The Doctor bent over the fire, stirred it up and replied, "Well, not in particular."

"Philandering," sniffed Mrs. Nesbit.

"Again?" returned the Doctor.

"No," snapped Mrs. Nesbit—"as usual!"

The Doctor had no opinion to express; one of the family specters was engaging his attention at the moment. Presently his wife put down her paper and sat as one wrestling with an impulse. The specter on her side of the hearth was trying to keep her lips sealed. They sat while the mantel clock ticked off five minutes.

"What are you thinking?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm thinking of Dan Sands," replied the wife with some emotion in her voice.

The foot tap of Mrs. Nesbit became audible. She shook her head with some force and exclaimed: "O Jim, wouldn't I like to have that man—just for one day."

"I've noticed," cut in the Doctor, "regarding such propositions from the gentler sex, that the Lord generally tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."

"The shorn lamb—the shorn lamb," retorted Mrs. Nesbit. "The shorn tom-cat! I'd like to shear him." Wherewith she rose and putting out the light led the Doctor to the stairs.

Both knew that the spectral sentinels had used Daniel Sands and his amours only as a seal upon their lips.

The parents could speak in parables about what they felt or fancied because there was so little that was tangible and substantial for them to see. Of all the institutions man has made—the state, the church, his commerce, his schools,—the home is by far the most spiritual. Its successes and its failures are never material. They are never evidenced in any sort of worldly goods. Only in the hearts of those who dwell in a home, or of those to whom it is dear, do its triumphs and its defeats register themselves. But in Tom Van Dorn's philosophy of life small space was left for things of the spirit alone, to register. He was trying with all his might to build a home upon material things. So above all he built his home around a beautiful woman. Then he lavished upon her and about the house wherein she dwelled, beautiful objects. He was proud of their cost. Their value in dollars and cents gave these objects their chief value in his balance sheet of gain or less in footing up his account with his home. And because what he had was expensive, he prized it. Possibly because he had bought his wife's devotion, at some material sacrifice to his own natural inclinations toward the feminine world, he listed her high in the assets of the home; and so in the only way he could love, he loved her jealously. She and the rugs and pictures and furniture—all were dear to him, as chattels which he had bought and paid for and could brag about. And because he was too well bred to brag, the repression of that natural instinct he added to the cost of the items listed,—rugs, pictures, wife, furniture, house, trees, lot, and blue grass lawn. So when toward the end of the first year of his marriage, he found that actually he could turn his head and follow with his eyes a pretty petticoat going down Market Street, and still fool his wife; when he found he could pry open the eyes of Miss Mauling at the office again with his old ogle, and still have the beautiful love which he had bought with self-denial, its value dropped.

And his wife, who felt in her soul her value passing in the heart she loved, strove to find her fault and to correct it. Daily her devotion manifested itself more plainly. Daily she lived more singly to the purpose of her soul. And daily she saw that purpose becoming a vain pursuit.

Outwardly the home was unchanged as this tragedy was played within the two hearts. The same scenery surrounded the players. The same voices spoke, in the same tones, the same words of endearment, and the same hours brought the same routine as the days passed. Yet the home was slowly sinking into failure. And the specters that sealed the lips of the parents who stood by and mutely watched the inner drama unfold, watched it unfold and translate itself into life without words, without deeds, without superficial tremor or flinching of any kind—the specters passed the sad story from heart to heart in those mysterious silences wherein souls in this world learn their surest truths.



CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH OUR HERO STROLLS OUT WITH THE DEVIL TO LOOK AT THE HIGH MOUNTAIN

The soup had come and gone; great platters of fried chicken had disappeared, with incidental spinach and new peas and potatoes. A bowl of lettuce splashed with a French dressing had been mowed down as the grass, and the goodly company was surveying something less than an acre of strawberry shortcake at the close of a rather hilarious dinner—a spring dinner, to be exact. Rhoda Kollander was reciting with enthusiasm an elaborate and impossible travesty of a recipe for strawberry shortcake, which she had read somewhere, when the Doctor, in his nankeens, putting his hands on the table cloth as one who was about to deliver an oracle, ran his merry eyes down the table, gathering up the Adamses and Mortons and Mayor Brotherton and Morty Sands; fastened his glance upon the Van Dorns and cut in on the interminable shortcake recipe rather ruthlessly thus in his gay falsetto:

"Tom, here—thinks he's pretty smart. And George Brotherton, Mayor of all the Harveys, thinks he is a pretty smooth article; and the Honorable Lady Satterthwaite here, she's got a Maryland notion that she has second sight into the doings of her prince consort." He chuckled and grinned as he beamed at his daughter: "And there is the princess imperial—she thinks she's mighty knolledgeous about her father—but," he cocked his head on one side, enjoying the suspense he was creating as he paused, drawling his words, "I'm just going to show you how I've got 'em all fooled."

He pulled from his pocket a long, official envelope, pulled from the envelope an official document, and also a letter. He laid the official document down before him and opened the letter.

"Kind o' seems to be signed by the Governor of the State," he drolled: "And seems like the more I look at it the surer I am it's addressed to Tom Van Dorn. I'm not much of an elocutionist and never could read at sight, having come from Eendiany, and I guess Rhody here, she's kind of elocutionary and I'll jest about ask her to read it to the ladies and gentlemen!" He handed Mrs. Kollander the letter and passed the sealed document to his son-in-law.

Mrs. Kollander read aloud:

"I take pleasure in handing you through the kindness of Senator James Nesbit your appointment to fill the vacancy in your judicial district created to-day by the resignation of Judge Arbuckle of your district to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court of this State created there by the resignation of Justice Worrell."

Looking over his wife's shoulder and seeing the significance of the letter, John Kollander threw back his head and began singing in his roaring voice, "For we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again, shouting the battle cry of freedom," and the company at the table clapped its hands. And while George Brotherton was bellowing, "Well—say!" Judge Thomas Van Dorn kissed his wife and beamed his satisfaction upon the company.

When the commotion had subsided the chuckling little man, all a-beam with happiness, his pink, smooth face shining like a headlight, explained thus:

"I jest thought these Maryland Satterthwaites and Schenectady Van Dorns was a-gittin' too top-lofty, and I'd have to register one for the Grand Duke of Griggsby's Station, to sort of put 'em in their place!" He was happy; and his vernacular, which always was his pose under emotional stress, was broad, as he went on: "So I says to myself, the Corn Belt Railroad is mighty keen for a Supreme Court decision in the Missouri River rate case, and I says, Worrell J., he's the boy to write it, but I says to the Corn Belt folks, says I, 'It would shatter the respect of the people for their courts if Worrell J. should stay on the bench after writing the kind of a decision you want, so we'll just put him in your law offices at twelve thousand per, which is three times what he is getting now, and then one idear brought on another and here's Tom's commission and three men and a railroad all made happy!" He threw back his head and laughed silently as he finished, "and all the justices concurring!" After the hubbub of congratulations had passed and the guests had moved into the parlor of the Nesbit home, the little Doctor, standing among them, regaled himself thus:

"Politics is jobs. Jobs is friends. Friends is politics. The reason why the reformers don't get anywhere is that they have no friends in politics. They regard the people as sticky and smelly and low. Bedelia has that notion. But I love 'em! Love 'em and vote 'em!"

Amos Adams opened his mouth to protest, but the Doctor waved him into silence. "I know your idear, Amos! But when the folks get tired of politics that is jobs and want politics that is principles, I'll open as fine a line of principles as ever was shown in this market!"

After the company had gone, Mrs. Nesbit faced her husband with a peremptory: "Well—will you tell me why, Jim Nesbit?" And he sighed and dropped into a chair.

"To save his self-respect! Self-respect grows on what it feeds on, my dear, and I thought maybe if he was a judge"—he looked into the anxious eyes of his wife and went on—"that might hold him!" He rested his head on a hand and drew in a deep breath. "'Vanity, vanity,' saith the Preacher—'all is vanity!' And I thought I'd hitch it to something that might pull him out of the swamp! And I happened to know that he had a sneaking notion of running for Judge this fall, so I thought I'd slip up and help him."

He sighed again and his tone changed. "I did it primarily for Laura," he said wearily, and: "Mother, we might as well face it."

Mrs. Nesbit looked intently at her husband in understanding silence and asked: "Is it any one in particular, Jim—"

He hesitated, then exclaimed: "Oh, I may be wrong, but somehow I don't like the air—the way that Mauling girl assumes authority at the office. Why, she's made me wait in the outer office twice now—for nothing except to show that she could!"

"Yes, Jim—but what good will this judgeship do? How will it solve anything?" persisted the wife. The Doctor let his sigh precede his words: "The office will make him realize that the eyes of the community are on him, that he is in a way a marked man. And then the place will keep him busy and spur on his ambition. And these things should help."

He looked tenderly into the worried face of his wife and smiled. "Perhaps we're both wrong. We don't know. Tom's young and—" He ended the sentence in a "Ho—ho—ho—hum!" and yawned and rose, leading the way up stairs.

In the Van Dorn home a young wife was trying to define herself in the new relation to the community in which the evening's news had placed her. She had no idea of divorcing the judgeship from her life. She felt that marriage was a full partnership and that the judgeship meant much to her. She realized that as a judge's wife her life and her duties—and she was eager always to acquire new duties—would be different from her life and her duties as a lawyer's wife or a doctor's wife or a merchant's wife, for example. For Laura Van Dorn was in the wife business with a consuming ardor, and the whole universe was related to her wifehood. To her marriage was the development of a two-phase soul with but one will. As the young couple entered their home, the wife was saying:

"Tom, isn't it fine to think of the good you can do—these poor folk in the Valley don't really get justice. And they're your friends. They always help you and father in the election, and now you can see that they have their rights. Oh, I'm so glad—so glad father did it. That was his way to show them how he really loves them."

The husband smiled, a husbandly and superior smile, and said absently, "Oh, well, I presume they don't get much out of the courts, but they should learn to keep away from litigation. It's a rich man's game anyway!" He was thinking of the steps before him which might lead him to a higher court and still higher. His ambition vaulted as he spoke. "Laura, Father Jim wouldn't mind having a son-in-law on the United States Supreme Court, and I believe we can work together and make it in twenty years more!"

As the young wife saw the glow of ambition in his fine, mobile face she stifled the altruistic yearnings, which she had come to feel made her husband uncomfortable, and joined him as he gazed into the crystal ball of the future and saw its glistening chimera.

Perhaps the preceding dialogue wherein Dr. James Nesbit, his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law have spoken may indicate that politics as the Doctor played it was an exceedingly personal chess game. We see him here blithely taking from the people of his state, their rights to justice and trading those rights cheerfully for his personal happiness as it was represented in the possible reformation of his daughter's husband. He thought it would work—this curious bartering of public rights for private ends. He could not see that a man who could accept a judgeship as it had come to Tom Van Dorn, in the nature of things could not take out an essential self-respect which he had forfeited when he took the place. The Doctor was as blind as Tom Van Dorn, as blind as his times. Government was a personal matter in that day; public place was a personal perquisite.

As for the reformation of Tom Van Dorn, for which all this juggling with sacred things was done, he had no idea that his moral regeneration was concerned in the deal, and never in all the years of his service did the vaguest hint come to him that the outrage of justice had been accomplished for his own soul's good.

The next morning Tom Van Dorn read of his appointment as Judge in the morning papers, and he pranced twice the length of Market Street, up one side and down the other, to let the populace congratulate him. Then with a fat box of candy he went to his office, where he gave the candy and certain other tokens of esteem to Miss Mauling, and at noon after the partnership of Calvin & Van Dorn had been dissolved, with the understanding that the young Judge was to keep his law books in Calvin's office, and was to have a private office there—for certain intangible considerations. Then after the business with Joseph Calvin was concluded, the young Judge in his private office with his hands under his coattails preened before Miss Mauling and talked from a shameless soul of his greed for power! The girl before him gave him what he could not get at home, an abject adoration, uncritical, unabashed, unrestrained.

The young man whom the newly qualified Judge had inherited as court stenographer was a sadly unemotional, rather methodical, old maid of a person, and Tom Van Dorn could not open his soul to this youth, so he was wont to stray back to the offices of Joseph Calvin to dictate his instructions to juries, and to look over the books in his own library in making up his decisions. The office came to be known as the Judge's Chambers and the town cocked a gay and suspicious eye at the young Judge. Mr. Calvin's practice doubled and trebled and Miss Mauling lost small caste with the nobility and gentry. And as the summer deepened, Dr. James Nesbit began to see that vanity does not build self-respect.

When the young Judge announced his candidacy for election to fill out the two years' unexpired term of his predecessor, no one opposed Van Dorn in his party convention; but the Doctor had little liking for the young man's intimacy in the office of Joseph Calvin and less liking for the scandal of that intimacy which arose when the rich litigants in the Judge's court crowded into Calvin's office for counsel. The Doctor wondered if he was squeamish about certain matters, merely because it was his own son-in-law who was the subject of the disquieting gossip connected with Calvin's practice in Van Dorn's court. Then there was the other matter. The Doctor could notice that the town was having its smile—not a malicious nor condemning smile, but a tolerant, amused smile about Van Dorn and the Mauling girl; and the Doctor didn't like that. It cut deeply into the Doctor's heart that as the town's smile broadened, his daughter's face was growing perceptibly more serious. The joy she had shown when first she told him of the baby's coming did not illumine her face; and her laughter—her never failing well of gayety—was in some way being sealed. The Doctor determined to talk with Tom on the Good of the Order and to talk man-wise—without feeling of course but without guile.

So one autumn afternoon when the Doctor heard the light, firm step of the young man in the common hallway that led to their offices over the Traders' Bank, the Doctor tuned himself up to the meeting and cheerily called through his open door:

"Tom—Tom, you young scoundrel—come in here and let's talk it all over."

The young man slipped a package into his pocket, and came lightly into the office. He waved his hand gayly and called: "Well—well, pater familias, what's on your chest to-day?" His slim figure was clad in gray—a gray suit, gray shirt, gray tie, gray shoes and a crimson rose bud in his coat lapel. As he slid into a chair and crossed his lean legs the Doctor looked him over. The young Judge's corroding pride in his job was written smartly all over his face and figure. "The fairest of ten thousand, the bright and morning star, Tom," piped the Doctor. Then added briskly, "I want to talk to you about Joe Calvin." The young man lifted a surprised eyebrow. The Doctor pushed ahead as he pulled the county bar docket from his desk and pointed to it. "Joe Calvin's business has increased nearly fifty per cent. in less than six months! And he has the money side of eighty per cent. of the cases in your court!"

"Well—" replied Van Dorn in the mushy drawl that he used with juries, "that's enough! Joe couldn't ask more." Then he added, eying the Doctor closely, "Though I can't say that what you tell me startles me with its suddenness."

"That's just my point," cried the Doctor in his high, shrill voice. "That's just my point, Thomas," he repeated, "and here's where I come in. I got you this job. I am standing for you before the district and I am standing for you now for this election." The Doctor wagged his head at the young man as he said, "But the truth is, Tom, I had some trouble getting you the solid delegation."

"Ah?" questioned the suave young Judge.

"Yes, Tom—my own delegation," replied the Doctor. "You see, Tom, there is a lot of me. There is the one they call Doc Jim; then there's Mrs. Nesbit's husband and there's your father-in-law, and then there's Old Linen Pants. The old man was for you from the jump. Doc Jim was for you and Mrs. Nesbit's husband was willing to go with the majority of the delegation, though he wasn't strong for you. But I'll tell you, Tom," piped the Doctor, "I did have the devil of a time ironing out the troubles of your father-in-law."

The Doctor leaned forward and pointed a fat, stern finger at his son-in-law. "Tom," the Doctor's voice was shrill and steely, "I don't like your didos with Violet Mauling!" The face above the crimson flower did not flinch.

"I don't suppose you're making love to her. But you have no business fooling around Joe Calvin's office on general principles. Keep out, and keep away from her." And then the Doctor's patience slipped and his voice rose: "What do you want to give her the household bills for? Pay 'em yourself or let Laura send her checks!" The Doctor's tones were harsh, and with the amiable cast off his face his graying blond pompadour hair seemed to bristle militantly. The effect gave the Doctor a fighting face as he barked, "You can't afford it. You must stop it. It's no way to do. I didn't think it of you, Tom!"

After Van Dorn had touched his black wing of hair, his soft mustache and the crimson flower on his coat, he had himself well in hand and had planned his defense and counter attacks. He spoke softly:

"Now, Father Jim—I'm not—" he put a touch of feeling in the "not," "going to give up the Mauling girl. When I'm elected next month, I'm going to make her my court stenographer!" He looked the Doctor squarely in the face and paused for the explosion which came in an excited, piping cry:

"Why, Tom, are you crazy! Take her all over the three counties of this district with you? Why, boy—" But Judge Van Dorn continued evenly: "I don't like a man stenographer. Men make me nervous and self-conscious, and I can't give a man the best that's in me. And I propose to give my best to this job—in justice to myself. And Violet Mauling knows my ways. She doesn't interpose herself between me and my ideas, so I am going to make her court stenographer next month right after the election."

When the Doctor drew in a breath to speak, Van Dorn put out a hand, checked the elder man and said blandly and smilingly, "And, Father Jim, I'm going to be elected—I'm dead sure of election."

The Doctor thought he saw a glint of sheer malicious impudence in Van Dorn's smile as he finished speaking: "And anyway, pater, we mustn't quarrel right now—Just at this time, Laura—"

"You're a sly dog, now, ain't you! Ain't you a sly dog?" shrilled the Doctor in sputtering rage. Then the blaze in his eyes faded and he cried in despair: "Tom, Tom, isn't there any way I can put the fear of God into you?"

Van Dorn realized that he had won the contest. So he forbore to strike again.

"Doctor Jim, I'm afraid you can't jar me much with the fear of God. You have a God that sneaks in the back door of matter as a kind of a divine immanence that makes for progress and Joe Calvin in there has a God with whiskers who sits on a throne and runs a sort of police court; but one's as impossible as the other. I have no God at all," his chest swelled magnificently, "and here's what happens":

He was talking against time and the Doctor realized it. But his scorn was crusting over his anger and he listened as the young Judge amused himself: "I've defended gamblers and thugs—and crooks, some rich, some poor, mostly poor and mostly guilty. And Joe has been free attorney for the law and order league and has given the church free advice and entertained preachers when he wasn't hiding out from his wife. And he's gone to conference and been a deacon and given to the Lord all his life. And now that it's good business for him to have me elected, can he get a vote out of all his God-and-morality crowd? Not a vote. And all I have to do is to wiggle my finger and the whole crowd of thugs and blacklegs and hoodlums and rich and poor line up for me—no matter how pious I talk. I tell you, Father Jim—there's nothing in your God theory. It doesn't work. My job is to get the best out of myself possible." But this was harking back to Violet Mauling and the young Judge smiled with bland impertinence as he finished, "The fittest survive, my dear pater, and I propose to keep fit—to keep fit—and survive!"

The Doctor's anger cooled, but the pain still twinged his heart, the pain that came as he saw clearly and surely that his daughter's life was bound to the futile task of making bricks without straw. Deep in his soul he knew the anguish before her and its vain, continual round of fallen hopes. As the young Judge strutted up and down the Doctor's office, the father in the elder man dominated him and a kind of contemptuous pity seized him. Pity overcame rage, and the Doctor could not even sputter at his son-in-law. "Fit and survive" kept repeating themselves over in Dr. Nesbit's mind, and it was from a sad, hurt heart that he spoke almost kindly: "Tom—Tom, my boy, don't be too sure of yourself. You may keep fit and you may survive—but Tom, Tom—" the Doctor looked steadily into the bold, black eyes before him and fancied they were being held consciously from dropping and shifting as the Doctor cried: "For God's sake, Tom, don't let up! Keep on fighting, son, God or no God—you've got a devil—keep on fighting him!"

The olive cheeks flushed for a fleeting second. Van Dorn laughed an irritated little laugh. "Well," he said, turning to the door, "be over to-night?—or shall we come over? Anything good for dinner?"

A minute later he came swinging into his own office. He pulled a package from his pocket. "Violet," he said, going up to her writing desk and half sitting upon it, as he put the package before her, "here's the candy."

He picked up her little round desk mirror, smiled at her in it, and played rather idly about the desk for a foolish moment before going to his own desk. He sat looking into the street, folding a sheet of blank paper. When it became a wad he snapped it at the young woman. It hit her round, beautiful neck and disappeared into her square-cut bodice.

"Get it out for you if you want it?" He laughed fatuously.

The girl flashed quick eyes at him, and said, "Oh, I don't know," and went on with her work. He began to read, but in a few minutes laid his book down.

"How'd you like to be a court stenographer?" The girl kept on writing. "Honest now I mean it. If I win this election and get this job for the two years of unexpired term, you'll be court stenographer—pays fifteen hundred a year." The girl glanced quickly at him again, with fire in her eyes, then looked conspicuously down at the keyboard of the writing machine.

"I couldn't leave home," she said finally, as she pulled out a sheet of paper. "It wouldn't be the thing—do you think so?"

He put his feet on the desk, showing his ankles of pride, and fingering his mustache, smiling a squinty smile with his handsome, beady eyes as he said: "Oh, I'd take care of you. You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

They both laughed. And the girl came over with a sheet of paper. "Here is that Midland Valley letter. Will you sign it now?"

He managed to touch her hand as she handed him the sheet, and again to touch her bare forearm as he handed it back after signing it. For which he got two darts from her eyes.

A client came in. Joseph Calvin hurried in and out, a busy little rat of a man who always wore shiny clothes that bagged at the knees and elbows. George Brotherton crashed in through the office on city business, and so the afternoon wore away. At the end of the day, Thomas Van Dorn and Miss Mauling locked up the office and went down the hall and the stairs to the street together. He released her arm as they came to the street, and tipped his hat as she rounded the corner for home. He saw the white-clad Doctor trudging up the low incline that led to Elm Street.

Dr. Nesbit was asking the question, Who are the fit? Who should survive? His fingers had been pinched in the door of the young Judge's philosophy and the Doctor was considering much that might be behind the door. He wondered if it was the rich and the powerful who should survive. Or he thought perhaps it is those who give themselves for others. There was Captain Morton with his one talent, pottering up and down the town talking all kinds of weather, and all kinds of rebuffs that he might keep the girls in school and make them ready to serve society; yet according to Tom's standards of success the Captain was unfit; and there was George Brotherton, ignorant, but loyal, foolishly blind, of a tender heart, yet compared with those who used his ignorance and played upon his blindness (and the Doctor winced at his part in that game) Mr. Brotherton was cast aside among the world's unfit; and so was Henry Fenn, fighting with his devil like a soldier; and so was Dick Bowman going into the mines for his family, sacrificing light and air and the joy of a free life that the wife and children might be clad, housed and fed and that they might enjoy something of the comforts of the great civilization which his toil was helping to build up around them; yet in his grime Dick was accounted exceedingly unfit. Dick only had a number on the company's books and his number corresponded to a share of stock and it was the business of the share of stock to get as much out of Dick and give him back as little, and to take as much from society in passing for coal as it could, and being without soul or conscience or feeling of any kind, the share of stock put the automatic screws on Dick—as their numbers corresponded. And for squeezing the sweat out of him the share was accounted unusually fit, while poor Dick—why he was merely a number on the books and was called a unit of labor. Then there was Daniel Sands. He had spread his web all over the town. It ran in the pipes under ground that brought water and gas, and the wires above ground, that brought light and power and communication. The web found its way into the earth—through deep cuts in the earth, worming along caverns where it held men at work; then the web ran into foul dens where the toilers were robbed of their health and strength and happiness and even of the money the toilers toiled for, and the web brought it all back slimey and stinking from unclean hands into the place where the spider sat spinning. And there was his son and daughter; Mr. Sands had married at least four estimable ladies with the plausible excuse that he was doing it only to give his children a home. Mr. Sands had given his son a home, to be sure; but his son had not taken a conscience from the home—for who was there at home to give it? Not the estimable ladies who had married Mr. Sands, for they had none or they would have been somewhere else, to be sure; not Mr. Sands himself, for he was busy with his web, and conscience rips such webs as his endways, and Daniel would have none of that. And the servants who had reared the youth had no conscience to give him; for it was made definite and certain in that home that they were paid for what they did, so they did what they were paid for, and bestowing consciences upon young gentlemen is no part of the duty of the "help" in a home like that.

As for his daughter, Anne, again one of God's miracles was wrought. There she was growing in the dead atmosphere of that home—where she had known two mothers before she was ten and she saw with a child's shrewd eyes that another was coming. Yet in some subsoil of the life about her the roots of her life were finding a moral sense. Her hazel eyes were questioning so curiously the old man who fathered her that he felt uncomfortable when she was near him. Yet for all the money he had won and all that money had made him, he was reckoned among the fit. Then there was the fit Mr. Van Dorn and the fit Mr. Calvin. Mr. Calvin never missed a Sunday in church, gave his tithe, and revered the law. He adjusted his halo and sang feelingly in prayer meeting about his cross and hoped ultimately for his crown as full and complete payment and return, the same being the legal and just equivalent for said hereinbefore named cross as aforesaid, and Mr. Calvin was counted among the fit, and the Doctor smiled as he put him in the list. And Mr. Van Dorn had confessed that he was among the fit and his fitness consisted in getting everything that he could without being caught.

But these reflections were vain and unprofitable to Dr. Nesbit, and so he turned himself to the consideration of the business in hand: namely, to make his calling and reelection sure to the State Senate that November. So he went over Greeley County behind his motherly sorrel mare, visiting the people, telling them stories, prescribing for their ailments, eating their fried chicken, cream gravy and mashed potatoes, and putting to rout the forces of the loathed opposition who maintained that the Doctor beat his wife, by sometimes showing said wife as exhibit "A" without comment in those remote parts of the county where her proud figure was unknown.

In November he was reelected, and there was a torchlight procession up the aisle of elms and all the neighbors stood on the front porch, including the Van Dorns and the Mortons and John Kollander in his blue soldier clothes, carrying the flag into another county office, and the Henry Fenns, while the Doctor addressed the multitude! And there was cheering, whereupon Mr. Van Dorn, Judge pro tem and Judge-elect, made a speech with eloquence and fire in it; John Kollander made his well-known flag speech, and Captain Morton got some comfort out of the election of Comrade Nesbit, who had stood where bullets were thickest and as a boy had bared his breast to the foe to save his country, and drawing the Doctor into the corner, filed early application to be made sergeant-at-arms of the State Senate and was promised that or Something Equally Good. The hungry friends of the new Senator so loaded him with obligations that blessed night that he again sold his soul to the devil, went in with the organization, got all the places for all his people, and being something of an organizer himself, distributed the patronage for half the State.

Ten days later—or perhaps it may have been two weeks later, at half past five in the evening—the Judge-elect was sitting at his desk, handsomely dressed in black—as befitting the dignity of his office. He and his newly appointed court stenographer had returned the hour before from an adjoining county where they had been holding court. The Judge was alone, if one excepts the young woman at the typewriting desk, before whom he was preening, as though she were a mere impersonal mirror. During the hour the Judge had visited the tailor's and had returned to his office wearing a new, long-tailed coat. His black silk neck-scarf was resplendently new, his large, soft, black hat—of a type much favored by statesmen in that day—was cocked at a frivolous angle, showing the raven's wing of black hair upon his fine forehead. A black silk watchguard crossed his black vest; his patent leather shoes shone below his trim black silk socks, and he rubbed his smooth, olive cheek with the yellow chrysanthemum upon his coat lapel.

"Gee, but you're swell," said Miss Mauling. "You look good enough to eat."

"Might try a bite—if you feel that way about it," replied the Judge. He put his hands in his pockets, tried them under his long coat tails, buttoned the coat and thrust one hand between the buttons, put one hand in a trousers' pocket, letting the other fall at his side, put both hands behind him, and posed for a few minutes exchanging more or less fervent glances with the girl. A step sounded in the hallway. The man and woman obviously listened. It was a heavy tread; it was coming to the office door. The man and woman slipped into Judge Van Dorn's private office. When the outer door opened, and it was apparent that some one was in the outer office, Miss Mauling appeared, note book in hand, quite brisk and businesslike with a question in her good afternoon.

"Where's Van Dorn?" The visitor was tall, rawboned, and of that physical cast known as lanky. His face was flinty, and his red hair was untrimmed at the neck and ears.

"The Judge is engaged just now," smiled Miss Mauling. "Will you wait?" She was careful not to ask him to sit. Grant Adams looked at the girl with a fretful stare. He did not take off his hat, and he shook his head toward Van Dorn's office door as he said brusquely, "Tell him to come out. It's important." The square shoulders of the tall man gave a lunge or hunch toward the door. "I tell you it's important."

Miss Mauling smiled. "But he can't come out just now. He's busy. Any message I can give him?"

The man was excited, and his voice and manner showed his temper.

"Now, look here—I have no message; tell Van Dorn I want him quick."

"What name, please?" responded Miss Mauling, who knew that the visitor knew she was playing.

"Grant Adams—tell him it's his business and not mine—except—"

But the girl had gone. It was several minutes before Tom Van Dorn moved gracefully and elegantly into the room. "Ah," he began. Grant glared at him.

"I've just driven down from Nesbit's with Kenyon, and Mrs. Nesbit says to tell you Laura's there—came over this morning, and you're to come just as quick as you can. They tried to get you on the 'phone, but you weren't here. Do you understand? You're to come quick, and I've left my horse out here for you. Kenyon and I'll catch a car home."

The pose with one hand in his trousers pocket and the other hanging loosely suited the Judge-elect as he answered: "Is that all?" Then he added, as his eyes went over the blue overalls: "I presume Mrs. Nesbit advised you as to the reason for—for, well—for haste?"

Grant saw Van Dorn's eyes wander to the girl's for approval. "I shall not need your horse, Adams," Van Dorn went on without waiting for a reply to his question. Then again turning his eyes to the girl, he asked: "Adams, anything I can do to repay your kindness?"

"No—" growled Adams, turning to go.

"Say, Adams," called Van Dorn, rubbing his hands and still smiling at the girl, "you wouldn't take a cigar in—in anticipation of the happy—"

Adams whirled around. His big jaw muscles worked in knots before he spoke; his blue eyes were set and raging. But he looked at the floor an instant before crying:

"You go to hell!" And an instant later, the lank figure had left the room, slamming the door after him. Grant heard the telephone bell ringing, and heard the girl's voice answering it, then he went to the doctor's office. As he was writing the words "At Home" on the slate on the door, he could hear Miss Mauling at the telephone.

"Yes," and again, "Yes," and then, "Is there any message," and finally she giggled, "All right, I'll call him." Then Grant stalked down the stairs. The receiver was hanging down. The Doctor at the other end of the wire could hear a man and a woman laughing. Van Dorn stepped to the instrument and said: "Yes, Doctor."

Then, "What—well, you don't say!"

And still again, "Yes, he was just here this minute; shall I call him back?" And before hanging up the receiver, he said, "Why, of course, I'll come right out."

The Judge-elect turned gracefully around, smiling complacently: "Well, Violet—it's your bet. It's a girl!"

The court stenographer poked a teasing forefinger at him and whittled it with another in glee. Then, as if remembering something, she asked: "How's your wife?"

Van Dorn's face was blank for an instant. "By George—that's so. I forgot to ask." He started to pick up the telephone receiver, but checked himself. He pulled his broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, and started for the door, waving merrily and rubbing his chin with his flower.

"Ta ta," he called as he saw the last of her flashing smile through the closing door.

And thus into a world where only the fittest survive that day came Lila Van Dorn,—the child of a mother's love.



CHAPTER XV

WHEREIN WE WELCOME IN A NEW YEAR AND CONSIDER A SERIOUS QUESTION

The journey around the sun is a long and tumultuous one. Many of us jolt off the earth as we ride, others of us are turned over and thrown into strange and absurd positions, and a few of us sit tight and edge along, a little further toward the soft seats. But as we whirl by the stations, returning ever and again to the days that are precious in our lives, to the seasons that give us greatest joy, we measure our gains, on the long journey, in terms of what we love. "A little over a year ago to-night, my dear," chirruped Dr. Nesbit, pulling a gray hair from his temple where hairs of any kind were becoming scarce enough. "A year, a month, and a week and a day ago to-night the town and the Harvey brass band came out here and they tramped up the blue grass so that it won't get back in a dozen years.

"Well," he mused, as the fire burned, "I got 'em all their jobs, I got two or three good medical laws passed, and I hope I have made some people happy."

"Yes, my dear," answered his wife. "In that year little Lila has come into short dresses, and Kenyon Adams has learned to play on the piano, and is taking up the violin."

"How time has flown since election a year ago," said Captain Morton to his assembled family as they sat around the base burner smoldering in the dining-room. "And I've put the patent window fastener into forty houses and sold Henry Fenn the burglar alarm to go with his." And the eldest Miss Morton spoke up and said:

"My good land, I hope we'll have a new principal by this time next year. Another year under that man will kill me—pa, I do wish you'd run for the school board."

And the handsome Miss Morton added, "My goodness, Emma Morton, if I didn't have anything to do but draw forty dollars every month for yanking a lot of little kids around and teaching them the multiplication tables, I wouldn't say much. Why, we've come through algebra into geometry and half way through Cicero, while you've been fussing with that old principal—and Mrs. Herdicker's got a new trimmer, and we girls down at the shop have to put up with her didoes. Talk of trouble, gee!"

"Martha, you make me weary," said the youngest Miss Morton, eating an apple. "If you'd had scarlet fever and measles the same year, and your old dress just turned and your same old hat, you'd have something to talk about."

"Well," remarked His Honor the Mayor to Henry Fenn and Morty Sands as they sat in the Amen Corner New Year's eve, looking at the backs of a shelf of late books and viewing several shelves of standard sets with highly gilded backs, "it's more'n a year since election—and well, say—I've got all my election bets paid now and am out of debt again, and the book store's gradually coming along. By next year this time I expect to put four more shelves of copyrighted books in and cut down the paper backs to a stack on the counter. But old Lady Nicotine is still the patron of the fine arts—say, if it wasn't for the 'baccy little Georgie would be so far behind with his rent that he would knock off a year and start over."

Young Mr. Sands rolled a cigarette and lighted it and said: "It's a whole year—and Pop's gone a long time without a wife; it'll be two years next March since the last one went over the hill who was brought out to make a home for little Morty, and I saw Dad peeking out of the hack window as we were standing waiting for the hearse, and wondered which one of the old girls present he'd pick on. But," mused Morty, "I guess it's Anne's eyes. Every time he edges around to the subject of our need of a mother, Anne turns her eyes on him and he changes the subject." Morty laughed quietly and added: "When Anne gets out of her 'teens she'll put father in a monastery!"

"Honeymoon's kind of waning—eh, Henry?" asked Judge Van Dorn, who dropped in for a magazine and heard the conversation about the passing of the year. He added: "I see you've been coming down here pretty regularly for three or four months!" Henry looked up sadly and shook his head. "You can't break the habit of a dozen years. And I got to coming here back in the days when George ran a pool and billiard hall, and I suppose I'll come until I die, and then George will bring his wheezy old quartette around and sing over me, and probably act as pall-bearer too—if he doesn't read the burial service of the lodge in addition."

"Well, a year's a year," said the suave Judge Van Dorn. "A year ago you boys were smoking on me as the new judge of this judicial district. All hail Thane of Cawdor—" He smiled his princely smile, taking every one in with his frank, bold eyes, and waved himself into the blustery night. There he met Mr. Calvin, who, owing to a turn matters had taken at home, was just beginning another long period of exile from the hearthstone. He walked the night like a ghost, silent and grim. His thin little neck, furrowed behind by the sunken road between his arteries, was adorned by two tufts of straggling hair, and as his overcoat collar was rolled and wrinkled, he had an appearance of extreme neglect and dejection. "Did you realize that it's over a year since election?" said Van Dorn. "We might as well begin looking out for next year, Joe," he added, "if you've got nothing better to do. I wish you'd go down the row to-night and see the boys and tell them I want to talk to them in the next ten days or so; a man never can be too early in these things; and say—if you happen in the Company store down there and see Violet Mauling, slip her a ten and charge it to me on the books; I wonder how she's doing—I haven't heard of her for three months. Nice girl, Violet."

And Mrs. Herdicker hadn't heard of Miss Mauling for some time, and sitting in her little office back of the millinery store, sorting over her old bills, she came to a bill badly dog-eared with Miss Mauling's name on it. The bill called for something like $75 and the last payment on it had been made nearly half a year ago. So she looked at that bill and added ten dollars to Mrs. Van Dorn's bill for the last hat she bought, and did what she could to resign herself to the injustices of a cruel world. But it had been a good year for Mrs. Herdicker. New wells in new districts had come gushing gas and oil into Harvey in great geysers and the work on the new smelter was progressing, and the men in the mines had been kept steadily at work; for Harvey coal was the best in the Missouri Valley. So the ladies who are no better than they should be and the ladies who are much better than they should be, and the ladies who will stand for a turned ribbon, and a revived feather, and are just about what they may be expected to be, all came in and spent their money like the princesses that they were. And Mrs. Herdicker figured in going over her stock just which hat she could sell to Mrs. Nesbit as a model hat from the Paris exhibit at the World's Fair, and which one she could put on Mrs. Fenn as a New York sample, and as she built her castles the loss of the $75 to Miss Mauling had its compensating returns, and she smiled and thought that just a year ago she had offered that same World's Fair Model to the wife of the newly elected State Senator and she must put on a new bunch of flowers and bend down the brim.

The Dexters were sitting by the stove in the living-room with Amos Adams; they had come down to the lonely little home to prepare a good dinner for the men. "A year ago to-day," said the minister to the group as he put down the newspaper, "Kenyon got his new fiddle."

"The year has brought me something—I tell you," Jasper said. "I've bought a horse with my money I earned as page in the State Senate and I've got a milk route, and have all the milk in the neighborhood to distribute. That's what the year has done for me."

"Well," reflected the minister, "we've got the mission church in South Harvey on a paying basis, and the pipe organ in the home church paid for—that's some comfort. And they do say," his eyes twinkled as he looked at his wife, "that the committee is about to settle all the choir troubles. That's pretty good for a year."

"Another year," sighed Amos Adams, and the wind blew through the gaunt branches of the cottonwood trees in the yard, and far down in the valley came the moaning as of many waters, and the wind played its harmonies in the woodlot. The old man repeated the words: "Another year," and asked himself how many more years he would have to wait and listen to the sighing of the moaning waters that washed around the world. And Kenyon Adams, lying flushed and tousled and tired upon a couch near by, heard the waters in his dreams and they made such music that his thin, little face moved in an eyrie smile.

"Mag," said a pale, nervous girl with dead, sad eyes as she looked around at the new furniture in the new house, and avoided the rim of soft light that came from the electric under the red shade, "did you think I was cheeky to ask you all those questions over the 'phone—about where Henry was to-night, and what you'd be doing?" The hostess said: "Why, no, Violet, no—I'm always glad to see you."

There was a pause, and the girl exclaimed: "That's what I come out for. I couldn't stand it any longer. Mag, what in God's name have I done? Didn't you see me the other day on Market Street? You were looking right at me. It's been nearly a year since we've talked. You used to couldn't get along a week without a good talk; but now—say, Mag, what's the matter? what have I done to make you treat me like this?" There was a tremor in the girl's voice. She looked piteously at the wife, radiant in her red house gown. The hostess spoke. "Look here, Violet Mauling, I did see you on Market Street, and I did cut you dead. I knew it would bring you up standing and we'd have this thing out."

The girl looked her question, but flushed. Then she said, "You mean the old man?"

"I mean the old man. It's perfectly scandalous, Violet; didn't you get your lesson with Van Dorn?" returned the hostess. "The old man won't marry you—you don't expect that, do you?" The girl shook her head. The woman continued, "Well, then drop it. You can't afford to be seen with him."

"Mag," returned the visitor, "I tell you before God I can't afford not to. It's my job. It's all I've got. Mamma hasn't another soul except me to depend on. And he's harmless—the old coot's as harmless as a child. Honest and true, Mag, if I ever told the truth that's it. He just stands around and is silly—just makes foolish breaks to hear himself talk—that's all. But what can I do? He keeps me in the company store, and Heaven knows he doesn't kill himself paying me—only $8 a week, as far as that goes, and then he talks and talks and talks about Judge Van Dorn, and snickers and drops his front false teeth—ugh!—and drivels. But, Mag, he's harmless as a baby."

"Well," returned the hostess, "Henry says every one is talking about it, and you're a common scandal, Violet Mauling, and you ought to know it. I can't hold you up, as you well know—no one can."

Then there followed a flood of tears, and after it had subsided the two women were sitting on a couch. "I want to tell you about Tom Van Dorn, Mag—you never understood. You thought I used to chase him. God knows I didn't, Mag—honest, honest, honest! You knew as well as anything all about it; but I never told you how I fought and fought and all that and how little by little he came closer and closer, and no one ever will know how I cried and how ashamed I was and how I tried to fight him off. That's the God's truth, Mag—the God's truth if you ever heard it."

The girl sobbed and hid her face. "Once when papa died he sent me a hundred dollars through Mr. Brotherton, and mamma thought it came from the Lodge; but I knew better. And, O Mag, Mag, you'll never know how I felt to bury papa on that kind of money. And I saved for nearly a year to pay it back, and of course I couldn't, for he kept getting me expensive things and I had to get things to go with 'em and went in debt, and then when I went there in the office it was all so—so close and I couldn't fight, and he was so powerful—you know just how big and strong, and—O Mag, Mag, Mag—you'll never know how I tried—but I just couldn't. Then he made me court reporter and took me over the district." The girl looked up into the great, soft, beautiful eyes of Margaret Fenn, and thought she saw sympathy there. That was a common mistake; others made it in looking at Margaret's eyes. The girl felt encouraged. She came closer to her one-time friend. "Mag," she said, "they lied awfully about how I lost my job. They said Mrs. Van Dorn made a row. Honest, Mag, there's nothing to that. She never even dreamed anything was—well—was—don't you know. She wasn't a bit jealous, and is as nice as she can be to me right now. It was this way. You know when I sent mamma away last May for a visit, and the Van Dorns asked me over there to stay?" Mrs. Fenn nodded. "Well," continued Violet, "one day in court—you know when they were trying that bond case—the city bonds and all—well, the Judge scribbled a note on his desk and handed it to me. It said my room door creaked, and not to shut it." She stopped and put her head in her hand and rocked her body. "I know, Mag, it was awful, but some way I just couldn't help it. He is so strong, and—you know, Mag, how we used to say there's some men when they come about you just make you kind of flush all over and weak—well, he's that way. And, anyway, like a fool I dropped that note and one of the jurors—a farmer from Union township—picked it up and took it straight to Doctor Jim."

The girl hid her face in her friend's dress. "It was awful." She spoke without looking up. "But, O Mag—Doctor Jim was fine—so gentle, so kind. The Judge thought he would cuss around a lot, but he didn't—not even to him—the Judge said. And the Doctor came to me as bashful and—as—well, your own father couldn't have been better to you. So I just quit, and the Judge got me the job in the Company store and the Doctor drops in and she—yes, Mag, the Judge's wife comes with the Doctor sometimes, and now it's been five months to-day since I left the court reporter's work and I have hardly seen the Judge to speak to him since. But they all know, I guess, but mamma, and I sometimes think folks try to talk to her; and that old man Sands comes snooping and snickering around like an old dog hunting a buried bone, and he's my job, and I don't know what to do."

Neither did Margaret know what to do, so she let her go and let her stay, and knew her old friend no more. For Margaret was rising in the world, and could have no encumbrances; and Miss Mauling disappeared in South Harvey and that New Year's Eve marked the sad anniversary of the break in her relations with Mrs. Fenn. And it is all set down here on this anniversary to show what a jolty journey some of us make as we jog around the sun, and to show the gentle reader how the proud Mr. Van Dorn hunts his prey and what splendid romances he enjoys and what a fair sportsman he is.

But the old year is restless. It has painted the sky of South Harvey with the smoke of a score of smelter chimneys; it has burned in the drab of the dejected-looking houses, and it has added a few dozen new ones for the men and their families who operate the smelter.

Moreover, the old year has run many new, strange things through a little boy's eyes as he looks sadly into a queer world—a little, black-eyed boy, while a grand lady with a high head sits on a piano bench beside the child and plays for him the grand music that was fashionable in her grand day. The passing year pressed into his little heart all that the music told him—not of the gray misery of South Harvey, not of the thousands who are mourning and toiling there, but instead the old year has whispered to the child the beautiful mystic tales of great souls doing noble deeds, of heroes who died that men might live and love, of beauty and of harmony too deep for any words of his that throb in him and stir depths in his soul to high aspiration. It has all gone through his ears; for his eyes see little that is beautiful. There is, of course, the beauty of the homely hours he spends with those who love him best, hours spent at school and joyous hours spent by the murmuring creek, and there is what the grand lady at the piano thinks is a marvel of beauty in the ornate home upon the hill. But the most beautiful thing he sees as the old year winds the passing panorama of life for his eyes is the sunshine and prairie grass. This comes to him of a Sunday when he walks with Grant—brother Grant, out in the fields far away from South Harvey—where the frosty breath of autumn has turned the grass to lavender and pale heliotrope, and the hills roll away and away like silent music and the clouds idling lazily over the hillsides afar off cast dark shadows that drift in the lavender sea. Now the smoke that the old year paints upon the blue prairie sky will fade as the year passes, and the great smelters may crumble and men may plow over the ground where they stand so proudly even to-day; but the music in the boy's heart, put there by the passing year, and the glory of the sunshine and the prairie grass with the meadow lark's sad evening song as it quivers for a moment in the sunset air,—these have been caught in the child's soul and have passed through the strange alchemy of God's great mystery of human genius into an art that is the heritage of the race. For into the mind of that child—that eyrie, large-eyed, wondering, silent, lonely-seeming child—the signals of God were passing. When he grew into his man's estate and could give them voice, the winds of the prairie, low and gentle, the soft lisping of quiet waters, the moving passion of the hurricane, the idle dalliance of the clouds whose purple shadows combed the rolling hills, and all the ecstasy of the love cry of solitary prairie birds, found meaning and the listening world heard, through his music, God speaking to His children.

So the year moved quickly on. Its tasks were countless. It had another child to teach another message. There was a little girl in the town—a small girl with the bluest eyes in the world and tiny curls—yellow curls that wound so softly around her mother's fingers that you would think that they were not curls at all but golden dreams of curls that had for the moment come true and would fade back into fairyland whence they came. And the passing year had to prop the child at a window while the dusk came creeping into the quiet house. There she sat waiting, watching, hoping that the proud, handsome man who came at twilight down the way leading to the threshold, would smile at her. She was not old enough to hope he would take her in his arms where she could cuddle and be loved. So the passing year had to take a fine brush and paint upon the small, wistful face a fleeting shadow, the mere ghost of a sadness that came and went as she watched and waited for the father love.

And Judge Thomas Van Dorn, the punctilious, gay, resistless, young Tom Van Dorn was deaf to the deeper voices that called to him and beckoned him to rest his soul. And soon upon the winds that roam the world and carry earth dreams back to ghosts, and bring ghosts of what we would be back to our dreams—the roaming winds bore away the passing year, but they could not take the shadows that it left upon the child's tender heart.

Now, when the old year with all its work lay down in the innumerable company of its predecessors, and the bells rang and the whistles blew in South Harvey to welcome in the new year, the midnight sky was blazoned with the great torches from the smelter chimneys, and the pumps in the oil wells kept up their dolorous whining and complaining, like great insects battening upon an abandoned world. In South Harvey the lights of the saloons and the side of the dragon's spawn glowed and beckoned men to death. Money tinkled over the bars, and whispered as it was crumpled in the claws of the dragon. For money the scurrying human ants hurried along the dark, half-lighted streets from the ant hills over the mines. For money the cranes of the pumps creaked their monody. For money the half-naked men toiled to their death in the fumes of the smelter. So the New Year's bells rang a pean of welcome to the money that the New Year would bring with its toll of death.

"Money," clanged the church bells in the town on the hill. "Money makes wealth and since we have banished our kings and stoned our priests, money is the only thing in our material world that will bring power and power brings pleasure and pleasure brings death."

"And death? and death? and death?" tolled the church bells that glad New Year, and then ceased in circling waves of sound that enveloped the world, still inquiring—"and death? and death?" fainter and fainter until dawn.

The little boy who heard the bells may have heard their plaintive question; for in the morning twilight, sitting in his nightgown on his high chair looking into the cheerful mouth of the glowing kitchen stove, while the elders prepared breakfast, the child who had been silent for a long time raised his face and asked:

"Grant—what is death?" The youth at his task answered by telling about the buried seed and the quickening plant. The child listened and shook his head.

"Father," he asked, addressing the old man, who was rubbing his chilled hands over the fire, "what is death?" The old man spoke, slowly. He ran his fingers through his beard and then addressing the youth who had spoken rather than the child, replied:

"Death? Death?" and looked puzzled, as if searching for his words. "Death is the low archway in the journey of life, where we all—high and low, weak and strong, poor and rich, must bow into the dust, remove our earthly trappings, wealth and power and pleasure, before we rise to go upon the next stage of our journey into wider vistas and greener fields."

The child nodded his head as one who has just appraised and approved a universe, replying sagely, "Oh," then after a moment he added: "Yes." And said no more.

But when the sun was up, and the wheels scraped on the gravel walk before the Adams home, and the silvery, infectious laugh of a young mother waked the echoes of the home, as she bundled up Kenyon for his daily journey, the old man and the young man heard the child ask: "Aunty Laura—what is death?" The woman with her own child near in the very midst of life, only laughed and laughed again, and Kenyon laughed and Lila laughed and they all laughed.



CHAPTER XVI

GRANT ADAMS IS SOLD INTO BONDAGE AND MARGARET FENN RECEIVES A SHOCK

Perhaps the sound of their laughter drowned the mournful voices of the bells in Grant Adams's heart. But the bells of the New Year left within him some stirring of their eternal question. For as the light of day sniffed out, Grant in a cage full of miners, with Dick Bowman and one of his boys standing beside him, going down to the second level of the mine, asked himself the question that had puzzled him: Why did not these men get as much out of life as their fellows on the same pay in the town who work in stores and offices? He could see no particular difference in the intelligence of the men in Harvey and the workers in South Harvey; yet there they were in poorer clothes, with, faces not so quick, clearly not so well kept from a purely animal standpoint, and even if they were sturdier and physically more powerful, yet to the young man working with them in the mine, it seemed that they were a different sort from the white-handed, keen-faced, smooth-shaven, well-groomed clerks of Market Street, and that the clerks were getting the better of life. And Grant cried in his heart: "Why—why—why?"

Then Dick Bowman said: "Red—penny for your thoughts?" The men near by turned to Grant and he said: "Hello, Dick—" Then to the boy: "Well, Mugs, how are you?" He spoke to the others, Casper and Barney and Evans and Hugh and Bill and Dan and Tom and Lew and Gomer and Mike and Dick—excepting Casper Herdicker, mostly Welsh and Irish, and they passed around some more or less ribald greetings. Then they all stepped upon the soft ground and stood in the light of the flickering oil torches that hung suspended from timbers.

Stretching down long avenues these flickering torches blocked out the alleys of the mine in either direction from the room, perhaps fifty by forty feet, six or seven feet high, where they were standing. A car of coal drawn by forlorn mules and pushed by a grinning boy, came creaking around a distant corner, and drew nearer to the cage. A score of men ending their shift were coming into the passageways from each end, shuffling along, tired and silent. They met the men going to work with a nod or a word and in a moment the room at the main bottom was empty and silent, save for the groaning car and the various language spoken by the grinning boy to the unhappy mule. Grant Adams turned off the main passage to an air course, where from the fans above cold air was rushing along a narrow and scarcely lighted runway about six feet wide and lower than the main passage. Down this passage the new mule barn was building. Grant went to his work, and just outside the barn, snuffed a sputtering torch that was dripping burning oil into a small oily puddle on the damp floor. The room was cold. Three men were with him and he was directing them, while he worked briskly with them. Occasionally he left the barn to oversee the carpenters who were timbering up a new shaft in a lower level that was not yet ready for operation. Fifty miners and carpenters were working on the third level, clearing away passages, making shaft openings, putting in timbers, constructing air courses and getting the level ready for real work. On the second level, in the little rooms, off the long, gloomy passages lighted with the flaring torches hanging from the damp timbers that stretched away into long vistas wherein the torches at the ends of the passage glimmered like fireflies, men were working—two hundred men pegging and digging and prying and sweating and talking to their "buddies," the Welsh in monosyllables and the Irish in a confusion of tongues. The cars came jangling along the passageways empty and went back loaded and groaning. Occasionally the piping voice of a boy and the melancholy bray of a mule broke the deep silence of the place.

For sound traveled slowly through the gloom, as though the torches sapped it up and burned it out in faint, trembling light to confuse the men who sometimes came plodding down the galleries to and from the main bottom. At nine o'clock Grant Adams had been twice over the mine, on the three levels and had thirty men hammering away for dear life. He sent a car of lumber down to the mule barn, while he went to the third level to direct the division of an air shaft into an emergency escape. On one side of this air shaft the air came down and there was a temporary hoist for the men on the third level and on the other side a wooden stairway was to be built up seventy feet toward the second level.

At ten o'clock Grant came back to the second level by the hoist in the air shaft and as he started down the low air course branching off from the main passage and leading to the new mule barn, he smelled burning pine; and hurrying around a corner saw that the boy who dumped the pine boards for the mule barn had not taken the boards into the barn, nor even entirely to the barn, but had dumped them in the passage to the windward of the barn, under the leaky torch, and Grant could see down the air course the ends of the boards burning brightly.

The men working in the barn could not smell the fire, for the wind that rushed down the air course was carrying the smoke and fumes away from them. Grant ran down the course toward the fire, which was fanned by the rushing air, came to the lumber, which was not all afire, jumped through the flames, slapping the little blazes on his clothes with his hat as he came out, and ran into the barn calling to the men to help him put out the fire. They spent two or three minutes trying to attach the hose to the water plug there, but the hose did not fit the plug; then they tried to turn the plug to get water in their dinner pails and found that the plug had rusted and would not turn. While they worked the fire grew. It was impossible to send a man back through it, so Grant sent a man speeding around the air course, to get a wrench from the pump room, or from some one in the main bottom to turn on the water. In the meantime he and the other two men worked furiously to extinguish the fire by whipping it with their coats and aprons, but always the flames beat them back. Helplessly they saw it eating along the mine timbers far down the vacant passage. Little red devils of flame that winked maliciously two hundred feet away, and went out, then sprang up again, then blazed steadily. Grant and the two men tugged frantically at the burning boards, trying to drag them out of the passageway into the barn, but only here and there could an end be picked up, and it took five minutes to get half a dozen charred boards into the barn. While they struggled with the charred boards the flames down the passage kept glowing brighter and brighter. The men were conscious that the flames were playing around the second torch below the barn. Although they realized that the man they sent for the wrench had nearly half a mile to go and come by the roundabout way, they asked one another if he was making the wrench!

Men began poking their heads into the course and calling, "Need any help down there," and Grant cried, "Yes, go to the pump in the main balcony with your buckets and get water." The man sent for the wrench appeared down the long passage. Grant yelled,

"Hurry—hurry, man!" But though he came running, the fire seemed to be going faster than he was. They could hear men calling and felt that there was confusion at the end of the air course where it turned into the main passage ahead of the flames. A second torch exploded, scattering the fire far down the course. The man, breathless and exhausted, ran up with the wrench. Then they felt the air in the air course stop moving. They looked at one another. "Yes," said the man with the wrench, "I told 'em to reverse the fans and when we got the water turned on we'd hold the fire from going to the other end of the passage." He said this between gasps as he tugged at the water plug with the wrench. He hit it a vicious blow and the cap broke.

The fan had reversed. The air was rushing back, bringing the flames to the barn. They beat the fire madly with their coats, but in two minutes the roaring air had brought the flames upon them. The loose timber and shavings in the barn were beginning to blaze and the men ran for their lives down the air course. As they ran for the south passage, the smoke followed them and they felt it in their eyes and lungs. The lights behind them were dimmed, and those in front grew dim. They reached the passage in a cloud of smoke, but it was going up the air shaft and did not fill the passage. "Mugs," yelled Grant to a boy driving an ore car, "run down this passage and tell the men there's a fire—where's your father?"

"He's up yon way," called the boy, pointing in the opposite direction as he ran. "You tell him." The fire was roaring down the air course behind them, and Grant and the three men knew that in a few minutes the reverse air would be sucking the flames up the air shaft, cutting off the emergency escape for the men on the first and second levels.

Grant knew that the emergency escape was not completed for the third level, but he knew that they were using the air chute for a temporary hoist for the men from the third level and that the main shaft was not running to the third level.

"Run down this passage, Bill," called Grant. "Get all those fellows. Evans, you call the first level; I'll skin down this rope to the men below." In an instant, as the men were flying on their errands, his red head disappeared down the rope into the darkness. At the bottom of the hoist in the third level Grant found forty or fifty men at work. They were startled to see him come down without waiting for the bucket to go up and he called breathlessly as his feet touched the earth: "Boys, there's a fire above on the next level—I don't know how bad it is; but it looks bad to me. They may get it out with a hose from the main bottom—if they've got hose there that will reach any place."

"Let's go up," cried one of the men. As they started toward him, Grant threw up his hand.

"Hold on now, boys—hold on. The fans will be blowing that fire down this air shaft in a few minutes. How far up have you got the ladders?" he asked.

Some one answered: "Still twelve feet shy." There was a scramble for the buckets, but no one offered to man the windlass and hoist them up the air shaft. Grant was only a carpenters' boss. The men around the buckets were miners. But he called: "Get out of there, Hughey and Mike—none of that. We must make that ladder first—get some timbers—put the rungs three feet apart, and work quick."

He pointed at the timbers to be used for the ladders, stepped to the windlass and cried:

"Here, Johnnie—you got no family—get hold of this windlass with me. Ready now—family men first—you, Sam—you, Edwards—you, Lewellyn."

Then he bent to the wheel and the men in the bucket started up the shaft. The others pounded at the ladder, and those who could find no work clambered up the stairs to the bottom of the gap that separated them from the second level. As the men in the buckets were nearly up to the second level, where the hoist stopped, Grant heard one of them call: "Hurry, hurry—here she comes," and a second later a hot, smoky wind struck his face and he knew the fan was turned again and soon would be blowing fire down the air course.

The men had the ladder almost finished. The men above on the stairs smelled the smoke and began yelling. The bucket reached the top and was started down. Grant looked up the air shaft and saw the fire—little flickering flames lighting up the shaft near the second level. The air rushing down was smoky and filled with sparks. The ladder was ready and the men made a rush with it up the stairway. Most of their lamps were put out and it was dark in the stairway. The men were uttering hysterical, foolish cries as they rushed upward in their panic. The ladder jolting against the sides of the chamber knocked the men off their feet and there was tumbling and swearing and tripping and struggling.

Grant grabbed the ladder from the men and held it above his head, and called out:

"You men go up there in order. You'll not get the ladder till you straighten up."

The emergency-passage was filling with smoke. The men were coughing and gasping.

Up and down the stairs men called:

"Brace up, that's right."

"Red's right."

"We'll all go if we don't straighten up."

In a moment there was some semblance of order, and Grant wormed his way to the top holding the ladder above him. He put one end of it on a landing and nailed the foot of the ladder to the landing floor. Then he stood on the landing, a great, powerful man with blazing eyes, and called down: "Now come; one at a time, and if any man crowds I'll kill him. Come on—one at a time." One came and went up; when he was on the third rung of the ladder, Grant let another man pass up, and so three men were on the ladder.

As the top man raised the trapdoor above, Grant and those upon the ladder could see the flames and a great gust of smoke poured down. The man at the top hesitated. On the other side of the partition in the air chute the smoke was pouring and the fire was circling the top of the emergency escape through which the men must pass.

"Go ahead or jump down," yelled Grant.

Those on the ladder and on the landing who could see up cried:

"Quick, for God's sake! Hurry!"

And in another second the first man had scrambled through the hole, letting the trapdoor fall upon the head of the scrambling man just under him. He fell, but Grant caught him, and shoved him into the next turn upon the ladder.

After that they learned to lift their hands up and catch the trapdoor, but they could see the flames burning the timbers and dropping sparks and blowing smoke down the emergency shaft. Ten men went up; the fire in the flume along the stairs below them was beginning to whip through the board partition. The fan was pumping the third level full of smoke; it was carried out of the stairway by the current. But the men were calling below. Little Ira Dooley tried to go around Grant ahead of his turn at the ladder. The cheater felt the big man's hand catch him and hold him. The men below saw Grant hit the cheater upon the point of the jaw and throw him half conscious under the ladder. The men climbed steadily up. Twenty-five went through the trapdoor into the unknown hell raging above. Again and again the ladder emptied itself, as the flames in the shaft grew longer, and the circle of fire above grew broader. The men passed through the trapdoor with scorching clothes.

The ladder was filling for the last time. The last man was on the first rung. Grant reached under the ladder, caught Dooley about the waist and started up with him. On the ladder Dooley regained consciousness, and Grant shoved him ahead and saw Dooley slip through the trapdoor and then stop in the smoke and fire and stand holding up the door for Grant. The two men smiled through the smoke, and as Grant came through with his clothes afire, he and Dooley looked quickly about them. Their lights were out; but the burning timbers above gave them their directions. They headed down the south passage, but even as they entered it the flames barred them there. Then they turned to go up the passage, and could hear men calling and yelling far down in the dark alley. The torches were gone. Far ahead through the stifling smoke that swirled about the damp timbers overhead, they could see the flickering lights of men running. They started to follow the lamps. Dooley, who was a little man, slowly dropped back. Grant caught his hand and dragged him. Soon they came up to the others, who paused to give them lights. Then they all started to run again, hoping to come out of that passage into the main bottom by the main shaft in another quarter of a mile. Occasionally a man would begin to lag, but some one always stopped to give him a hand. Once Grant passed two men, Tom Williams and Evan Davis, leaning against a timber, Davis fagged, Williams fanning his companion with his cap.

From some cross passage a group of men who worked on the second level came rushing to them. They had no lights and were lost. Down the passage they all ran together, and at the end they saw something cluttering it up. The opening seemed to be closed. The front man tumbled and fell; a dozen men fell over him. Three score men were trapped there, struggling in a pile of pipes and refuse timber that all but filled the passage into the main bottom. Five minutes were lost there. Then by twos they crawled into the main bottom. There men were working with hose, trying to put out the fire in the air course leading to the mule stables. They did not realize that the other end of the mine was in flames.

Coal was still going up in the cages. The men in the east and west passages were still at work. Smoke thickened the air. The entrance to the air course was charred, and puffing smoke. The fans relaxed for a moment upon a signal to cease until the course was explored. A hose was playing in the course, but no man had ventured down it. When Grant came out he called to the men with the cage boss: "Where's Kinnehan—where's the pit boss?" No one knew. Some little boys—trimmers and drivers—were begging to go up with the coal. Finally the cage boss let them ride up.

While they were wrangling, Grant said: "Lookee here—this is a real fire, men; stop spitting on that air course with the hose and go turn out the men."

The men from the third level were clamoring at the cage boss to go up.

Grant stopped them: "Now, here—let's divide off, five in a squad and go after the men on this level, and five in a squad go up to the next level and call the men out there. There's time if we hurry to save the whole shift." He tolled them off and they went down the glimmering passages, that were beginning to grow dim with smoke. As he left the main bottom he saw by his watch under a torch that it was nearly eleven o'clock. He ran with his squad down the passage, calling out the men from their little rooms. Three hundred yards down the smoke grew denser. And he met men coming along the passage.

"Are they all out back of you?" he called to the men as they passed. "Yes," they cried, "except the last three or four rooms."

Grant and his men pushed forward to these rooms. As they went they stumbled over an unconscious form in the passage. The men behind Grant—Dooley, Hogan, Casper Herdicker, Williams, Davis, Chopini—joined him. Their work was done. They had been in all the rooms. They picked up the limp form, and staggered slowly back down the passage. The smoke gripped Grant about the belly like a vise. He could not breathe. He stopped, then crawled a few feet, then leaned against a timber. Finally he rose and came upon the swaying group with the unconscious man. Another man was down, and three men were dragging two.

The smoke kept rolling along behind them. It blackened the passage ahead of them. Most of the lights the men carried were out. Grant lent a hand, and the swaying procession crawled under the smoke. They went so slowly that one man, then two on their hands and knees, then three more caught up with them and they were too exhausted to drag the senseless man with them. At a puddle in the way they soused the face of the prostrated man in the water. That revived him. They could hear and feel another man across the passage calling feebly for help. Grant and Chopini, speaking different languages, understood the universal call of distress, and together crawled in the dark and felt their way to the feeble voice. Chopini reached the voice first. Grant could just distinguish in the darkness the powerful movement of the Italian, with his head upon the ground like a nosing dog's as he wormed under the fallen body and got it on his back and bellied over to the group that was slowly moving down the passage toward the glimmering light. As they passed the rooms vacated by the miners, sometimes they put their heads in and got refreshing air, for the smoke moved in a slow, murky current down the passage and did not back into the rooms at first.

Grant and Chopini crawled on all fours into a room, and found the air fresh. They rose, holding each other's hands. They leaned together against the dark walls and breathed slowly, and finally their diaphragms seemed to be released and they breathed more deeply. By a hand signal they agreed to start out. At the door they crouched and crawled. A few yards further they found the little group of a dozen men feebly pushing on. Seven were trying to drag five. Further down the passage they could hear the shrill cries of the men in the main bottom, as they came hurrying from the other runways, and far back up the dark passage behind them they could hear the roar of flames. They saw that they were trapped. Behind them was the fire. Before them was the long, impossible stretch to the main bottom, with the smoke thickening and falling lower every second. So thick was the smoke that the light ahead winked out. Death stood before them and behind them.

"Boys—" gasped Grant, "in here—let's get in one of these rooms and wall it up."

The seven looked at him and he crawled to a room; sticking his head in he found it murky. He tried another. The third room was fresh and cool, and he called the men in.

Then all nine dragged one after another of the limp bodies into the room and they began walling the door into the passage. There were two lights on a dozen caps. Grant put out one lamp and they worked by the glimmer of a single lamp. Gradually, but with a speed—slow as it had to be—inspired by deadly terror, the wall went up. They daubed it with mud that seemed to refresh itself from a pool that was hollowed in the floor. After what seemed an age of swiftly accurate work, the wall was waist high; the smoke bellied in, in a gust, and was suddenly sucked out by an air current, and the men at the wall tapping some spring of unknown energy bent frantically to their task. Three of the six men were coming to life. They tried to rise and help. Two crawled forward, and patted the mud in the bottom crevices. The fierce race with death called out every man's reserves of body and soul.

Then, when the wall was breast high, some one heard a choking cry in the passage. Grant was in the rear of the room, wrestling with a great rock, and did not hear the cry; but Chopini was over the wall, and Dooley followed him, and Evans followed him in an instant. They disappeared down the passage, and when Grant returned, carrying the huge rock to the speeding work at the wall, he heard a voice outside call:

"We've got 'em."

And then, after a silence, as the workmen hurried with the wall, there came a call for help. Williams and Dennis Hogan followed Grant through the hole now nearing the roof of the room, out into the passage. The air was scorching. Some current was moving it rapidly. The second party came upon the first struggling weakly with Dick Bowman and his son. Father and son were unconscious and one of the rescuing party had fainted. Again the vise gripped Grant's abdomen, and he put his face upon the damp earth and panted. Slowly the three men in the darkness bellied along until they felt the wall, then in an agony of effort raised themselves and their burden. Up the wall they climbed to their knees, to their feet, and met the hands of those inside who took the burden from them. One, two, three whiffs of clean air as they stuck their heads in the room, and they were gone—and another two men from the room followed them. They came upon the first party working their gasping, fainting course back to the wall, with their load, rolling a man before them. And they all pulled and tugged and pushed and some leaned heavily upon others and all looked death squarely in the face and no man whimpered. The panic was gone; the divine spark that rests in every human soul was burning, and life was little and cheap in their eyes, compared with the chance they had to give it for others.

Flicks of fire were swirling down the passage, and the roar of the flames came nearer and Grant fancied he could hear the crackle of it. Chopini was on his knees clutching at the crevices in the wall; Hogan and Dooley dug with their hands into the chinks, then four men were on their feet, with the burden, and in the blackness, hands within the wall reached out and took the man from those outside. The hands reached out and felt other hands and pulled them up, and five, six men stood upon their feet and were pulled, scrambling and trembling and reeling, into the room. The blackness outside became a lurid glare. The flickering lamp inside showed them that one man was outside. Grant Adams stood faint and trembling, leaning against a wall of the room; the room and the men whirled about him and he grew sick at the stomach. But with a powerful effort he gathered himself, and lunged to the hole in the rising wall. He was trying to pull himself up when Dooley pulled him down, and went through the hole like a cat. Hogan followed Dooley and Evans followed Hogan. "Here he is, right at the bottom," called Hogan, and in an instant the feet of Casper Herdicker, then the sprawling legs, then the body and then the head with the closed eyes and gaping mouth came in, and then three men slowly followed him. Grant, revived by the water from the puddle under him, stood and saw the last man—Dennis Hogan—crawl in. Then Grant, seeing Hogan's coat was afire, looked out and saw flames dancing along the timbers, and a spark with a gust of smoke was sucked into the room by some eddy of the current outside. In a last spurt of terrible effort the hole in the wall was closed and plastered with mud and the men were sealed in their tomb.