CHAPTER XLIX

HOW MORTY SANDS TURNED AWAY SADLY AND JUDGE VAN DORN UNCOVERED A SECRET

Grant Adams sat in his cell, with the jail smell of stone and iron and damp in his nostrils. As he read the copy of Tolstoy's "The Resurrection," which his cell-mate had left in his hurried departure the night before, Grant moved unconsciously to get into the thin direct rays of the only sunlight—the early morning sunlight, that fell into his cage during the long summer day. The morning Times lay on the floor where Grant had dropped it after reading the account of what had happened to his cell-mate when the police had turned him over to the Law and Order League, at midnight. To be sure, the account made a great hero of John Kollander and praised the patriotism of the mob that had tortured the poor fellow. But the fact of his torture, the fact that he had been tarred and feathered, and turned out naked on the golf links of the country club, was heralded by the Times as a warning to others who came to Harvey to preach Socialism, and flaunt the red flag. Grant felt that the jailer's kindness in giving him the morning paper so early in the day, was probably inspired by a desire to frighten him rather than to inform him of the night's events.

Gradually he felt the last warmth of the morning sun creep away and he heard a new step beside the jailer's velvet footfall in the corridor, and heard the jailer fumbling with his keys and heard him say: "That's the Adams cell there in the corner," and an instant later Morty Sands stood at the door, and the jailer let him in as Grant said:

"Well, Morty—come right in and make yourself at home."

He was not the dashing young blade who for thirty years had been the Beau Brummel of George Brotherton's establishment; but a rather weazened little man whose mind illumined a face that still clung to sportive youth, while premature age was claiming his body.

He cleared his throat as he sat on the bunk, and after dropping Grant's hand and glancing at the book title, said: "Great, isn't it? Where'd you get it?"

"The brother they ran out last night. They came after him so suddenly that he didn't have time to pack," answered Grant.

"Well, he didn't need it, Grant," replied Morty. "I just left him. I got him last night after the mob finished with him, and took him home to our garage, and worked with him all night fixing him up. Grant, it's hell. The things they did to that fellow—unspeakable, and fiendish." Morty cleared his throat again, paused to gather courage and went on. "And he heard something that made him believe they were coming for you to-night."

The edge of a smile touched the seamed face, and Grant replied: "Well—maybe so. You never can tell. Besides old John Kollander, who are the leaders of this Law and Order mob, Morty?"

"Well," replied the little man, "John Kollander is the responsible head, but Kyle Perry is master of ceremonies—the stuttering, old coot; and Ahab gives them the use of the police, and Joe Calvin backs up both of them. However," sighed Morty, "the whole town is with them. It's stark mad, Grant—Harvey has gone crazy. These tramps filling the jails and eating up taxes—and the Times throwing scares into the merchants with the report that unless the strike is broken, the smelters and glassworks and cement works will move from the district—it's awful! My idea of hell, Grant, is a place where every man owns a little property and thinks he is just about to lose it."

The young-old man was excited, and his eyes glistened, but his speech brought on a fit of coughing. He lifted his face anxiously and began: "Grant,—I'm with you in this fight." He paused for breath. "It's a man's scrap, Grant—a man's fight as sure as you're born." Grant sprang to his feet and threw back his head, as he began pacing the narrow cell. As he threw out his arms, his claw clicked on the steel bars of the cell, and Morty Sands felt the sudden contracting of the cell walls about the men as Grant cried—

"That's what it is, Morty—it's a man's fight—a man's fight for men. The industrial system to-day is rotting out manhood—and womanhood too—rotting out humanity because capitalism makes unfair divisions of the profits of industry, giving the workers a share that keeps them in a man-rotting environment, and we're going to break up the system—the whole infernal profit system—the blight of capitalism upon the world." Grant brought down his hand on Morty's frail shoulder in a kind of frenzy. "Oh, it's coming—the Democracy of Labor is coming in the earth, bringing peace and hope—hope that is the 'last gift of the gods to men'—Oh, it's coming! it's coming." His eyes were blazing and his voice high pitched. He caught Morty's eyes and seemed to shut off all other consciousness from him but that of the idea which obsessed him.

Morty Sands felt gratefully the spell of the strong mind upon him. Twice he started to speak, and twice stopped. Then Grant said: "Out with it, Morty—what's on your chest?"

"Well,—this thing," he tapped his throat, "is going to get me, Grant, unless—well, it's a last hope; but I thought," he spoke in short, hesitating phrases, then he started again. "Grant, Grant," he cried, "you have it, this thing they call vitality. You are all vitality, bodily, mentally, spiritually. Why have I been denied always, everything that you have! Millions of good men and bad men and indifferent men are overflowing with power, and I—I—why, why can't I—what shall I do to get it? How can I feel and speak and live as you? Tell me." He gazed into the strong, hard visage looking down upon him, and cried weakly: "Grant—for God's sake, help me. Tell me—what shall I do to—Oh, I want to live—I want to live, Grant, can't you help me!"

He stopped, exhausted. Grant looked at him keenly, and asked gently,

"Had another hemorrhage this morning—didn't you?"

Morty looked over his clothes to detect the stain of blood, and nodded. "Oh, just a little one. Up all night working with Folsom, but it didn't amount to anything."

Grant sat beside the broken man, and taking his white hand in his big, paw-like hand:

"Morty—Morty—my dear, gentle friend; your trouble is not your body, but your soul. You read these great books, and they fascinate your mind. But they don't grip your soul; you see these brutal injustices, and they cut your heart; but they don't reach your will." The strong hand felt the fluttering pressure of the pale hand in its grasp. Morty looked down, and seemed about to speak.

"Morty," Grant resumed, "it's your money—your soul-choking money. You've never had a deep, vital, will-moving conviction in your life. You haven't needed this money. Morty, Morty," he cried, "what you need is to get out of your dry-rot of a life; let the Holy Ghost in your soul wake up to the glory of serving. Face life barehanded, consecrate your talents—you have enough—to this man's fight for men. Throw away your miserable back-breaking money. Give it to the poor if you feel like it; it won't help them particularly." He shook his head so vigorously that his vigor seemed like anger, and hammered with his claw on the iron bunk. "Money," he cried and repeated the word, "money not earned in self-respect never helps any one. But to get rid of the damned stuff will revive you; will give you a new interest in life—will change your whole physical body, and then—if you live one hour in the big soul-bursting joy of service you will live forever. But if you die—die as you are, Morty—you'll die forever. Come." Grant reached out his arms to Morty and fixed his luminous eyes upon his friend, "Come, come with me," he pleaded. "That will cure your soul—and it doesn't matter about your body."

Morty's face lighted, and he smiled sympathetically; but the light faded. He dropped his gaze to the floor and sighed. Then he shook his head sadly. "It won't work, Grant—it won't work. I'm not built that way. It won't work."

His fine sensitive mouth trembled, and he drew a deep breath that ended in a hard dry cough. Then he rose, held out his hand and said:

"Now you watch out, Grant—they'll get you yet. I tell you it's awful—that's the exact word—the way hate has driven this town mad." He shook the cage door, and the jailer came from around a corner, and unlocked the door, and in a moment Morty was walking slowly away with his eyes on the cold steel of the cell-room floor.

When his visitor was gone, Grant Adams went back to his book. At the end of an hour he went to the slit in his cell, which served as window, and looked on a damp courtyard that gave him a narrow slice of Market Street and the Federal court house in the distance. Men and women walking in and out of the little stereoscopic view he had of the street, seemed to the prisoner people in a play, or in another world. They were remote from him. At the gestures they made, the gaits they fell into, the errands they were going upon, the spring that obviously moved them, he gazed as one who sees a dull pantomime. During the middle of the morning, as he looked, he saw Judge Van Dorn's big, black motor car roll up to the curb before the Federal court house and unload the spare, dried-up, clothes-padded figure of the Judge, who flicked out of Grant's eyeshot. A hundred other figures passed, and Ahab Wright, with his white side-whiskers bristling testily, came bustling across the stereopticon screen and turned to the court house and was gone. Young Joe Calvin, dismounting from his white horse, came for a second into the picture, and soon after the elder Calvin came trotting along beside Kyle Perry with his heavy-footed gait, and the two turned as the Judge had turned—evidently into the court house, where the Judge had his office.

Grant took up his book. After noon the jailer came with Henry Fenn, who, as Adams' attorney, visited him daily. But the jailer stood by while the lawyer talked to the prisoner through the bars. Henry Fenn wore a troubled face and Grant saw at once that his friend was worried. So Grant began:

"So you've heard my cell-mate's message—eh, Henry? Well, don't worry. Tell the boys down in the Valley, whatever they do—to keep off Market Street and out of Harvey to-night."

The listening jailer looked sharply at Fenn. It was apparent the jailer expected Fenn to protest. But Fenn turned his radiant smile on the jailer and said: "The smelter men say they could go through this steel as if it was pasteboard in ten minutes—if you'd say the word." Fenn grinned at the prisoner as he added: "If you want the boys, all the tin soldiers and fake cops in the State can't stop them. But I've told them to stay away—to stay in their fields, to keep the peace; that it is your wish."

"Henry," replied Grant, "tell the boys this for me. We've won this fight now. They can't build a fire, strike a pick, or turn a wheel if the boys stick—and stick in peace. I'm satisfied that this story of what they will do to me to-night, while I don't question the poor chap who sent the word—is a plan to scare the boys into a riot to save me and thus to break our peace strike."

He walked nervously up and down his cell, clicking the bars with his claw as he passed the door. "Tell the boys this. Tell them to go to bed to-night early; beware of false rumors, and at all hazards keep out of Harvey. I'm absolutely safe. I'm not in the least afraid—and, Henry, Henry," cried Grant, as he saw doubt and anxiety in his friend's face, "what if it's true; what if they do come and get me? They can't hurt me. They can only hurt themselves. Violence always reacts. Every blow I get will help the boys—I know this—I tell you—"

"And I tell you, young man," interrupted Fenn, "that right now one dead leader with a short arm is worth more to the employers than a ton of moral force! And Laura and George and Nate and the Doctor and I have been skirmishing around all day, and we have filed a petition for your release on a habeas corpus in the Federal court—on the ground that your imprisonment under martial law without a jury trial is unconstitutional."

"In the Federal court before Van Dorn?" asked Grant, incredulously.

"Before Van Dorn. The State courts are paralyzed by young Joe Calvin's militia!" returned Fenn, adding: "We filed our petition this morning. So, whether you like it or not, you appear at three-thirty o'clock this afternoon before Van Dorn."

Grant smiled and after a moment spoke: "Well, if I was as scared as you people, I'd—look here. Henry, don't lose your nerve, man—they can't hurt me. Nothing on this earth can hurt me, don't you see, man—why go to Van Dorn?"

Fenn answered: "After all, Tom's a good lawyer in a life job and he doesn't want to be responsible for a decision against you that will make him a joke among lawyers all over the country when he is reversed by appeal." Grant shook his dubious head.

"Well, it's worth trying," returned Fenn.

At three o'clock Joseph Calvin, representing the employers, notified Henry Fenn that Judge Van Dorn had been called out of town unexpectedly and would not be able to hear the Adams' petition at the appointed time. That was all. No other time was set. But at half-past five George Brotherton saw a messenger boy going about, summoning men to a meeting. Then Brotherton found that the Law and Order League was sending for its members to meet in the Federal courtroom at half-past eight. He learned also that Judge Van Dorn would return on the eight o'clock train and expected to hear the Adams' petition that night. So Brotherton knew the object of the meeting. In ten minutes Doctor Nesbit, Henry Fenn and Nathan Perry were in the Brotherton store.

"It means," said Fenn, "that the mob is going after Grant to-night and that Tom knows it."

"Why?" asked the thin, sharp voice of Nathan Perry.

"Otherwise he would have let the case go over until morning."

"Why?" again cut in Perry.

"Because for the mob to attack a man praying for release under habeas corpus in a federal court might mean contempt of court that the federal government might investigate. So Tom's going to wash his hands of the matter before the mob acts to-night."

"Why?" again Perry demanded.

"Well," continued Fenn, "every day they wait means accumulated victory for the strikers. So after Tom refuses to release Grant, the mob will take him."

"Well, say—let's go to the Valley with this story. We can get five thousand men here by eight o'clock," cried Brotherton.

"And precipitate a riot, George," put in the Doctor softly, "which is one of the things they desire. In the riot the murder of Grant could be easily handled and I don't believe they will do more than try to scare him otherwise."

"Why?" again queried Nathan Perry, towering thin and nervous above the seated council.

"Well," piped the Doctor, with his chin on his cane, "he's too big a figure nationally for murder—"

"Well, then—what do you propose, gentlemen?" asked Perry who, being the youngest man in the council, was impatient.

Fenn rose, his back to the ornamental logs piled decoratively in the fireplace, and answered:

"To sound the clarion means riot and bloodshed—and failure for the cause."

"To let things drift," put in Brotherton, "puts Grant in danger."

"Of what?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, of indignities unspeakable and cruel torture," returned Brotherton.

"I'm sure that's all, George. But can't we—we four stop that?" said Fenn. "Can't we stand off the mob? A mob's a coward."

"It's the least we can do," said Perry.

"And all you can do, Nate," added the Doctor, with the weariness of age in his voice and in his counsel.

But when the group separated and the Doctor purred up the hill in his electric, his heart was sore within him and he spoke to the wife of his bosom of the burden that was on his heart. Then, after a dinner scarcely tasted, the Doctor hurried down town to meet with the men at Brotherton's.

As Mrs. Nesbit saw the electric dip under the hill, her first impulse was to call up her daughter on the telephone, who was at Foley that evening. For be it remembered Mrs. Nesbit in the days of her prime was dubbed "the General" by George Brotherton, and when she saw the care and hovering fear in the pink, old face of the man she loved, she was not the woman to sit and rock. She had to act and, because she feared she would be stopped, she did not pick up the telephone receiver. She went to the library, where Kenyon Adams with his broken leg in splints was sitting while Lila read to him. She stood looking at the lovers for a moment.

"Children," she said, "Grant Adams is in great danger. We must help him."

To their startled questions, she answered: "He is asking your father, Lila, to release him from the prison to-night. If he is not released, a mob will take Grant as they took that poor fool last night and—" She stopped, turned toward them a perturbed and fear-wrinkled face. Then she said quickly: "I don't know that I owe Grant Adams anything but—you children do—" She did not complete her sentence, but burst out: "I don't care for Tom Van Dorn's court, his grand folderol and mummery of the law. He's going to send a man to death to-night because his masters demand it. And we must stop it—you and Lila and I, Kenyon."

Kenyon reached out, tried to rise and failed, but grasped her strong, effective hand, as he cried: "What can we do—what can I do?"

She went into the Doctor's office and brought out two old crutches.

"Take these," she said, "then I'll help you down the porch steps—and you go to your mother! That's what you can do. Maybe she can stop him—she has done a number of other worse things with him."

She literally lifted the tottering youth down the veranda steps and a few moments later his crutches were rattling upon the stone steps that rose in front of the proud house of Van Dorn. Margaret had seen him coming and met him before he rang the bell.

She looked the dreadful wonder in her mind and as he took her hand to steady himself, he spoke while she was helping him to sit.

"You are my mother," he said simply. "I know it now." He felt her hand tighten on his arm. She bent over him and with finger on lips, whispered: "Hush, hush, the maid is in there—what is it, Kenyon?"

"I want you to save Grant."

She still stood over him, looking at him with her glazed eyes shot with the evidence of a strong emotion.

"Kenyon, Kenyon—my boy—my son!" she whispered, then said greedily: "Let me say it again—my son!" She whispered the word "son" for a moment, stooping over him, touching his forehead gently with her fingers. Then she cried under her breath: "What about that man—your—Grant? What have I to do with him?"

He reached for her hands beseechingly and said: "We are asking your husband, the Judge, to let him out of jail to-night, for if the Judge doesn't release Grant—they are going to mob him and maybe kill him! Oh, won't you save him? You can. I know you can. The Judge will let him out if you demand it."

"My son, my son!" the woman answered as she looked vacantly at him. "You are my son, my very own, aren't you?"

She stooped to look into his eyes and cried: "Oh, you're mine"—her trembling fingers ran over his face. "My eyes, my hair. You have my voice—O God—why haven't they found it out?" Then she began whispering over again the words, "My son."

A clock chimed the half-hour. It checked her. "He'll be back in half an hour," she said, rising; then—"So they're going to mob Grant, are they? And he sent you here asking me for mercy!"

Kenyon shook his head in protest and cried: "No, no, no. He doesn't even know—"

She looked at the young man and became convinced that he was telling the truth; but she was sure that Laura Van Dorn had sent him. It was her habit of mind to see the ulterior motive. So the passion of motherhood flaring up after years of suppression quickly died down. It could not dominate her in her late forties, even for the time, nor even with the power which held her during the night of the riot in South Harvey, when she was in her thirties. The passion of motherhood with Margaret Van Dorn was largely a memory, but hate was a lively and material emotion.

She fondled her son in the simulation of a passion that she did not feel—and when in his eagerness he tried vainly to tie her to a promise to help his father, she would only reply:

"Kenyon, oh, my son, my beautiful son—you know I'd give my life for you—"

The son looked into the dead, brassy eyes of his mother, saw her drooping mouth, with the brown lips that had not been stained that day; observed the slumping muscles of her over-massaged face, and felt with a shudder the caress of her fingers—and he knew in his heart that she was deceiving him. A moment after she had spoken the automobile going to the station for the Judge backed out of the garage and turned into the street.

"You must go now," she cried, clinging to him. "Oh, son—son—my only son—come to me, come to your mother sometimes for her love. He is coming now in a few minutes on the eight o'clock train. You must not let him see you here."

She helped Kenyon to rise. He stumbled across the floor to the steps and she helped him gently down to the lawn. She stood play-acting for him a moment in whisper and pantomime, then she turned and hurried indoors and met the inquisitive maid servant with:

"Just that Kenyon Adams—the musician—awfully dear boy, but he wanted me to interfere with the Judge for that worthless brother, Grant. The Nesbits sent him. You know the Nesbit woman is crazy about that anarchist. Oh, Nadine, did Chalmers see Kenyon? You know Chalmers just blabs everything to the Judge."

Nadine indicated that Chalmers had recognized Kenyon as he crawled up the veranda steps and Mrs. Van Dorn replied: "Very well, I'll be ready for him." And half an hour later, when the Judge drove up, his wife met him as he was putting his valise in his room:

"Dahling," she said as she closed the door, "that Kenyon Adams was over here, appealing to me for his brother, Grant."

"Well?" asked the Judge contemptuously.

"You have him where we want him now, dahling," she answered. "If you refuse him his freedom, the mob will get him. And oh, oh, oh," she cried passionately, "I hope they'll hang him, hang him, higher'n Haman. That will take the tuck out of the old Nesbit cat and that other, his—his sweetheart, to have her daughter marrying the brother of a man who was hanged! That'll bring them down."

A flash across the Judge's face told the woman where her emotion was leading her. It angered her.

"So that holds you, does it? That binds the hands of the Judge, does it? This wonderful daughter, who snubs him on the street—she mustn't marry the brother of a man who was hanged!" Margaret laughed, and the Judged glowered in rage until the scar stood white upon his purple brow.

"Dahling," she leered, "remember our little discussion of Kenyon Adams's parentage that night! Maybe our dear little girl is going to marry the son, the son," she repeated wickedly, "of a man who was hanged!"

He stepped toward her crying: "For God's sake, quit! Quit!"

"Oh, I hope he'll hang. I hope he'll hang and you've got to hang him! You've got to hang him!" she mocked exultingly.

The man turned in rage. He feared the powerful, physical creature before him. He had never dared to strike her. He wormed past her and ran slinking down the hall and out of the door—out from the temple of love, which he had builded—somewhat upon sand perhaps, but still the temple of love. A rather sad place it was, withal, in which to rest the weary bones of the hunter home from the hills, after a lifelong ride to hounds in the primrose hunt.

He stood for a moment upon the steps of the veranda, while his heart pumped the bile of hate through him; and suddenly hearing a soft footfall, he turned his head quickly, and saw Lila—his daughter. As he turned toward her in the twilight it struck him like a blow in the face that she in some way symbolized all that he had always longed for—his unattainable ideal; for she seemed young—immortally young, and sweet. The grace of maidenhood shone from her and she turned an eager but infinitely wistful face up to his, and for a second the picture of the slim, white-clad figure, enveloping and radiating the gentle eagerness of a beautiful soul, came to him like the disturbing memory of some vague, lost dream and confused him. While she spoke he groped back to the moment blindly and heard her say:

"Oh, you will help me now, this once, this once when I beg it; you will help me?" As she spoke she clutched his arm. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Father, don't let them murder him—don't, oh, please, father—for me, won't you save him for me—won't you let him out of jail now?"

"Lila, child," the Judge held out his hand unsteadily, "it's not what I want to do; it's the law that I must follow. Why, I can't do—"

"If Mr. Ahab Wright was in jail as Grant is and the workmen had the State government, what would the law say?" she answered. Then she gripped his hands and cried: "Oh, father, father, have mercy, have mercy! We love him so and it will kill Kenyon. Grant has been like a father to Kenyon; he has been—"

"Tell me this, Lila," the Judge stopped her; he held her hands in his cold, hard palms. "Who is Kenyon—who is his father—do you know?"

"Yes, I know," the daughter replied quietly.

"Tell me, then. I ought to know," he demanded.

"There is just one right by which you can ask," she began. "But if you refuse me this—by what other right can you ask? Oh, daddy, daddy," she sobbed. "In my dreams I call you that. Did you ever hear that name, daddy, daddy—I want you—for my sake, to save this man, daddy."

The Judge heard the words that for years had sounded in his heart. They cut deep into his being. But they found no quick.

"Well, daughter," he answered, "as a father—as a father who will help you all he can—I ask, then, who is Kenyon Adams's father?"

"Grant," answered the girl simply.

"Then you are going to marry an illegitimate—"

"I shall marry a noble, pure-souled man, father."

"But, Lila—Lila," he rasped, "who is his mother?"

Then she shrank away from him. She shook her head sadly, and withdrew her hands from his forcibly as she cried:

"O father—father—daddy, have you no heart—no heart at all?" She looked beseechingly up into his face and before he could reply, she seemed to decide upon some further plea. "Father, it is sacred—very sacred to me, a beautiful memory that I carry of you, when I think of the word 'Daddy.' I have never, never, not even to mother, nor to Kenyon spoken of it. But I see you young, and straight and tall and very handsome. You have on light gray clothes and a red flower on your coat, and I am in your arms hugging you, and then you put me down, and I stand crying 'Daddy, daddy,' after you, when you are called away somewhere. Oh, then—then, oh, I know that then—I don't know where you went nor anything, but then, then when I snuggled up to you, surely you would have heard me if I had asked you what I am asking now."

The daughter paused, but the father did not answer at once. He looked away from her across the years. In the silence Lila was aware that in the doorway back of her father, Margaret Van Dorn stood listening. Her husband did not know that she was there.

"Lila," he began, "you have told me that Kenyon's father is Grant Adams, why do you shield his mother?"

The daughter stood looking intently into the brazen eyes of her father, trying to find some way into his heart. "Father, Grant Adams is before your court. He is the father of the man whom I shall marry. You have a right to know all there is to know about Grant Adams." She shook her head decisively. "But Kenyon's mother, that has nothing to do with what I am asking you!" She paused, then cried passionately: "Kenyon's mother—oh, father, that's some poor woman's secret, which has no bearing on this case. If you had any right on earth to know, I should tell you; but you have no right."

"Now, Lila," answered her father petulantly—"look here—why do you get entangled with those Adamses? They are a low lot. Girl, a Van Dorn has no business stooping to marry an Adams. Miserable mongrel blood is that Adams blood child. Why the Van Dorns—" but Lila's pleading, wistful voice went on:

"In all my life, father, I have asked you only this one thing, and this is just, you know how just it is—that you keep my future husband's father from a cruel, shameful death. And—now—" her voice was quivering, near the breaking point, and she cried: "And now, now you bring in blood and family. What are they in an hour like this! Oh, father—father, would my daddy—the fine, strong, loving daddy of my dreams do this? Would he—would he—oh, daddy—daddy—daddy!" she cried, beseechingly.

Perhaps he could see in her face the consciousness that some one was behind him, for he turned and saw his wife standing in the doorway. As he saw her, there rose in him the familiar devil she always aroused, which in the first years wore the mask of love, but dropped that mask for the sneer of hate. It was the devil's own voice that spoke, quietly, suavely, and with a hardness that chilled his daughter's heart. "Lila, perhaps the secret of Kenyon's mother is no affair of mine, but neither is Grant Adams's fate after I turn him back to the jailer, an affair of mine. But you make Grant's affair mine; well, then—I make this secret an affair of mine. If you want me to release Grant Adams—well, then, I insist." The gray features of his wife stopped him; but he smiled and waved his hand grandly at the miserable woman, as he went on: "You see my wife has bragged to me once or twice that she knows who Kenyon's mother is, Lila, and now—"

The daughter put her hands to her face and turned away, sick with the horror of the scene. Her heart revolted against the vile intrigue her father was proposing. She turned and faced him, clasping her hands in her anguish, lifted her burning face for a moment and stared piteously at him, as she sobbed: "O dear, dear God—is this my father?" and shaking with shame and horror she turned away.



CHAPTER L

JUDGE VAN DORN SINGS SOME MERRY SONGS AND THEY TAKE GRANT ADAMS BEHIND A WHITE DOOR

After arguments of counsel, after citation of cases, after the applause of Market Street at some incidental obiter dicta of Judge Van Dorn's about the rights of property, after the court had put on its tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, which the court had brought home from its recent trip to Chicago to witness the renomination of President Taft, after the court, peering through its brown-framed spectacles, was fumbling over its typewritten opinion from the typewriter of the offices of Calvin & Calvin, written during the afternoon by the court's legal alter ego, after the court had cleared its throat to proceed with the reading of the answer to the petition in habeas corpus of Grant Adams, the court, through its owlish glasses, saw the eyes of the petitioner Adams fixed, as the court believed, malignantly on the court.

"Adams," barked the court, "stand up!" With his black slouch hat in his hand, the petitioner Adams rose. It was a hot night and he wiped his brow with a red handkerchief twisted about his steel claw.

"Adams," began the court, laying down the typewritten manuscript, "I suppose you think you are a martyr."

The court paused. Grant Adams made no reply. The court insisted:

"Well, speak up. Aren't you a martyr?"

"No," meeting the eye of the court, "I want to get out and get to work too keenly to be a martyr."

"To get to work," sneered the court. "You mean to keep others from going to work. Now, Adams, isn't it true that you are trying to steal the property of this district from its legal owners by riot and set yourself up as the head of your Democracy of Labor, to fatten on the folly of the working men?" The court did not pause for a reply, but continued: "Now, Adams, there is no merit to the contentions of your counsel in this hearing, but, even if there was mere technical weight to his arguments, the moral issues involved, the vast importance of this ease to the general welfare of this Republic, would compel this court to take judicial notice of the logic of its decision in your favor. For it would release anarchy, backed by legal authority, and strike down the arm of the State in protecting property and suppressing crime."

The court paused, and, taking its heavy spectacles in its fingers, twirled them before asking: "Adams, do you think you are a God? What is this rot you're talking about the Prince of Peace? What do you mean by saying nothing can hurt you? If you know nothing can hurt you, why do you let your attorney plead the baby act and declare that, if you are not released to-night, a mob will wait on you? If you are a God, why don't you help yourself—quell the mob, overcome the devil?"

The crowd laughed and the court perfunctorily rapped for order. The laugh was frankincense and myrrh to the court. So the court clearly showed its appreciation of its own fine sarcasm as it rapped for order and continued insolently: "See here, Adams, if you aren't crazy, what are you trying to do? What do you expect to get out of all this glib talk about the power of spiritual forces and the peaceful revolution and the power greater than bullets and your fanatical ranting about the Holy Ghost in the dupes you are inciting to murder? Come now, maybe you are crazy? Maybe if you'd talk and not stand there like a loon—"

Again the crowd roared and again the court suppressed its chuckle and again order was restored. "Maybe if you'd not stand there grouching, you'd prove to the court that you are crazy, and on the grounds of insanity the court might grant your prayer. Come, now, Adams, speak up; go the whole length. Give us your creed!"

"Well," began Adams, "since you want—"

"Don't you know how to address a court?" The court bellowed.

"To say 'Your honor' would be a formality which even your friends would laugh at," replied Grant quietly. The crowd hissed; the court turned purple. Grant Adams stood rigid, with white face and quivering muscles. His jaws knotted and his fist clenched. Yet when he spoke he held his voice down. In it was no evidence of his tension. Facing for the first few moments of his speech the little group of his friends—Dr. Nesbit, George Brotherton, Captain Morton, Nathan Perry and Amos Adams—who sat at the lawyers' table with Henry Fenn, Grant Adams plunged abruptly into his creed: "I believe that in every human adult consciousness there is a spark of altruism, a divine fire, which marks the fatherhood of God and proves the brotherhood of man. Environment fans that spark or stifles it. Its growth is evidenced in human institutions, in scales and grades of civilization. Christ was a glowing flame of this fire." The court gave a knowing wink to Ahab Wright, who grinned at the court's keen sense of humor. Adams saw the wink, but proceeded: "That is what He means when He says: 'I am the resurrection and the life,' for only as men and nations, races and civilization by their institutions fan that spark to fire, will they live, will they conquer the forces of death ever within them."

Thus far Grant Adams had been speaking slowly, addressing himself more to his friends and the court stenographer than the crowd. Now he faced the crowd defiantly as he let his voice rise and cried: "This is no material world. Humanity is God trying to express Himself in terms of justice—with the sad handicap of time and space ever holding the Eternal Spirit in check. We are all Gods."

Again Market Street, which worshiped the god material, hissed. Grant turned to the men in the benches a mad, ecstatic face and throwing his crippled arm high above his head, cried aloud:

"O men of Harvey, men with whom I have lived and labored, I would give my life if you could understand me; if you could know in your hearts how passionately I yearn to get into your souls the knowledge that only as you give you will have, only as you love these men of the mines and mills, only as you are brothers to these ginks and wops and guinnies, will prosperity come to Harvey. 'I am the resurrection and the life' should ring through your souls; for when brotherhood, expressed in law and customs, gives these men their rightful share in the products of their labor, our resurrected society will begin to live." He stopped dead still for a moment, gazing, almost glaring, into the eyes of the crowd. Ahab Wright dropped his gaze. But John Kollander, who heard nothing, glared angrily back. Then leaning forward and throwing out his claw as if to grapple them, Grant Adams, let out his great voice in a cry that startled Market Street into a shudder as he spoke. "Come, come, come with us and live, oh, men of Market Street, you who are dead and damned! Come with us and live. 'I am the way and the life.'" He checked his rising voice, then said: "Come, let us go forward together, for only then will God, striving for justice in humanity, restore your dead and atrophied souls. Have faith that as you give you will have; as you love, will you live." His manner changed again. The court was growing restless. Grant's voice was low pitched, but it showed a heavy tension of emotion. He stretched his hand as one pleading: "Oh, come with us. Come with us—your brothers. We are one body, why should we have different aims? We are ten thousand here, you are many more. Perhaps we are only dreaming a mad dream, but if you come with us we shall all awake from our dream into a glorious reality."

Market Street laughed. John Kollander bawled: "He's an anarchist—a socialist!" Grant looked at the deaf old man in his blue coat and brass buttons adorned with many little flags, to advertise his patriotism. Taking a cue from John Kollander, Grant cried: "I am moving with the current of Heavenly love, I am a part of that love that is washing into this planet from the infinite source of life beyond our ken. I am moved, I know not how. I am inspired to act, I know not whence. I go I know not where—only I have faith, faith that fears nothing, faith that tells me that insomuch as I act in love, I am a part of the Great Purpose moving the universe, immortal, all powerful, vital, the incarnation of Happiness! I am trying—trying—ah, God, how I am trying, to bring into the world all the love that my soul will carry. I am—"

"That's enough," snapped the court; and turning to Joseph Calvin, Judge Van Dorn said: "That man's crazy. This court has no jurisdiction over the insane. His family can bring a proceeding in habeas corpus before the probate court of the county on the ground of the prisoner's insanity. But I have no right to take judicial notice of his insanity." The Judge folded up his opinion, twirled his heavy glasses a moment, blinked wisely and said: "Gentlemen, this is no case for me. This is a crazy man. I wash my hands of the whole business!"

He rose, put away his glasses deliberately, and was stepping from his dais, when up rose big George Brotherton and cried:

"Say, Tom Van Dorn—if you want this man murdered, say so. If you want him saved, say so. Don't polly-fox around here, dodging the issue. You know the truth of the matter as well as—"

The court smiled tolerantly at the impetuous fellow, who was clearly in contempt of court. The crowd waited breathlessly.

"Well, George," said the suave Judge with condescension in his tone as he strutted into the group of lawyers and reporters about him, "if you know so much about this case, what is the truth?" The crowd roared its approval. "But hire a hall, George—don't bother me with it. It's out of my jurisdiction."

So saying, he elbowed his way out of the room into his office and soon was in his automobile, driving toward the Country Club. He had agreed to be out of reach by telephone during the evening and that part of the agreement he decided to keep.

After the Judge left the room Market Street rose and filed out, leaving Grant standing among the little group of his friends. The sheriff stood near by, chatting with the jailer and as Brotherton came up to bid Grant good-night, Brotherton felt a piece of paper slip into his hands, when he shook hands with Grant. "Don't let it leave your pocket until you see me again," said Grant in a monotone, that no one noticed.

The group—Dr. Nesbit, Nathan Perry, George Brotherton and Captain Morton—stood dazed and discouraged about Grant. No one knew exactly what note to strike—whether of anger or of warning or of cheer. It was Captain Morton who broke the silence.

"'Y gory, man—free speech is all right, and I'm going to stay with you, boy, and fight it out; but, Grant, things do look mighty shaky here, and I wonder if it's worth it—for that class of people, eh?"

From the Captain, Nathan Perry took his cue. "I should say, Grant, that they'll make trouble to-night. Shouldn't we call out the boys from the Valley, and—"

Grant cut in:

"Men, I know what you fear," he said. "You are afraid they will kill me. Why, they can't kill me! All that I am that is worth living is immortal. What difference does it make about this body?" His face was still lighted with the glow it wore while he was addressing the court. "Ten thousand people in the Valley have my faith. And now I know that even this strike is not important. The coming Democracy of Labor is a spiritual caste. And it has been planted in millions of minds. It can never die. It too is immortal. What have guns and ropes and steel bars to do with a vision like this?" He threw back his head, his blue eyes blazed and he all but chanted his defiance of material things: "What can they do to me, to my faith, to us, to these Valley people, to the millions in the world who see what we see, who know what we know and strive for what we cherish? Don't talk to me about death—there is no death for God's truth. As for this miserable body here—" He gazed at his friends for a moment, shook his head sadly and walked to the jailer.

For an hour after the sheriff took Grant to his cell as the town went home and presumably to bed, George Brotherton with Henry Fenn and Nathan Perry, rolled his car around the court house square in the still, hot June night. The Doctor stood by his electric runabout, for half an hour or more. Then, the Doctor feeling that a false alarm had been spread, whirred up the hill. The younger men stayed on Market Street. They left it long after midnight, deserted and still.

As the watching party broke up, a telephone message from the offices of Calvin & Calvin winged its way to Sands Park, and from the shades there came silently a great company of automobiles with hooded lights. One separated from the others and shot down into the Valley of the Wahoo. The others went into Market Street.

At three o'clock the work there was done. The office of the Harvey Tribune was wrecked, and in one automobile rode Amos Adams, a prisoner, while before him, surrounded by a squad of policemen, rode Grant Adams, bound and gagged.

Around the policemen the mob gathered, and at the city limits the policemen abandoned Grant and Amos. Their instructions were to take the two men out of town. The policemen knew the mob. It was not Market Street. It was the thing that Market Street had made with its greed. The ignorance of the town, the scum of the town—men, white and black, whom Market Street, in thoughtless greed the world over, had robbed as children of their birthright; men whose chief joy was in cruelty and who lusted for horror. The mob was the earth-bound demon of Market Street. Only John Kollander in his brass buttons and blue soldier clothes and stuttering Kyle Perry and one or two others of the town's respectability were with the mob that took Grant Adams and his father after the policemen released the father and son at the city limits. The respectables directed; the scum and the scruff of the town followed, yelping not unlike a pack of hungry dogs.

John Kollander led the way to the country club grounds. There was a wide stretch of rolling land, quiet, remote from passing intruders, safe; and there great elm trees cast their protecting shade, even in the starlight, over such deeds as men might wish to do in darkness.

It was nearly four o'clock and the clouds, banked high in the west, were flaming with heat lightning.

On the wide veranda of the country club alone, with a siphon and a fancy, square, black bottle, sat Judge Thomas Van Dorn. He was in his shirt sleeves. His wilted collar, grimy and bedraggled, lay on the floor beside him. He was laughing at something not visible to the waiter, who sat drowsing in the door of the dining room, waiting for the Judge either to go to sleep or to leave the club in his car. The Judge had been singing to himself and laughing quietly at his own ribaldry for nearly an hour. The heat had smothered the poker game in the basement and except for the Judge and the waiter the club house was deserted. The Judge hit the table with the black bottle and babbled:

"Dog bit a rye straw, Dog bit a riddle-O! Dog bit a little boy Playing on a fiddle-O!"

Then he laughed and said to the sleepy waiter: "Didn't know I could sing, did you, Gustave!"

The waiter grinned. The Judge did not hear a footstep behind him. The waiter looked up and saw Kyle Perry.

"Oh, I know a maid And she's not afraid To face—

"Why, hello Kyle, you old stuttering scoundrel—have one on me—cleanses the teeth—sweetens the breath and makes hair grow on your belly!"

He laughed and when Kyle broke in:

"S-s-say, T-T-Tom, the f-f-fellows are all over in the g-g-golf l-l-links."

"The hell they are, Kyle," laughed the Judge. "Tell 'em to come over and have a cold one on me—Gustave, you go—"

"B-b-but they d-don't want a drink. The p-p-poker b-b-bunch said you were here and th-th-they s-s-sent m-m-me to—"

"S-s-s-sure they d-d-did, Kyle," interrupted Van Dorn. "They sent you to read the Declaration of Independence to-morrow and wanted you to begin now and get a g-g-good st-st-start!" He broke into song:

"Oh, there was an old man from Dundee Who got on a hell of a spree, Oh, he wound up the clock, With—

"Say, Kyle," the Judge looked up foolishly, "you didn't know that I was a cantatrice." He laughed and repeated the last word slowly three times and then giggled.

"Still sober. I tell Mrs. Van Dorn that when I can say cantatrice or specification," he repeated that word slowly, "I'm fit to hold court."

"Oh, the keyhole in the door— The keyhole in the door—"

he bellowed.

"Now, l-l-listen, T-T-Tom," insisted Perry. "I t-t-tell you the bunch has g-g-got Grant Adams and the old man out there in the g-g-golf l-links and they heard you were h-h-here and they s-s-sent me to tell you they were g-g-going to g-g-give him all the d-d-degrees and they w-w-want to t-t-tie a s-s-sign on him when they t-t-turn him loose and h-h-head him for Om-m-ma-h-ha—"

"B-b-better h-h-h-head him for h-h-hell," mocked the Judge.

"Well, they've g-got an iron b-b-band they've b-b-bound on h-h-him and they've got a b-b-board and some t-t-tar and they w-w-want a m-motto."

The Judge reached for his fountain pen in his white vest and when the waiter had brought a sheet of paper, he scribbled while he sang sleepily:

"Oh, there was a man and he could do, He could do—he could do;

"Here," he pushed the paper to Perry, who saw the words:

"Get on to the Prince of Peace, Big Boss of the Democracy of Labor."

"That's k-k-kind of t-t-tame, don't y-y-you think?" said Kyle.

"That's all right, Kyle—anyway, what I've written goes:

"Oh, there was an old woman in Guiana."

He sang and waved Kyle proudly away. And in another hour the waiter had put him to bed.

* * * * *

It was nearly dawn when George Brotherton had told his story to Laura. They sat in the little, close, varnish-smelling room to which he called her.

She had come through rain from Harvey. As she came into the dreary, shabby, little room in South Harvey, with its artificial palms and artificial wreaths—cheap, commercial habiliments of ostentatious mourning, Laura Van Dorn thought how cruel it was that he should be there, in a public place at the end, with only the heavy hands of paid attendants to do the last earthly services for him—whose whole life was a symbol of love.

But her heart was stricken, deeply, poignantly stricken by the great peace she found behind the white door. Yet thus the dust touches our souls' profoundest depths—always with her memory of that great peace, comes the memory of the odor of varnish and carbolic acid and the drawn, spent face of George Brotherton, as he stood before her when she closed the door. He gazed at her piteously, a wreck of a man, storm-battered and haggard. His big hands were shaking with a palsy of terrible grief. His moon face was inanimate, and vagrant emotions from his heart flicked across his features in quivers of anguish. His thin hair was tousled and his clothes were soiled and disheveled.

"I thought you ought to know, Laura—at once," he said, after she had closed the white door behind her and sat numb and dumb before him. "Nate and Henry and I got there about four o'clock. Well, there they were—by the big elm tree—on the golf course. His father was there and he told me coming back that when they wanted Grant to do anything—they would string up Amos—poor old Amos! They made Grant stoop over and kiss the flag, while they kicked him; and they made him pull that machine gun around the lake. The fools brought it up from the camp in South Harvey." Brotherton's face quivered, but his tears were gone. He continued: "They strung poor old Amos up four times, Laura—four times, he says." Brotherton looked wearily into the street. "Well, as we came down the hill in our car, we could see Grant. He was nearly naked—about as he is now. We came tearing down the hill, our siren screaming and Nate and me yelling and waving our guns. At the first scream of our siren, there was an awful roar and a flash. Some one," Brotherton paused and turned his haggard eyes toward Laura—"it was deaf John Kollander, he turned the lever and fired that machine gun. Oh, Laura, God, it was awful. I saw Grant wilt down. I saw—"

The man broke into tears, but bit his lips and continued: "Oh, they ran like snakes then—like snakes—like snakes, and we came crashing down to the tree and in a moment the last machine had piked—but I know 'em, every man-jack!" he cried. "There was the old man, tied hand and foot, three yards from the tree, and there, half leaning, half sitting by the tree, the boy, the big, red-headed, broken and crippled boy—was panting his life out." Brotherton caught her inquiring eyes. "It was all gone, Laura," he said softly, "all gone. He was the boy, the shy, gentle boy that we used to know—and always have loved. All this other that the years have brought was wiped from his eyes. They were so tender and—" He could go no further. She nodded her understanding. He finally continued: "The first thing he said to me was, 'It's all right, George.' He was tied, they had pulled the claw off and his poor stumped arm was showing and he was bleeding—oh, Laura."

Brotherton fumbled in his pocket and handed an envelope to her.

"'George,' he panted, as I tried to make him comfortable—'have Nate look after father.' And when Nate had gone he whispered between gasps, 'that letter there in the court room—' He had to stop a moment, then he whispered again, 'is for her, for Laura.' He tried to smile, but the blood kept bubbling up. We lifted him into an easier position, but nothing helped much. He realized that and when we quit he said:

"'Now then, George, promise me this—they're not to blame. John Kollander isn't to blame. It was funny; Kyle Perry saw him as I did, and Kyle—' he almost laughed, Laura.

"'Kyle,' he repeated, 'tried to yell at old John, but got so excited stuttering, he couldn't! I'm sure the fellows didn't intend—' he was getting weak; 'this,' he said.

"'Promise me and make—others; you won't tell. I know father—he won't. They're not—it's—society. Just that,' he said. 'This was society!' He had to stop. I felt his hand squeeze. 'I'm—so—happy,' he said one word at a time, gripping my hand tighter and tighter till it ached." Brotherton put out his great hand, and looked at it impersonally, as one introducing a stranger for witness. Then Brotherton lifted his eyes to Laura's and took up his story:

"'That's hers,' he said; 'the letter,' and then 'my messages—happy.'"

The woman pressed her letter to her lips and looked at the white door. She rose and, holding her letter to her bosom, closed her eyes and stood with a hand on the knob. She dropped her hand and turned from the white door. The dawn was graying in the ugly street. But on the clouds the glow of sunrise blushed in promise. She walked slowly toward the street. She gazed for a moment at the glorious sky of dawn.

When her eyes met her friend's, she cried:

"Give me your hand—that hand!"

She seized it, gazed hungrily at it a second, then kissed it passionately. She looked back at the white door, and shook with sobs as she cried:

"Oh, you don't think he's there—there in the night—behind the door? We know—oh, we do know he's out here—out here in the dawn."



CHAPTER LI

IN WHICH WE END AS WE BEGAN AND ALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER

The great strike in the Wahoo Valley now is only an episode in the history of this struggle of labor for its rights. The episode is receding year by year further and more dimly into the past and is one of the long, half-forgotten skirmishes wherein labor is learning the truth that only in so far as labor dares to lean on peace and efficiency can labor move upward in the scale of life. The larger life with its wider hope, requires the deeper fellowship of men. The winning or losing of the strike in the Wahoo meant little in terms of winning or losing; but because the men kept the peace, kept it to the very end, the strike meant much in terms of progress. For what they gained was permanent; based on their own strength, not on the weakness of those who would deny them.

But the workers in the mines and mills of the Wahoo Valley, who have gone to and from their gardens, planting and cultivating and harvesting their crops for many changing seasons, hold the legend of the strong man, maimed and scarred, who led them in that first struggle with themselves, to hold themselves worthy of their dreams. In a hundred little shacks in the gardens, and in dingy rooms in the tenements may be found even to-day newspaper clippings pinned to the wall with his picture on them, all curled up and yellow with years. Before a wash-stand, above a bed or pasted over the kitchen stove, soiled and begrimed, these clippings recall the story of the man who gave his life to prove his creed. So the fellowship he brought into the world lives on.

And the fellowship that came into the world as Grant Adams went out of it, touched a wider circle than the group with whom he lived and labored. The sad sincerity with which he worked proved to Market Street that the man was consecrated to a noble purpose, and Market Street's heart learned a lesson. Indeed the lives of that long procession of working men who have given themselves so freely—where life was all they had to give—for the freedom of their fellows from the bondage of the times, the lives of these men have found their highest value in making the Market Street eternal, realize its own shame. So Grant Adams lay down in the company of his peers that Market Street might understand in his death what his fellows really hoped for. He was a seed that is sown and falls upon good ground. For Market Street after all is not a stony place; seeds sown there bring forth great harvests. And while the harvest of Grant Adams's life is not at hand; the millennium is not here; the seed is quickening in the earth. And great things are moving in the world.

* * * * *

Of course, there came a time in Harvey, even in the house of Nesbit, when there was marrying and giving in marriage. It was on a winter's night when the house inside the deep, dark Moorish verandas, celebrating Mrs. Nesbit's last bout with the spirit of architecture, glowed with a jewel of light.

And in due course they appeared, Rev. Dr. John Dexter leading the way, followed by a thin, dark-skinned young man with eyes to match and a rather slight, shortish girl, blond and pink with happy trimmings and real pearls on her eyelashes. The children jabbered, and the women wept and the men wiped their eyes, and it was altogether a gay occasion. Just as the young people were ready to look the world squarely in the face, George Brotherton, thinking he heard some one moving outside in the deep, dark veranda, flicked on the porch light, and through the windows he saw—and the merry company could not help seeing two faces—two wan, unhappy faces, staring hungrily in at the bridal pair. They stood at different corners of the house and did not seem to know of one another's presence until the light revealed them. Only an instant did their faces flash into the light, as John Dexter was reading from the Bible a part of the service that he loved to put in, "and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." The faces vanished, there was a scurrying across the cement floor of the veranda and two figures met on the lawn in shame and anger.

But they in the house did not know of the meeting. For everybody was kissing everybody else, and the peppermint candy in little Grant Brotherton's mouth tasted on a score of lips in three minutes, and a finger dab of candy on Jasper Adams's shirt front made the world akin.

After the guests had gone, three old men lingered by the smoldering logs. "Well, now, Doc Jim," asked Amos, "why shouldn't I? Haven't I paid taxes in Greeley County for nearly fifty years? Didn't I make the campaign for that home in the nineties, when they called it the poor house—most people call it that now. I only stay there when I am lonesome and I go out in a taxi-cab at the county's expense like a gentleman to his estate. And I guess it is my estate. I was talking to Lincoln about it the other night, and he says he approves. Ruskin says I am living my religion like a diamond in the rock."

To the Captain's protest he answered, "Oh, yes, I know that—but that would be charity. My pencils and shoestrings and collar buttons and coat hangers keep me in spending money. I couldn't take charity even from you men. And Jasper's money," the gray poll wagged, and he cried, "Oh, no—not Ahab Wright's and Kyle Perry's—not that money. Kenyon is forever slipping me fifty. But I don't need it. John Dexter keeps a room always ready for me, and I like it at the Dexters' almost as much as I do at the county home. So I don't really need Kenyon's money, however much joy he takes in giving it. And I raise the devil's own fuss to keep him from doing it."

The Doctor puffed, and the Captain in his regal garments paraded the long room, with his hands locked under his coattails.

"But, Amos," cried the Captain, "under the law, no man wearing that button," and the Captain looked at the tri-color of the Loyal Legion, proudly adorning the shiny coat, "no soldier under the law, has to go out there. They've got to keep you here in town, and besides you're entitled to a whopping lot of pension money for all these unclaimed years."

The white old head shook and the pursed old lips smiled, as the thin little voice replied, "Not yet, Ezra—not yet—I don't need the pension yet. And as for the Home—it's not lonesome there. A lot of 'em are bedfast and stricken and I get a certain amount of fun—chirping 'em up on cloudy days. They like to hear from Emerson and John A. Logan, and Sitting Bull and Huxley and their comrades. So I guess I'm being more or less useful." He stroked his scraggy beard and looked at the fire. "And then," he added, "she always seems nearer where there is sorrow. Grant, too, is that way, though neither of 'em really has come."

The Captain finding that his money was ashes in his hands, and not liking the thought and meditation of death, changed the subject, and when the evening was old, Amos Adams called a taxi-cab, and at the county's expense rode home.

At the end of a hard winter day, descending tardily into the early spring, they missed him at the farm. No one knew whether he had gone to visit the Dexters, as was his weekly wont, or whether he was staying with Captain Morton in town, where he sometimes spent Saturday night after the Grand Army meeting.

The next day the sun came out and melted the untimely snow banks. And some country boys playing by a limestone ledge in a wide upland meadow above the Wahoo, far from the smoke of town, came upon the body of an old man. Beside him was strewn a meager peddler's kit. On his knees was a tablet of paper; in his left hand was a pencil tightly gripped. On the tablet in a fine, even hand were the words: "I am here, Amos," and his old eyes, stark and wide, were drooped, perhaps to look at the tri-color of the Loyal Legion that shone on his shrunken chest and told of a great dream of a nation come true, or perhaps in the dead, stark eyes was another vision in another world.

And so as in the beginning, there was blue sky and sunshine and prairie grass at the end.



CHAPTER LII

NOT EXACTLY A CHAPTER BUT RATHER A Q E D OR A HIC FABULA DOCET

"And the fool said in his heart, there is no God!" And this fable teaches, if it teaches anything, that the fool was indeed a fool. Now do not think that his folly lay chiefly in glutting his life with drab material things, with wives and concubines, with worldly power and glory. That was but a small part of his folly. For that concerned himself. That turned upon his own little destiny. The vast folly of the fool came with his blindness. He could not see the beautiful miracle of progress that God has been working in this America of ours during these splendid fifty years that have closed a great epoch.

And what a miracle it was! Here lay a continent—rich, crass, material, beckoning humanity to fall down and worship the god of gross and palpable realities. And, on the other hand, here stood the American spirit—the eternal love of freedom, which had brought men across the seas, had bid them fight kings and principalities and powers, had forced them into the wilderness by the hundreds of thousands to make of it "the homestead of the free"; the spirit that had called them by the millions to wage a terrible civil war for a great ideal.

This spirit met the god of things as they are, and for a generation grappled in a mighty struggle.

And men said: The old America is dead; America is money mad; America is a charnel house of greed. Millions and millions of men from all over the earth came to her shores. And the world said: They have brought only their greed with them. And still the struggle went on. The continent was taken; man abolished the wilderness. A new civilization rose. And because it was strong, the world said it was not of the old America, but of a new, soft, wicked order, which wist not that God had departed from it.

Then the new epoch dawned; clear and strong came the call to Americans to go forth and fight in the Great War—not for themselves, not for their own glory, nor their own safety, but for the soul of the world. And the old spirit of America rose and responded. The long inward struggle, seen only by the wise, only by those who knew how God's truth conquers in this earth, working beneath the surface, deep in the heart of things, the long inward struggle of the spirit of America for its own was won.

So it came to pass that the richness of the continent was poured out for an ideal, that the genius of those who had seemed to be serving only Mammon was devoted passionately to a principle, and that the blood of those who came in seeming greed to America was shed gloriously in the high emprise which called America to this new world crusade. Moses in the burning bush speaking with God, Saul on the road to Damascus, never came closer to the force outside ourselves which makes for righteousness,—the force that has guided humanity upward through the ages,—than America has come in this hour of her high resolve. And yet for fifty years she has come into this holy ground steadily, and unswervingly; indeed, for a hundred years, for three hundred years from Plymouth Rock to the red fields of France, America has come a long and perilous way—yet always sure, and never faltering.

To have lived in the generation now passing, to have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the hearts of the people, to have watched the steady triumph in our American life of the spirit of justice, of fellowship over the spirit of greed, to have seen the Holy Ghost rise in the life of a whole nation, was a blessed privilege. And if this tale has reflected from the shallow paper hearts of those phantoms flitting through its pages some glimpse of their joy in their pilgrimage, the story has played its part. If the fable of Grant Adams's triumphant failure does not dramatize in some way the victory of the American spirit—the Puritan conscience—in our generation, then, alas, this parable has fallen short of its aim. But most of all, if the story has not shown how sad a thing it is to sit in the seat of the scornful, and to deny the reality of God's purpose in this world, even though it is denied in pomp and power and pride, then indeed this narrative has failed. For in all this world one finds no other place so dreary and so desolate as it is in the heart of a fool.

THE END



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author.



BY THE SAME AUTHOR

God's Puppets

By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

Cloth, 12mo, with Frontispiece, $1.35

"Five capital stories full of scorn for hypocrisy, meanness and anti-social types of character, and of equal admiration for men who are clean, straight and generous. The book has the tone and purpose of Mr. White's 'A Certain Rich Man.' It has also humor and a closely drawn picture of small town conditions in the Middle West."—Outlook.

"Literature that is lifelike in essence, moral without being hypocritical, dramatic without being theatricalized, inspiring without being preachy."—New York Sun.

The Old Order Changeth

By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

Cloth, 12mo, $1.25

This is a collection of stirring essays on topics of present-day interest. Opening with a discussion of the former democracy of this country, the author considers the beginnings of the change, the cause and certain definite tendencies in American democracy.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers—64-66 Fifth Avenue—New York



NEW FALL FICTION

H. G. WELLS' NEW NOVEL.

JOAN AND PETER. "The Story of an Education."

By H. G. Wells. With frontispiece.

$1.75.

A NEW NOVEL BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE.

IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William

Allen White, author of "A Certain Rich Man."

With frontispiece. $1.60.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS' NEW NOVEL.

THE SPINNERS. By Eden Phillpotts, author of "Brunel's Tower," "Old Delabole," etc.

NEW JACK LONDON STORIES.

THE RED ONE. By Jack London, author of "The Call of the Wild," etc. With frontispiece.

A SEA STORY BY MCFARLAND.

SKIPPER JOHN OF THE NIMBUS. By Raymond McFarland. With frontispiece. $1.50.

A NOVEL BY ZOeE BECKLEY.

A CHANCE TO LIVE. By Zoe Beckley. With illustrations.

ONCE ON THE SUMMER RANGE. By Francis Hill. Illustrated.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers—64-66 Fifth Avenue—New York



The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me

By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

Cloth, $1.50

"A jolly book ... truly one of the best that has yet come down war's grim pike."—New York Post.

"Honest from first to last.... Resembles 'Innocents Abroad' in scheme and laughter ... a vivid picture of Europe at this hour. Should be thrice blessed, for man and book light up a world in the gloom of war."—New York Sun.

"A unique chronicle, genuine and sincere."—New York Times.

Here is a book of truth and humor. One of the first stories by an American that tell what America has done and is doing "over there." It is a tale such as Mark Twain would have written had he lived to do his bit in France.

Two "short, fat, bald, middle-aged, inland Americans" cross over to France with commissions from the Red Cross. Their experiences are told in a bubbling humor that is irresistible. The sober common sense and the information about the work going on in France—the way our men take hold and the French respond—go to make this the book all Americans have long been waiting for.

The inimitable sketches of Tony Sarg, distributed throughout, lend a clever, human atmosphere to the text.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers—64-66 Fifth Avenue—New York



A Certain Rich Man

By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

Author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

Cloth, 12mo, $1.50

The absorbing story of the career of a remarkable money-maker and his associates. A powerful book full of United States life and colour, taking front rank among the best modern novels.

"It pulsates with humour, interest, passionate love, adventure, pathos—every page is woven with threads of human nature, life as we know it, as it is, and above it all a spirit of righteousness, true piety, and heroic patriotism. These inspire the author's genius and fine literary quality, thrilling the reader with tenderest emotion, and holding to the end his unflagging and absorbing interest."—G. W. O. in Philadelphia Public Ledger.

"This novel has a message for to-day, and for its brilliant character drawing, and that gossipy desultory style of writing that stamps Mr. White's literary work, will earn a high place in fiction. It is good and clean and provides a vacation from the cares of the hour. It resembles a Chinese play, because it begins with the hero's boyhood, describes his long, busy life, and ends with his death. Its tone is often religious, never flippant, and one of its best assets is its glowing descriptions of the calm, serene beauties of nature. Its moral is that a magnate never did any real good with money."—Oregonian, Portland, Oregon.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers—64-66 Fifth Avenue—New York



Other Books by William Allen White

COURT OF BOYVILLE

Illustrated—Cloth—12mo—$1.50

There are few men in the world who have pictured that strange creation, the Boy, as he actually is. One of these men is Mr. White. His Kansas boys are a delight, and the recollections they will awaken in the mind of any man will cause him to congratulate himself for having read the book.

IN OUR TOWN

Illustrated—Cloth—12mo—$1.50

Mr. White suggests Barrie more than any other living writer. His new book does for the daily life of a modern Kansas town just what Barrie has done for a Scotch town in "A Window in Thrums."

"It is 'Boyville' grown up; better because more skilfully and deftly done; riper, because 'Bill' is a bigger boy now than he was five years ago, and more human. No writer to-day handles the small town life to compare with White, and this is the best book he has yet done."—Los Angeles Herald.

STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS

Illustrated—Cloth—12mo—$1.50

There are hours and days and long years in the lives of men and women wherein strong passions are excited and great human interests are at stake. The ambition for power, the greed for money, the desire to win the game, the hunger for fame, parental love, anger, friendship, hate, and revenge—the primitive passions that move men and the world powerfully—certainly these deserve as important a place in the chronicles of the human animal as does the mating instinct. It is with this idea in mind that Mr. White has set the stories in this volume in the field of American politics, where every human emotion finds free play.

THE REAL ISSUE

Cloth—12mo—$1.25

"It pulsates with humor, interest, passionate love, adventures, pathos—every page is woven with threads of human nature, life as we know it, life as it is, and above it all a spirit of righteousness, true piety, and heroic patriotism. These inspire the author's genius and fine literary quality, thrilling the reader with tenderest emotion, and holding to the end his unflagging, absorbing interest."—The Public Ledger, Philadelphia.

PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY—64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York