philosophical discussion. Let me assure you that the nasty telegram that caused you to leave Bailey Harbor in so bitter a spirit was the work of your father-in-law. Putney had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, I rather guessed that; but I ran away thinking I might rouse my husband to a little self-assertion."

"And when he asserted himself sufficiently to go back to you I was right there to shoot him!"

"You are a highly amusing person! It would interest me a good deal to know your real name and a lot of other things about you."

"In due season you shall know everything. Just now I haven't the heart to keep you from your husband, and I'm going to send him to you immediately. And as I shrink from telling a man I like so much that I tried to kill him not so long ago, I'm going to turn that agreeable business over to you!"

IV

That night the Governor's condition took an unfavorable turn and Dr. Mosgrove was summoned. He remained until the crisis was passed.

"We must expect progress to be retarded now and then; but now that we've got by this we may feel more confident. He hasn't been wholly conscious at any time, but he's muttered a name several times—Julia; is that the sister? Then the sight of her may help us in a day or two when his mind clears up."

Archie was beset with many fears as he waited the arrival of Mrs. Graybill. His utter ignorance of any details touching the life of his friend seemed now to rise before him like a fog which he was afraid to penetrate. And there was Ruth, with her happiness hanging in the balance; she was in love with a man of whom she knew nothing; indeed the mystery that enfolded him was a part of his fascination for her, no doubt; and if in the Governor's past life there was anything that made marriage with a young woman of Ruth's fineness and sweetness hazardous, the sooner it was known the better. But when he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Graybill in the vestibule of the train his apprehensions vanished. The poise, the serenity of temper, an unquestioning acceptance of the fate that played upon her life, which he had felt at their first meeting struck him anew.

"Our patient is doing well. The news is all good," he said at once.

"I felt that it would be; I couldn't believe that this was the end!"

"We will hope that it is only the beginning!" he said gravely.

"A capital place for a beginning, or ending!" she remarked glancing with a rueful smile at the desolate street and shabby hotel.

Putney and his wife had moved to Heart o' Dreams for a few days. It would be a second honeymoon, Putney said. Mrs. Graybill was introduced into the hotel without embarrassment. It might have seemed that she had foreseen just such a situation and prepared for it. She won Dr. Reynolds' heart by the brevity of her questions, and expressed her satisfaction with everything that had been done. When she came down to the dining-room for luncheon she avoided all reference to the sick man. In her way she was as remarkable as the Governor himself. Her arrival had greatly stirred Mrs. Leary, who, deprived of Sally's services, served the table. Archie was struck by the fact that with only the exchange of commonplace remarks the two women, born into utterly different worlds, seemed to understand each other perfectly. He had merely told Mrs. Leary that the Governor's sister was coming and warned her against letting fall any hint of her knowledge of his ways.

"I've never been in these parts before," Julia remarked to Archie; "I should be glad if you'd show me the beach. We might take a walk a little later."

The hour in which he waited for her tried his soul. The Governor was the one man who had ever roused in him a deep affection, and the dread of finding that under his flippancy, his half-earnest, half-boyish make-believe devotion to the folk of the underworld, he was really an irredeemable rogue, tortured him. These were disloyal thoughts; he hated himself for his doubts. It was impossible that a man of the Governor's blood, his vigor of mind and oddly manifested chivalry could ever have been more than a trifler with iniquity.

"I'm going to ask you to bear with me," said Mrs. Graybill when they reached the shore, "if I seem to be making this as easy for myself as possible. I know that my brother cares a great deal for you. He sent me little notes now and then—he always did that, though the intervals were sometimes long; I know that he would want you to know. Things have reached a point where if he lives he will tell you himself."

"Please don't think I have any feeling that I have any right to know. It's very generous of you to want to tell me. But first it's only fair to give you a few particulars about myself. You said in New York that you knew me and I must apologize for my failure to recall our meeting."

"It was fortunate you didn't! I've known some of your family, I think; your sister is Mrs. Howard Featherstone. Away back somewhere the Van Dorens and a Bennett owned some property jointly. It may have been an uncle of yours?"

"Yes; Archibald Bennett, for whom I was named."

"That's very odd; but it saves explanations. We are not meeting quite as strangers."

"I felt that the moment I saw the name Van Doren. I had never seen your brother until we met in Maine; he was of the greatest service to me; I was in sorry plight when he picked me up."

He was prepared to tell the story of the meeting, everything indeed that had occurred. He had imagined that she would be immensely curious as to all the phases and incidents of his relationship with her brother.

"Just now I shall be happier not to know," she said, and added with a smile: "Later, when my heart is lighter than it is today you may tell me."

She was magnificent, a thoroughbred, this woman, who walked beside him with the air of a queen who might lose a throne but never the mastery of her own soul. She was far more at ease than he, walking with her hands thrust carelessly into the pockets of her coat, halting now and then to gaze across the water.

"My brother is Philip Van Doren, and there were just the two of us. An unusual sympathy bound us together from childhood, and there was never a closer tie between brother and sister. I married his most intimate friend. My husband betrayed him; it was the breach of a trust in which they were jointly liable. It was not merely a theft, it was a gross, dastardly thing, without a single mitigating circumstance. My husband killed himself."

She spoke without a quaver of the beautiful voice, meeting his gaze as she uttered the last sentence as though anxious to spare herself nothing in her desire to convince him of her perfect composure. One might have thought her an amiable woman attempting to entertain a dull companion by summarizing a tale she had read that had not interested her particularly.

"It broke Philip's heart; it broke his spirit! It destroyed his generous faith in all men. He was a brilliant student in college and promised to go far in the law; but he felt keenly the dishonor. The financial part of it he of course took care of; that was the least of it. There was always a strain of mysticism in him; and he had gone deeply into astrology and things like that; and when the dark hour came he pretended to find consolation in them. He was born under an evil star, he said, and would not be free of its spell until he had passed through a period of servitude. It sounds like insanity, but it was only a grim ironic distortion of his reason. He said that if honor was so poor a thing he would seek a world that knew no honor. I dread to think how he has spent these years!"

"I have found him the kindest, the most loyal, the most lovable of men. He has simply mocked at life—the life he used to know."

"Yes; I suppose that was the way of it," she said pensively. "In one of his brief messages he spoke of a young woman who had interested him, but I never can tell when he's serious—"

Archie met the question promptly.

"A charming young girl, Ruth Hastings, whose antecedents and connections are the best. You need have no fears on that score. You shall see her, very soon."

She permitted him to describe the meeting with Ruth and Isabel at Rochester, and her face betrayed relief and pleasure as he made it clear that the Governor's romance was in no way discreditable.

"It is curious, and in his own way of looking at things may be significant, that your telegram reached me on the day following the seventh anniversary of the beginning of his exile."

"He had looked forward to the seventh anniversary as marking the end of the dark influences; he believed there would be a vast change in his affairs."

"If only he lives!" she exclaimed. "Is it possible that he can ever step back into the world he left?"

"You may be sure he has planned a return, with marriage at the very threshold."

"Then God grant that he may live!" she said fervently.

The following evening, after Dr. Mosgrove's visit had left their hopes high, Archie carried her to Heart o' Dreams. Happiness shone in the stars over the northern waters. Putney Congdon and his wife were enjoying to the full the peace that followed upon the storms of their married life. They had established themselves in a tent on the outskirts of the camp and declared that they might remain there forever. A girl bugler sounded taps and the lights went out, leaving tired and happy youth to the fellowship of dreams.

Isabel gave Archie no opportunity to speak to her alone, and he found her aloofness dismaying. Her scruples against hearing protestations of love from a man she believed she had injured were creditable to her conscience, but Archie was all impatient to shatter them. She made a candid confession to Mrs. Congdon, with Putney and Archie standing by.

"With malice aforethought I practiced my vampirish arts upon these two men! And, Alice, the crudest thing you could do would be to forgive me! I couldn't bear it. I flirted with Mr. Congdon; not only that but I took advantage of his distress over his father's efforts to estrange you two to counsel him to lead a reckless, devil-may-care existence. And I tried the same thing on Mr. Bennett, only he was much more susceptible than your husband and took me more seriously. I want you, one and all, to be sure that I hate myself most cordially!"

"The end justified the means, I think," said Mrs. Congdon.

"I found a friend I'm not going to lose as one result," said Putney. "And if the sick man across the bay recovers I hope I have another lifelong friend there."

"Oh, it's all so strange!" cried Mrs. Congdon. "One might think that we must suffer tribulation before we know what perfect happiness is! And I never expect to understand all that has happened to you men. Is it possible that you'll ever settle down again?"

"That depends—" Archie remarked, glancing meaningfully at Isabel,—a glance which Mrs. Congdon detected and appraised with that prescience which makes every woman a match-maker.

On the wharf they lingered, like a company of old friends reluctant for even a brief parting; Ruth, lantern in hand, stood beside Mrs. Graybill, looking like a child beside the stately woman. As Archie cried "All aboard," Julia caught Ruth in her arms and kissed her.

"Good night, little girl!" she said softly.

It was like a benediction and the very graciousness of act and word lightened Archie's vigil as all night he watched outside the Governor's door.

V

On the eighth day Dr. Mosgrove announced that his visits were no longer necessary; he ran up to Huddleston, he told Archie, for the pleasure of meeting the agreeable people he found there. The Governor was making an extraordinary recovery, and the bracing northern air would soon set him up. Someone was always on the water between Leary's hotel and Heart o' Dreams, and clouds no longer darkened the bay.

Dr. Mosgrove had made a careful examination of Carey, and recommended that he be sent to a sanatorium for treatment. Perky undertook to carry him to a private institution near Chicago suggested by the doctor, and this became another of the series of strange errands that fell to the lot of the Arthur B. Grover. Eliphalet Congdon had been importuning Archie to release him, but it had seemed wise to give the erratic millionaire more time in which to meditate upon his sins.

When the tug returned Archie found that the old gentleman had taken advantage of a day's parole in Chicago to do considerable shopping. In a new suit of clothes he really looked, as Perky said, like a white man; but the change in him was not merely as to his outward person. He opened a bag on deck and displayed with pride a pearl necklace he had purchased for his daughter-in-law, a handsome watch for young Edith and another for his grandson, whom Mrs. Congdon had left with a friend in the east.

"I guess I haven't been square with Putney," he remarked, "and now's a good time to let him know how I feel about it. Here," he continued, producing a bulky envelope, "is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in government bonds that he may use as he likes."

"Grand; perfectly bully!" cried Archie. "Please consider yourself discharged from the ship. We'll go right over to Heart o' Dreams and spread the glad tidings."

Though so many vistas were brightening, Archie was still troubled by Isabel's persistent refusal to see him alone, or to give him any opportunity to break down the barriers she had raised against him. After luncheon at the camp, where Eliphalet Congdon proved himself a very likable human being, he sought her as she was leaving the dining hall.

Her young charges were skipping gaily about her; there was no question of their admiration and affection for her. He caught the spirit of their gaiety and took advantage of a moment when Isabel emerged smiling from an adoring group to plant himself before her.

"You are running away from me!" he said sternly. "And that's not fair."

"Oh, this is my busiest day! You mustn't think a place like this runs automatically."

"I think nothing of the kind. But your studied efforts to escape from me are embarrassing. Ruth, the Congdons, Mrs. Graybill—everybody is noticing it!"

"Certain matters are one's personal affair," she answered. "Really I must ask you to excuse me."

"I refuse to be snubbed again! You are trampling me under foot, and I refuse to be stepped on any more. I wish to assure you, Miss Perry, that my love for you is not to be spurned with impunity!"

"Please be careful! Those girls over there are watching us."

"A wonderful opportunity for them to see a desperate man making love; an invaluable part of their education! They will never forget how I fell upon my knees and declared myself!"

"Oh, you wouldn't! You really wouldn't! You forget that these children are highly impressionable!"

"So am I, and extremely sensitive. It would be fine if you'd join me in a little walk. If you refuse I shall follow you the rest of the day singing. The Governor and I did a good deal of singing in our travels and—"

As he filled his lungs as though about to burst into song she hastily turned toward the wood.

"You seem to forget that I'm mistress here while you're merely a guest! I hate to say it, but you're in serious danger of becoming a nuisance."

"You're not resentful and hateful enough yet to frighten me away.

'He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all.'

"It's a fact we can't escape from that you and I are not free agents and we haven't been from the very moment we met at May's house. And the lines converge here; you've got to admit that!"

"But they lead away again in quite opposite directions. It is cruel of you to insist—"

"I insist that I love you! That's the only thing that matters!"

"Except," she corrected, "your cheerful assumption that I reciprocate the feeling, when—"

"Let me begin all over again," he interrupted hastily. "You must realize that all the odd happenings that followed our meeting in Washington have come out pretty well; only this little affair of ours—"

"You call it an affair! Calamity would be a better term for it."

This silenced him for some time. Tradition held that the trail they followed was an inheritance from Indian times; it was like an ineffaceable line drawn in the forest by the red men in assertion of their permanent title to the soil.

As she walked before him, carrying her head high, his heart ached with love for her. It would be best perhaps not to urge her further; to wait until the camp closed and then see her in a different environment. It might be that his sister would arrange this for him, and he took courage from the thought.

"It has been in my mind for a day or two that May must be wondering what's become of me. I always write to her, you know; and she imagines me in the Rockies. There must be a stack of mail waiting for me at Banff; I must wire to have it forwarded."

"You needn't necessarily give up the trip—"

She turned her head to dodge an overhanging bough and he caught a glimpse of her face; she was crying; and new and world-shaking emotions were stirred in him by the sight of her tear-wet cheek.

"Do you know," he said, "when we talk about clearing up things I'd forgotten about that buried treasure. I think it would be a mistake for me to leave without exhausting all the possibilities of finding your grandfather's buried gold. I wonder if poor Carey knew any more about it than you do!"

"I'm sure he didn't. There are holes here and there in these woods that he dug in his search. He had an idea that it might be found in the ruins of grandfather's house, but that stood where I built the camp hall and I had the old cellar thoroughly explored. Why!" she exclaimed, stopping short and glancing about thoughtfully, "that's strange."

"We're lost, I hope!"

"Not lost; but there was a fork in the trail and I must have made the wrong turn. I don't remember that I ever saw that fallen tree before."

At some time, perhaps several years earlier, a storm had evidently centered its fury about the place where they stood, and a big hemlock crushing in its fall several smaller trees lay prone across the trail.

"That old fellow must have made a mighty crash when he went down. I'm sure that I never came this way before."

"Here's an old scar," said Archie, "where some one must have blazed the tree years and years ago. It's the mark of an ax or hatchet. And look! Three other big trees bear the same mark. They define a square and must have been made for some purpose!"

Discussion of the markings brought them immediately into accord. Isabel was perplexed to find herself in a spot she had never visited before though she had spent the previous summer on the land, planning the camp, and thought she knew every foot of it. She peered into the pit torn by the roots of the huge tree. The sunlight glinted brightly upon something that lay half hidden in the earth.

"Oh, how wonderful!" she cried and placed a gold piece in his hands.

They knelt together, tearing up the weeds and loosening the earth. It was Archie who quickly found a second coin, a ten-dollar gold piece stamped 1859. With a stick he dug into the hole and soon they had made a little heap of bright coins, laughing like children with each discovery. A deeper probe resulted in the unearthing of a splintered cedar plank evidently torn from a chest that had contained the money.

"Of all the astonishing things that ever happened this is the most utterly paralyzing!" exclaimed Archie jubilantly.

Using the board as a spade he scooped out a capful of coins—gold, American, English and French, which the Southerner had buried in the northern wilderness.

"It won't do to leave this place unprotected, and we must stop or we'll have more than we can carry. We must bring Putney back to help. It's my guess that there's a chest of money at the foot of each of these blazed trees."

"And pretty good hiding places, too, where the gold might have remained forever if—"

"If you hadn't been hating me so that you lost your way!"

They stood with the heap of gold between them, the bewilderment of discovery in their eyes.

"This is the end of the rainbow and the gold lies at our feet!" he said, and he took her hands, and the one still wearing the bandage he held very, very gently. "Love we know to be better than much fine gold; and wouldn't it be a pity for the finding of these coins to mark the very end, with nothing beyond! And life is so big and wonderful I want your help to make mine of some use—"

She looked at him long and searchingly, and her eyes were so grave, their questioning seemed so interminable, that he did not know until she spoke that her lips had trembled into a smile.

"If you can forgive me," she said; and she laid her hands upon his shoulders, lightly as though by their touch she were investing him with her hope in life renewed and strengthened, and giving pledge that they would walk together thereafter to the end of their days.

* * * * *

During his convalescence the matter of the sixty thousand dollars taken from Seebrook at Cornford troubled the Governor greatly. While he had not personally profited by that transaction it was, he said, his nearest approach to actual larceny and he wished to make reparation, the more particularly as Eliphalet complained that the sale of his stock was frustrated by the mysterious substitution of Leary's stolen bills for the money in Seebrook's trunk. Whereupon Archie bought the stock from Eliphalet and sent it with ten thousand dollars in cash to Seebrook, enclosing in the packet he confided to Briggs for delivery a note explaining that the theft had been a mere bit of pleasantry for which the guilty person offered the sincerest apologies.

Before he left the North the Governor made generous provision for all who had shared his fortunes. Perky sold the Arthur B. Grover to a dredging company in Chicago and the proceeds were divided among the crew. To each man's share the Governor made a substantial addition with the stipulation that the recipient should engage thereafter in some honorable calling. It may be said that in every instance of which the present chronicler has knowledge the man thus endowed invested wisely in a lawful business and so far has kept his promise.

When he closed the hotel Leary took Perky to his home further up the lake, and as Mrs. Leary was perfectly capable of managing the confectionery alone, the two old friends purchased a garage, where in the abundant leisure of the long northern winters they discuss the exploits of their lawless days and read the newspaper reports of the performances of their successors in the predatory arts, deploring, of course, the ineptitude of the new generation. The underground trail ceased to exist with the passing of the Governor, and as you tour the Green Mountain State you may pause at Bill Walker's farm and enjoy a glass of buttermilk on his veranda without fear of a raid by the constabulary.

Eliphalet Congdon is at peace with all the world, and wherever a chess tournament is forward he may be observed, sometimes an interested spectator, but not infrequently a participant and a shrewd and dangerous adversary.

Sally Walker deserves and shall receive a final word. When Mrs. Graybill left Huddleston, happy and wholly at ease as to her brother's future, she took Sally with her, with every intention of adopting the girl and carrying her abroad for a protracted stay. As Pete Barney was killed late in the summer while attempting to escape from the Ohio penitentiary, Sally was quite free to enter upon a new life, and from all accounts she is realizing fully the expectations of her benefactress.

In the loveliest of Colorado's valleys you may, if you exercise your eyes intelligently, note three houses in the Spanish style, with roads that link them together as though publishing the fact that the owners of the surrounding ranches are bound by the closest and dearest ties. As an adjunct of his residence Putney Congdon maintains a machine shop where he finds ample time for experiment. The Archibald Bennetts are learning all there is to know about fruit culture; and they are so happy that they are in danger of forgetting the existence of cities. Farthest of the three homes from the railroad, and where the hills begin, Philip and Ruth Van Doren chose their abode. And you may see them any day that you care to penetrate to their broad pastures, riding together, viewing with contemplative eyes the distant peaks or the cattle that are the Governor's delight, a link, he says, between the present and the olden times when the world was young. And often at night, when they are not with the Congdons or the Bennetts, they ride for hours in silence, so great is their happiness, so perfect their understanding, so deep their confidence in the stars.

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Books by MEREDITH NICHOLSON

Lady Larkspur

"This is pure comedy carried on in high spirits and mingled with the charm of romance."—Outlook.

"There is a gracefulness to the dialogue and an artistic balance in the characterization that keep one reminded that this is an author who is also an artist down to the last word."—Philadelphia Press.

"Mr. Nicholson keeps us entertained and uncertain to the end."—Boston Herald.

The Madness of May

Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele

"May to Mr. Nicholson is neither a person nor a month. It is a state of mind and an intoxication of spirit. The little tale is a gay and joyous fantasy that plays with the imagination like the wind through new-leafed trees."—New York Sun.

"No one who wishes to be charmed out of himself or herself for an hour or so should neglect to read the story."—Philadelphia Ledger.

"Meredith Nicholson has written nothing more charmingly fanciful or more filled with the spirit of the springtime than 'The Madness of May.'" —St. Louis Republic.

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By MEREDITH NICHOLSON

The Valley of Democracy

Illustrated by Walter Tittle

"It is a book which could have been written only by a Westerner; and it is a book for every American, Westerner and Easterner, Northerner and Southerner, to read, mark, ponder, and inwardly digest."—New York Times.

"The book radiates the spirit that makes the West fascinating."—Outlook.

"His chapters are set forth with that same easy facility in letters which has marked his works in fiction."—New York World.

"A notably serious and thoughtful study of the American mind, character, and tendencies in the Middle West.... It is a book of fascinating interest and of the greatest possible civic and patriotic value."—New York Tribune.

"Meredith Nicholson has done a great work in this masterly study of the Middle West. It is a national, nay, more, an international service which is performed in these illuminating pages, for in interpreting America to Americans the author is also interpreting America, or a very considerable section of it, to the world at large."—San Francisco Chronicle.

THE END