"Now," said the priest, when the girl had joined him in the street below, "it ain't right to take you to the Mission—"

"We'll go there first," the girl calmly announced. "And then to the Hall. By the way, there's a telephone in your place? I want to call up the health officer. I want to report the condition of these tenements."

The priest laughed. "It won't do any good, Miss. I've camped on his heels for months. And he can't do anything, anyway. I see that. If he gets too troublesome to those higher up, why, he gets fired. They don't want his reports. He isn't here to report on conditions, but to overlook 'em. It's politics."

"You mean to say that nothing can be done in regard to those awful buildings which Mr. Ames owns and rents to his mill hands?" she said.

"That's it," he replied. "It's criminal to let such buildings stand. But Ames owns 'em. That's enough."

They went on in silence for some minutes. Meanwhile, the priest was studying his fair companion, and wondering who she might be. At length he inquired if she had ever been in Avon before.

"No," replied the girl. "I wish I had!"

"Haven't seen Pillette's house then? He's resident manager of the Ames mills. We can go a little out of our way and have a look at it."

A few minutes later they stood at the iron gate of the manager's residence, a massive, brown stone dwelling, set in among ancient trees in an estate of several acres, and surrounded by shrubs and bushes.

"Fine place, eh?" remarked the priest.

"Beautiful," replied Carmen. "Does he know all about those tenements down there?"

"Ah, that he does; and cares less. And he knows all about the terrible hot air in his mills, and the flying lint that clogs the lungs of the babies working there. He sees them leave the place, dripping with perspiration, and go out into the zero temperature half naked. And when they go off with pneumonia, well he knows why; and cares less. He knows that the poor, tired workers in that great prison lose their senses in the awful noise and roar, and sometimes get bewildered and fall afoul of belts and cogs, and lose their limbs or lives. He knows; and doesn't care. So does Mr. Ames. And he wouldn't put safety devices over his machines, because he doesn't care. I've written to him a dozen times about it. But—

"And then Pillette," he continued; "I've asked him to furnish his hands with decent drinking water. They work ten and twelve hours in that inferno, and when they want to drink, why, all they have is a barrel of warm water, so covered with lint that it has to be pushed aside in order to get at the water. Why, Pillette don't even give 'em change rooms! He won't give 'em decent toilet rooms! Says Mr. Ames can't afford it. Seems to me that when a man can give a ball and send out invitations on cards of solid gold, he can afford to give a thought to the thousands who have toiled and suffered in order to enable him to give such a ball, don't you?"

Carmen did. She had attended that reception. The memory came back now in hot, searing thoughts.

"Oh, he catches 'em coming and going!" the priest went on. "You see, he manipulates Congress so that a high tariff law is passed, protecting him from imported goods. Then he runs up the prices of his output. That hits his mill hands, for they have to pay the higher prices that the tariff causes. Oh, no, it doesn't result in increased wages to them. Ha! ha! Not a bit! They're squeezed both ways. He is the only one who profits by high tariff on cotton goods. See how it works?"

Yes, Carmen saw. She might not know that Ames periodically appeared before Congress and begged its protection—nay, threatened, and then demanded. She might not know that Senator Gossitch ate meekly from the great man's hand, and speciously represented to his dignified colleagues that the benefits of high protective duties were for "the people" of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how needless it all was, and how easy, oh! how pitiably easy, it would be to remedy every such condition, would the master but yield but a modicum of his colossal, mesmeric selfishness. She did not know, she could not, that the master, Ames, made a yearly profit from his mills of more than two hundred per cent. But she did know that, were he less stupidly greedy, even to the extent of taking but a hundred per cent profit, he would turn a flood of sunshine into hundreds of sick, despairing, dying souls.

"This is the place," she heard the priest say, his voice seeming to come from a long distance. "This is the Mission."

She stopped and looked about her. They were in front of an old, two-story building, decrepit and forbidding, but well lighted. While she gazed, the priest opened the door and bade her enter.

"This down here is the reading room," he explained. "The door is never locked. Upstairs is my office, and sleeping rooms for men. Also a stock of old clothes I keep on hand for 'em when I send 'em out to look for work. I've clothed an average of four men a day during the past year, and sent 'em out to look for jobs. I board 'em, and keep 'em going until they land something. Sometimes I have to lend 'em money. I just help 'em to help themselves. No, I never bother about a man's religion. Come up to my office."

Carmen climbed the rough steps to the floor above and entered the small but well-kept office of the priest.

"Now here," he said, with a touch of pride, "is my card-index. I keep tab on all who come here. When they get straightened up and go out to hunt work, I give 'em identification cards. Just as soon as I can get funds I'm going to put a billiard table back there and fit up a little chapel, so's the Catholic men who drift in here can attend service. You know, a lot of 'em don't have the nerve to go to a church. Too proud. But they'd attend Mass here."

Carmen looked at the man in admiration. Then a thought came to her. "We haven't either of us asked the other's name," she said.

The priest's eyes twinkled. "I've been dying to know yours," he replied. "I'm Father Magee, Daniel Magee. But the boys generally call me Danny. What shall I call you? Oh, give any name; it doesn't matter, just so's I'll know how to address you."

"I am Carmen Ariza. And I am from South America," said the girl simply. "Now sit down here. I want to talk to you. I have a lot to ask."

* * * * *

An hour later the girl rose from her chair. "I shall have to wait and visit the Hall another time," she said. "I must catch the eight-thirty back to the city. But—"

"I'll never see you go down this tough street to the depot alone!" averred the priest, reaching for his hat.

Carmen laughed. But she gratefully accepted the proffered escort. Two of Father Magee's assistants had come in meanwhile, and were caring for the few applicants below.

"You're right, Miss Carmen," the priest said, as they started for the train. "Mr. Ames must be reached. Perhaps you can do it. I can't. But I'll give you every assistance possible. It eats my heart out to see the suffering of these poor people!"

At eleven o'clock that night Carmen entered the office of the city editor of the Express. "Ned," she said, "I've been with Dante—no, Danny—in Inferno. Now I'm going to Washington. I want expense money—a good lot—so that I can leave to-morrow night."

Haynerd's eyes dilated as he stared at the girl. "Washington!" he ejaculated. "Well—! But what did you find down in Avon?"

"I'll write you a detailed report of my trip to-morrow. I'm going home now," she replied.



CHAPTER 12

It is sometimes said of the man who toils at forge or loom in this great commonwealth that he is fast forgetting that Washington is something more significant to him than what is embraced in the definition of the gazetteers. Not so, however, of that class of the genus homo individualized in J. Wilton Ames. He leaned not upon such frail dependence as the Congressional Record for tempered reports of what goes on behind closed legislative doors; he went behind those doors himself. He needed not to yield his meekly couched desires to the law-builders whom his ballot helped select; he himself launched those legislators, and gave them their steering charts. But, since the interpretation of laws was to him vastly more important than their framing, he first applied himself to the selection of judges, and especially those of the federal courts. With these safely seated and instructed at home, he gave himself comfortably to the task of holding his legislators in Washington to the course he chose.

Carmen had not spent a day at the Capital before the significance of this fact to the common citizen swept over her like a tidal wave. If the people, those upon whom the stability of the nation rests, looked as carefully after appointments and elections as did Ames, would their present wrongs continue long to endure? She thought not. And after she had spent the day with the Washington correspondent of the Express, a Mr. Sands, who, with his young wife, had just removed to the Capital, she knew more with respect to the mesmerism of human inertia and its baneful effects upon mankind than she had known before.

And yet, after that first day of wandering through the hallowed precincts of a nation's legislative halls, she sat down upon a bench in the shadow of the Capitol's great dome and asked herself the questions: "What am I here for, anyway? What can I do? Why have I come?" She had acted upon—impulse? No; rather, upon instinct. And instinct with her, as we have said, was unrestrained dependence upon her own thought, the thought which entered her mentality only after she had first prepared the way by the removal of every obstruction, including self.

At the breakfast table the second morning after her arrival in the city, Mr. Sands handed her a copy of the Express. Among the editorials was her full report upon conditions as she had found them in Avon, published without her signature. Following it was the editor's comment, merciless in its exposition of fact, and ruthless in its exposure of the cruel greed externalized in the great cotton industry in that little town.

Carmen rose from the table indignant and protesting. Hitt had said he would be wise in whatever use he made of her findings. But, though quite devoid of malignity, this account and its added comment were nothing less than a personal attack upon the master spinner, Ames. And she had sent another report from Washington last night, one comprising all she had learned from Mr. Sands. What would Hitt do with that? She must get in touch with him at once. So she set out to find a telegraph office, that she might check the impulsive publisher who was openly hurling his challenge at the giant Philistine.

When the message had gone, the girl dismissed the subject from her thought, and gave herself up completely to the charm of the glorious morning and her beautiful environment. For some time she wandered aimlessly about the city; then bent her steps again toward the Capitol.

At the window of a florist she stopped and looked long and lovingly at the gorgeous display within. In the midst of the beautiful profusion a single flower held her attention. It was a great, brilliant red rose, a kind that she had never seen before. She went in and asked for it.

"We call it the 'President' rose, Miss," said the salesman in response to her query. "It is quite new."

"I want it," she said simply.

And when she went out with the splendid flower burning on her bosom like living fire, she was glad that Hitt had not been there to see her pay two dollars for it.

The great Capitol seemed to fascinate her, as she stood before it a few moments later. The spell of tradition enwrapped her. The mighty sentiments and motives which had actuated the framers of the Constitution seemed to loom before her like monuments of eternal stone. Had statesmanship degenerated from that day of pure patriotism into mere corruption? Mr. Sands would have her so believe.

"The people!" he had exclaimed in scoffing tones. "Why, my dear girl, the people of your great State are represented in the national Senate by—whom? By nobody, I say. By the flies on the panes; by the mice in the corners; by the god, perhaps, to whom the chaplain offers his ineffectual prayers; but not by men. No; one of your Senators represents a great railroad; the other an express company! The people? Those Senators know no such ridiculous creature as 'the people'!"

She turned from the Capitol, and for an hour or more strolled in the brilliant sunlight. "An economic disease," she murmured at length. "That's what it is. And, like all disease, it is mental. It is a disease of the human conscience. It comes from the fear of separation from good. It all reduces to the belief of separation from God—the belief that upon men's own human efforts depend all the happiness and satisfaction they can have. Why, I have never known anything but happiness and abundance! And yet, I have never made a single effort to acquire them!" For the girl saw not the past vicissitudes of her life except as shadowy mists, which dimmed not the sun of her joy.

"Take care!" cried a loud voice close to her.

There was a tramping of horses' feet. A great, dark body swept past. It struck her, and brushed her to one side. She strove to hold herself, but fell.

The man and his companion were off their horses instantly, and assisted the girl to her feet.

"Are you hurt?" asked the one who had been riding ahead. "I called to you, but you didn't seem to hear."

"Not a bit!" laughed the girl, recovering her breath, and stooping to brush the dust from her dress. "I was dreaming, as usual."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that! It was a close shave! I'm mighty sorry! Are you sure you're all right? Perhaps you had better come in with us."

The girl raised her head and looked into his face with a bright smile. The man's anxious expression slowly changed into one of wonder, and then of something quite different. The girl's long, thick hair had been loosened by the fall, and was hanging about her shoulders. Framed in the deep brown profusion was the fairest face he had ever looked upon; the most winning smile; the most loving, compassionate glance.

"You'll have to come in now, and let the maid help you," he said firmly. "And I'll send you home in an auto. May I ask where you live?"

"New York," replied Carmen, a little confused as she struggled vainly with her hair. "Oh, I'm not going to fuss with it any more!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Yes, I'll go with you, and let the maid do it up. Isn't it long!"

She glanced about her, and then up the avenue toward which the men had been riding. A flush suddenly spread over her face, and she turned and looked searchingly at the man.

"You—you—live—in—there?" she stammered, pointing toward the distant house. "And you are—"

"Yes," he replied, coming to her assistance, but evidently greatly enjoying her embarrassment, "I am the President."

Carmen gave a little gasp. "Oh!"

Then her hand stole mechanically to the rose flaming upon her bosom. "I—I guess I know why I bought this now," she said softly. Quickly unpinning it, she extended it to the man. "I was bringing it to you, wasn't I?" she laughed. "It's a 'President' rose."

The picture was one that would have rejoiced an artist: the simple girl, with her tumbled hair and wonderful face, standing there in the glorious sunlight, holding out a single rose to the chief executive of a great nation.

The President bowed low and took the proffered flower. "I thank you," he said. "It is beautiful. But the one who gives it is far more so."

Then he bade his companion take the two horses to the stable, and motioned to Carmen to accompany him.

"I was just returning from my morning ride," he began again, "when you happened—"

"Things never happen," interrupted the girl gently.

He looked at her with a little quizzical side glance. "Then you didn't happen to be in the way?" he said, smiling.

"No," she returned gravely. "I was obeying the law of cause and effect."

"And the cause?" he pursued, much interested.

"A desire to see you, I guess. Or, perhaps, the necessity of seeing you. And because I wanted to see you in the interests of good, why, evil seemed to try to run over me."

"But why should you wish to see me?" he continued, greatly wondering.

"Because you are the head of a wonderful nation. Your influence is very great. And you are a good man."

He studied her for a moment. Then:

"You came down from New York to talk with me?" he asked.

"I think I came all the way from South America to see you," she said.

"South America!"

"Yes, Colombia."

"Colombia! There is a revolution in progress down there now. Did you come to see me about that? I can do nothing—"

The girl shook her head. "No," she said, "it's to prevent a revolution here in your own country that I think I have come to see you."

They had by now reached the door of the Executive Mansion. Entering, the President summoned a maid, and turned the big-eyed girl over to her. "Bring her to my office," he directed, "when she is ready."

A little later the nameless girl from Simiti again stood before the President of the United States.

"I have an important conference at ten," he said, glancing at a clock. "But we have a few minutes before that time. Will you—may I ask you to tell me something about yourself?" he ventured. "You are feeling all right? No bad effects from the accident?" he added, looking apprehensively at her while he set out a chair.

The girl drew the chair close to his desk and sat down. "I know nothing about accidents," she said quietly. Then, turning quite from that topic, she drew the President quickly into her thought and carried him off with her as on a magic carpet.

The man listened in rapt attention. From time to time he turned and stared at his strange visitor. At other times he made notes of points which impressed him. Once he interrupted, when she made reference to her past life. "This priest, Jose de Rincon, might he not have been imprisoned as a political offender?"

"I do not know," the girl replied tenderly. "My foster-father, Rosendo, did not mention him in the two letters which I have received."

The President nodded; and the girl went rapidly on. Soon she was deep in the problem presented by Avon.

But at the mention of that town, and of its dominating genius, the President seemed to become nervous. At length he raised a hand, as if to end the interview.

"I fear I can do nothing at present," he said with an air of helplessness. "My influence is quite limited."

"But," she protested, "you have the public welfare at heart. And can you not see that public welfare is the welfare of each individual?"

"I know Mr. Ames well," the President replied, somewhat irrelevantly. "He, like all men of great wealth, presents a serious problem, doubtless. But he himself, likewise, is confronted by problems of very trying natures. We must give him time to work them out."

The girl sighed. "It's like getting at the essence of Christianity," she said. "The world has had nearly two thousand years in which to do that, but it hasn't made much of a start as yet. How much time does Mr. Ames require? And how many more lives must he sacrifice?"

"But," the President resumed reflectively, "after all, it is the people who are wholly responsible for the conditions which exist among them. They have the means of remedying every economic situation, the ballot. It is really all in their hands, is it not? They elect their public officers, their judges, and their lawmakers."

Again the girl sighed. "You too," she said, "take refuge in the cant of the age. Yes, the people do try to elect public servants; but by some strange anomaly the servant becomes master the moment he enters the door of office. His thought then centers upon himself. And then they, and you, sit helplessly back and cry, No use! And if the people rise, their servants meet them with a hail of lead. It's really childishly ridiculous, isn't it? when you stop to consider it seriously."

She leaned her elbows upon the desk, and sat with chin in her hands, looking squarely into the eyes of the President.

"So you, the head of this great nation, confess to utter helplessness," she slowly said. "But you don't have to."

A servant entered at that moment with a card. The President glanced at it, and bade him request the caller to wait a few moments. Then, after some reflection:

"The people will always—"

The door through which the servant had passed was abruptly thrown open, and a harsh voice preceded the entrance of a huge bulk.

"I am not accustomed to being told to wait, Mr. President," said the ungracious voice. "My appointment was for ten o'clock, and I am here to keep it."

Then the newcomer stopped abruptly, and stared in amazement at the young girl, sitting with her elbows propped upon the desk, and her face close to that of the President.

The latter rose, flushed and angry. But Ames did not notice him. His attention was centered upon the girl who sat looking calmly up at him. A dark, menacing scowl drew his bushy eyebrows together, and made the sinister look which mantled his face one of ominous import to the person upon whom it fell.

Carmen was the first to break the tense silence. With a bright smile illuming her face she rose and held out a hand to the giant before her. "Good morning, Mr. Ames," she said. "We meet pretty often, don't we?"

Ames ignored both the greeting and the extended hand. Turning upon the President, he said sharply: "So, the Express seeks aid in the White House, eh?"

"No, Mr. Ames," said Carmen quickly, answering for the President. "It seeks to aid the White House."

Ames turned to the girl. "Might I ask," he said in a tone of mordant sarcasm, "how you learned that I was to be here this morning? I would like to employ your methods of espionage in my own business."

"I would give anything if you would employ my methods in your business," returned the girl gently.

The President looked in embarrassment from one to the other. "I think, Miss Carmen," he said, "that we must consider our interview ended. This next hour belongs by appointment to Mr. Ames."

A peculiar expression had come into Ames's features. His thought had been working rapidly. Here was an opportunity for a telling stroke. He would play it. His manner suddenly became more gracious.

"Let her remain, Mr. President," he said in a tone pregnant with meaning. "I am glad to have a representative of the New York press with us to hear you express your attitude toward the cotton schedule."

The President caught the insinuation. His hand was to be forced! His indignation mounted, but he checked it.

"The schedule has been reported out of committee," he replied briefly. "It is now before Congress."

"I am aware of that," said Ames. "And your influence with Congress in regard to it?"

"I am studying the matter, Mr. Ames," returned the President slowly.

"Shall the Avon mills be closed pending a decision? Or, on the assumption that Congress will uphold the altered schedule, must the Spinners' Association begin immediate retrenchment? As president of that Association, I ask for instructions."

"My influence with Congress, as you well know, Mr. Ames, is quite limited," replied the hectored executive.

"It is not a question of the amount of your influence with that body, Mr. President," returned Ames coldly, "but of how you will employ that which you have."

Silence lay upon them all for some moments. Then Ames resumed:

"I would remind you," he remarked with cruel insinuation, "that—or," glancing at the girl, "perhaps I should not make this public." He paused and awaited the effect of his significant words upon the President. Then, as the latter remained silent, he went on evenly:

"Second-term prospects, you are aware, are often very greatly influenced by public facts regarding the first election. Of course we are saying nothing that the press might use, but—well, you must realize that there is some suspicion current as to the exact manner in which your election was—"

"I think you wish to insinuate that my election was due to the Catholic vote, which you controlled in New York, and to your very generous campaign contributions, do you not? I see no reason for withholding from the press your views on the subject."

"But, my friend, this is an age of investigation, and of suspicion toward all public officials. And such rumors wouldn't look well on the front pages of the press throughout the country. Of course, our young friend here isn't going to mention them to her superiors; but, nevertheless, they ought to be suppressed at once. Their effect upon your second-term prospects would be simply annihilating. Now I am in a position to greatly assist in the matter of—well, in fact, I have already once offered my aid to the Express. And I stand ready now to join with it in giving the lie to those who are seeking to embarrass the present administration. Miss Carmen is with us—"

"Mr. Ames," the girl quietly interrupted, "I wish you were with us."

"But, my dear girl, have I—"

"For then there would be no more suffering in Avon," she added.

"Ha! Then it was you who wrote that misleading stuff in the Express, eh? I might have known it! May I ask," he added with a contemptuous sneer, "by whose authority you have visited the houses occupied by my tenants, without my permission or knowledge? I take it you were down there, although the cloudy weather must have quite dimmed your perception."

"Yes," she answered in a low voice, "I have been there. And it was very cloudy. Yes, I visited your charnel houses and your cemeteries. I saw your victims. I held their trembling hands, and stroked their hot brows. I fed them, and gave them the promise that I would plead their cause with you."

"Humph! But you first come here to—"

"It was with no thought of seeing you that I came to Washington, Mr. Ames. If I cross your path often, it must be for a purpose not yet revealed to either of us. Perhaps it is to warn you, to awaken you, if not too late, to a sense of your desperate state."

"My desperate state!"

"Yes. You are drunk, you know, drunk with greed. And such continuous drunkenness has made you sick unto death. It is the same dread disease of the soul that the wicked Cortez told the bewildered Mexicans he had, and that could be cured only with gold. You—you don't see, Mr. Ames, that you are mesmerized by the evil which is always using you."

She stood close to the huge man, and looked straight up into his face. He remained for a moment motionless, yielding again to that fascination which always held him when in her presence, and of which he could give no account to himself. That slight, girlish figure—how easily he could crush her!

"But you couldn't, you know," she said cryptically, as she shook her head.

"Couldn't what?" he demanded.

"Crush me."

He recoiled a step, struck by the sudden revelation that the girl had read his thought.

"You see, Mr. Ames," she continued, "what a craven error is before truth. It makes a coward of you, doesn't it? Your boasted power is only a mesmerism, which you throw like a huge net over your victims. You and they can break it, if you will."

"Miss Carmen!" exclaimed the President. "We really must consider our interview ended. Let us make an appointment for another day."

"I guess the appointment was made for to-day," the girl said softly. "And by a higher power than any of us. Mr. Ames is the type of man who is slowly turning our Republican form of government into a despotism of wealth. He boasts that his power is already greater than a czar's. You bow before it; and so the awful monster of privilege goes on unhampered, coiling its slimy tentacles about our national resources, our public utilities, and natural wealth. I—I can't see how you, the head of this great nation, can stand trembling by and see him do it. It is to me incomprehensible."

The President flushed. He made as if to reply, but restrained himself. Carmen gave no indication of leaving. A stern look then came into the President's face. He stood for a few minutes in thought. Then he turned again to his desk and sat down.

"Please be seated," he said, "both of you. I don't know what quarrel there is between you two, and I am not interested in it. But you, Miss Carmen, represent the press; Mr. Ames, business. The things which have been voiced here this morning must remain with us alone. Now let us see if we can not meet on common ground. Is the attitude of your newspaper, Miss Carmen, one of hostility toward great wealth?"

"The Express raises its voice only against the folly and wickedness of the human mind, not against personality," replied the girl.

"But you are attacking Mr. Ames."

"No. We attack only the human thought which manifests in him. We oppose the carnal thought which expresses itself in the folly, the madness of strife for excessive wealth. It is that strife that makes our hospitals and asylums a disgraceful necessity. It makes the immigrant hordes of Europe flock here because they are attracted by the horrible social system which fosters the growth of great fortunes and makes their acquisition possible. Our alms-houses and prisons increase in number every year. It is because rich men misuse their wealth, trample justice under foot, and prostitute a whole nation's conscience."

"But the rich need not do that. They do not all—"

"It is a law of human thought," said Carmen in reply, "that mankind in time become like that which has absorbed their attention. Rich men obey this law with utmost precision. They acquire the nature and character of their god, gold. They rapidly grow to be like that which they blindly worship. They harden like their money. They grow metallic, yellow, calloused, unchanging, and soulless, like the coins they heap up. There is the great danger to our country, Mr. President. And it is against the human thought that produces such beings—thought stamped with the dollar mark—that the Express opposes itself."

She hesitated, and looked in the direction of Ames. Then she added:

"Their features in time reveal to the world their metallic thought. Their veins shrivel with the fiery lust of gold. Their arteries harden. And then, at last, they crumble and sink into the dust of which their god is made. And still their memories continue to poison the very sources of our national existence. You see," she concluded, "there is no fool so mired in his folly as the man who gives his soul for great wealth."

"A very enjoyable little sermon, preached for my benefit, Miss Carmen," interposed Ames, bowing to her. "And now if you have finished excoriating my poor character," he continued dryly, "will you kindly state by whose authority you publish to the world my affairs?"

"God's authority, Mr. Ames," returned the girl gently.

"Bah! The maudlin sentimentalism of such as you make us all suffer!" he exclaimed with a gesture of disgust. "Hadn't we better sing a hymn now? You're obsessed with your foolish religious notions! You're running amuck! You'll be wiser in a few years, I hope."

The girl reflected. "And may I ask, Mr. Ames, by what right you own mines, and forests, and lands? Divine right, I suppose."

"By the divine right of law, most assuredly," he retorted.

"And you make the law. Yes, divine right! I have learned," she continued, turning to the President, "that a bare handful of men own or control all the public utilities of this great country. It doesn't seem possible! But," abruptly, "you believe in God, don't you?"

He nodded his head, although with some embarrassment. His religion labored heavily under political bias.

She looked down at the floor, and sat silent for a while. "Divine right," she began to murmur, "the fetish of the creatures made rich by our man-made social system! 'The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded them.' But, oh, what must be the concept of God held by the rich, a God who bestows these gifts upon a few, and with them the privilege and divine consent to oppress and crush their fellow-men! What a low order of intelligence the rich possess! An intelligence wherein the sentiments of love and justice have melted into money!"

"Mr. President," put in Ames at this juncture, "I think we have spent quite enough time moralizing. Suppose you now indicate your attitude on the cotton tariff. I'd like to know what to expect."

Carmen glanced quickly up. Her sparkling eyes looked right into the President's. A smile wreathed her mouth. "I admire the man," she said, "who dares to stand for the right in the face of the great taboo! There are few men nowadays who stand for anything in particular."

"Look here!" exclaimed Ames, aware now that he had made a mistake in permitting the girl to remain, "I wish my interview to be with you alone, Mr. President."

Carmen rose. "I have embarrassed you both, haven't I?" she said. "I will go. But first—"

She went to Ames and laid a hand on his arm. "I wish—I wish I might awaken you," she said gently. "There is no victim at Avon in so desperate a state as you. More gold will not cure you, any more than more liquor can cure a slave to strong drink. You do not know that you are hourly practicing the most despicable form of robbery, the wringing of profits which you do not need out of the dire necessities of your fellow-beings."

She stopped and smiled down into the face of the man. His emotions were in a whirl. This girl always dissected his soul with a smile on her face.

"I wish I might awaken you and your poor victims by showing you and them that righteousness makes not for a home in the skies, but for greater happiness and prosperity for everybody right here in this world. Don't you really want the little babies to have enough to eat down there at Avon? Do you really want the President to support you in the matter of the cotton schedule, and so increase the misery and sorrow at your mills? You don't know, do you? that one's greatest happiness is found only in that of others." She stood looking at him for a few moments, then turned away.

The President rose and held out his hand to her. She almost laughed as she took it, and her eyes shone with the light of her eager, unselfish desire.

"I—I guess I'm like Paul," she said, "consumed with zeal. Anyway, you'll wear my rose, won't you?"

"Indeed I will!" he said heartily.

"And—you are not a bit afraid about a second term, are you? As for party principle, why, you know, there is only one principle, God. He is the Christ-principle, you know, and that is way above party principle."

Under the spell of the girl's strange words every emotion fled from the men but that of amazement.

"Righteousness, you know, is right-thinking. And that touches just that about which men are most chary, their pocketbooks."

She still held his hand. Then she arched her brows and said naively: "You will find in yesterday's Express something about Avon. You will not use your influence with Congress until you have read it, will you?" And with that she left the room.

A deep quiet fell upon the men, upon the great executive and the great apostle of privilege. It seemed to the one that as the door closed against that bright presence the spirit of night descended; the other sat wrapped in the chaos of conflicting emotions in which she always left him.

Suddenly the President roused up. "Who is she?" he asked.

"She's the bastard daughter of a negro priest," replied Ames in an ugly tone.

"What—she? That beautiful girl—! I don't believe it!"

"By God, she is!" cried the thoroughly angered Ames, bringing a huge fist down hard upon the desk. "And I've got the proof! And, what's more, she's head over heels in love with another renegade priest!

"But that's neither here nor there," he continued savagely. "I want to know what you are going to do for us?"

"I—I do not see, Mr. Ames, that I can do anything," replied the President meditatively.

"Well—will you leave the details to us, and do as we tell you then?" the financier pursued, taking another tack.

The President hesitated. Then he raised his head. "You say you have proof?" he asked.

"Proof?"

"Yes—about the girl, you—"

"Damn the girl!" almost shouted Ames. "I've got proofs that will ruin her, and you too—and, by God, I'll use 'em, if you drive me to it! You seem to forget that you were elected to do our bidding, my friend!"

The President again lapsed into silence. For a long time he sat staring at the floor. Then he looked up. "It was wonderful," he said, "wonderful the way she faced you, like David before Goliath! There isn't a vestige of fear in her make-up. I—we'll talk this matter over some other time, Mr. Ames," he finished, rising abruptly.

"We'll talk it over now!" roared Ames, his self-control flying to the winds. "I can ruin you—make your administration a laughing-stock—and plunge this country into financial panic! Do you do as I say, or not?"

The President looked the angry man squarely in the eyes. "I do not," he answered quietly. "Good morning."



CHAPTER 13

"It's corking! Simply corking!" cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen's report on her first few days in Washington. "Makes a fellow feel as if the best thing Congress could do would be to adjourn for about fifty years, eh? Such freak legislation! But she's a wonder, Hitt! And she's booming the Express to the skies! Say, do you know? she's in love, that girl is! That's why she is so—as the Mexicans say—simpatico."

"Eh? In love!" exclaimed Hitt. "Well, not with you, I hope!"

"No, unfortunately," replied Haynerd, assuming a dejected mien, "but with that Rincon fellow—and he a priest! He's got a son down in Cartagena somewhere, and he doesn't write to her either. She's told Sid the whole story, and he's working it up into a book during his odd moments. But, say," turning the conversation again into its original channel, "how much of her report are we going to run? You know, she tried to head us off. Doesn't want to attack Ames. Ha! ha! As if she hadn't already attacked him and strewn him all over the field!"

"We'll have to be careful in our allusions to the President," replied Hitt. "I'll rewrite it myself, so as not to offend her or him. And I—but, by George! her reports are the truth, and they rightfully belong to the people! The Express is the avowed servant of the public! What she finds out belongs to all. I see no reason for concealing a thing. Did I tell you that I had two inquiries from Italian and German papers, asking permission to translate her reports into their own columns?"

"No? Jerusalem! We're becoming famous! Did you wire her to see Gossitch and Mall?"

"Yes, and Logue, as well as others. And I've put dozens of senators and congressmen on our mailing list, including the President himself. I've prepared letters for each one of them, calling attention to the girl and her unique reports. She certainly writes in a fascinating vein, doesn't she? Meanwhile, she's circulating around down there and advertising us in the best possible manner. We're a success, old man!" he finished, slapping the city editor roundly upon the back.

"Humph!" growled the latter. "Confine your enthusiasm to words, my friend. Say, what did you do about that liquid food advertisement?"

"Discovered that it was beer," replied Hitt, "and turned it firmly down."

"Well, isn't beer a food? Not that we care to advertise it, but—"

Hitt laughed. "When that fellow Claus smoothly tried to convince me that beer was a food, I sent a sample of his stuff to the Iles chemical laboratory for analysis. They reported ninety-four per cent water, four per cent alcohol—defined now as a poisonous drug—and about two per cent of possible food substance. If the beer had been of the first grade there wouldn't have been even the two per cent of solids. You know, I couldn't help thinking of what Carmen said about the beer that is advertised in brown bottles to preserve it from the deleterious effects of light. Light, you know, starts decay in beer. Well, light, according to Fuller, is 'God's eldest daughter.' Emerson says it is the first of painters, and that there is nothing so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. Light destroys fermentation. Thus the light of truth destroys the fermentation which is supposed to constitute the human mind and body. So light tries to purify beer by breaking it up. The brewers have to put it into brown bottles to preserve its poisonous qualities. As Carmen says, beer simply can't stand the light. No evil can stand the light. Remarkable, isn't it?"

"Humph! It's astonishing that so many so-called reputable papers will take their advertising stuff. It's just as bad as patent medicine ads."

"Yes. And I note that the American public still spend their annual hundred million dollars for patent medicine dope. Most of this is spent by women, who are largely caught by the mail-order trade. I learned of one exposure recently made where it was found that a widely advertised eye wash was composed of borax and water. The cost was somewhere about five cents a gallon, and it sold for a dollar an ounce. Nice little profit of some two hundred and fifty thousand per cent, and all done by the mesmerism of suggestive advertising. Shrewd business, eh? Nice example in morality. Speaking of parasites on society, Ames is not the only one!"

"And yet those fellows howl and threaten us with the boycott because we won't advertise their lies and delusions. It's as bad as ecclesiastical intolerance!"

Carmen spent a week in Washington. Then she returned to New York and went directly to Avon. What she did there can only be surmised by a study of her reports to Hitt, who carefully edited them and ran them in the Express. Again, after several days, she journeyed back to Washington. Her enthusiasm was boundless; her energy exhaustless; her industry ceaseless; and her persistency doggedly unshakable. In Washington she made her way unhindered among those whom she deemed essential to the work which she was doing. Doubtless her ability to do this and to gain an audience with whomsoever she might choose was in great part due to her beauty and charming simplicity, her grace of manner, and her wonderful and fearless innocence, combined with a mentality remarkable for its matured powers. Hitt and Haynerd groaned over her expenses, but promptly met them.

"She's worth it," growled the latter one day. "She's had four different talks with the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to? I'll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help them secure a National Bureau of Health? Say, do you know what that would do? It would foist allopathy upon every chick and child of us! Make medication, drugging, compulsory! Good heavens! Have we come to that in this supposedly free country? By the way, Hitt, Doctor Morton has been let out of the University. Fired! He says Ames did it because of his association with us. What do you think of that?"

"I think, my friend," replied Hitt, "that it is a very serious matter, and one that impinges heavily upon the rights of every one of us, when a roaring lion like Ames is permitted to run loose through our streets. Can nothing stop him!"

"I've centered my hopes in Carmen," sighed Haynerd. "She's my one last bet. If she can't stop him, then God himself can't!"

Hitt turned and went into his office. A few moments later he came out again and handed an opened letter to Haynerd. "Some notes she's sent from Washington. Mentions the National Bureau of Health project. It hasn't escaped her, you see. Say, will you tell me where she picks up her information?"

"The Lord gives it to her, I guess," said Haynerd, glancing over the letter. "What's this?"

"'Reverend Borwell and Doctor Siler are down here lobbying for the National Bureau of Health bill. Also, Senator Gossitch dropped a remark to me yesterday which makes me believe that he and other Senators have been approached by Tetham with reference to sending an American ambassador to the Vatican. Mr. Ames favors this.'"

Haynerd handed the letter back to Hitt and plunged into the papers on his desk. "Don't say another word to me!" he exclaimed. "This country's going stark, staring mad! We're crazy, every mother's son of us!"

"It's the human mind that is crazy, Ned, because it is wholly without any basis of principle," returned Hitt with a sigh.

* * * * *

"Doctor Siler! I beg your pardon!"

"Eh? Why, Miss Carmen!" exclaimed that worthy person, looking up from the gutter, whither he had hastened after his silk hat which had been knocked off by the encounter with the young girl who had rounded the corner of Ninth street into Pennsylvania avenue and plunged full into him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Doctor! I was coming from the Smithsonian Institution, and I guess—"

"Don't mention it, Miss Carmen. It's a privilege to have my hat knocked off by such a radiant creature as you."

"But it was so stupid of me! Dreaming again! And I want to offer my—"

"Look here, Miss Carmen, just offer yourself as my guest at luncheon, will you? That will not only make amends, but place me hopelessly in your debt."

"Indeed I will!" exclaimed the girl heartily. "I was on my way to a restaurant."

"Then come with me. I've got a little place around the corner here that would have made Epicurus sit up nights inditing odes to it."

The girl laughed merrily, and slipped her arm through his. A few minutes later they were seated at a little table in a secluded corner of the doctor's favorite chophouse.

"By the way, I met a friend of yours a few minutes ago," announced the doctor, after they had given their orders. "He was coming out of the White House, and—were you ever in a miniature cyclone? Well, that was Ames! He blew me right off the sidewalk! So angry, he didn't see me. That's twice to-day I've been sent to the gutter!" He laughed heartily over his experiences, then added significantly: "You and he are both mental cyclones, but producing diametrically opposite effects."

Carmen remained seriously thoughtful. The doctor went on chatting volubly. "Ames and the President don't seem to be pulling together as well as usual. The President has come out squarely against him now in the matter of the cotton schedule. Ames declares that the result will be a general financial panic this fall. By the way, Mr. Sands, the Express correspondent, seems to be getting mighty close to administration affairs these days. Where did he get that data regarding a prospective National Bureau of Health, do you suppose?"

"I gave it to him," was the simple reply.

The doctor dropped his fork, and stared at the girl. "You!" he exclaimed. "Well—of course you naturally would be opposed to it. But—"

"Tell me," she interrupted, "tell me candidly just what you doctors are striving for, anyway. For universal health? Are your activities all quite utilitarian, or—is it money and monopoly that you are after? It makes a lot of difference, you know, in one's attitude toward you. If you really seek the betterment of health, then you are only honestly mistaken in your zeal. But if you are doing this to make money—and I think you are—then you are a lot of rascals, deserving defeat."

"Miss Carmen, do you impugn my motives?" He laughed lightly at the thought.

"N—well—" She hesitated. He began to color slightly under her keen scrutiny. "Well," she finally continued, "let's see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn't it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. No science is so speculative, none so hypothetical, as the so-called science of medicine."

"But we have had to learn," protested the doctor.

"Do you realize, Doctor," she resumed, "that the teaching and preaching of disease for money is one of the greatest curses resting upon the world to-day? I never saw a doctor until I was on the boat coming to New York. And then I thought he was one of the greatest curiosities I had ever seen. I followed him about and listened to him talk to the passengers. And I learned that, like most of our young men, he had entered the practice of medicine under the pressure of dollars rather than altruism. Money is still the determining factor in the choice of a profession by our young men. And success and fortune in the medical profession, more than in any other, depend upon the credulity of the ignorant and helpless human mind."

"Do you deny that great progress has been made in the curative arts?" he demanded. "See what we have done with diphtheria, with typhoid, with smallpox, and malaria!"

"Surely, Doctor, you can not believe that the mere temporary removing of a disease is real healing! You render one lot of microbes innocuous, after thousands of years of experimentation, and leave mankind subject to the rest. Then you render another set harmless. Do you expect to go on that way, making set after set of microbes harmless to the human body, and thus in time, after millions of years, eradicate disease entirely? Do you think that people will then cease to die? All the time you are working only in matter and through material modes. Do you expect thereby to render the human sense of life immortal? I think a sad disappointment awaits you. Your patients get well, only to fall sick again. And death to you is still as inevitable as ever, despite your boasted successes, is it not so?"

He broke into a bantering laugh, but did not reply.

"Doctor, the human mind is self-inoculated. It suffers from auto-infection. It makes its own disease microbes. It will keep on making them, until it is educated out of itself, and taught to do better. Then it will give place to the real reflection of divine mind; and human beings will be no more. Why don't you realize this, you doctors, and get started on the right track? Your real work is in the mental realm. There you will find both cause and cure."

"Well, I for one have little respect for faith cure—"

"Nor I," she interposed. "Dependence upon material drugs, Doctor, is reliance upon the phenomena of the human mind. Faith cure is dependence upon the human mind itself, upon the noumenon, instead of the phenomenon. Do you see the difference? Hypnotism is mental suggestion, the suggestions being human and material, not divine truth. The drugging system is an outgrowth of the belief of life in matter. Faith cure is the belief of life and power inherent in the human mind. One is no higher than the other. The origin of healing is shrouded in mythology, and every step of its so-called progress has been marked by superstition, dense ignorance, and fear. The first doctor that history records was the Shaman, or medicine-man, whose remedies reflected his mental status, and later found apt illustration in the brew concocted by Macbeth's witches. And think you he has disappeared? Unbelievable as it may seem, it was only a short time ago that a case was reported from New York where the skin of a freshly killed black cat was applied as a remedy for an ailment that had refused to yield to the prescribed drugging! And only a few years ago some one applied to the Liverpool museum for permission to touch a sick child's head with one of the prehistoric stone axes there exhibited."

"That was mere superstition," retorted the doctor.

"True," said Carmen. "But materia medica is superstition incarnate. And because of the superstition that life and virtue and power are resident in matter, mankind have swallowed nearly everything known to material sense, in the hope that it would cure them of their own auto-infection. You remember what awful recipes Luther gave for disease, and his exclamation of gratitude: 'How great is the mercy of God who has put such healing virtue in all manner of muck!'"

"Miss Carmen," resumed the doctor, "we physicians are workers, not theorists. We handle conditions as we find them, not as they ought to be."

"Oh, no, you don't!" laughed the girl. "You handle conditions as the human, mortal mind believes them to be, that's all. You accept its ugly pictures as real, and then you try desperately through legislation to make us all accept them. Yet you would bitterly resent it if some religious body should try to legislate its beliefs upon you.

"Now listen, you doctors are rank materialists. Perhaps it is because, as Hawthorne puts it, in your researches into the human frame your higher and more subtle faculties are materialized, and you lose the spiritual view of existence. Your only remedy for diseased matter is more matter. And these material remedies? Why, ignorance and superstition have given rise to by far the larger number of remedies in use by you to-day! And all of your attempts to rationalize medicine and place it upon a systematic basis have signally failed, because the only curative property a drug has is the credulity of the person who swallows it. And that is a factor which varies with the individual."

"The most advanced physicians give little medicine nowadays, Miss Carmen."

"They are beginning to get away from it, little by little," she replied. "In recent years it has begun to dawn upon doctors and patients alike that the sick who recover do so, not because of the drugs which they have taken, but in spite of them! One of the most prominent of our contemporary physicians who are getting away from the use of drugs has said that eighty-five per cent of all illnesses get well of their own accord, no matter what may or may not be done for them. In a very remarkable article from this same doctor's pen, in which he speaks of the huge undertaking which physicians must assume in order to clear away the materia medica rubbish of the ages, he states that the greatest struggle which the coming doctor has on his hands is with drugs, and the deadly grip which they have on the confidence and affections both of the profession and of the public. Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, 'Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours,' and, second, 'No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease.' In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, 'He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most drugs.'

"The hundreds of drugs listed in books on materia medica I find are gradually being reduced in number to a possible forty or fifty, and one doctor makes the radical statement that they can be cut down to the 'six or seven real drugs.' Still further light has been thrown upon the debasing nature of the drugging system by a member of the Philadelphia Drug Exchange, in a recent hearing before the House Committee on municipal affairs right here. He is reported as saying that it makes little difference what a manufacturer puts into a patent medicine, for, after all, the effect of the medicine depends upon the faith of the user. The sick man who turns to patent medicines for relief becomes the victim of 'bottled faith.' If his faith is sufficiently great, a cure may be effected—and the treatment has been wholly mental! The question of ethics does not concern either the patent medicine manufacturer or the druggist, for they argue that if the sick man's faith has been aroused to the point of producing a cure, the formula of the medicine itself is of no consequence, and, therefore, if a solution of sugar and water sold as a cure for colds can stimulate the sufferer's faith to the point of meeting his need, the business is quite legitimate. 'A bunch of bottles and sentiment,' adds this member of the Drug Exchange, 'are the real essentials for working healing miracles.'"

"Say!" exclaimed the doctor, again sitting back and regarding her with amazement. "You have a marvelous memory for data!"

"But, Doctor, I am intensely interested in my fellow-men. I want to help them, and show them how to learn to live."

"So am I," he returned. "And I am doing all I can, the very best I know how to do."

"I guess you mean you are doing what you are prompted to do by every vagrant impulse that happens to stray into your mentality, aren't you?" she said archly. "You haven't really seriously thought out your way, else you would not be here now urging Congress to spread a blanket of ignorance over the human mind. If you will reflect seriously, if you will lay aside monetary considerations, and a little of the hoary prejudice of the ages, and will carefully investigate our present medical systems, you will find a large number of schools of medicine, bitterly antagonistic to one another, and each accusing the other of inferiority as an exact science, and as grossly ignorant and reprehensibly careless of life. But which of these warring schools can show the greatest number of cures is a bit of data that has never been ascertained. A recent writer says: 'As important as we all realize health to be, the public is receiving treatment that is anything but scientific, and the amount of unnecessary suffering that is going on in the world is certainly enough to make a rock shed tears.' He further says that, 'at least seventy-five per cent of the people we meet who are apparently well, are suffering from some chronic ailment that regular medical systems can not cure,' and that many of these would try further experimentation were it not for the criticism that is going on in the medical world regarding various curative systems. The only hope under the drugging system is that the patient's life and purse may hold out under the strain of trying everything until he can light upon the right thing before he reaches the end of the list."

"And do you include surgery in your general criticism?" he asked.

"Surgery is no less an outgrowth of the belief of sentient matter than is the drugging system," she replied. "It is admittedly necessary in the present stage of the world's thought; but it is likewise admitted to be 'the very uncertain art of performing operations,' at least ninety per cent of which are wholly unnecessary.

"You see," she went on, "the effect upon the moral nature of the sick man is never considered as rightfully having any influence upon the choice of the system to be employed. If Beelzebub can cast out demons, why not employ him? For, after all, the end to be attained is the ejection of the demon. And if God had not intended minerals and plants to be used as both food and medicine, why did He make them? Besides, man must earn his bread in some way under our present crude and inhuman social system, and if the demand for drugs exists we may be very sure it will be supplied by others, if not by ourselves. Again, the influence of commercialism as a determining factor in the choice of a profession, is an influence that works to keep many in the practice of a profession that they know to be both unscientific and harmful. The result is an inevitable lowering of ideals to the lust of material accumulation."

"Well!" he exclaimed. "You certainly are hard on us poor doctors! And we have done so much for you, too, despite your accusations. Think of the babies that are now saved from diphtheria alone!"

"And think of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!" she returned. "Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting sickness! Isn't it criminal? As for diphtheria antitoxin, it is in the same class as the white of an egg. It contains no chemicals. It is the result of human belief, the belief that a horse that has recovered from diphtheria can never again be poisoned by the microbe of that disease. The microbe, Doctor, is the externalization in the human mentality of the mortal beliefs of fear, of life and power in matter, and of disease and death. The microbe will be subject, therefore, to the human mind's changing thought regarding it, always."

"Well then," said the doctor, "if people are spiritual, and if they really are a consciousness, as you say, why do we seem to be carrying about a body with us all the time—a body from which we are utterly unable to get away?"

"It is because the mortal mind and body are one, Doctor. The body is a lower stratum of the human mind. Hence, the so-called mind is never distinct from its body to the extent of complete separation, but always has its substratum with it. And, Doctor, the mind can not hold a single thought without that thought tending to become externalized—as Professor James tells us—and the externalization generally has to do with the body, for the mind has come to center all its hopes of happiness and pleasure in the body, and to base its sense of life upon it. The body, being a mental concept formed of false thought, passes away, from sheer lack of a definite principle upon which to rest. Therefore the sense of life embodied in it passes away with it. You know, the ancients had some idea of the cause of disease when they attributed it to demons, for demons at least are mental influences. But then, after that, men began to believe that disease was sent by God, either to punish them for their evil deeds, or to discipline and train them for paradise. Funny, isn't it? Think of regarding pain and suffering as divine agents! I don't wonder people die, do you? Humboldt, you know, said: 'The time will come when it will be considered a disgrace for a man to be sick, when the world will look upon it as a misdemeanor, the result of some vicious thinking.' Many people seem to think that thought affects only the brain; but the fact is that we think all over!"

"But look here," put in the doctor. "Here's a question I intended to ask Hitt the other night. He said the five physical senses did not testify truly. Well now, if, as you say, the eyes do not testify to disease, then they can't testify to cures either, eh?" He sat back with an air of triumph.

"Quite correct," replied Carmen. "The physical senses testify only to belief. In the case of sickness, they testify to false belief. In the case of a cure, they testify to a changed belief, to a belief of recovered health, that is all. It is all on the basis of human belief, you see."

"Eh? But—nerves feel—"

"Nerves, Doctor, like all matter, are externalizations of human thought. Can the externalization of thought talk back to thought? No. You are still on the basis of mere human belief."

At that moment the doctor leaned over and tapped upon the window to attract the attention of some one in the street. Carmen looked out and caught sight of a tall, angular man dressed in clerical garb. The man bowed pleasantly to the doctor, and cast an inquiring glance at the girl, then passed on.

"A priest?" inquired Carmen.

"Yes, Tetham," said the doctor.

"Oh, is that the man who maintains the lobby here at the Capital for his Church? I've heard about him. He—well, it is his business to see that members of his Church are promoted to political office, isn't it? He trades votes of whole districts to various congressmen in return for offices for strong church members. He also got the parochial schools of New York exempt from compulsory vaccination. The Express—"

"Eh? The Express has heard from him?" inquired the doctor.

"Yes. We opposed the candidate Mr. Ames was supporting for Congress. We also supported Mr. Wales in his work on the cotton schedule. And so we heard from Father Tetham. He is supporting the National Bureau of Health bill. He is working for the Laetare medal. He—"

"Say, Miss Carmen, will you tell me where you pick up your news? Really, you astonish me! Do you know something about everybody here in Washington?"

She laughed. "I have learned much here," she said, "about popular government as exemplified by these United States. The knowledge is a little saddening. But it is especially saddening to see our constitutional liberties threatened by this Bureau of Health bill, and by the Government's constant truckling to the Church of Rome. Doctor, can it be that you want to commit this nation to the business of practicing medicine, and to its practice according to the allopathic, or 'regular' school? The American Medical Association, with its reactionary policies and repressive tendencies, is making strenuous endeavors to influence Congress to enact certain measures which would result in the creation of such a Department of Health, the effect of which would be to monopolize the art of healing and to create a 'healing trust.' If this calamity should be permitted to come upon the American people, it would fall as a curtain of ignorance and superstition over our fair land, and shut out the light of the dawning Sun of Truth. It would mean a reversion to the blight and mold of the Middle Ages, in many respects a return in a degree to the ignorance and tyranny that stood for so many centuries like an impassable rock in the pathway of human progress. The attempt to foist upon a progressive people a system of medicine and healing which is wholly unscientific and uncertain in its effects, but which is admittedly known to be responsible for the death of millions and for untold suffering and misery, and then to say, 'Thou shalt be cured thereby, or not be cured at all,' is an insult to the intelligence of the Fathers of our liberties, and a crime upon a people striving for the light. It smacks of the Holy Inquisition: You accept our creed, or you shall go to hell—after we have broken you on the rack! Why, the thought of subjecting this people to years of further dosing and experimentation along the materialistic lines of the 'regular' school, of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses itself in the demand, 'Who shall be greatest?' to dictate the course of conduct that shall shape the destinies of a great people, is to admit the failure of free government, and to revert to a condition of mind that we had thought long since outgrown. To yield our dear-bought liberties to Italian ecclesiastics, on the other hand—well, Doctor, it is just unthinkable!"

"H'm! Well, at least you are delightfully frank with me. Yet you have the effect of making me feel as if—as if I were in some way behind a veil. That—"

"Well, the human mind is very decidedly behind a veil—indeed, behind many of them. And how can it see God through them? Mankind just grope about all their lives back of these veils, not knowing that God is right before them all the time. God has got to be everything, or else He will be nothing. With or without drugs, it is God 'who healeth all thy diseases.' The difficulty with physicians is that they are densely ignorant of what healing means, and so they always start with a dreadful handicap. They believe that there is something real to be overcome—and of course fail to permanently overcome it. Many of them are not only pitiably ignorant, but are in the profession simply to make money out of the fears and credulity of the people. Doctor, the physician of to-day is in no way qualified to handle the question of public health—especially those doctors who say: 'If you won't take our medicines we'll get a law passed that will make you take them.' To place the health of the people in their hands would be a terrible mistake. The agitation for a federal Department of Health is based upon motives of ignorance and intentional wrong. If the people generally knew this, they would rise in a body against it. Make what laws you wish for yourself, Doctor. The human mind is constantly occupied in the making of ridiculous laws and limitations. But do not attempt to foist your laws upon the people. Tell me, why all this agitation about teaching sex-hygiene in the public schools? Why not, for a change, teach Christianity? What would be the result? But even the Bible has been put out of the schools. And by whom? By your Church, that its interpretation may continue to be falsely made by those utterly and woefully ignorant of its true meaning!"

For some moments they continued their meal in silence. Then the girl took up the conversation again. "Doctor," she said, "will you come out from among them and be separate?"

He looked at her quizzically. "Oppose Ames?" he finally said.

"Ah, that is the rub, then! Yes, oppose ignorance and falsity, even though incarnate in Mr. Ames," she replied.

"He would ruin me!" exclaimed the doctor. "He ruins everybody who stands in his way! The cotton schedule has gone against him, and the whole country will have to suffer for it!"

"But how can he make the country suffer because he has been blocked in his colossal selfishness?" she asked.

"That I can not answer," said the doctor. "But I do know that he has intimated that there will be no cotton crop in this country next year."

"No cotton crop! Why, how can he prevent that?"

The doctor shook his head. "Mr. Ames stands as the claim of omnipotent evil," was his laconic reply.

And when the meal was ended, the girl went her way, pondering deeply. "No cotton crop! What—what did he mean?" But that was something too dark to be reported to the Express.

* * * * *

Three weeks from the day he had his brush with Carmen in the presence of the President, Ames, the great corruptionist, the master manipulator, again returned from a visit to Washington, and in a dangerous frame of mind. What might have been his mental state had he known that the train which drew his private car also brought Carmen back to New York, can only be conjectured. It was fortunate, no doubt, that both were kept in ignorance of that fact, and that, while the great externalization of the human mind's "claim" of business sulked alone in his luxurious apartments, the little follower after righteousness sat in one of the stuffy day coaches up ahead, holding tired, fretful babies, amusing restless children, and soothing away the long hours to weary, care-worn mothers.

When the financier's car drew into the station his valets breathed great sighs of relief, and his French chef and negro porter mopped the perspiration from their troubled brows, while silently offering peans of gratitude for safe delivery. When the surly giant descended the car steps his waiting footman drew back in alarm, as he caught his master's black looks. When he threw himself into the limousine, his chauffeur drew a low whistle and sent a timidly significant glance in the direction of the lackey. And when at last he flung open the doors of his private office and loudly summoned Hood, that capable and generally fearless individual quaked with dire foreboding.

"The Express—I want a libel suit brought against it at once! Draw it for half a million! File it in Judge Penny's court!"

"Yes, sir," responded the lawyer meekly. "The grounds?"

"Damn the grounds!" shouted Ames. Then, in a voice trembling with anger: "Have you read the last week's issues? Then find your grounds in them! Make that girl a defendant too!"

"She has no financial interest in the paper, sir. And, as for the reports which they have published—I hardly think we can establish a case from them—"

"What? With Judge Penny sitting? If you and he can't make out a case against them, then I'll get a judge and a lawyer who can! I want that bill filed to-morrow!" bringing his fist down upon the desk.

"Very well, sir," assented Hood, stepping back.

"Another thing," continued Ames, "see Judge Hanson and have the calling of the Ketchim case held in abeyance until I am ready for it. I've got a scheme to involve that negro wench in the trial, and drag her through the gutters! So, she's still in love with Rincon, eh? Well, we'll put a crimp in that little affair, I guess! Has Willett heard from Wenceslas?"

"Not yet, sir."

"I'll lift the scalp from that blackguard Colombian prelate if he tries to trick me! Has Willett found Lafelle's whereabouts?"

"No, sir. But the detectives report that he has been in Spain recently."

"Spain! What's he—up to there?" he exclaimed in a voice that began high and ended in a whisper.

He lapsed into a reflective mood, and for some moments his thoughts seemed to wander far. Then he pulled himself together and roused out of his meditations.

"You told Jayne that I would back the Budget to any extent, provided it would publish the stuff I sent it?"

"Yes, sir. He was very glad to accept your offer."

"Very well. You and Willett set about at once getting up daily articles attacking the Express. I want you to dig up every move ever made by Hitt, Haynerd, that girl, Waite, Morton, and the whole miserable, sneaking outfit! Rake up every scandal, every fact, or rumor, that is in any way associated with any of them. I want them literally cannonaded by the Budget! Hitt's a renegade preacher! Haynerd was a bum before he got the Social Era! Waite is an unfrocked priest! Miss Wall's father was a distiller! That girl—that girl is a—Did you know that she used to be in a brothel down in the red-light district? Well, she did! Great record the publishers of the Express have, eh? Now, by God! I want you and Jayne to bury that whole outfit under a mountain of mud! I'm ready to spend ten millions to do it! Kill 'em! Kill 'em all!"

"I think we can do it, Mr. Ames," returned the lawyer confidently.

"You've got to! Now, another matter: I'm out to get the President's scalp! He's got to go down! Begin with those New York papers which we can influence. I'll get Fallom and Adams over here for a conference. Meanwhile, think over what we'd better say to them. Our attacks upon the President must begin at once! I've already bought up a Washington daily for that purpose. They have a few facts now that will discredit his administration!"

"Very well, Mr. Ames. Ah—a—there is a matter that I must mention as soon as you are ready to hear it, Mr. Ames—regarding Avon. It seems that the reports which that girl has made have been translated into several languages, and are being used by labor agitators down there to stir up trouble. The mill hands, you know, never really understood what your profits were, and—well, they have always been quite ignorant, you know, regarding any details of the business. But now they think they have been enlightened—they think they see how the tariff has benefited you at their expense—and they are extremely bitter against you. That priest, Father Danny, has been doing a lot of talking since the girl was down there."

"By God!" cried Ames, rising from his chair, then sinking back again.

"You see, Mr. Ames," the lawyer continued, "the situation is fast becoming acute. The mill hands don't believe now that you were ever justified in shutting down, or putting them on half time. And, whether you reduce wages or not, they are going to make very radical demands upon you in the near future, unless I am misinformed. These demands include better working conditions, better tenements, shorter hours, and very much higher wages. Also the enforcement of the child labor law, I am sorry to say."

"They don't dare!" shouted Ames.

"But, after all, Mr. Ames, you know you have said that it would strengthen your case with Congress if there should be a strike at Avon."

"But not now! Not now!" cried Ames. "It would ruin everything! I am distinctly out of favor with the President—owing to that little negro wench! And Congress is going against me if I lose Gossitch, Logue, and Mall! That girl has put me in bad down there! Wales is beginning to threaten! By G—"

"But, Mr. Ames, she can be removed, can she not?"

"Violence would still further injure us. But—if we can drive the Express upon the shoals, and then utterly discredit that girl, either in the libel suit or the Ketchim trial, why, then, with a little show of bettering things at Avon, we'll get what we want. But we've got work before us. Say, is—is Sidney with the Express?" he added hesitatingly.

Hood started, and shot a look of mingled surprise and curiosity at his master. Was it possible that Ames—

"You heard my question, Mr. Hood?"

"I—I beg pardon! Yes, sir—Sidney is still with them. He—a—they say he has quite conquered his—his—"

"You mean, he's no longer a sot?" Ames asked brutally. "Out with it, man! Don't sit there like a smirking Chinese god!"

"Well, Mr. Ames, I learn that Sidney has been cured of his habits, and that the—that girl—did it," stammered the nervous lawyer.

Ames's mouth jerked open—and then snapped shut. Silence held him. His head slowly sank until his chin touched his breast. And as he sat thus enwrapped, Hood rose and noiselessly left the room.

Alone sat the man of gold—ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims. Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.

Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of countless multitudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gross hewers of wood and drawers of water. Looking, and knowing not that in their piteous cry for help and light was sounded his own dire peril.

The door opened, and the office boy announced the chief stenographer of the great bank below. Ames looked up and silently nodded permission for the man to enter.

"Mr. Ames," the clerk began, "I—I have come to ask a favor—a great favor. I am having difficulty—considerable difficulty in securing stenographers, but—I may say—my greatest struggle is with myself. I—Mr. Ames, I can not—I simply can not continue to hire stenographers at the old wage, nine dollars a week! I know how these girls are forced to live. Mr. Ames, with prices where they are now, they can not live on that! May I not offer them more? Say, ten or twelve dollars to start with?"

Ames looked at him fixedly. "Why do you come to me with your request?" he asked coldly. "Your superior is Mr. Doan."

"Yes, sir, I know," replied the young man with hesitation. "But—I—did speak to him about it, and—he refused."

"I can do nothing, sir," returned Ames in a voice that chilled the man's life-current.

"Then I shall resign, Mr. Ames! I refuse to remain here and hire stenographers at that criminal wage!"

"Very well, sir," replied Ames in the same low, freezing tone. "Hand your resignation to Mr. Doan. Good day, sir."

Again the guardian of the sanctity of private property was left alone. Again, as he lapsed into dark revery, his thought turned back upon itself, and began the reconstruction of scenes and events long since shadowy dreams. And always as they built, the fair face of that young girl appeared in the fabric. And always as he retraced his course, her path crossed and crossed again his own. Always as he moved, her reflection fell upon him—not in shadow, but in a flood of light, exposing the secret recesses of his sordid soul.

He dwelt again upon the smoothness of his way in those days, before her advent, when that group of canny pirates sat about the Beaubien's table and laid their devious snares. It was only the summer before she came that this same jolly company had merged their sacred trust assets to draw the clouds which that autumn burst upon the country as the worst financial panic it had known in years. And so shrewdly had they planned, that the storm came unheralded from a clear sky, and at a time when the nation was never more prosperous.

He laughed. It had been rich fun!

And then, the potato scheme. They had wagered that he could not put it through. How neatly he had turned the trick, filled his pockets, and transformed their doubts into wondering admiration! It had been rare pleasure! Oh, yes, there had been some suffering, he had been told. He had not given that a thought.

And the Colombian revolution! How surprised the people of these United States would be some day to learn that this tropic struggle was in essence an American war! The smug and unthinkingly contented in this great country of ours regarded the frenzied combat in the far South as but a sort of opera bouffe. What fools, these Americans! And he, when that war should end, would control navigation on the great Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and acquire a long-term lease on the emerald mines near Bogota. The price? Untold suffering—countless broken hearts—indescribable, maddening torture—he had not given that a thought.

He laughed again.

But he was tired, very tired. His trip to Washington had been exhausting. He had not been well of late. His eyes had been bloodshot, and there had been several slight hemorrhages from the nose. His physician had shaken his head gravely, and had admonished him to be careful—

But why did that girl continue to fascinate him? he wondered. Why now, in all his scheming and plotting, did he always see her before him? Was it only because of her rare physical beauty? If he wrote or read, her portrait lay upon the page; if he glanced up, she stood there facing him. There was never accusation in her look, never malice, nor trace of hate. Nor did she ever threaten. No; but always she smiled—always she looked right into his eyes—always she seemed to say, "You would destroy me, but yet I love you."

God! What a plucky little fighter she was! And she fought him fairly. Aye, much more so than he did her. She would scorn the use of his methods. He had to admit that, though he hated her, detested her, would have torn her into shreds—even while he acknowledged that he admired her, yes, beyond all others, for her wonderful bravery and her loyal stand for what she considered the right.

He must have dozed while he sat there in the warm office alone. Surely, that hideous object now floating before his straining gaze, that thing resembling the poor, shattered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, was not real! It was but a shadow, a flimsy thing of thought! And that woestricken thing there, with its tenuous arms extended toward him—was that Gannette? Heavens, no! Gannette had died, stark mad! But, that other shade—so like his wife, a few months dead, yet alive again! Whence came that look of horror in a face once so haughty! It was unreal, ghastly unreal, as it drifted past! Ah, now he knew that he was dreaming, for there, there in the light stood Carmen! Oh, what a blessed relief to see that fair image there among those other ghastly sights! He would speak to her—

But—God above! What was that? A woman—no, not Carmen—fair and—

Her white lips moved—they were transparent—he could see right through them—and great tears dropped from her bloodless cheeks when her accusing look fell upon him!

Slowly she floated nearer—she stopped before him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder—it was cold, cold as ice! He tried to call out—to rise—to break away—

And then, groaning aloud, and with his brow dripping perspiration, he awoke.

Hood entered, but stopped short when he saw his master's white face. "Mr. Ames! You are ill!" he cried.

Ames passed a hand across his wet forehead. "A—a little tired, that's all, I guess. What now?"

The lawyer laid a large envelope upon the desk. "It has come," he said. "There's a delegation of Avon mill hands in the outer office. Here are their demands. It's just what I thought."

Ames slowly took up the envelope. For a moment he hesitated. Again he seemed to see that smiling girl before him. His jaw set, and his face drew slowly down into an expression of malignity. Then, without examining its contents, he tore the envelope into shreds, and cast the pieces into the waste basket.

"Put them out of the office!" he commanded sharply. "Wire Pillette at once to discharge these fellows, and every one else concerned in the agitation! If those rats down there want to fight, they'll find me ready!"



CHAPTER 14

The immense frame of J. Wilton Ames bent slightly, and the great legs might have been seen to drag a bit, as the man entered his private elevator the morning after his rejection of the mill hands' demands, and turned the lever that caused the lift to soar lightly to his office above. And a mouse—had the immaculate condition of his luxurious sanctum permitted such an alien dweller—could have seen him sink heavily into his great desk chair, and lapse into deep thought. Hood, Willett, and Hodson entered in turn; but the magnate gave them scant consideration, and at length waved them all away, and bent anew to his meditations.

Truth to tell—though he would not have owned it—the man was now dimly conscious of a new force at work upon him; of a change, slowly, subtly taking place somewhere deep within. He was feebly cognizant of emotions quite unknown; of unfamiliar sentiments, whose outlines were but just crystallizing out from the thick magma of his materialistic soul.

And he fought them; he hated them; they made him appear unto himself weak, even effeminate! His abhorrence of sentimentalism had been among the strongest of his life-characteristics; and yet, though he could not define it, a mellowing something seemed to be acting upon him that dull, bitterly cold winter morning, that shed a soft glow throughout his mental chambers, that seemed to touch gently the hard, rugged things of thought that lay within, and soften away their sharp outlines. He might not know what lay so heavily upon his thought, as he sat there alone, with his head sunk upon his breast. And yet the girl who haunted his dreams would have told him that it was an interrogation, even the eternal question, "What shall it profit a man—?"

Suddenly he looked up. The door had opened, he thought. Then he sat bolt upright and stared.

"Good morning, Mr. Ames. May I come in?"

Come in! Had ever such heavenly music touched his ears before! This was not another dream! The vision this time was real! He sprang to his feet. He would have held out his arms to her if he could.

And yet, how dared she come to him? How dared she, after what she had done? Was this fresh affrontery? Had she come again to flout him? To stand within the protection which her sex afforded and vivisect anew his tired soul? But, whatever her motives, this girl did the most daring things he had ever seen a woman do.

"Isn't it funny," she said, as she stood before him with a whimsical little smile, "that wherever I go people so seldom ask me to sit down!"

Ames sank back into his seat without speaking. Carmen stood for a moment looking about her rich environment; then drew up a chair close to him.

"You haven't the slightest idea why I have come here, have you?" she said sweetly, looking up into his face.

"I must confess myself quite ignorant of the cause of this unexpected pleasure," he returned guardedly, bending his head in mock deference, while the great wonder retained possession of him.

"Well," she went on lightly, "will you believe me when I tell you that I have come here because I love you?"

Aha! A dark suspicion sprang up within him. So this was an attack from a different quarter! Hitt and Haynerd had invoked her feminine wiles, eh?