A man who is employed in the Department of Health has a pass to the good wishes of a woman who rents a house in New York. Mrs. Dewey regarded me as a person of influence with the governing powers, one who could probably get her landlord to "do something with the old-fashioned bathtub" by prying him through the official lever of departmental requirements. It was far from my purpose to deceive her, but nothing I could say in denial was strong enough to change her conviction. My presence under her roof induced in Mrs. Dewey a state of expectancy over a new enameled bathtub that carried with it at first more deference than she paid to the other tenants. When my milk-bottle fell off the back window-sill into the yard below, she swept up what the cat left without complaining.

A few short weeks before I was a man with some confidence in my fellows; life had its charms, hope sustained me. Rosy views are for those whose faith has not been shattered. Optimism could find no support in my bitter experiences. Hermits may find seclusion in crowds, thought I. No one could find me at my new address, and it was my intention to seek no new friends, and to avoid every one I knew. I did not want to answer questions about Jim, and I did not want to hear anything more of him. I had read all the published accounts of the fire and was glad to note that the secret had not been revealed. As for Miss Tescheron, she had probably lost faith in him and suspected me by this time. As I could not explain to her my change of heart toward Jim without implicating myself, I proposed to wash my hands of the whole affair and go it alone in future—for a time at any rate. Should I not write to her and thank her for sending flowers to me when I was ill? Was it not the grateful thing to do? I had written Hygeia and no reply came. I had quite a bunch of Jim's letters on hand also to demonstrate my powers as a letter-writer. Writing, I concluded, was not fortunate for me. It would be better to have Miss Tescheron regard me as an ungrateful wretch, a fit associate of the scoundrel who had toyed with her affections.

Robinson Crusoe started his island home with about as many clothes as I had when I left the hospital. It was fortunate that the city was such a kind employer; that my pay went on while I was ill, and that my connection with the Health Department secured the best hospital service at a nominal charge. I ordered a new trunk and a new outfit of clothing the day after my arrival, and when the clothes came I proceeded to try them on, but there was no fun in it without Jim to guy me. I fought hard to keep that fellow out of my mind, but he was with me day and night. I could not get away from him and my sorrow. Was it his ghost hovering near, longing to return to its earthly habitation, and propose a housekeeping merger with me? My fried onions might have penetrated the other world and recalled him with such longings, for there are worse places than home at dinner-time.

Mrs. Dewey entered one day and found me with my feet on the window-trim and the rest of me crouched in the most substantial rocker. I was smoking and cogitating. It was so quiet and I was so far out of sight that she did not know I was there until she started to dust the chair. The smoke had not suggested my presence, for old Dewey was always doing that—he had learned how when young, and so it was no trouble.

"Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were in the room. You're always so quiet," she said.

"Sorrow makes a man quiet."

"Sorrow? Yes, you're right; but what have you—"

"Yes, I have much," I answered. "I know your tragedy, but you can't guess mine. You have my sympathy, and if I could help you I would; but you can't help me."

"Some woman, Mr. Hopkins—I did not think you were married. You must be—"

"No," said I, and I spoke slowly, with some choking. "I have been wronged by a man, a friend in whom I had faith; with whom I lived for ten years. We were closer than brothers. He deserted me in my hour of need—but go on with your dusting; what matters it? I tell you so that you may understand why I feel so badly. Heaviness grows upon me, so that I doubt if I shall ever see the bright side of things again."

Mrs. Dewey wiped away the tears from her careworn face.

"Ten weeks ago," I continued, "we parted, and he has fled, branded as a criminal in my eyes, by evidence which no one can doubt. I am alone, despondent, and insanity or hard work must be my escape. As I cannot get my mind on my business, I fear the worst. The blow is more than I can bear."

"Pshaw! You're only a young man. You don't know what sorrow is. When you spoke so sad, you brought a tear to my eye, but I never let the tears get the best of me. I think you are weak in body yet. You need better food. You don't eat right. You ought to go out to some good restaurant and get three square meals a day. You have the money to pay for them, and you ought to do it."

"Eat! Don't speak of eating. My appetite is all gone. Some day I may get over this dismal feeling and take your kind advice, but not now."

"Men have no grit. It takes a woman, I'm thinking, to carry a heart-load. If it was a woman you were worrying about, I'd coddle you a little; but I never knew a man who ran away from his friends who was worth a tear. You'll soon see the folly of it."

"I don't blame you for hating all men," said I, knowingly. "You judge the sex by the specimen you have at home. All women do the same at your age."

"You're crazy, now, Mr. Hopkins," blurted the woman, her anger quickly rising. "Two days in my house and you undertake to advise me against my husband with whom I have lived in peace for twenty-five years. Have I given you license to interfere in my affairs? You astonish me with your impertinence! You amaze me! No man has ever dared to offer me such an insult! I will have you understand, sir, that Mr. Dewey is my husband, and I will allow no one to slightingly refer to him in my presence." She was heaving and grasping the broom pretty firmly. I crawled into a farther chair.

"Why, madam, I overheard you in the hall this morning berating him as the laziest vagabond that ever breathed, and you prayed—"

"Never mind. He's my husband. When I want some one to interfere, I'll go to a lawyer, who's in that business. I won't peddle my troubles to strangers. If you haven't any more sense than to interfere in our affairs, you must be crazy now, and if I were you I wouldn't worry about getting crazy."

Mrs. Dewey passed out and slammed the door.

I wanted to go right down and jump off the dock when this counter-irritant blistered me and her tonic bitters were poured into my lethargic circulation. Stimulation brought a reaction of brighter views, however. Mrs. Dewey's old-fashioned drubbing held the mirror so that I could behold a life-sized burro every time I looked into it. There never can be any use for a middleman, before or after the marriage contract, thought I. Shame took the place of conceit; my pride was humbled and fear was swept away. I mended with amazing rapidity under the earnest eloquence of that short sermon, delivered by a woman with a broom.



CHAPTER XVIII

Four of the happiest weeks of their lives, Gabrielle and Jim spent with the Gibsons in their Produce Exchange tower, far out of the way of enemies, if any there might be in pursuit. Gabrielle had confided in Mrs. Gibson, and was urged by her to bring Jim there to convalesce, as the doctor said he ought not to walk much for two or three months. The lovers were delighted to transfer their trysting place to those romantic quarters—a castle tower in the heart of New York, surrounded by a harbor moat, and an elevator which served well the purpose of a bridge leading to the portcullis of the upper floors. Mr. and Mrs. Gibson, and their daughter, the winsome Nellie, were delighted to have them as visitors, and entered into their defense against the cruel father and his co-conspirators, the faithless chum and the unfeeling world in general, with hearty warmth, cheering Gabrielle and filling the soul of Jim with heavenly contentment. There he had met his darling and the spot would be sacred to him always; it was doubly blessed when her sweet voice sounded near him within its walls, and her tender glances drew fond response from his eyes. On the floors below they sold grain and bulletined the price of tallow at "five and one-half cents for city"; but in the far-away tower the din of the wheat pit was not heard. From the round windows the ships of commerce appeared to ride the tide care-free as the darting gulls that dived for their prey or swung on resting wings in broad circles from shore to shore. Dreams fairer than those lovers pictured in quiet ecstasy have never been outlined by brush or melodious line. Just a little cube of heaven had been caught from the realms of bliss, and they dwelt together there for four weeks.

Now, four weeks in heaven is a very brief period. Whole eternities pass there in what seems to be an interval too brief to record on Cupid's chronometer. Joy in my lady's tower, traveling with swift, winged feet, marks not the hour like Terror in the castle dungeon, where the outcast prisoner lies upon the damp stones writhing in feverish despair. While they were up in heaven together, I was down in—the hospital or at Mrs. Dewey's. Mr. and Mrs. Tescheron were at home in Ninety-sixth Street. The bill of folly had been paid and Mr. Tescheron hoped the episode had closed, although Gabrielle's manner continued to indicate that she had not suffered so deeply as the strength of her attachment to the outlaw had led him to believe she would. What was the secret? He did not ask her, for having paid nearly $5,000 (more, but he didn't know it), working along his own lines, he did not care to admit that his daughter had outgeneraled him. A premonition that she had done so prepared him in moments of reflection to hear the truth. He fought against the concept every time it flashed before him, but with weakening strength, as the outclassed fighter staggers groggily to the ropes. What match was he, what adversary I, for Cupid, lacking the inspiration the god gave to his faithful adherents? If you ask me why I am so familiar with Mr. Tescheron's fears and numerous other matters recorded here, I make reply that I have investigated all the sources of information in any way connected with these events, and have drawn out the persons who were involved in Hosley's career by many conversations. If this statement does not satisfy, then I have one that will. I quote that great authority, William Makepeace Thackeray, who tells us in Vanity Fair that a novelist is supposed to know everything, and am I not treating the subject as a novelist, using for the most part fictitious names and places to shield from public ridicule the good people whose judgment may seem weak, and actions exaggerated, in the temperature of cold type scanned by prudent, judicial-minded readers? Icebergs will boil under certain conditions. Human beings, I find, have their solid, liquid and gaseous states. Be not surprised, therefore, if Tescheron, frigid when surrounded by his cracked ice and cold-storage products at the fish market, becomes pliable or volatile material in Hoboken under the heat of fear and temper, and, before cooling, is wrought into strange shapes by the artisan, Smith. Poor Tescheron! Innocently I made him pay a pretty penny! But he needed a good hammering.

"Gabrielle, are you really to be married against your father's wishes, my dear?" asked Mrs. Gibson, sadly, drawing Gabrielle to her. "Could we not win him over to our view of Jim? Should we not try?"

Mrs. Gibson, Gabrielle, Nellie and Jim were in the large tower sitting-room at the time of this questioning. "No, Mrs. Gibson"; and Gabrielle was most serious as she spoke. "My father will in time come to admire Jim as you do; I know father so well. Mother and I understand him. He jumps at conclusions regarding people for whom he has a dislike, and time and again has acknowledged to me how he regretted his haste. In good time father will ask my forgiveness. Not before the wedding, though, I fear; but I hope on. It is my intention to proceed, with mother's approval."

"Almost an elopement," laughed Nellie, ready for a wedding as eagerly as an opposed bride.

"Not quite, though, for mother will be there," smiled Gabrielle.

"I'll be there without these crutches," said Jim, dropping his supports to the floor, while he made an effort to stump across the room and demonstrate that he could creep to the tune of a wedding march.

"You'll do, Jim," said Nellie, as she took him by the arm to support him, and aired the Lohengrin selection. "You are just speedy enough to-day. In three weeks you will be able to run."

"Only three weeks off!" exclaimed Mrs. Gibson. "How the time passes! We must hurry. Nellie, go at once to the dressmaker's and get her positive assurance that our gowns will be ready. And you, too, have so much to do, Gabrielle."

"The more time the more there is to do always," said Gabrielle. "A bride is never quite ready, but in three weeks I am sure I shall be, if I am not disappointed by all the people I have engaged to help me. But let us think no more of our worries. You have not told me what impression those two gowns made that came last night. Didn't you see them? Let me show them to you."

Gabrielle brought out the gowns, and the critics went into tucks, trimmings, opalescent spangles, Malines lace, China-ribbed embroidery and many other bewildering technicalities. One of the dresses was all white, fashioned out of net, and was ribbon-sashed, girdled, looped, shirred, tucked, tuck-shirred, shirr-tucked, fulled, grilled, padded, scrolled, rolled, appliqued, tasseled, rosetted, knotted, banded, edged, picot-edged, ruffled, plaited, bowed, buckled, buckle-bowed, yoked and choked with ribbon. It was a pretty gown, and a hat and muff built on the same style went with it. The hat was to be held in place by long streamer ribbons—I think eighteen inches wide—tied in a bow to be knotted over the left ear, and ramify from the chin-dimple to the crest of the hair-wave. Eiderdown, lightly packed in a hollow cylinder about the size of a pint preserving jar, covered with ten-inch frills of chiffon, pieced out with ribbon, wadded neglige, were points that made the muff more dainty than warm. The combination was designed to be worn without the muff on an ocean boardwalk about sunset, when the wind dies down. Cosy comfort was to be supplied by the muff on a windy day, for only a real mermaid could wear a plain fish net in all kinds of weather.

"It's a most stunning affair!" exclaimed Nellie, admiring with close scrutiny all the fine points in the shirring, hemstitching and accordeon plaiting.

"Very airy, but pretty," was Mrs. Gibson's view. "What is it to be worn over? Oh, I see; this beautiful soft white taffeta. Well, Gabrielle, you will look a bride with that gown, I am sure."

"That is one of the fine things I have gained by delay. If we had been married five weeks ago, I would not have thought of this gem." And the girls laughed, while Jim looked on in surprised delight. The details of dressmaking he was not competent to discuss.

"Why does it take so many clothes to get married?" asked Jim, evidently not understanding that every event in a woman's life is a peg for more clothes.

"What a strange question! How foolish, Jim!" exclaimed the women.

"Don't you know that a wedding is a ceremonial affair, where all the grand formalities must be observed?" asked Nellie. "You wouldn't have us scuffle through it in old shoes and walking skirts, would you?"

"Jim's notion of getting married," said Gabrielle, "is extremely primitive. For my part, I like nice things. I'm so sorry they do not appeal to Jim." Gabrielle feigned disappointment.

"I should say they did appeal to me," Jim hastily assured the critics. "They are so surprising!"

"Surprising! How so?" asked Nellie.

"Like a sunrise, I suppose," answered Jim. "I've never seen many, but those who have rave over them. What a pity the styles change so often! Next year the net in that dress will all have to be taken off and put in place of the bead trimming on the lamp shades; the bead trimming must then be sent to Staten Island and dyed green to make it proper for hat ornamentation, a necklace or—"

"Amber is the proper color for a necklace," laughed Mrs. Gibson. "Nellie cut her teeth on amber beads."

Then they all laughed, and Jim saw that it was good policy to admire without attempting to suggest reforms.

"And this silk gauze affair, what is this?" asked Nellie. "My! it is so light you could mail it for a cent."

"That is just a cobweb I fancied," said Gabrielle, proudly, as she gently shook out the folds of a light creation. "How beautifully it fits and yet it affords such freedom!"

"It's an Empire modification," remarked Nellie, who discerned the basic neck-waisted feature of the cobweb's architecture. "Lovely short sleeves—"

"Bad for mosquitoes," said Jim.

"Hush!" admonished Gabrielle. "We can't restrict art to such limitations."

"If it really is a cobweb, the mosquitoes won't go near it," said Jim. "Perhaps the designer had that in mind when he cut down the sleeves."

"What a heavy lace insertion—Valenciennes, a good part of it, isn't it, Gabrielle?" asked Mrs. Gibson. "Why, it's simply beyond words, I think."

"Three deep embroidered flounces, and such frills and frills of lace! My! It's grand!" So Nellie believed and declared.

Jim's imagination was not fired. "I hope I never step on it," he said.

"Don't you dare!" commanded Nellie. "This cobweb is meant to catch the eye only—not a whole man."

While Jim was laughing and attempting to thrust his opinions still farther upon the critics, they restored the art treasures to the boxes and placed them in the store-room, where the bride's purchases were gathering day by day as they arrived from the shopping district. Fortunately, the tower was larger than it appears from Broadway, or it would not have held all the packages and allowed the Gibsons room to live.

Nellie had forgotten the dressmaker, but now started, and Mrs. Gibson resumed her household duties in another room.

"Gabrielle, you are making altogether too much preparation," said Jim. "You have undertaken too much. With your regular duties I can see that it is wearing on you. Could you not be satisfied with less shopping and less dressmaking?"

"No, Jim, it is not this preparation that burdens me," she replied, seating herself at the side of her lame hero.

"Tell me what it is, then—is it that miserable fancied conspiracy against me? I thought your father had forgotten that now."

"He believes that you are gone, and yet I can see that he knows what I am about to do; at least I fear so. Mother may have told him, for I have confided in her everything but telling her where you are. Naturally, Jim, I feel sad not to have my father's support in this matter. But we shall have his good-will later on, I am sure. In the meantime I am made unhappy by his present attitude—how can I help it? I know he is wrong—"

"Gabrielle, you have firmly refused to tell me just what it is your father has against me. Time and again I have asked, but I cannot learn, and of course I cannot imagine what his flight to Hoboken was for. He charges me with some crime—but in heaven's name, what crime? Come, Gabrielle, do tell me now, won't you?"

"Jim, have I not always told you in reply to your questioning that the charges made against you by my poor, misguided father and Mr. Hopkins are too absurd to repeat? If I should tell you now, it would only prove my father to be a hot-headed man, one who is so easily misled by those who arouse his fears. Let it all rest with my statement that his position is taken because of those absurd conclusions. Then it will not be necessary for me to make my dear father appear ridiculous."

"I shan't think that," said Jim, softly. It appeared that he could say or do nothing to extricate himself from the work of the plotters, whose shadows disappeared as he drew nigh. "But if you would only give me, the accused, a chance to make a defense, I could incidentally prove Hopkins innocent and have him at our wedding. That I should like to do. It pains me more than I can tell to ignore that poor chap. I often wonder where he is, and think myself a coward and an inhuman scoundrel not to make an effort to find him."

"Why do you bother about him, Jim? Didn't the nurse hurry us from the hospital that day because she said Mr. Hopkins had told her you were a rogue? Don't you see that both father and he have been impressed by the story of those villainous detectives, who would do anything for money?"

"Well, Gabrielle, tell me what those detectives have told your father about me. He has told you, has he not? Have these charges raised no suspicion in your mind against me? Are you not anxious to question me? How proud, then, I am to have won the heart of such a grand little woman!"

Before he could wait for replies to his questions the burly invalid clutched his chair, rose to his feet and stretching out his arms gathered up his treasure of loyalty and fondly caressed her. "How fortunate for me," he continued, "that your heart has not been poisoned against me! How priceless this love of yours! for without it I should not be saved. Let the whole world forsake me, and you remain true, what care I? Gabrielle, you have guarded me like an angel."

Jim could say no more. He choked and could not go on. Was sincerity to be doubted when so emphasized? Could there be aught of guile in that embrace?

"Jim, I have never doubted you—I never could doubt you, for do I not know your heart as you know mine?" assured Gabrielle, meeting his frank eyes steadily with hers. "You are my plain hero, untrumpeted, except by all your friends who have known you here for years. Never ask me again of the base charges father has listened to. I trust my love, which I see answered in those boyish eyes—in every kind word and act. Jim, I love you and we shall be married; we shall plan our own life in the light of this love, and doing that we have naught to fear. We shall welcome true friends, who will be loyal to us because we are loyal to our own ideals, and so father shall be won to us, and Mr. Hopkins may turn toward us again. Our troubles are largely our fears, Mr. MacDonald says, and I believe him. How foolish to fear when we may enjoy repose through faith and love!"

"Gabrielle, my darling, you will never again be questioned by me. So long as you have faith, let the rest of the world go hang! Poor Ben Hopkins, I would like to see him, though."

I give no notice here as to when the embrace released. It is quite possible that it continued until late in the afternoon, with hand-holding modifications, when Nellie returned and sang loudly in another room for warning and company. The fleeting hours that the happy pair looked out from one of those magic windows are not to be recorded in detail. A lover's log-book is unknown. The fears and conspiracies that might have harassed them found no leverage of doubt to pry an entrance into Gabrielle's heart. Every wave of the higher air wafted from Trinity's steeple, brought them the joy of marriage bells. Even without a lame leg, Jim would never have thought of running away from that place.

The wedding was to take place in the afternoon of Wednesday, only three weeks off. Mr. Tescheron was to be notified in due time that it would be held at the Episcopal church to which the family belonged. That part of the ceremony calling for the giving away of the bride would be omitted. Only a few relatives and dear friends would be present, and they would understand Gabrielle's purpose to marry the man of her choice. The affair would be clouded with sadness, they all believed (except Jim); but Gabrielle was determined not to hide the opposition of her father. She was determined to have her wedding about as she had planned from childhood in the little church she loved, and up to the very minute of the fixed hour she would hope and pray to have her father there full of repentance and forgiveness. Mr. Tescheron was to be told by her one week prior to the wedding. Thus he was to be given one week alone with his conscience to settle the question whether he should accept an invitation to his daughter's wedding. More than a week's notice, Gabrielle believed, would inflict unnecessary cruelty and less than a week grant hardly enough time for him to retrace his steps.

Mrs. Tescheron, poor soul, spent many hours in tears, her faith and pride in her daughter sustaining her through the hours of preparation. The day of the wedding she dreaded, and she doubted if she would bear up when the climax of the strain came. Firmness prompted by kindness, the wife and mother understood to be necessary in dealing with the irascible head of the family, and she therefore quietly acquiesced in this policy when administered by their only child. She had never been able to successfully make her will dominant in the household on that principle, perhaps because she had begun by surrendering to him the first few times he was mastered by his temper in the early days of married life, like most wives do surrender. The baby is generally much better brought up in the family than the father. My observation as a bachelor teaches me that every wife should take a husband in hand like a child—coddle him, keep him in after dark, put him to bed very early full of hot gruel when he sneezes or falls asleep after dinner; if he complains of a draught give him a steaming foot-bath and one or two mustard plasters, those gentle love-taps of family life, that lingeringly long tell of devotion; and when he has any inclination to do anything except smile, pounce upon him and trundle him into some sort of medicated misery, tenderly but firmly.

I could name a dozen good husbands, men of eagle eye in the market place, who stand pat in good nature at home, because their wives make little or no discrimination between the babies and their papa. Mrs. Tescheron was fortunate in her daughter, however, and in later years was relieved as the child grew to lead them. The mother determined with as much strength of purpose as she could summon, to rely upon Gabrielle to find the way out in this emergency, as the daughter had in all others.



CHAPTER XIX

The day Mr. Tescheron was to receive notification of the wedding in his immediate family came so quickly the announcement could not be made in the morning. Gabrielle needed the day to prepare, for while she was brave, the meeting with her father must bring tears of disappointment. Perhaps the glowering skies made postponement easy. Better the night for sorrow, thought she, and then hurried down-town, her hands full of small packages containing bits of finery not available to enter into the ornamentation of the dressmaker's conceptions in silk and lace. These must be exchanged for other shades, and the light of a cloudy day was not suitable for matching colors; her feminine mind turned to the more important details of preparation.

As she entered the office her thoughts were wholly away from the law of her country and its business operations. The gowns that were to be fitted and the untrimmed hats loomed larger than the intricate questions in various states of litigation that came under her supervision. In a week she was to pass from this realm of worldly detail, and would assume the larger role of wife, better equipped by freedom and the good uses she had made of its opportunities. Still the hats and gowns must not be ignored by any high-flown philosophy. She was about to hitch her wagon to a star, to be a whole woman, the head of a home and all that; but what would we think even of the president of Sorosis if she appeared in last year's sleeves?

Among her letters that morning, Gabrielle found one from Hygeia, and regretted that she must place it with her packages as soon as she glanced at the name, for there was no time to read it then; perhaps in a car she would find the time. Letters written at leisure in the country and read in the crowded city cars lose their native sweetness. Such as I have ever received from there must be opened tenderly and read slowly far from the throng.

By one o'clock the mills of Justice ceased to claim the attention of Gabrielle. Two hours were spent in the stores, every minute consumed in the closest study of fabrics, miles of floor-walking and volumes of questioning—all composing the art and science of shopping, the one sphere in which woman can carry the weight of a fur cloak and do a hundred-yard dash or a mile run to the most distant department, while her man companion takes his coat off and worms his way twenty feet to the necktie counter, which is always found opposite the main entrance. Ten feet farther in, it would fail. Gabrielle shopped with system, to save time, and then used the time she saved to shop some more.

Not long after three o'clock on that memorable Wednesday, Mrs. Gibson, Nellie and Gabrielle gathered around the enthroned Jim in his castle retreat to talk it all over again for the thousandth time.

"The wedding ring fitted the first time we tried it, and so do all my clothes, ties, gloves and hats," said Jim, with a smile intended to aggravate argument. "It is no trouble at all for me to get married."

"You're not original, though," laughed Nellie. "Originality, you know, takes time, thought and effort. Gabrielle will outshine you."

"Of course, she will," said Jim—"if there is anything left of the poor girl to wear these things."

"Oh, don't fear that, Jim," Gabrielle advised. "This is great fun."

"The stores always seem to be filled with women," remarked Jim. "Are they all about to get married, I wonder?"

"Those who go the earliest and stay the longest are women who are getting ready for the fourth trip," said Mr. Gibson, the jolly father, whose grim face belied his heart. He had entered in time to catch Jim's query. "It's a case of accelerated motion," he added.

The girls laughed and chided him for his wantonly cruel words. They chatted along merrily for an hour, first about this trifle and then that, completely under the influence of the glorious event, without one thought being given to the cloud, as big as a postman's hand, among Gabrielle's packages, for they did not see it there.

The happy prospective bridegroom, who had escaped the dire fate the letters threatened to throw across his path by dodging beneath the quilts at the hospital, was now full of the heroism that thrives in peace. The calamity which seemed prepared to fall upon him in the hour of his greatest happiness, Fate had tossed aside, and his star combination proved to be intact and in good working order. Trouble had gathered near in murky concentration for a few minutes that anxious day, but when Hygeia passed out of the door of his room to answer my bell, the knight stood forth with visor up, resumed his normal color, and gradually his power of speech. Those old breadcrumbs cast upon the waters of love years before had washed ashore at a most untimely moment, thought he; but the audience had not reached the end to ponder on the writer's name. A miss was as good as a mile in slipping between the cup and the lip.

But the course of true love is a rugged path to the close of the ceremony; beyond, it is still more rugged, and the surrounding country, they say, is often wild and desolate, and quite unlike the park gardening and its beckoning vistas to be seen along Lovers' Lane before the turn in the road at the altar.

A cloud no larger than the tiny mist from the whistle of one of those tooting tugs familiar in the harbor scene was gathering while the sun shone so brightly in the tower apartment. An electric shock will gather and burst a cloud large enough to bring midnight and deluge at noonday. Mr. Gibson understood the importance of lightning arresters, but was not prepared to apply them in his home. The women could do nothing; and, of course, I, the only person in the world who might have transformed the current to a harmless voltage, had been shunned as an enemy.

Then came the lull before the hurricane—the soft whispering of the wind in the tree-tops. Jim alone could see the havoc it raised along the mountain ridge, foretelling by a few minutes the arrival of the twisting and wrenching blast.

"Oh, Nellie, you remember my telling about the gushy love-letters the nurse read to us at the hospital, for our entertainment. Well, here, please take this; she has sent another, which I see by a glance is quite as good as the rest. Would you mind reading it aloud? and then I ask you all to excuse me while I snatch a moment to read her long letter."

In this way, Gabrielle believed she would solve the problem of time, that had been so limited that busy day.

"Why, certainly; let us have the pleasure, and go ahead with your reading." Nellie was always ready to entertain the company.

But Gabrielle did not advance more than a few lines with Hygeia's accompanying letter. The Gibson family were so delighted with Nellie's reading of my celebrated collaboration with Lord Byron, constructed by the drip of my pen welding some of the choicest gems of the inspired poet to bring together the hearts of Jim and that fair Margaret, it was quite out of the question for Gabrielle to withdraw from the fun. She became as attentive as the other auditors and added her applause to sustain the clever elocutionist. Comment flowed freely from all except Jim at nearly every interruption.

"Father, this is supposed to be the proper way to make love," said Nellie, and she began to read:

"'My Darling Margaret:

"'Your letter of this morning bids me with many playful thrusts to be more hopeful during your absence, which you say will be brief in one paragraph and in another that it will be "about three months." How is it possible for me to reconcile these statements? Three months may be an eternity. The criminal bound and held beneath the spigot, from which water, drop by drop, pounds with thundering impact upon his hot head, and the idlers in sylvan dells, view time differently. Your advice, though, shall be taken and followed with such will as I am able to command. Weakness, backsliding from my purpose to be as cheerful as you wish, you must forgive. If you would have me display an even interest in life, undisturbed by the moaning which creeps into these letters, you know the sure, swift course to take—the fastest express train to New York, and a telegram summoning me to the depot—that is all.

"'For the past two nights my sleep has been blessed with visions more lovely and hope inspiring. Fear has been driven away, to give place to fairer thoughts of you. Not to dream of you crowded the hours of absence too heavily upon me. Henceforth I am determined that you shall be with me in my thoughts, tenderly ministering to me with those eyes whose soft light I would have my steady beacons. Darling Margaret, their flickering, or the fear that they will flicker, sets me almost crazy.

"'Thy form appears through night, through day: Awake, with it my fancy teems; In sleep, it smiles in fleeting dreams— The vision charms the hours away, And bids me curse Aurora's ray, For breaking slumbers of delight, Which make me wish for endless night; Since, oh! whate'er my future fate, Shall joy or woe my steps await, Tempted by love, by storms beset, Thine image I can ne'er forget.'"

"He pursued her hard," interrupted Mr. Gibson. "I can remember when I used to feel that way about girls, but I couldn't put it on paper."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Gibson. "What you put on paper would never compromise you. The name of the man who wrote the letter, you understand, father, is not known, and neither do we know the woman. Still, I hardly think it can be one of yours, so I shan't worry. Go on, Nellie."

Nellie had observed as she paused in her reading and glanced upward, that Jim seemed much disturbed. He was very red and his eyes seemed to be afire. But Gabrielle did not give any of her attention to Jim, and Nellie was too busy with her task of deciphering my wretched manuscript to interject a gay remark at Jim's expense. Jim moistened his lips, wiped his beading brow, and nerved himself for the worst. There were now no quilts for him to dodge under, and no acute pain to serve as a standing account against which he might charge these evidences of the anguish he could not conceal.

Nellie continued, and Gabrielle forgot all about Hygeia's letter. This I think flattering to my style.

"Listen!" commanded Nellie, and again she read:

"'Yes, my darling, dreaming always of you, night and day, surely, surely, hope should inspire me. This is the place and now the time to wander in love's enchanted realm. I shall not put off till your home-coming the joys I would experience. Let my "heart be a spirit," and then I may be wafted to your side this minute and sit beside you from early morn till twilight and the even-song of birds softly and sweetly hint the flight of time. Yes—

"'He who hath loved not, here would learn that love, And make his heart a spirit; he who knows That tender mystery, will love the more: For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes, And the world's waste, have driven him far from those— For 'tis his nature to advance or die; He stands not still, but or decays, or grows Into a boundless blessing, which may vie With the immortal lights in its eternity!'

"'And now, my darling, I must not forget to remind you that you have quite overlooked my request for a lock of your golden hair. You acknowledged the receipt of mine, and asked why I did not tie it in a pretty ribbon instead of a piece of cotton thread.'"

"There is the lock of hair again!" exclaimed Gabrielle. "I saw it in the other letter when Jim was at the hospital. It was a trifle lighter than his. The poor girl—I suppose she thought it more precious than strands of pure gold."

"Hair has a lot to do with love, Gabrielle," whispered Mr. Gibson. "Think what an uphill job it would have been for Jim with a bald head."

"Never could have done it," said Jim, huskily, determined to break in somewhere on a long chance that the letter would blow out to sea or the Produce Exchange tower topple over.

"'Haste, my sweetheart,'" continued Nellie, "'is my excuse—haste which wholly disregards the trifling detail; but I see my error now and enclose a yard of blue ribbon to be converted by your deft hands into a tight bow-knot where the unpoetic cotton now binds the clipped token of my love. I pray there may be enough left to gather a generous lock of the golden tresses for which I yearn. You will not withhold them, will you, Margaret? What sweet thoughts proceed from memory's strongholds:

"'Can I forget—canst thou forget, When playing with thy golden hair, How quickly thy fluttering heart did move? Oh, by my soul, I see thee yet, With eyes so languid, breast so fair, And lips, though silent, breathing love.

"'When thus reclining on my breast, Those eyes threw back a glance so sweet, As half reproached, yet raised desire, And still we near and nearer prest, And still our glowing lips would meet, As if in kisses to expire.

"'And then those pensive eyes would close, And bid their lids each other seek, Veiling the azure orbs below, While their long lashes' darken'd gloss Seemed stealing o'er thy brilliant cheek, Like raven's plumage smoothed on snow.'

"'While it may be true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, there are limitations, believe me, to man's endurance. Three months will find me worn to a scant shadow, a mere tissue, so sharp that the dial at noonday cannot point with finer finger the passage of the sun under the meridian wire. Only the first month is now waning, and I dare not look a weighing machine in the face, for fear I might fall in the slot. I am not facetious, believe me, Margaret.

"'Fear underlies my woe. Annoying images, at first vague, gather strength of outline and haunt me like evil prophecies. Of course, there is naught but fear to account for these distressing delusions, but is it not as real when it wounds as the dagger's point? How shall we banish the terrors that arise in lonely hours? In writing to you these thoughts as they flow from the deep reservoirs of my soul, through the conduit of pen, in inky tracings on this fair page, my sweetest hours are spent. Here is an outlet that reduces in some measure the roaring flood-waters, as strength abides to perform the necessary physical evolutions till repose comes o'er me; then I slip into the Land of Nod through a lane of sweet magnolias, and approach the rose-bedecked gates garlanded as if for the entry of a prince and his bride. You are with me then, and as the cheering populace greets us, a herald stands forth and addresses you thus:

"'She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes, Thus mellowed to the tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

"'And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent.'"

"My! but he puts it on thick," gasped Nellie, pausing for breath.

"Oh, pshaw!" said her father; "impossible to mix it too thick."

"What would he have done without Lord Byron?" asked Mrs. Gibson, who gave me scant credit, apparently.

"Well, Byron wouldn't mind," said Gabrielle, smiling. "He would be glad to help the cause along. The lover is strengthening his persuasion with good poetry."

Nellie read more rapidly now, for she had learned many of my pen oddities:

"'What a worldly fellow I was till your eyes met mine and brought me far, far up from the depths to the heights of contemplation. My philosophy was naught. I saw not the beauty of life, for I was lost in a wilderness of its petty distractions. Remembering our happy days together, why should their inspiration not sustain me now? At the time of parting—

"'I saw thee weep—the big bright tear Came o'er that eye of blue, And then methought it did appear A violet dropping dew; I saw thee smile—the sapphire blaze Beside thee ceased to shine; It could not match the living rays That filled that glance of thine.'

"'The feeling so tenderly expressed in that tear preceding the smile holds me in thrall when I bid fear depart and wake no more the ogres of its dread. Let me rather fondle that cherished smile,

"'As clouds from yonder sun receive A deep and mellow dye, Which scarce the shade of coming eve Can banish from the sky; Those smiles, into the moodiest mind, Their own pure joys impart; Their sunshine leaves a glow behind That lightens o'er the heart.'"

Would luck ever come? Would it ever come? What would be the outcome? Jim tried to plan for the approaching emergency, but the best he could do was to struggle to conceal the acute case of chills and fever then torturing his weak body and adding confusion to his dazed mind. The reader proceeded:

"'All the deep feelings of the lover have been experienced by the poets, and to them we must turn to find words attuned to the harmonies surging within, clamoring for expression, where passion has just been born. These gifted singers have searched the human heart as only genius can and have given their songs as a universal heritage to all who feel the melting murmurs. If there is aught of inspiration in their words, it belongs to me as the harper's music belonged to Byron when he craved it:

"'My soul is dark—oh! quickly string The harp I yet can brook to hear; And let thy gentle fingers fling Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. If in this heart a hope be dear, That sound shall charm it forth again; If in those eyes there lurk a tear, 'Twill flow and cease to burn my brain.'

"'And how natural, Margaret, it is for the man steeped in love as I am to search out consolation amid the sweet concord of poetry. And so seeking the thought attuned to mine, I also say:

"'But let the strain be wild and deep, Nor let the notes of joy be first; I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep, Or else this heavy heart will burst; For it hath been by sorrow nursed, And ached in sleepless silence long; And now 'tis doomed to know the worst And break at once—or yield to song.'

"'My writing is usually over at midnight, and when I have returned from the corner, where I post the letter, I sit me down in the darkness to ponder on what I have composed. How dull it seems to me then; how poorly expressed these sentiments too deep for words of mine, and not always within range of such poetry as I can find! Moods are so fleeting, too; some tender thought passes over me and for a moment I am lost in the rare atmosphere of mountain-tops to which it summons me. When I come to tell of this magic wrought by your innocent witchery, I find it quite impossible to explain, as the essence of my heavenly flight is all so poetic and strange a mere mortal like myself cannot interpret the feeling. It surely cannot be that all men who love are so entranced. It must be that within the circle of your enchanting power a superior charm prevails:

"'There be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters, Is thy sweet voice to me; When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean's pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull'd winds seem dreaming.

"'The moon is your partner in this mysterious midnight revel, Margaret:

"'And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain o'er the deep, Whose breast is gently heaving, As an infant's asleep; So the spirit bows before thee, To listen and adore thee, With a full but soft emotion, Like the swell of Summer's ocean.'

"'How wise, after all, your advice to be hopeful! The sweetest moments of our lives are passing now while we are wrapped in our devotion to each other. All sounds are sweet—

"''Tis sweet to hear At midnight on the blue moonlit deep, The song and oar of Adria's gondolier, By distance mellowed o'er the water's sweep. 'Tis sweet to see the evening star appear; 'Tis sweet to listen to the night winds creep From leaf to leaf; 'tis sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.'"

Gabrielle now took up Hygeia's letter again. The rainbow of hope based on ocean seemed to Jim to be disappearing beneath its watery foundation. If Obreeon had appeared and offered to remove those letters at that point, he might have doubled the price, and Jim would have paid it gladly.

But the reader did not stop.

"'Of course, I am interested,'" read Nellie, "'in your daily doings in the country, so do not chide me for not asking more questions. I should like to know the number of cows your Uncle Reuben keeps, and if the cheese factory is running on full time. These items savor of rural thrift, and as the farmer is the backbone of the country, I would not eliminate him—scratch him as it were—from our worldly calculations. The cows, the cheese factory and Uncle Reuben, however, stand in the dim background fading into the hazy purple of the tree-lined brook, as I think of you, my May Queen, laughing, in the center of the picture. When I correspond with Uncle Reuben it will be by telegram at my end of the line.

"'Before I close to-night I must again assure you that a happier view of the outlook for the coming two months will be taken. Your happiness must be mine:

"'Well! thou art happy, and I feel That I should thus be happy, too; For still my heart regards thy weal Warmly—'"

"Stop, Nellie! James Hosley, you wrote that letter! Do you deny it?"

Gabrielle Tescheron crumpled Hygeia's note in her clenched hand as she said that, and arose, fastening her steady eyes on the crouching form of the cripple, who appeared to cringe under the blast of the storm. He had tried to be prepared, but he failed utterly when he attempted to speak. He was seen to raise his hand and elevate his eyebrows, but now words were impossible; a low murmur and heavy breathing, an effort to stand and a surrender in despair to the hopelessness of his fate, were all that marked Jim Hosley's resistance to this accusation.

"You wrote this letter—you wrote the others—do you deny it?"

This came quickly after the first question from her lips; her manner completely changed, betraying the nervous strain under which she suppressed her emotions, as she bravely faced the man for whom the world had seemed a small sacrifice. Jealousy might have waged its battle in privacy; but the revelation of a detestable crime so convincingly corroborated by this letter from the nurse, whose pricking conscience had at last reported my version of Hosley with her view of the ownership and purpose of the damaging poetic documents, outlined to Gabrielle's quick intelligence the method of a deep, patiently pursued course of crime. Her father's claims, to which her deaf ears had been turned in the ardor of youth, came now with terrible force to win instant conviction. She would not falter in the crisis. The man should be given a hearing—brief, to be sure—but he should have it.

"Speak!" The command brought the Gibsons to their feet, but Jim was paralyzed and dumb. After a long pause, he took all the responsibility for my folly and pleaded:

"I wrote it, Gabrielle—and forgive me."

"Then you must leave this house at once. You go your way and I shall see you no more. I know it all now. This letter from the nurse—Mr. Hopkins—my father—they were right. I have been blind. You have deceived me, just as you deceived this poor woman, whose awful fate I know. Mr. and Mrs. Gibson and Nellie"—she turned, grasping her chair—"you have been kind friends. If I have imposed on your hospitality, you will forgive me—"

Unstrung and in tears, she threw herself into Mrs. Gibson's outstretched arms, and Nellie and her mother, overcome with surprise and grief, supported her as she walked into another room.

"Hosley, I demand that you tell me what this means," said Mr. Gibson, advancing, the lines of his stern face tightly drawn. He had such faith in Gabrielle he could not doubt her words—and yet he had loved Jim Hosley these many years, and he could not, dared not, believe that his faith in Jim was founded on a cleverly contrived imitation of the finest qualities of manhood. "What does this all mean—this opposition of Tescheron, this sudden action of Gabrielle?"



Jim could only feebly remonstrate against the pursuing evil which had clung close to his heels since the very day he had asked Mr. Tescheron for his daughter's hand, he told Mr. Gibson; since the very night of the fire; since the very night of my connection with the problem when it began to develop as a simple affair of the heart.

"Mr. Gibson, I wrote those letters years ago, foolishly, to be sure, but innocently, believe me. They now appear to ruin me," he huskily proceeded. "But Gabrielle would be fair and forgive me that. No, it is not that I wrote the letters—there is something hidden. She will not tell me what it is. I have begged her to tell me, but she will not. She would only tell me she loved me when I entreated her to confide in me the cause of her father's hatred. Now in a flash she infers something, and I can see she believes her father, and joins him against me. Mr. Gibson, bear with me a moment. Let me see her now—"

Mr. Gibson went to the door and called her softly.

His wife's voice was heard in reply:

"Gabrielle has gone."



CHAPTER XX

A shambling step along the floor of my hall one evening, long past nine o'clock, aroused me from thoughts of Hosley, the man whose image filled my home hours with a creeping shame and dread. A knock on my door, the first since I had been living there, startled me.

Before I could advance, Jim Hosley stumbled in and braced his worn body against the wall. He reached for my hand and I took it, and forgave him everything I had suspected he had done, and every crime he might have committed. The look on Jim Hosley's face that night would have won the pardon of a cannibal chief; it would have halted a Spanish inquisition, stayed the commune of Paris and wrung unadulterated, anonymous pity from the heart of an Irish landlord or a monopolist. A minute before I was for hanging Jim Hosley (provided my connection with the case was not revealed). Now, when I saw him and felt his hand once more in the grasp of comradeship, I was with him heart and soul, and scoundrel though he might be, a lineal descendant of old Bluebeard, perhaps, I stood ready to sharpen and pass his knives to him and assist in any humble way a willing and obliging servant could to make the business a success.

"Ben, I have searched for you for three hours. Thank Heaven, I am near you at last! I lay in the next room at the hospital, but Gabrielle would not let me see you," were his first words.

"In the hospital? With me in the next room? And Gabrielle—"

"Yes, Ben; we can talk all night, and then we shan't understand. How did those letters written to the girl—"

He flung himself into a chair. He was exhausted and ten years older. Pain in his leg prompted him to ask me to remove his shoe. I helped him into my dressing-gown, gave him a pipe, plenty of pillows in an easy chair and fondled him like a prodigal son. I was never so glad to see a mortal since I peeped into the world. The fatted calf's substitute, a dish of pork and beans, was put to heat in a pan of water on the gas stove. The coffee-pot was "rastled" under the tap to remove the early morning aroma which clung to the grounds always left to await my attention the following morning. The egg poacher, the toaster, the slab of bacon, and a mince pie, bought an hour before to produce sleep, were brought out and displayed to make a scene like the old days when joy was unconfined, when women were mere theories and courtship a pastime.

Jim in his despair warmed up and actually smiled. That heart-ache which had overwhelmed him and made life so unbearable when he entered, gave way, and hope, with the smell of bacon and fried eggs, mounted higher. Grief, powerful dynamo though it be, may be tickled by a smaller one—a square meal often brings its victim into line.

"Jim, we'll take the night to talk this thing over. It will take all that time for me to tell you that I am so mighty glad to see you again, and besides, it will take time to eat as well, for you look to me as if food was the one supply you had failed to connect with since that fire. Tell me, Jim, how Gabrielle could keep you away? How could you allow a woman to separate you from your old pal? Does it seem reasonable? And yet you always were so innocently plausible I could never doubt you. How did that happen? Tell me now, before I give you anything to eat. I would like to feel a little more sure on that point."

I whistled and rattled on, perfectly charmed to be again under the influence of that wife-slayer's magic smile or his potent frown—it was all the same to me.

"I simply don't know," answered Jim. "I can't tell you. I don't know, Ben. I am easily led by Gabrielle. I was weak. Had I insisted upon seeing you from the first, no matter what happened—but there, let it pass. I asked your help with her father. There I made a bad mistake. You did something—I don't know what it was exactly, but you put your foot 'way down in—you upset me from the first. But let it pass. I'll take all you can give me to eat and then we'll go at the thing again; not where we left off the night we parted at the flat, but where we stand now. Gabrielle, too, has forsaken me, Ben." He looked at me with his mouth drawn down, his pinched face betraying surrender, his heavy eyes burdened with care.

"Forsaken you! How so? Was she not with you at the hospital?"

"Those letters to the Brown girl, in Thirty-eighth Street, are at the bottom of it, Ben. I told you they would come back, if you wrote so much. Those letters have ruined me—ruined me with the one woman I have loved. The other women—those to whom you wrote, you induced me to fool. Don't you see you did, Ben? Those letters you signed my name to, and gushed your poetry into like a stream from a fire-hose, swept me off; all the women you wrote to thought they were crazy letters, Ben. I never dared tell you that; but they all put me down for a fool, and as I had no particular interest in them I took the blame, Ben. I never supposed the letters could reach Gabrielle. I had them all in my bureau drawer when the fire started. I forgot to burn them—just chucked them in there when I got them back from Miss Brown. There must have been over a hundred. And, blowed if you didn't work in a lot of my hair! Egad, you must have clipped it when I fell asleep listening to you read them. I have heard them read since, too, at the hospital. Our nurse read one very prettily, and then I thought my hour had come—"

"Our nurse read them! My nurse in your room, too?"

"Yes. We had the same nurse."

"Sit up and have some pork and beans and a cup of coffee, Jim," said I. I could see then that there was no need to go into too many particulars. I did not care to go much further till I had collected some definite thoughts and arranged to conceal the amount of cash my wisdom had seen fit to call forth from my bank account for a lot of old junk that had been stored in Jim Hosley's bureau, and had fallen down to the next floor when the fire took place—just the spot the detectives wanted it to land precisely, in order to connect me with the case. It would not have surprised me to learn that Smith and Obreeon, his partner (for I could plainly see he was), had started that fire with full knowledge of the location of those letters and the exact spot they would fall if a match were touched to our abode at the proper time. My handwriting in the Tescheron messages had given me away.

"What do you think of those beans, Jim?"

"I think they taste more like home than anything I have met since I took that bath."

"There, don't say another word, Jim. I won't accuse you of anything. You had your bath, and both of us have enjoyed the sweat it produced. When we come out of this thing we'll be the purest mortals that ever took a course in practical morality over a hot stove as a starter. I told you about that quilt. So, that is the way it was, eh? Well, Jim, you certainly do know how to set a house afire, although I never believed you would set the world afire. I take it you will clip the ends pretty short when you start in to make quilts again for that purpose. But never mind, old boy, try another cup of this coffee."

"Why is it they can't make coffee in a hospital?" asked Jim.

"They do make it," I answered; "but the doctors and nurses never let any of it get away from them. They find it too strong for boarders. It's bad for their nerves. The only thing that's good for a sick man is something you can sterilize, and then they may charge double prices for it. Jim, did you ever feel so hungry before when you settled down there?"

I was trying to divert his attention from the trouble I had put him through, for I realized there was no hope for his case unless I yet took a hand in and patched up the chasm which separated him from an imagined paradise.

It is surprising what a relation there is between the digestion and heart.

"We were to have been married a week from to-day, Ben," said Jim.

My knife and fork clattered to the floor!

"That's so; and now we are parted forever."

I was struck dumb—only one week to make good, to save the wreck from total loss! Something must be done quickly. In the past everything I had undertaken had been a failure, but I must persist. It was close to ten o'clock—a bad time to begin, for my midnight correspondence had never been correctly construed.

"When did you leave Gabrielle?" I asked, with an idea ranging in my fancy. It was an intangible idea, but I thought it promised relief.

"About five o'clock to-day; we separated at the Gibsons'."

"You stay here till I come back, and go on eating, Jim," I directed, and grabbing my hat I rushed for the door.

"Stop, Ben! Don't you do a thing to-night," commanded Jim. "What can you do now? Don't you know you made a bad break the last time?"

But I kept right on and sent one more message from the nearest messenger office. It was directed to Miss Tescheron at her home and read:

"Don't recall those wedding invitations till you see me to-morrow.

"BENJAMIN HOPKINS."

There was just enough of the indefinite in that, I imagined, to suspend operations; it would be a straw for the woman to clutch. She would not risk the unpleasant notoriety of a wedding postponement, if there could be a chance that she had acted impulsively at least, and had been misled by circumstantial evidence she had ignored till there came into the case the other-woman element. I did not fear the wound in her heart, unless the gangrene of jealousy entered to prevent the successful issue of my hastily arranged plan.

When I returned to the house, Jim was greatly disturbed.

"Ben, you have rushed out and sent another message; I can see it in your face," he said. "What can you be thinking of? Why did you not wait till to-morrow and talk this thing over?"

"You leave this matter to me," said I.

"Yes—I did that before."

"But you took a bath contrary to my advice." Tinkering middlemen and ferrets can squeeze through small holes.

I determined to stop proceedings in Ninety-sixth Street, if such a thing were possible. It seemed nervy for me to interfere now, but it was a long shot and I determined to take it. What I would do to cement the break I really knew not, but trusted to luck.

Jim did not yet know about the Browning woman and the interest he was supposed to have in her. I tapped him gently and so indirectly on the subject that I could see he knew nothing about her. The undertaker's card he had found in the hall and brought in and laid on the table, where I chanced to pick it up, little thinking I would take it as corroborative of anything that might be said against him. He declared he had not left the house that night. Smith's men had simply lied when they said he left with the undertaker. I had a plan for testing his statement, however.

When he told me how I had driven the Tescheron family to Hoboken for six weeks, and hinted his suspicions gathered from Gabrielle that the old gentleman had been forced to settle with some official before returning, I was almost struck dumb. As he gave me the details of his wretched experience of that afternoon at the Gibsons', I became desperate.

"Jim, if that wedding comes off next Wednesday, will you forgive me?" I asked.

"It's impossible."

"What—to forgive me?"

"For me to ever achieve such happiness." From the depths of his despair, he looked at me entreatingly as he spoke.



CHAPTER XXI

During the night—we turned in about two A. M.—it occurred to me that I had heard or read that no person could be legally convicted of murder till the body of the victim had been found dead. This little matter had been overlooked about long enough, I thought. The lawyers might have asked concerning the corpus delicti, but no one had sought their advice. It struck me that the common-sense thing to do now was to begin at the bottom and see Collins, the undertaker, before I went too far in exonerating Hosley, even though I could never hope to escape the spell of his innocent, wholehearted manner.

The morning following the arrival of Jim, with his burden of woe, seeking release through the middleman of yore, I started out early, determined to do the biggest day's work as an intermediary ever recorded on Cupid's card index. I found Mr. Collins busy keeping his professional Prince Albert coat wide open, with both hands in his trousers pockets, at his quiet "establishment"—so described on the gold sign. I explained that I wanted some information. He recalled the Browning case very well, and tried hard to smile when I asked for the name of the cemetery and its location, that I might visit the grave. I thought that might stagger him, but it did not.

"You see, this sort of burial was out of my line altogether, but I did it to please Browning, an old friend of mine, and the children, as much as anything," he answered with complete self-possession.

Out of his line, of course, thought I, because his specialty was cremations, and this was a burial—much to my surprise.

"The lady was very kind to us when we lived there, Mr. Collins," I said, lying impressively. "I have been laid up in the hospital so long I have not had a chance to make the inquiry before. I want to take some flowers to lay on her grave as a token of our respect—my partner and I, you know—Mr. Hosley. We always found Mrs. Browning very accommodating" (she never bothered me, for I did not know that she existed until she ceased to do so). "We propose to take a whole day off and make a trip up there now to attend to this duty which has been uppermost in our minds."

Mr. Collins being a member of the Undertakers' Association, had been operated on for the removal of his diaphragm to prevent laughing, and he therefore took a serious professional interest in my request. He retired to the neighborhood of his safe, looked into some large books and returned with the name of the cemetery and a few directions written on a slip of paper.

"You'll find it just back of Mount Vernon, about two miles from the trolley crossing I have given you there. Take a hack when you leave the car; there's a livery right across the street. And say, don't forget to come back and tell me about it."

I thanked him for his kindness and assured him I would return to tell him the result of my search.

The proper thing to do with a murderer is to subject him to the third degree. Very often he will quake when taken to the grave of his victim. So I decided to take Jim up there with me; we could do it and get back easily by noon, and maybe before. If he quaked, I would not need to be hasty in defending him, and if he did not quake, the air would do him good, poor chap, for he was badly unstrung and needed a ride in the country.

"Come, Jim," I shouted, rushing into the house. "I am not going down to the office to-day. I shall take a day off to straighten out your tangled affairs. Get your things on and come with me."

He seemed to doubt my prowess, but slowly worked his way into his coat. Before boarding the elevated train going north, I bought a handsome bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley, tuberoses, asparagus fern and enough forget-me-nots to appropriately light up the center. This indicated to Jim that I was preparing a peace offering to tender Gabrielle. He wanted to know if he hadn't better wait on the corner while I went in and did the talking.

"In where?" I asked, for I had given no particulars.

"Why, you are going up to Ninety-sixth Street, aren't you?"

"Not I," said I. "At least not yet. We are going beyond that, Jim; up to Mount Vernon and beyond by trolley when we leave the elevated." I looked him square in the eye, and I could see no quaking. If he was suspicious, he knew how to dissemble. Could that be possible? I wondered, but only for a second.

"What are you going there for, Ben?"

"Can't you imagine, Jim?" I asked, having that midnight journey in mind that he might have taken with the man Collins, or his representatives, the night I was at the hotel. But I could not understand how he could have had time to make the trip.

"Never was up this way in my life," he answered, "and don't see where it comes in now, hanged if I do."

"Well, it's a little notion of mine," I assured him. "I don't want to proceed on this matter with Gabrielle until I have been to Mount Vernon and two miles beyond. The air will do you good, and so I brought you for that purpose."

I thought I would appear benevolent in his eyes, if I could not startle him. To tell the truth, I did not expect to startle him. He could not plot, and I was a knave, I thought then, ever to have doubted him. But I must go on and give him the third degree, for common-sense compelled caution.

"Ben, let's cut out Mount Vernon, get off and go up to Ninety-sixth Street. I'll go in alone and see if Gabrielle will not meet me this morning. I think she may, if you did not spoil everything by some crazy message."

"Why, Miss Tescheron will be down-town by this time; it is after nine o'clock."

"That's so. I don't suppose any one but her mother would be home." He seemed perfectly satisfied to go with me after that.

It was a dismal ride across the little stretch of country, and when the hack drew up in front of a tall, red building, I looked at my bouquet and then at the driver, asking him if he understood me to call for a brewery, the only object that seemed to lie before us. The man with the reins thereupon directed us to make a detour of the building and its fringe of beer garden, to a point where we would behold the spot we sought. I took Jim's arm and helped him to struggle toward the place. An old man in his shirt-sleeves was digging in a prospective vegetable patch with much lubrication of the horny hands of toil, in which he grasped a potato fork.

"Getting ready to plant?" I asked, my farming blood beginning to rise. "Why don't you use a spade and get somewhere?" There I was, as usual, ready to give advice.

"'Tain't necessary; we don't plant very deep, only 'bout a foot or two; expect we'll have to later on, though, if the business keeps on like it has been goin'. Say, mister, what time is it?" A man who digs for day's wages frequently wants to know the time, so I accommodated him and lost track of the direction of his remarks.

"Can you tell me where I'll find the grave noted on this slip of paper?" I asked, handing Collins' memorandum to him.

"Yes," said he, "that's one of mine. Browning—that's right. I kin show it to you. Step this way."

When he said it was one of his, I took it to mean that he had been the digger for the occasion. So we followed through a little rustic gate—Hamlet Hopkins and Horatio Hosley—into a fenced lot comprising about two acres of level ground, laid out in the smallest graves I had ever seen. Most of them were about the size of my floral tribute. The tiny marble slabs reared above many of the little knolls seemed like foot-stones, and appeared to indicate that the perpendicular system of the Irish pagans had been adopted.

"Here's your'n," said our guide, pointing to a very small exhibit in his peculiar collection. I laid the flowers on it and glanced at the headstone. The simple inscription read:

"TOOTSEY."

The foot-stone bore this epitaph:

"RATS!"



CHAPTER XXII

On the way home in the hack and the trolley, Jim wanted to know why I had gone so far out of my way. Was it part of my work for the city? Did I think I could manage his affairs with so much lost time? He was as restless and nervous as a hungry dog shivering before a meat-shop. As for myself, I never yielded a point in my dignity, but tried hard to add to my supply of superiority, assuring him the hour would soon be at hand when I could report a complete victory in his cause, and my own vindication as a middleman in the sort of business that had run me through the tortures specially prepared for those who flatter themselves they are better able to manage other people's business than their own. I had gone in so deep I determined to wade through to the finish, no matter if I did botch it. A craftsman such as I was could not be balked.

I left Jim at home and hurried down to Miss Tescheron's office, reaching there about two o'clock. I sent in my card by the boy, and it was returned, with the information that Miss Tescheron was too busy to see me.

I took the card and wrote on it:

"To the very last day of your life you will regret this act of folly. I have great good news for you. HOPKINS."

The boy did not return for ten minutes. I knew then that my message was working its leaven, and in time the moment of victory would arrive. At the end of ten minutes the boy returned and requested that I follow him into Miss Tescheron's office. There I found that charming young lady struggling to maintain an air of disinterested dignity behind a desk which I could not approach within three feet, because a railing had been planted as an outpost to guard against the bore emergency. But three feet was near enough for me that day. I could have done the work anywhere within range of my voice or pen, it was such an easy matter; at least, I thought so when I gained admission to the judge who was to be moved by my plea in behalf of the defendant, Hosley.

As I drew near, making my most dignified bow, I beheld the form of a gray-haired man, who was advancing in years beyond the middle period of life. He was seated near Miss Tescheron, whom I now faced for the first time. I knew he must be John MacDonald, the famous lawyer. Miss Tescheron, I imagined, had called him in to be a witness to all I might have to say. Two judges, therefore, were to hear the presentation I was about to make in behalf of the outcast. In my capacity as middleman, I had always relied on the pen; but it was up to me now to make good the claims of my client with a verbal argument before two of the most discriminating lawyers.

I relied more, however, on the woman's heart.



CHAPTER XXIII

How fortunate I was in my judges or my jury of two—a fond woman and a plain man of common-sense! As our lives have been so bound with theirs, I must reveal the man more fully here.

Mr. MacDonald was widely known among that class of corporations that sought knowledge of the law and not opinions as to how it might be corrupted. They came to him to carry their cases through the courts, and not through the legislatures via the lobby. Therefore, he was not what is commonly called a corporation lawyer. He never drew bills designed to conceal franchise grabs or tax evasions, or crooked contracts with dummies in subsidiary corporations organized to bleed a mother concern of its profits. Some laws not on the books governed him in such matters, so that he never became an accomplice in these forms of thievery. He did more than pray "lead us not into temptation"; he kept both of his keen eyes open to make sure that he did not fall into it, and when he found that he had fallen, he quickly made every effort to extricate himself. This meant that he turned away volumes of business which would have brought large returns, but he would not have his office fouled by this stream of corruption any more than he would seek health in a sewer. When these degenerate concerns were admitted to his office, they came as penitents seeking reformation. His regular clients were the corporations who had come to take his view, that a big business must be laid on broad and deep foundations of integrity all-around; that all compromises with blackmailing legislatures are but makeshifts; that the thing to seek is justice, not only for themselves, but with a greater zeal for the people whose resources they use. The whole solution of our economic problems, in the mind of this simple student of the law—including its ninety per cent. of human nature—lay in the corporations training their lawyers upon themselves as their most unmerciful critics—as conscience, the censor, lays down the laws which every strong individual must follow or meet his doom in ruin. The underlying principles of the thing involving millions were as simple in his mind as the obligation to pay his washerwoman, if he were to maintain his self-respect. The officers and directors of a corporation, he believed, could no more successfully cheat the State of its just taxes, or rob the stockholders by paying them a small profit on their holdings while draining the earnings of the concern with their subsidiary National Packing & Transportation Companies, United States Terminal Companies and American Warehouse & Bonding Corporations, without in the end reaping the reward of their crimes. Mr. MacDonald would no more give his consent to the swindling of innocent stockholders by their trustees, than he would rob an apple-stand. He had that rare discernment so seldom found now among big business men and their lawyer followers—he could see the wrong involved in the stealing of a million dollars and would gladly have aided in a movement to amend the penal code so as to prevent it, for he believed it possible for law to bring within the scope of its crushing penalties the audacity of these modern Captain Kidds. When he read the formal advertisement of a great industrial monopoly declaring a dividend of a few per cent, per annum basis on a lake of water owned by "outsiders," he thought of the beautifully worded contracts made between the officers of the concern, the "insiders," and their dummies, in the dozen or so parasitic companies whose stock was nearly all in their own hands, and paid from twenty to forty and even a hundred per cent, on the investment in unadvertised dividends. He thought of this and hundreds of other forms of legalized theft practiced by these men of church standing, who made it a point never to engage in petit larceny. They preferred to steal millions and keep on the safe side. They divided up the "swag" in the office of the American Transportation and Terminal Company, organized solely for that respectable purpose. It had a fine name, but the Bowery thieves would recognize it as a "fence." John MacDonald used to say: "A corporation is not known by the companies it keeps."

For five years Gabrielle Tescheron had advanced under the guidance of this simple, wise and good man, so that at the time of our story she had been well grounded in her profession, in its philosophy, in the routine of its office practice, and to some extent in the knowledge of human nature its successful followers must command. The long rows of sheepskin-bound books in the office library were less formidable; the grind of detail was no longer an obstacle to her ambition, which nerved her onward to the higher slopes of professional occupation, for she now had reliable subordinates trained according to the MacDonald system of thoroughness to complete for her the irksome tasks. Mixed up as the business was in corporation matters, it had much to look after that had fallen to it through legal processes, but which, of itself was pure business management and far away from the law. There were receiverships, and fortunate was the weak-kneed concern that fell into John MacDonald's hands; it generally meant new life and success for a dying venture. He worked no magic, but he applied a lot of common-sense where it had been scarce before, so that the results seemed much as if a fairy in finance had touched the difficult problems with a mystic wand. It was, however, the effect of truth entering where promotors had held sway before, or where addle-pated sons of constructive fathers, now departed, had been trying to make the business go on what they knew of actresses and automobiles. These concerns did so well under the receivership that when they began business anew, John MacDonald was generally engaged to remain in control of the management. If he found the right man in the shop—the fellow who might have saved it—or could put his finger on such a man elsewhere, he would assume the task with that man in charge under him. Concerns that were tottering to a fall through bad management naturally drifted into his office before the worst happened, and engaged him to save their corporate lives by his superior executive ability. This he would do also if he could find his man. As a lawyer, he had less regard for the law's power to effect transformations than a layman, and a higher conception of the value of good men. While the ignoramuses at the head of the capital and labor trusts were for leveling all the men in our big business concerns, MacDonald continued to have faith in strong individuals.

The effect of close relationship with this man was to gain strength. Gabrielle had studied his methods until they became her own. As I stood there before them, I did not know them as I do now. MacDonald's fame I knew, and that tended to frighten me. It should have given me confidence, for John MacDonald was what I call an "elemental man." He kept close to the earth—the simples of the world, he dealt in. It may appear from what I have said that he was loaded down with responsibilities and care; then I have not made it clear that the exercise of these executive gifts was chiefly to secure leisure and the opportunity for relaxation—a most important thing in the MacDonald philosophy. He and his staff worked hard that they might have time to play, and with short hours and good pay they came near to having the right proportions of labor and leisure to keep men and women sound in health and contented with the world. Therefore, there were not many employed in his office. Why, down in one of the city departments so familiar to Jim and me, the same volume of business would have required ten times as many employes, and at least thirty different systems.

During his leisure, which John MacDonald planned to maintain against all comers, and the on-rush of business, he practiced the art of relaxation; he had formed a habit of returning to the simple from confusing contact with the complex, and he practiced it largely in his home, with his wife and children. Lincoln is the best-known master of this art, necessary to maintain the equilibrium of a busy man, and keep him fresh, sane, sociable and interestingly boyish.

MacDonald had gone into the thick of the world's strife, and through the ordeal had shielded himself from its poisoned arrows of ambition. At a board meeting, it was said of John MacDonald, that when the three minutes of real business were over and his associates then began to discuss matters in the domain of irrelevancies, he resolved into smiles and found somebody to crack a joke with. He figured that about a third of his available time was given to actual work, and the rest to play, because his colleagues had so much ground to cover without reaching anywhere. There were days when he worked a full sixteen hours, but they were few, and he was always alone. On the days he had to associate with talking business men, he made up for these busy days by relaxing at a more rapid pace in a revel of bracing fun. I never knew a man who understood so thoroughly how to live and succeed, because it seemed to me he knew how to discount everything unnecessary, so that he might take the time others gave to straining their nerves to save his.

I suppose the character of Gabrielle Tescheron might have yielded to the unstable influences of her home, where her impulsive and irascible father sought to be an influential factor, were it not for the counteracting effect of the day's associations in that calm realm of business activity, where so much of the brain-work of vast industrial enterprises was conducted as noiselessly as the movements of one of those powerful machines that run in an oil bath. I do not say that she would not have been superior to her home environment without her fortunate associations down-town. I give the business small credit, for our superior jewels are intrinsically precious before the artisan gives the polish by which we more often make our comparisons. But there can be no question that she worked among associations which strengthened and emphasized all her admirable qualities and placed her above the petty things that annoyed her fretful father and seemed like mountains to his magnifying eyes.