It was but a matter of minutes before the furnace was raging outside. The men in the room could hear it crackle and roar, and the mud in the chinks steamed. The men daubed the chinks again and again.

As the fire roared outside, the men within the room fancied—and perhaps it was the sheer horror of their situation that prompted their fancy—that they could hear the screams of men and mules down the passage toward the main bottom. After an hour, when the roar ceased, they were in a great silence. And as the day grew old and the silence grew deep and the immediate danger past, they began to wait. As they waited they talked. At times they heard a roaring and a crash and they knew that the timbers having burned away, the passages and courses were caving in. By their watches they knew that the night was upon them. And they sat talking nervously through the night, fearing to sleep, dreading what each moment might bring. Lamp after lamp burned out in turn. And still they sat and talked. Here one would drowse—there another lose consciousness and sink to the ground, but always men were talking. The talk never ceased. They were ashamed to talk of women while they were facing death, so they kept upon the only other subjects that will hold men long—God and politics. The talk droned on into morning, through the forenoon, into the night, past midnight, with the thread taken from one man sinking to sleep by another waking up, but it never stopped. The water that seeped into the puddle on the floor moistened their lips as they talked. There was no food save in two lunch buckets that had been left in the room by fleeing miners, and thus went the first day.

The second day the Welsh tried to sing—perhaps to stop the continual talk of the Irish. Then the Italian sang something, Casper Herdicker sang the "Marseillaise" and the men clapped their hands, in the twilight of the last flickering lamp that they had. After that Grant called the roll at times and those who were awake felt of those who were asleep and answered for them, and a second day wore into a third.

By the feeling of the stem of Grant Adams's watch as he wound it, he judged that they had lived nearly four days in the tomb. Little Mugs Bowman was crying for food, and his father was trying to comfort him, by giving him his shoe leather to chew. Others rolled and moaned in their sleep, and the talk grew unstable and flighty.

Some one said, "Hear that?" and there was silence, and no one heard anything. Again the talk began and droned unevenly along.

"Say, listen," some one else called beside the first man who had heard the sound.

Again they listened, and because they were nervous perhaps two or three men fancied they heard something. But one said it was the roar of the fire, another said it was the sound of some one calling, and the third said it was the crash of a rock in some distant passageway. The talk did not rise again for a time, but finally it rose wearily, punctuated with sighs. Then two men cried:

"Hear it! There it is again!"

And breathless they all sat, for a second. Then they heard a voice calling, "Hello—hello?" And they tried to cheer.

But the voice did not sound again, and a long time passed. Grant tried to count the minutes as they ticked off in his watch, but his mind would not remain fixed upon the ticking, so he lost track of the time after three minutes had passed. And still the time dragged, the watch kept ticking.

Then they heard the sound again, clearer; and again it called. Then Dick Bowman took up a pick, called:

"Watch out, away from the wall, I'm going to make a hole."

He struck the wall and struck it again and again, until he made a hole and they cried through it:

"Hello—hello—We're here." And they all tried to get to the hole and jabber through it. Then they could hear hurrying feet and voices calling, and confusion. The men called, and cried and sobbed and cheered through the hole, and then they saw the gleam of a lantern. Then the wall crumbled and they climbed into the passage. But they knew, who had heard the falling timbers and the crashing rocks, for days, that they were not free.

The rescuers led the imprisoned miners down the dark passage; Grant Adams was the last man to leave the prison. As he turned an angle of the passage, a great rock fell crashing before him, and a head of dirt caught him and dragged him under. His legs and body were pinioned. Dennis Hogan in front heard the crash, saw Grant fall, and stood back for a moment, as another huge rock slid slowly down and came to rest above the prostrate man. For a second no one moved. Then one man—Ira Dooley—slowly crept toward Grant and began digging with his hands at the dirt around Grant's legs. Then Casper Herdicker and Chopini came to help. As they stood at Grant's head, quick as a flash, the rock fell and the two men standing at Grant's head were crushed like worms. The roof of the passage was working wickedly, and in the flickering light of the lanterns they could see the walls shudder. Then Dick Bowman stepped out. He brought a shovel from a room opening on the passage, and Evan Davis and Tom Williams and Jamey McPherson with shovels began working over Grant, who lay white and frightened, watching the squirming wall above and blowing the dropping dirt from his face as it fell.

"Mugs, come here," called Dick Bowman. "Take that shovel," commanded the father, "and hold it over Grant's face to keep the dirt from smothering him." The boy looked in terror at the roof dropping dirt and ready to fall, but the father glared at the son and he obeyed. No one spoke, but four men worked—all that could stand about him. They dug out his body; they released his legs, they freed his feet, and when he was free they helped him up and hurried him down the passage which he had traversed four days ago. Before they turned into the main bottom room, he was sick with the stench. And as he turned into that room, where the cage landed, he saw by the lantern lights and by the flaring torches held by a dozen men, a great congregation of the dead—some piled upon others, some in attitudes of prayer, some shielding their comrades in death, some fleeing and stricken prone upon the floor, some sitting, looking the foe in the face. Men were working with the bodies—trying to sort them into a kind of order; but the work had just begun.

The weakened men, led by their rescuers, picked their way through the corpses and went to the top in a cage. Far down in the shaft, the daylight cut them like a knife. And as they mounted higher and higher, they could hear the murmur of voices above them, and Grant could hear the sobs of women and children long before he reached the top. The word that men had been rescued passed out of the shaft house before they could get out of the cage, and a great shout went up.

The men walked out of the shaft house and saw all about them, upon flat cars, upon the dump near the shaft, upon buildings around the shaft house, a great crowd of cheering men and women, pale, drawn, dreadful faces, illumined by eager eyes. Grant lifted his eyes to the crowd. There in a carriage beside Henry Fenn, Grant saw Margaret staring at him, and saw her turn pale and slide down into her husband's arms, as she recognized Grant's face among those who had come out of death. Then he saw his father and little Kenyon in the crowd and he dashed through the thick of it to them. There he held the boy high in the air, and cried as the little arms clung about his neck.

The great hoarse whistles roared and the shrill siren whistles screamed and the car bells clanged and the church bells rang. But they did not roar and scream and peal and toll for money and wealth and power, but for life that was returned. As for the army of the dead below, for all their torture, for all their agony and the misery they left behind for society to heal or help or neglect—the army of the dead had its requiem that New Year's eve, when the bells and whistles and sirens clamored for money that brings wealth, and wealth that brings power, and power that brings pleasure, and pleasure that brings death—and death?—and death?

The town had met death. But no one even in that place of mourning could answer the question that the child heard in the bells. And yet that divine spark of heroism that burns unseen in every heart however high, however low—that must be the faltering, uncertain light which points us to the truth across the veil through the mists made by our useless tears.

And thus a New Year in Harvey began its long trip around the sun, with its sorrows and its joys, with its merry pantomime and its mutes mourning upon the hearse, with its freight of cares and compensations and its sad ironies. So let us get on and ride and enjoy the journey.



CHAPTER XVII

A CHAPTER WHICH INTRODUCES SOME POSSIBLE GODS

When Grant Adams had told and retold his story to the reporters and had eaten what Dr. Nesbit would let him eat, it was late in the afternoon. He lay down to sleep with the sun still shining through the shutters in his low-ceiled, west bed room. Through the night his father sat or slept fitfully beside him and when the morning sun was high, and still the young man slept on, the father guarded him, and would let no one enter the house. At noon Grant rose and dressed. He saw the Dexters coming down the road and he went to the door to welcome them. It seemed at first that the stupor of sleep was not entirely out of his brain. He was silent and had to be primed for details of his adventure. He sat down to eat, but when his meal was half finished, there came bursting out of his soul a flame of emotion, and he put down his food, turned half around from the table, grasped the edges of the board with both hands and cried as a fanatic who sees a vision:

"Oh, those men,—those men—those wonderful, beautiful souls of men I saw!—those strong, fearless. Godlike men!—there in the mine, I mean. Evan Davis, Dick Bowman, Pat McCann, Jamey McPherson, Casper Herdicker, Chopini—all of them; yes, Dennis Hogan, drunk as he is sometimes, and Ira Dooley, who's been in jail for hold-ups—I don't care which one—those wonderful men, who risked their lives for others, and Casper Herdicker and Chopini, who gave their lives there under the rock for me. My God, my God!"

His voice thrilled with emotion, and his arms trembled as his hands gripped the table. Those who heard him did not stop him, for they felt that from some uncovered spring in his being a section of personality was gushing forth that never had seen day. He turned quietly to the wondering child, took him from his chair and hugged him closely to a man's broad chest and stroked the boyish head as the man's blue eyes filled with tears. Grant sat for a moment looking at the floor, then roughed his red mane with his fingers and said slowly and more quietly, but contentiously:

"I know what you don't know with all your religion, Mr. Dexter; I know what the Holy Ghost is now. I have seen it. The Holy Ghost is that divine spark in every human soul—however life has smudged it over by circumstance—that rises and envelopes a human creature in a flame of sacrificial love for his kind and makes him joy to die to save others. That's the Holy Ghost—that's what is immortal."

He clenched his great hickory fist and hit the table and lifted his face again, crying: "I saw Dennis Hogan walk up to Death smiling that Irish smile. I saw him standing with a ton of loose dirt hanging over him while he was digging me out! I saw Evan Davis—little, bow-legged Evan Davis—go out into the smoke alone—alone, Mr. Dexter, and they say Evan is a coward—he went out alone and brought back Casper Herdicker's limp body hugged to his little Welsh breast like a gorilla's—and saved a man. I saw Dick Bowman do more—when the dirt was dropping from the slipping, working roof into my mouth and eyes, and might have come down in a slide—I lay there and watched Dick working to save me and I heard him order his son to hold a shovel over my face—his own boy." Grant shuddered and drew the child closer to him, and looked at the group near him with wet eyes. "Ira Dooley and Tom Williams and that little Italian went on their bellies, half dead from the smoke, out into death and brought home three men to safety, and would have died without batting an eye—all three to save one lost man in that passage." He beat the table again with his fist and cried wildly: "I tell you that's the Holy Ghost. I know those men may sometimes trick the company if they can. I know Ira Dooley spends lots of good money on 'the row'; I know Tom gambles off everything he can get his hands on, and that the little Dago probably would have stuck a knife in an enemy over a quarter. But that doesn't count."

The young man's voice rose again. "That is circumstance; much of it is surroundings, either of birth or of this damned place where we are living. If they cheat the company, it is because the company dares them to cheat and cheats them badly. If they steal, it is because they have been taught to steal by the example of big, successful thieves. I've had time to think it all out.

"Father—father!" cried Grant, as a new wave of emotion surged in from the outer bourne of his soul, "you once said Dick Bowman sold out the town and took money for voting for the Harvey Improvement bond steal. But what if he did? That was merely circumstance. Dick is a little man who has had to fight for money all his life—just enough money to feed his hungry children. And here came an opportunity to get hold of—what was it?—a hundred dollars—" Amos Adams nodded. "Well, then, a hundred dollars, and it would buy so much, and leading citizens came and told him it was all right—men we have educated with our taxes and our surplus money in universities and colleges. And we haven't educated Dick; we've just taught him to fight—to fight for money, and to think money will do everything in God's beautiful world. So Dick took it. That was the Dick that man and Harvey and America made, father, but I saw the Dick that God made!" He stopped and cried out passionately, "And some day, some day all the world must know this man—this great-souled, common American—that God made!"

Grant's voice was low, but a thousand impulses struggled across his features for voice and his eyes were infinitely sad as he gazed at the curly, brown hair of the child in his arms playing with the buttons on his coat.

The minister looked at his wife. She was wet-faced and a-tremble, and had her hands over her eyes. Amos Adams's old, frank face was troubled. The son turned upon him and cried:

"Father—you're right when you say character makes happiness. But what do you call it—surroundings—where you live and how you live and what you do for a living—environment! That's it, that's the word—environment has lots and lots to do with character. Let the company reduce its dividends by giving the men a chance at decent living conditions, in decent houses and decent streets, and you'll have another sort of attitude toward the company. Quit cheating them at the store, and you'll have more honesty in the mines; quit sprinkling sour beer and whiskey on the sawdust in front of the saloons to coax men in who have an appetite, and you'll have less drinking—but, of course, Sands will have less rents. Let the company obey the law—the company run by men who are pointed out as examples, and there'll be less lawlessness among the men when trouble comes. Why, Mr. Dexter, do you know as we sat down there in the dark, we counted up five laws which the company broke, any one of which would have prevented the fire, and would have saved ninety lives. Trash in the passage leading to the main shaft delayed notifying the men five minutes—that's against the law. Torches leaking in the passageway where there should have been electric lights—that's against the law. Boys—little ten-year-olds working down there—cheap, cheap!" he cried, "and dumping that pine lumber under a dripping torch—that's against the law. Having no fire drill, and rusty water plugs and hose that doesn't reach—that's against the law. A pine partition in an air-chute using it as a shaft—that's against the law. Yet when trouble comes and these men burn and kill and plunder—we'll put the miners in jail, and maybe hang them, for doing as they are taught a thousand times a week by the company—risking life for their own gain!"

Grant Adams rose. He ran his great, strong, copper-freckled hands through his fiery hair and stood with face transfigured, as the face of one staring at some phantasm. "Oh, those men—they risked their lives—Chopini and Casper Herdicker gave their lives for me. Father," he cried, "I am bought with a price. These men risked all and gave all for me. I am theirs. I have no other right to live except as I serve them." He drew a deep breath; set his jaw and spoke with all the force he could put into a quiet voice: "I am dedicated to men—to those great-souled, brave, kind men whom God has sent here for man to dwarf and ruin. They have bought me. I am theirs."

The minister put the question in their minds:

"What are you going to do, Grant?"

The fervor that had been dying down returned to Grant Adams's face.

"My job," he cried, "is so big I don't know where to take hold. But I'm not going to bother to tell those men who sweat and stink and suffer under the injustices of men, about the justice of God. I've got one thing in me bigger'n a wolf—it's this: House them—feed them, clothe them, work them—these working people—and pay them as you people of the middle classes are housed and fed and paid and clad, and crime won't be the recreation of poverty. And the Lord knows the work of the men who toil with their hands is just as valuable to society as preaching and trading and buying and selling and banking and editing and lawing and doctoring, and insuring and school teaching."

He stood before the kitchen stove, a tall, awkward, bony, wide-shouldered, loose-wired creature in the first raw stage of full-blown manhood. The red muscles of his jaw worked as his emotions rose in him. His hands were the hands of a fanatic—never still.

"I've been down into death and I've found something about life," he went on. "Out of the world's gross earnings we're paying too much for superintendence, and rent and machines, and not enough for labor. There's got to be a new shake-up. And I'm going to help. I don't know where nor how to begin, but some way I'll find a hold and I'm going to take it."

He drew in a long breath, looked around and smiled rather a ragged, ugly smile that showed his big teeth, all white and strong but uneven.

"Well, Grant," said Mrs. Dexter, "you have cut out a big job for yourself." The young man nodded soberly.

"Well, we're going to organize 'em, the first thing. We talked that over in the mine when we had nothing else to talk about—but God and our babies."

In the silence that followed, Amos Adams said: "While you were down there of course I had to do something. So after the paper was out, I got to talking with Lincoln about things. He said you'd get out. Though," smiled the old man sheepishly and wagged his beard, "Darwin didn't think you would. But anyway, they all agreed we should do something for the widows."

"They have a subscription paper at George Brotherton's store—you know, Grant," said Mr. Dexter.

"Well—we ought to put in something, father,—all we've got, don't you think?"

"I tried and tried to get her last night to know how she felt about it," mused Amos. "I've borrowed all I can on the office—and it wouldn't sell for its debts."

"You ought to keep your home, I think," put in Mrs. Dexter quickly, who had her husband's approving nod.

"They told me," said the father, "that Mary didn't feel that way about it. I couldn't get her. But that was the word she sent."

"Father," said Grant with the glow in his face that had died for a minute, "let's take the chance. Let's check it up to God good and hard. Let's sell the house and give it all to those who have lost more than we. We can earn the rent, anyway."

Mrs. Dexter looked significantly at Kenyon.

"No, that shouldn't count, either," said Grant stubbornly. "Dick Bowman didn't let his boy count when I needed help, and when hundreds of orphaned boys and girls and widows need our help, we shouldn't hold back for Kenyon."

"Grant," said the father when the visit was ended and the two were alone, "they say your father has no sense—up town. Maybe I haven't. I commune with these great minds; maybe they too are shadows. But they come from outside of me." He ran his fingers through his graying beard and smiled. "Mr. Left brings me things that are deeper and wiser than the things I know—it seems to me. But they all bear one testimony, Grant; they all tell me that it's the spiritual things and not the material things in this world that count in the long run, and, Grant, boy," the father reached for his son's strong hand, "I would rather have seen the son that has come back to me from death, go back to death now, if otherwise I never could have seen him. They told me your mother was with you. And now I know some way she touched your heart out there in the dark—O Grant, boy, while you spoke I saw her in your face—in your face I saw her. Mary—Mary," cried the weeping old man, "when you sent me back to the war you looked as he looked to-day, and talked so."

"Father," said Grant, "I don't know about your Mr. Left. He doesn't interest me, as he does you, and as for the others—they may be true or all a mockery, for anything I know. But," he exclaimed, "I've seen God face to face and I can't rest until I've given all I am—everything—everything to help those men!"

Then the three went out into the crisp January air—father and son and little Kenyon bundled to the chin. They walked over the prairies under the sunshine and talked together through the short winter afternoon. At its close they were in the timber where the fallen leaves were beginning to pack against the tree trunks and in the ravines. The child listened as the wind played upon its harp, and the rhythm of the rising and falling tide of harmony set his heart a-flutter, and he squeezed his father's fingers with delight. A redbird flashing through the gray and brown picture gave him joy, and when it sang far down the ravine where the wind organ seemed to be, the child's eyes brimmed and he dropped behind the elders a few paces to listen and be alone with his ecstasy. And so in the fading day they walked home. The quail piped for the child, and the prairie chicken pounded his drum, and in the prairie grass the slanting sun painted upon the ripples across the distant, rolling hills many pictures that filled the child's heart so full that he was still, as one who is awed with a great vision. And it was a great vision that filled his soul: the sunset with its splendors, the twilight hovering in the brown woods, the prairie a-quiver with the caresses of the wind, winter-birds throbbing life and ecstasy into the picture, and above and around it all a great, warm, father's heart symbolizing the loving kindness of the infinite to the child's heart.



CHAPTER XVIII

OUR HERO RIDES TO HOUNDS WITH THE PRIMROSE HUNT

Going home from the Adamses that afternoon, John Dexter mused: "Curious—very curious." Then he added: "Of course this phase will pass. Probably it is gone now. But I am wondering how fundamental this state of mind is, if it will not appear again—at some crisis later in life."

"His mother," said Mrs. Dexter, "was a strong, beautiful woman. She builded deep and wide in that boy. And his father is a wise, earnest, kindly man, even if he may be impractical. Why shouldn't Grant do all that he dreams of doing?"

"Yes," returned the minister dryly. "But there is life—there are its temptations. He is of the emotional type, and the wrong woman could bend him away from any purpose that he may have now. Then, suppose he does get past the first gate—the gate of his senses—there's the temptation to be a fool about his talents if he has any—if this gift of tongues we've seen to-day should stay with him—he may get the swelled head. And then," he concluded sadly, "at the end is the greatest temptation of all—the temptation that comes with power to get power for the sake of power."

The next morning Amos Adams and Grant went in to Market Street to sell their home. Grant seemed a stranger to that busy mart of trade: the week of his absence had taken him so far from it. His eyes were caught by two tall figures, a man and a woman, walking and talking as they crossed the street—the man in a heavy, long, brown ulster, the woman in a flaring red, outer garment. He recognized them as Margaret Fenn and Thomas Van Dorn. They had met entirely by chance, and the meeting was one of perhaps half a dozen chance meetings which they had enjoyed during the winter, and these meetings were so entirely pleasurable that the man was beginning rather vaguely to anticipate them—to hope for another meeting after the last. Grant was in an exalted mood that morning, and the sight of the two walking together struck him only as a symbol and epitome of all that he was going into the world to fight—in the man intellect without moral purpose, in the woman materialism, gross and carnal. The Adamses went the rounds of the real estate dealers trying to sell their home, and in following his vision Grant forgot the two tall figures in the street.

But the two figures that had started Grant's reverie continued to walk—perhaps a trifle slower than was the wont of either, down Market Street. They walked slowly for two reasons: For her part, she wished to make the most of a parade on Market Street with so grand a person as the Judge of the District Court, and the town's most distinguished citizen; and for his part, he dawdled because life was going slowly with him in certain quarters: he felt the lack of adventure, and here—at least, she was a stunning figure of a woman! "Yes," she said, "I heard about them. Henry has just told me that Mr. Brotherton said the Adamses are going to sell their home and give it to the miners' widows. Isn't it foolish? It's all they've got in the world, too! Still, really nothing is strange in that family. You know, I boarded with them one winter when I taught the Prospect School. Henry says they want to do something for the laboring people," she added naively.

As she spoke, the man's eyes wandered over her figure, across her face, and were caught by her eyes that looked at him with something in them entirely irrelevant to the subject that her lips were discussing. His eyes caught up the suggestion of her eyes, and carried it a little further, but he only said: "Yes—queer folks—trying to make a whistle—"

"Out of a pig's tail," she laughed. But her eyes thought his eyes had gone just a little too far, so they drooped, and changed the subject.

"Well, I don't know that I would say exactly a pig's tail," he returned, bracketing his words with his most engaging smile, "but I should say out of highly refractory material."

His eyes in the meantime pried up her eyelids and asked what was wrong with that. And her eyes were coy about it, and would not answer directly.

He went on speaking: "The whole labor trouble, it seems to me, lies in this whistle trade. A smattering of education has made labor dissatisfied. The laboring people are trying to get out of their place, and as a result we have strikes and lawlessness and disrespect for courts, and men going around and making trouble in industry by 'doing something for labor.'"

"Yes," she replied, "that is very true."

But her eyes—her big, liquid, animal eyes were saying, "How handsome you are—you man—you great, strong, masterful man with your brown ulster and brown hat and brown tie, and silken, black mustache." To which his eyes replied, "And you—you are superb, and such lips and such teeth," while what he trusted to words was:

"Yes—I believe that the laborer in the mines, for instance, doesn't care so much about what we would consider hardship. It's natural to him. It would be hard for us, but he gets used to it! Now, the smelter men in that heat and fumes—they don't seem to mind it. The agonizing is done largely by these red-mouthed agitators who never did a lick of work in their lives."

Their elbows touched for a moment as they walked. He drew away politely and her eyes said:

"That's all right: I didn't mind that a bit." But her lips said: "That's what I tell Mr. Fenn, and, anyway, the work's got to be done and cultivated people can't do it. It's got to be done by the ignorant and coarse and those kind of people."

His eyes flinched a little at "those kind" of people and she wondered what was wrong. But it was only for a moment that they flinched. Then they told her eyes how fine and desirable she looked, and she replied eyewise with a droop such as the old wolf might have used in replying to Red Riding Hood, "The better to eat you, my child." Then his voice spoke; his soft, false, vain, mushy voice, and asked casually: "By the way, speaking of Mr. Fenn—how is Henry? I don't see him much now since he's quit the law and gone into real estate."

His eyes asked plainly: Is everything all right in that quarter? Perhaps I might—

"Oh, I guess he's all right," and her eyes said: That's so kind of you, indeed; perhaps you might—

But he went on: "You ought to get him out more—come over some night and we'll make a hand at whist. Mrs. Van Dorn isn't much of a player, but like all poor players, she enjoys it." And the eyes continued: But you and I will have a fine time—now please come—soon—very soon.

"Yes, indeed—I don't play so well, but we'll come," and the eyes answered: That is a fair promise, and I'll be so happy. Then they flashed quickly: But Mrs. Van Dorn must arrange it. He replied: "I'll tell Mrs. Van Dorn you like whist, and she and you can arrange the evening."

Then they parted. He walked into the post office, and she walked on to the Wright & Perry store. But instead of returning to his office, he lounged into Mr. Brotherton's and sat on a bench in the Amen Corner, biting a cigar, waiting for traffic to clear out. Then he said: "George, how is Henry Fenn doing—really?"

His soft, brown hat was tipped over his eyes and his ulster, unbuttoned, displayed his fine figure, and he was clearly proud of it. Brotherton hesitated while he invoiced a row of books.

"Old trouble?" prompted Judge Van Dorn.

"Old trouble," echoed Mr. Brotherton—"about every three months since he's been married; something terrible the last time. But say—there's a man that's sorry afterwards, and what he doesn't buy for her after a round with the joy-water isn't worth talking about. So far, he's been able to square her that way—I take it. But say—that'll wear off, and then—" Mr. Brotherton winked a large, mournful, devilish wink as one who was hanging out a storm flag. Judge Van Dorn twirled his mustache, patted his necktie, jostled his hat and smiled, waiting for further details. Instead, he faced a question:

"Why did Henry quit the law for real estate, Judge—the old trouble?"

Judge Van Dorn echoed, and added: "Folks pretty generally know about it, and they don't trust their law business in that kind of hands. Poor Henry—poor devil," sighed the young Judge, and then said: "By the way, George, send up a box of cigars—the kind old Henry likes best, to my house. I'm going to have him and the missus over some evening."

Mr. Brotherton's large back was turned when the last phrase was uttered, and Mr. Brotherton made a little significant face at his shelves, and the thought occurred to Mr. Brotherton that Henry Fenn was not the only man whom people pretty generally knew about. After some further talk about Fenn and his affairs, Van Dorn primped a moment before the mirror in the cigar cutter and started for the door.

"By the by, your honor, I forgot about the Mayor's miners' relief fund. How is it now?" asked Van Dorn.

"Something past ten thousand here in the county."

"Any one beat my subscription?" asked Van Dorn.

Brotherton turned around and replied: "Yes—Amos Adams was in here five minutes ago. He has mortgaged his place and so long as he and Grant can't find kith or kin of Chopini, and Mrs. Herdicker would take nothing—Amos has put $1,500 into the fund. Done it just now—him and Grant."

The Judge took the paper, looked at the scrawl of the Adamses, and scratching out his subscription, put two thousand where there had been one thousand. He showed it to Brotherton, and added with a smile:

"Who'll call that—I wonder."

And wrapping his ulster about him and cocking his hat rakishly, he went with some pride into the street. He was thirty-four years old and was accounted as men go a handsome dog, with a figure just turning from the litheness of youth into a slight rotundity of very early middle age. He carried his shoulders well, walked with a firm, straight gait—perhaps a little too much upon his toes for candor, but, with all, he was a well-groomed animal and he knew it. So he passed Margaret Fenn again on the street, lifted his hat, hunted for her eyes, gave them all the voltage he had, and the smile that he shot at her was left over on his face for half a block down the street. People passing him smiled back and said to one another:

"What a fine, good-natured, big-hearted fellow Tom Van Dorn is!"

And Mr. Van Dorn, not oblivious to the impression he was making, smiled and bowed and bowed and smiled, and hellowed Dick, and howareyoued Hiram, and goodmorninged John, down the street, into his office. There he found his former partner busy with a laudable plan of defending a client. His client happened to be the Wahoo Fuel Company, which was being assailed by the surviving relatives of something like one hundred dead men. So Mr. Calvin was preparing to show that in entering the mine they had assumed the ordinary risks of mining, and that the neglect of their fellow servants was one of those ordinary risks. And as for the boy ten years old being employed in the mines contrary to law, there were some details of a trip to Austria for that boy and his parents, that had to be arranged with the steamship company by wire that very morning. The Judge sat reading the law, oblivious—judicially—to what was going on, and Joseph Calvin fell to work with a will. But what the young Judge, who could ignore Mr. Calvin's activities, could not help taking judicial notice of in spite of his law books, were those eyes out there on the street. They were indeed beautiful eyes and they said so much, and yet left much to the imagination—and the imagination of Judge Van Dorn was exceedingly nimble in those little matters, and in many other matters besides. Indeed, so nimble was his imagination that if it hadn't been for the fact that at Judge Van Dorn's own extra-judicial suggestion, every lawyer in town, excepting Henry Fenn, who had retired from the law practice, had been retained by the Company an hour after the accident, no one knows how many holes might have been found in Mr. Joseph Calvin's unaided brief.

As the young Judge sat poring over his law book, Captain Morton came in and after the Captain's usual circumlocution he said:

"What I really wanted to know, Judge, was about a charter. I want to start a company. So I says to myself, Judge Tom, he can just about start me right. He'll get my company going—what say?" Answering the Judge's question about the nature of the company, the Captain explained: "You see, I had the agency for the Waverly bicycle here a while back, and I got one of their wheels and was fooling with it like a fellow will on a wet day—what say?" He smiled up at the Judge a self-deprecatory smile, as if to ask him not to mind his foolishness but to listen to his story. "And when I got the blame thing apart, she wouldn't go together—eh? So I had to kind of give up the agency, and I took a churn that was filling a long-felt want just then. Churns is always my specialty and I forgot all about the bicycle—just like a fellow will—eh? But here a while back I wanted to rig up a gearing for the churn and so I took down the wreck of the old wheel, and dubbing around I worked out a ball-bearing sprocket joint—say, man, she runs just like a feather. And now what I want is a patent for the sprocket and a charter for the company to put it on the market. Henry Fenn's going to the capital for me to fix up the charter; and then whoopee—the old man's coming along, eh? When I get that thing on the market, you watch out for me—what say?"

The eyes of Margaret Fenn danced around the Captain's sprocket. So the Judge, thinking to get rid of the Captain and oblige the Fenns with one stroke, sent the Captain away with twenty-five dollars to pay Henry Fenn for getting the patent for the sprocket and securing the charter for the company.

As the Captain left the office of the Judge he greeted Mrs. Van Dorn with an elaborate bow.

And now enter Laura Van Dorn. And she is beautiful, too—with candid, wide-open gray eyes. Maturity has hardly reached her, but through the beauty of line and color, character is showing itself in every feature; Satterthwaite and Nesbit, force and sentiment are struggling upon her features for mastery. The January air has flushed her face and her frank, honest eyes glow happily. But when one belongs to the ancient, though scarcely Honorable Primrose Hunt, and rides forever to the hounds down the path of dalliance, one's wife of four years is rather stale sport. One does not pry up her eyelashes; they have been pried; nor does one hold dialogues with her under the words of conventional speech. The rules of the Hunt require one to look up at one's wife—chiefly to find out what she is after and to wonder how long she will inflict herself. And when one is hearing afar the cry of the pack, no true sportsman is diverted from the chase by ruddy, wifely cheeks, and beaming, wifely eyes, and an eager, wifely heart. So when Laura his wife came into the office of the young Judge she found his heart out with the Primrose Hunt and only his handsome figure and his judicial mind accessible to her. "Oh, Tom," she cried, "have you heard about the Adamses?" The young Judge looked up, smiled, adjusted his judicial mind, and answered without emotion: "Rather foolish, don't you think?"

"Well, perhaps it's foolish, but you know it's splendid as well as I. Giving up everything they had on earth to soften the horror in South Harvey—I'm so proud of them!"

"Well," he replied, still keeping his chair, and letting his wife find a chair for herself, "you might work up a little pride for your husband while you're at it. I gave two thousand. They only gave fifteen hundred."

"Well—you're a dear, too." She touched him with a caressing hand. "But you could afford it. It means for you only the profits on one real estate deal or one case of Joe Calvin's in the Federal Court, where you can still divide the fees. But, Tom—the Adamses have given themselves—all they have—themselves. It's a very inspiring thing; I feel that it must affect men in this town to see that splendid faith."

"Laura," he answered testily, "why do you still keep up that foolish enthusiasm for perfectly unreasonable things? There was no sense in the Adamses giving that way. It was a foolish thing to do, when the old man is practically on the town. His paper is a joke. Sooner or later we will all have to make up this gift a dollar at a time and take care of him."

He turned to his law book. "Besides, if you come to that—it's money that talks and if you want to get excited, get excited over my two thousand. It will do more good than their fifteen hundred—at least five hundred dollars more. And that's all there is to it."

Her face twitched with pain. Then from some depths of her soul she hailed him impulsively:

"Tom, I don't believe that, and I don't believe you do, either—it isn't the good the money does those who receive; it's the good it does the giver. And the good it does the giver is measured by the amount of sacrifice—the degree of himself that he puts into it—can't you understand, Tom? I'd give my soul if you could understand."

"Well, I can't understand, Laura," impatiently; "that's your father's sentimental side. Of all the fool things," the Judge slapped the book sheet viciously, "that the old man has put into your head—sentiment is one of the foolest. I tell you, Laura, money talks. There are ten languages spoken in South Harvey, and money talks in all of them, and one dollar does as much as another, and that's all there is to it."

She rose with a little sigh. "Well," she said gently, "we won't quarrel." The wife looked intently at the husband, and in that flash of time from beneath her consciousness came renewed strength. Something primeval—the eternal uxorial upon which her whole life rested, possessed her and she smiled, and touched her husband's thick, black hair gently. For she felt that if the spiritual ties for the moment had failed them, she must pick up some other tie. She was the nest builder indomitable. If the golden thread should drop—there is the string—the straw—the horse hair—the twig. So Laura Van Dorn picked up an appeal to her husband's affections and continued her predestined work.

"Tom," she said, with her smile still on her face, "what I really and truly wanted to tell you was about Lila." The mention of the child's name brought quick light to the mother's face. "Lila—think of it, Tom—Lila," the mother repeated with vast pride. "You must come right out and see her. About an hour ago, she sat gazing at your picture on my dresser, and suddenly without a word from me, she whispered 'Daddy,' and then was as shy for a moment, then whispered it again, and then spoke it out loud, and she is as proud as Punch, and keeps saying it over and over! Tom—you must come out and hear it."

Perhaps it was a knotty point of law that held his mind, or perhaps it was the old beat of the hoofs on the turf of the Primrose Hunt that filled his ears, or the red coat of the fox that filled his eyes.

He smiled graciously and replied absently: "Well—Daddy—" And repeated "Daddy—don't you think father is—" He caught the cloud flashing across her face, and went on: "Oh, I suppose daddy is all right to begin with." He picked up his law book and the woman drew nearer to him. She put her hand over the page and coaxed:

"Come on, Tom—just for a little minute—come on out and see her. I know she is waiting for you—I know she is just dying to show off to you—and besides, the new rugs have come for the living-room, and I just couldn't unpack them without you. It would seem so—old—old—old marriedy, and we aren't going to be that." She laughed and tried to close the law book.

Their eyes met and she thought for a moment that she was winning her contest. But he put her hand aside gently and answered: "Now, Laura, I'm busy, exceedingly busy. This mine accident is bound to come before me in one form or another soon, and I must be ready for it, and it is a serious matter. There will be all kinds of attacks upon the property."

"The property?" she asked, and he answered:

"Why, yes—legal attacks upon the mine—to bleed the owners, and I must be ready to guard them against these assaults, and I just can't jump and run every time Lila coos or you cut a string on a package. I'll be out to-night and we'll hear Lila and look at the rugs." To the disappointment upon her face he replied: "I tell you, Laura, sentiment is going to wreck your life if you don't check it."

The man looked into his book without reading. He had come to dislike these little scenes with his wife. He looked from his book out of the window, into the snowy street. He remembered his morning walk. There was no talk of souls in those eyes, no hint of higher things from those lips, no covert taunt of superiority in that face.

Laura did not wince. But her eyes filled and her voice was husky as she spoke: "Tom, I want your soul again—the one that used to speak to me in the old days." She bent over him, and rubbed her cheek against his and there she left him, still looking into the street.

That evening at sunset, Judge Van Dorn, with his ulster thrown back to show his fine figure, walked in his character of town Prince homeward up the avenue. His face was amiable; he was gracious to every one. He spoke to rich and poor alike, as was his wont. As he turned into his home yard, he waved at a little face in the window. In the house he was the spirit of good nature itself. He was full of quips and pleasantries and happy turns of speech. But Laura Van Dorn had learned deep in her heart to fear that mood. She was ashamed of her wisdom—degraded by her doubt, and she fought with it.

And yet a man and a woman do not live together as man and wife and parents without learning much that does not come from speech and is not put into formulated conviction. The signs were all for trouble, and in the secret places of her heart she knew these signs.

She knew that this grand manner, this expansive mood, this keying up of attentions to her were the beginnings of a sad and sordid story—a story that she did not entirely understand; would not entirely translate, but a story that sickened her very soul. To keep the table talk going, she said: "Tom, it's wonderful the way Kenyon is taking to the violin. He has a real gift, I believe."

"Yes," answered the husband absently, and then as one who would plunge ahead, began: "By the by—why don't you have your father and mother and some of the neighbors over to play cards some evening—and what's the matter with the Fenns? Henry's kind of down on his luck, and I'll need him in my next campaign, and I thought if we could have them over some evening—well, what's the matter with to-morrow evening? They'd enjoy it. You know Mrs. Fenn—I saw her down town this morning, and George Brotherton says Henry's slipping back to his old ways. And I just thought perhaps—"

But she knew as well as he what he "thought perhaps," and a cloud trailed over her face.

When Thomas Van Dorn left his home that night, striding into the lights of Market Street, his heart was hot with the glowing coals of an old wrong revived. For to Judge Van Dorn, home had become a trap, and the glorious eyes that had beamed upon him in the morning seemed beacons of liberty.

As gradually those eyes became fixed in his consciousness, through days and weeks and months, a mounting passion for Margaret Fenn kindled in his heart. And slowly he went stone-blind mad. The whole of his world was turned over. Every ambition, every hope, every desire he ever had known was burned out before this passion that was too deep for desire. Whatever lust was in his blood in those first months of his madness grew pale. It seemed to the man who went stalking down the street past her house night after night that the one great, unselfish passion of his life was upon him, loosening the roots of his being, so that any sacrifice he could make, whether of himself or of any one or anything about him, would give him infinite joy. When he met Henry Fenn, Van Dorn was always tempted and often yielded to the temptation to rush up to Fenn with some foolish question that made the sad-eyed man stare and wonder. But just to be that near to her for the moment pleased him. There was no jealousy for Fenn in Van Dorn's heart; there was only a dog-like infatuation that had swept him away from his reason and seated a fatuous, chattering, impotent, lecherous ape where his intellect should have been. And he knew he was a fool. He knew that he was stark mad. Yet what he did not know was that this madness was a culmination, not a pristine passion new born in his heart. For the maggot in his brain had eaten out a rotten place wherein was the memory of many women's yieldings, of many women's tears. One side of his brain worked with rare cunning. He wound the evidence against the men in the mine, taken at the coroner's hearing, through the labyrinth of the law, and snared them tightly in it. That part of his brain clicked with automatic precision. But sitting beside him was the ape, grinning, leering, ready to rise and master him. So many a night when he was weary, he lay on the couch beside his desk, and the ape came and howled him to a troubled sleep.

But while Judge Van Dorn tried to fight his devil away with his law book, down in South Harvey death still lingered. Death is no respecter of persons, and often vaunts himself of his democracy. Yet it is a sham democracy. In Harvey, when death taps on a door and enters the house, he brings sorrow. But in South Harvey when he crosses a threshold he brings sorrow and want. And what a vast difference lies between sorrow, and sorrow with want. For sometimes the want that death brings is so keen that it smothers sorrow, and the poor may not mourn without shame—shame that they feel the self-interest in their sorrow. So when Death entered a hundred homes in South Harvey that winter day at the beginning of the new year, with him came hunger, with him came cold, with him came the harlot's robe and the thief's mask, and the blight of ignorance, and the denial of democratic opportunity to scores of children. With death that day as he crossed the dreary, unpainted portals of the poor came horror that overshadows grief among the poor and makes the boast of the democracy of death a ruthless irony.



CHAPTER XIX

HEREIN CAPTAIN MORTON FALLS UNDER SUSPICION AND HENRY FENN FALLS FROM GRACE

On Market Street nearly opposite the Traders' National Bank during the decades of the eighties and nineties was a smart store front upon which was fastened a large, black and gold sign bearing the words "The Paris Millinery Company" and under these words in smaller letters, "Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop." If Mr. George Brotherton and his Amen Corner might be said to be the clearing house of public opinion in Harvey, the establishment of Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop., might well be said to be the center of public clamor. For things started in this establishment—by things one means in general, trouble; variegated of course as to domestic, financial, social, educational, amatory, and at times political. Now the women of Harvey and South Harvey and of Greeley county—and of Hancock and Seymour counties so far as that goes—used the establishment of "The Paris Millinery Company, Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop.," as a club—a highly democratic club—the only place this side of the grave, in fact, where women met upon terms of something like equality.

And in spring when women molt and change their feathers, the establishment of "Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop." at its opening rose to the dignity of a social institution. It was a kind of folk-mote. Here at this opening, where there was music and flowers and bonbons, women assembled en masse. Mrs. Nesbit and Mrs. Fenn, Mrs. Dexter and Violet Hogan, she that was born Mauling met, if not as sisters at least in what might be called a great step-sisterhood; and even the silent Lida Bowman, wife of Dick, came from her fastness and for once in a year met her old friends who knew her in the town's early days before she went to South Harvey to share the red pottage of the Sons of Esau!

But her friends had little from Mrs. Bowman more than a smile—a cracked and weather-beaten smile from a broken woman of nearly forty, who was a wife at fifteen, a mother at seventeen, and who had borne six children and buried two in a dozen years.

"There's Violet," ventured Mrs. Bowman to Mrs. Dexter. "I haven't seen her since her marriage."

To a question Mrs. Bowman replied reluctantly, "Oh—as for Denny Hogan, he is a good enough man, I guess!"

After a pause, Mrs. Bowman thought it wise to add under the wails of the orchestra: "Poor Violet—good hearted girl's ever lived; so kind to her ma; and what with all that talk when she was in Van Dorn's office and all the talk about the old man Sands and her in the Company store, I just guess Vi got dead tired of it all and took Denny and run to cover with him."

Violet Hogan in a black satin,—a cheap black satin, and a black hat—a cheap black hat with a red rose—a most absurdly cheap red rose in it, walked about the place picking things over in a rather supercilious way, and no one noticed her. Mrs. Fenn gave Violet an eyebrow, a beautifully penciled eyebrow on a white marble forehead, above beaming brown eyes that were closed just slightly at the moment. And Mrs. Van Dorn who had kept track of the girl, you may be sure, went over to her and holding out her hand said: "Congratulations, Violet,—I'm so glad to hear—" But Mrs. Denny Hogan having an eyebrow to spare as the gift of Mrs. Fenn passed it on to Mrs. Van Dorn who said, "Oh—" very gently and went to sit on a settee beside Mrs. Brotherton, the mother of the moon-faced Mr. Brotherton and Mrs. Ahab Wright, who always seemed to seek the shade. And then and there, Mrs. Van Dorn had to listen to this solo from Mrs. Brotherton:

"George says Judge Van Dorn is running for Judge again: really, Laura, I hope he'll win. George says he will. George says Henry Fenn is the only trouble Mr. Van Dorn will have, though I don't see as Henry could do much. Though George says he will. George says Henry is cranky and mean about the Judge someway and George says Henry is drinking like a fish this spring and his legs is hollow, he holds so much; though he must have been joking for I have heard of hollow horn in cattle, but I never heard of hollow legs, though they are getting lots of new diseases."

By the time Mrs. Brotherton found it necessary to stop for breath, Laura Van Dorn had regained the color that had dimmed as she heard the reference to Henry Fenn. And when she met Mrs. Margaret Fenn at a turn of the aisle, Mrs. Margaret Fenn was the spirit of joy and it seemed that Mrs. Van Dorn was her long lost sister; so Mrs. Margaret Fenn began fumbling her over to find the identifying strawberry mark. At least that is what Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., told Mrs. Nesbit as she sold Mrs. Nesbit the large one with the brown plume.

Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., made it a rule never to gossip, as every one who frequented her shop was told, but as between old friends she would say to Mrs. Nesbit that if ever one woman glued herself to another, and couldn't be boiled or frozen, or chopped loose, that woman was Maggie Fenn sticking to Laura Van Dorn. And Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., closed her mouth significantly, and Mrs. Nesbit pretended with a large obvious, rather clumsy pretense, that she read no meaning in Mrs. Herdicker's words. The handsome Miss Morton, with her shoe tops tiptoeing to her skirts, who was in the shop and out of school for the rush season, listened hard, but after that they whispered and the handsome Miss Morton turned her attention to the youngest Miss Morton who was munching bonbons and opening the door for all of Harvey and South Harvey and the principalities around about to enter and pass out. After school came the tired school teachers from the High School, her eldest sister, Emma Morton, among them, with their books and reports pressed against their sides. But Margaret Fenn did not see the school teachers, nor even the fifth Mrs. Sands towed about by her star-eyed stepdaughter Anne, though Margaret Fenn's eyes were busy. But she was watching the women; she was looking for something as though to ward it off, always glancing ahead of her to see where she was going, and who was in her path; always measuring her woman, always listening under the shriek of the clarionettes, always quick with a smile—looking for something—something that she may have felt was upon its way, something that she dreaded to see. But all the shoulders she hobnobbed with that day were warm enough—indifferently warm, and that was all she asked. So she smiled and radiated her fine, animal grace, her feline beauty, her superfemininity, and was as happy as any woman could be who had arrived at an important stage of her journey and could see a little way ahead with some degree of clearness.

Let us look at her as she stands by the door waiting to overhaul Mrs. Nesbit. A fine figure of a woman, Margaret Fenn makes there—in her late twenties, with large regular features, big even teeth, clear brown eyes—not bold at all, yet why do they seem so? Perhaps because she is so sure and firm and unhesitating. Her skin is soft and fair as a child's, bespeaking health and good red blood. The good red blood shows in her lips—red as a wicked flower, red and full and as shameless as a dream. Taller than Mrs. Nesbit she stands, and her clothes hang to her in spite of the fullness of the fashion, in most suggestive lines. She seems to shine out of her clothes a lustrous, shimmering figure, female rather than feminine, and gorgeous rather than lovely. Margaret Fenn is in full bloom; not a drooping petal, not a bending stamen, not a wilted calyx or bruised leaf may be seen about her. She is a perfect flower whose whole being—like that of a flower at its full—seems eager, thrilling, burning with anticipation of the perfect fruit.

She puts out her hands—both of her large strong hands, so well-gloved and well-kept, to Mrs. Nesbit. Surely Mrs. Fenn's smile is not a make-believe smile; surely that is real pleasure in her voice; surely that is real joy that lights up her eyes. And why should they not be real? Is not Mrs. Nesbit the one person in all Harvey that Margaret Fenn would delight to honor? Is not Mrs. Nesbit the dowager empress of Harvey, and the social despot of the community? And is not Mrs. Nesbit smiling at the eldest Miss Morton, she of the Longfellow school, who is trying on a traveling hat, and explaining that she always wanted a traveling hat and suit alike so that she could go to the Grand Canyon if she could ever save up enough money, but she could never seem to afford it? Moreover is not Mrs. Nesbit in a beneficent frame of mind?

"Well," smiles the eyes and murmurs the voice, and glows the face of the young woman, and she puts out her hand. "Mrs. Nesbit—so glad I'm sure. Isn't it lovely here? Mrs. Herdicker is so effective."

"Mrs. Fenn,—" this from the dowager, and the eyebrow that Mrs. Fenn gave to Mrs. Hogan, and Mrs. Hogan gave to Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Van Dorn gave to Mrs. Brotherton and Mrs. Brotherton gave to Mrs. Calvin who, George says, is an old cat, and Mrs. Calvin gave to Mrs. Nesbit for remarks as to the biennial presence of Mr. Calvin in the barn (repeated to Mrs. Calvin), the eyebrow having been around the company comes back to Mrs. Fenn.

After which Mrs. Nesbit moves with what dignity her tonnage will permit out of the perfumed air, out of the concord of sweet sounds into the street. Mrs. Fenn, who was looking for it all the afternoon, that thing she dreaded and anticipated with fear in her heart's heart, found it. It was exceedingly cold—and also a shoulder of some proportions. And it chilled the flowing sap of the perfect flower so that the flower shivered in the breeze made by the closing door, though the youngest Miss Morton presiding at the door thought it was warm, and Mrs. Herdicker thought it was warm and Mrs. Violet Hogan said to Mrs. Bowman as they went through the same door and met the same air: "My land, Bowman, did you ever see such an oven?" and then as the door closed she added:

"See old Mag Fenn there? I just heard something about her to-day. I bet it's true."

Thus the afternoon faded and the women went home to cook their evening meals, and left Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., with a few late comers—ladies of no particular character who had no particular men folk to do for, and who slipped in after the rush to pay four prices for what had been left. Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., was straightening up the stock and snapping prices to the girls who were waiting upon the belated customers. She spent little of her talent upon the sisterhood of the old, old trade, and contented herself with charging them all she could get, and making them feel she was obliging them by selling to them at all. It was while trade sagged in the twilight that Mrs. Jared Thurston, Lizzie Thurston to be exact, wife of the editor of the South Harvey Derrick came in. Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., knew her of old. She was in to solicit advertising, which meant that she was needing a hat and it was a swap proposition. So Mrs. Herdicker told Mrs. Thurston to write up the opening and put in a quarter page advertisement beside and send her the bill, and Mrs. Thurston looked at a hat. No time was wasted on her either—nor much talent; but as Mrs. Thurston was in a business way herself, Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., stopped to talk to her a moment as to an equal—a rare distinction. They sat on a sofa in the alcove that had sheltered the orchestra behind palms and ferns and Easter lilies, and chatted of many things—the mines, the new smelter, the new foreman's wife at the smelter, the likelihood that the Company store in South Harvey would put in a line of millinery—which Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., denied with emphasis, declaring she had an agreement with the old devil not to put in millinery so long as she deposited at his bank. Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., had taken the $500 which the Company had offered for the life of poor Casper and had filed no lawsuit, fearing that a suit with the Company would hurt her trade. But as a business proposition both women were interested in the other damage suits pending against the Company for the mine accident. "What do they say down there about it?" asked the milliner.

"Well, of course," returned Mrs. Thurston, who was not sure of her ground and had no desire to talk against the rich and powerful, "they say that some one ought to pay something. But, of course, Joe Calvin always wins his suits and the Judge, of course, was the Company's attorney before he was the Judge—"

"And so the claim agents are signing 'em up for what the Company will give," cut in the questioner.

"That's about it, Mrs. Herdicker," responded Mrs. Thurston. "Times are hard, and they take what they can get now, rather than fight for it. And the most the Company will pay is $400 for a life, and not all are getting that."

"Tom Van Dorn—he's a smooth one, Lizzie—he's a smooth one." Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., looked quickly at Mrs. Thurston and got a smile in reply. That was enough. She continued:

"You'd think he'd know better—wouldn't you?"

"Well, I don't know—it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks," was the non-committal answer of Mrs. Thurston, still cautious about offending the powers.

Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., brushed aside formalities. "Yes—stenographers and hired girls, and biscuit shooters at the Palace and maybe now and then an excursion across the track; but this is different; this is in his own class. They were both here this afternoon, and you should have seen the way she cooed and billed over Laura Van Dorn. Honest, Lizzie, if I'd never heard a word, I'd know something was wrong. And you should have seen old lady Nesbit give her the come-uppins."

Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., dropped her voice to a confidential tone. "Lizzie?" a pause; "They say you've seen 'em together."

The thought of the quarter page advertisement overcame whatever scruples Mrs. Thurston may have had, and so long as she had the center of the stage she said her lines: "Why I don't know a single thing—only this: that for—maybe a month or so every few days along about five or six o'clock when the roads are good I've seen him coming one way on his wheel, and go down in the country on the Adams road, and about ten minutes later from another way she'd come riding along on her wheel and go down the Adams road into the country following him. Then in an hour or so, they come back, sometimes one of them first—sometimes the other, but I've really never seen them together. She might be going to the Adamses; she boarded there once years ago."

"Yes,—and she hates 'em!" snapped Mrs. Herdicker derisively, and then added, "Well, it's none of my business so long as they pay for their hats."

"Well, my land, Mrs. Herdicker," quoth Lizzie, "it's a comfort to hear some one talk sense. For two months now we've been hearing nothing but that fool Adams boy's crazy talk about unions, and men organizing to help their fellows, and—why did you know he's quit his job as boss carpenter in the mine? And for why—so that he can be a witness against the company some say; though there won't be any trial. Tom Van Dorn will see to that. He's sent word to the men that they'd better settle as the law is against them. But that Grant Adams quit his job any way and is going about holding meetings every night, and working on construction work above ground by day and talking union, union, union till Jared and I are sick of it. I tell you the man's gone daft. But a lot of the men are following him, I guess."

Being a methodical woman Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., wrote the copy for her advertisement and let Mrs. Thurston go in peace. She went into the gathering twilight, and hurried to do a few errands before returning to South Harvey.

At the court house Mrs. Thursston met Henry Fenn coming out of the register of deeds office where he had been filing a deed to some property he had sold, and at Mr. Brotherton's Amen Corner, she saw Tom Van Dorn smoking upon the bench. The street was filled with bicycles, for that was a time when the bicycle was a highly respectable vehicle of business and pleasure. Mrs. Thurston left Market Street and a dozen wheels passed her. As she turned into her street to South Harvey a bell tinkled. She looked around and saw Margaret Fenn making rapidly for the highway. Mrs. Thurston was human; she waited! And in five minutes Tom Van Dorn came by and went in the same direction!

An hour later Margaret Fenn came pedaling into the town from the country road, all smiling and breathless and red lipped, and full of color. As she turned into her own street she met her husband, immaculately dressed. He bowed with great punctiliousness and lifting his hat high from his head smiled a search-light of a smile that frightened his wife. But he spoke no word to her. Five minutes later, as Tom Van Dorn wheeled out of Market Street, he also saw Henry Fenn, standing in the middle of the crossing leering at him and laughing a drunken, foolish, noisy laugh. Van Dorn called back but Fenn did not reply, and the Judge saw nothing in the figure but his drunken friend standing in the middle of the street laughing.



CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH HENRY FENN FALLS FROM GRACE AND RISES AGAIN

This chapter must devote itself chiefly to a bargain. In the bargain, Judge Thomas Van Dorn is party of the first part, and Margaret Fenn, wife of Henry Fenn, is party of the second part, and the devil is the broker.

Tom Van Dorn laid hungry eyes upon Margaret Fenn; Margaret Fenn looked ravenously upon all that Van Dorn had; his talent, his position, his worldly goods, estates and chattels. He wanted what she had. He had what she wanted, and by way of commission in negotiating the bargain, the devil took two souls—not such large souls so far as that goes; but still the devil seems to have been the only one in the transaction who profited.

June came—June and the soft night wind, and the warm stars; June with its new, deep foliage and its fragrant grass and trees and flowers; June with a mocking bird singing through the night to its brooding mate; June came with its poets leaning out of windows into the night hearing love songs in the rhythmic whisper of lagging feet strolling under the shade of elms. And under cover of a June night, breathing in the sensuous meaning of the time like a charmed potion, Judge Van Dorn, who personated justice to twenty-five thousand people, went forth a slinking, cringing beast to woo!

Here and there a lamp blinked through the foliage. The footfalls of late homecomers were heard a long way off; the voices of singers—a serenading party out baying at the night—was heard as the breeze carried the music upon its sluggish ebb and flow. To avoid belated homecomers, Judge Van Dorn crossed the street; the clanging electric car did not find him with its search-light, though he felt shielded by its roar as he stepped over the iron railing about the Fenn home and came softly across the lawn upon the grass.

On the verandah, hidden by summer vines, he sat a moment alone, panting, breathless, though he had come up but four steps, and had mounted them gently. A rustle of woman's garments, the creaking of a screen door, the perfume that he loved, and then she stood before him—and the next moment he had her in his arms. For a minute she surrendered without struggling, without protest, and for the first time their lips met. Then she warded him off.

"No—no, Tom. You sit there—I'll have this swing," and she slipped into a porch swing and finally he sat down.

"Now, Tom," she said, "I have given you everything to-night. I am entirely at your mercy; I want you to be as good to me as I have been to you."

"But, Margaret," he protested, "is this being good to me, to keep me a prisoner in this chair while you—"

"Tom," she answered, "there is no one in the house. I've just called Henry up by long distance telephone at the Secretary of State's office in the capitol building. I've called him up every hour since he got there this afternoon, to make him remember his promise to me. He hasn't taken a thing on this trip—I'm sure; I can tell by his voice, for one thing." The man started to speak. She stopped him: "Now listen, Tom. He'll have that charter for the Captain's company within half an hour and will start home on the midnight train. That will give us just an hour together—all alone, Tom, undisturbed."

She stopped and he sprang toward her, but she fended him off, and gave him a pained look and went on as he sank moaning into his chair: "Tom, dear, how should we spend the first whole hour we have ever had in our lives alone together? I have read and re-read your beautiful letters, dear. Oh, I know some of them by heart. I am yours, Tom—all yours. Now, dear," he made a motion to rise, "come here by my chair, I want to touch you. But—that's all."

They sat close together, and the woman went on: "There are so many things I want to say, Tom, to-night. I wonder if I can think of any of them. It is all so beautiful. Isn't it?" she asked softly, and felt his answer in every nerve in his body, though his lips did not speak. It was the woman who broke the silence. "Time is slipping by, Tom. I know what's in your mind, and you know what's in mine. Where will this thing end? It can't go on this way. It must end now, to-night—this very night, Tom, dear, or we must know where we are coming out. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Margaret," replied the man. He gripped his arm about her, and continued passionately, "And I'm ready." In a long minute of ecstasy they were dumb. He went on, "You have good cause—lots of cause—every one knows that. But I—I'll make it somehow—Oh, I can make it." He set his teeth fiercely, and repeated, "Oh, I'll make it, Margaret."

The night sounds filled their deaf ears, and the pressure of their hands—all so new and strange—filled them with joy, but the joy was shattered by a step upon the sidewalk, and until it died away they were breathless. Then they sat closer together and the woman whispered:

"'And I'd turn my back upon things eternal To lie on your breast a little while.'"

A noise in the house, perhaps of the cat moving through the room behind them, startled them again. The man shook and the woman held her breath; then they both smiled. "Tom—Tom—don't you see how guilty we are? We mustn't repeat this; this is our hour, but we must understand each other here and now." The man did not reply. He who had taken recklessly and ruthlessly all of his life had come to a place where he must give to take. His fortunes were tied up in his answer, so he replied: "Margaret, you know the situation—down town?"

"The judgeship?" she asked.

"Yes."

"But that will be settled in November. After that is time enough. Oh, eternity is time enough, Tom—I can wait and wait and wait—only if it is to be for eternity, we must not reckon with it now."

"Oh, Margaret, Margaret, Margaret—my soul's soul—I want you. I know no peace but to look into your eyes; I know no heaven but your smile—no God but your possession, no hell but—but—this!" He pressed her hand to his lips and moaned a kind of human bellow of unrequited love—some long suppressed man's courting note that we had in the forest, and he grasped her in a flood of passionate longing. She slipped away from him and stood up before him and said: "No,—No, no, my dear—my dear—I love you—Oh, I do love you, Tom—but don't—don't."

He started after her but she pushed him back with her powerful arms and held him. "Tom, don't touch me. Tom," she panted, "Tom." Her big meaningful eyes met his and she held him for a moment silent. He stepped back and she smiled and kissed his forehead when he had dropped into a chair.

"Now, Tom, time is slipping by. It's nearly midnight. We've got to talk sensibly and calmly. Sit here by me and be as sane as you can. We know we love one another. That's been said and resaid; that's settled. Now shall I first break for liberty—or will you? That must all be settled too. We can't just let things drift. I'm twenty-seven. You're thirty-five. Life is passing. Now when?"

They shrank before the light of a street car rounding the corner, that gleamed into their retreat. When it had gone, the man bowed his fine, proud, handsome head, and spoke with his eyes upon the ground:

"You go first—you have the best cause!" She looked upon his cowardly, sloping shoulders, and thought a moment. It was the tigress behind the flame who stooped over him, pondering, feeling her way through events that she had been going over and over in her imagination for weeks. The feline caution that guided her, told her, as it had always told her, that his letters were enough to damn him, but maybe not enough to hold him. She was not sure of men. Their standards might not be severe enough to punish him; he, knowing this, might escape. All this—this old query without answer went hurrying through her mind. But she was young; the spirit of adventure was in her. Henry Fenn, weak, vacillating, chivalrous, adoring Henry Fenn, had not conquered her; and the fire in her blood, and the ambition in her brain, came over her as a spell. She slipped to her knees, putting her head upon her lover's breast, and cried passionately in a guttural murmur—"Yes, I'll go first, Tom—now, for God's sake, kiss me—kiss me and run." Then she sprang up: "Now, go—go—go, Tom—run before I take it back. Don't touch me again," she cried. "Go."

She slipped back into the door, then turned and caught him again and they stood for a terrible moment together. She whirled into the house, clicked the door after her and left him standing a-tremble, gaping and mad in the night. But she knew her strength, and knew his weakness and was not afraid.

She let him moan a wordless lovesong, very low and terrible in the night alone before the door, and did not answer. Then she saw him go softly down the steps, look up and down the street, move guiltily across the yard, hiding behind a bush at a distant footfall, and slip slowly into the sidewalk and go hurrying away from the house. In half an hour she was waiting for Henry Fenn as a cat might wait at a rat hole.

The next day little boys followed Henry Fenn about the streets laughing; Henry Fenn, drunken and debased, whose heart was bleeding. It was late in the afternoon when he appeared in the Amen Corner. His shooting stars were all exploded from their rocket and he was fading into the charred papier-mache of the reaction that comes from over exhilaration. So he sat on the walnut bench, back of the newspaper counter with his hands on his knees and his eyes staring at the floor while traffic flowed through the establishment oblivious to his presence. Mr. Brotherton watched Fenn but did not try to make him talk. There came a time when trade was slack that Fenn looked for a minute fixedly at Mr. Brotherton, and finally said, shaking his head sadly:

"She says I've got to quit!" A pause and another sigh, then: "She says if I ever get drunk again, she'll quit me like a dog." Another inspection of the floor; more lugubrious head-shaking followed, after which the eyes closed and the dead voice spoke:

"Well, here's her chance. Say, George," he tried to smile, but the light only flickered in his leaden eyes. "I guess I'm orey-eyed enough now to furnish a correct imitation of a gentleman in his cups?"

Fenn got up, took Brotherton back among the books at the rear of the store. The drunken man took from his pocket a fountain pen incased in a silver mounting. He held the silver trinket up and said:

"Damn his soul to hell!"

"Let me see it—whose is it, Henry?" asked Brotherton. Fenn answered, "That's my business." He paused; then added "and his business." Another undecided moment, and then Fenn concluded: "And none of your business."

Suddenly he took his hands off the big man, and said, "I'm going home. If she means business, here's her chance."

Brotherton tried to stop him, but Fenn was insistent. Customers were coming in, and so Brotherton let the man go. But all the evening he was worried about his friend. Absentmindedly he went over his stock, straightening up Puck and Judge and Truth and Life, and putting the magazines in their places, sorting the new books into their shelf, putting the standard pirated editions of English authors in their proper place and squaring up the long rows of "The Bonnie Brier Bush" and "A Hazard of New Fortunes" where they would catch the buyers' eyes upon the counter, in freshly jostled ranks, even and inviting, after the day's havoc in Harvey's literary circles. But always Fenn's face was in Brotherton's mind. The chatter of the evening passed without Brotherton realizing what it was all about. As for instance, between Grant Adams and Captain Morton over a sprocket which the Captain had invented and Henry Fenn had patented for the Captain. Grant on the other hand kept trying to tell the Captain about his unions organizing in the Valley, and neither was interested in what the other said, yet each was bursting with the importance of what he was saying. But even that comic dialogue could not take Mr. Brotherton's mind from the search of the sinister connection it was trying to discover, between the fountain pen and Henry Fenn.

So Brotherton, worried with the affairs of Fenn, was not interested and the Captain peddled his dream in other marts. With Fenn's ugly face on his mind, Brotherton saw young Judge Van Dorn swing in lightly, go through his daily pantomime, all so smoothly, so well oiled, so polished and polite, so courtly and affable, that for the moment Brotherton laid aside his fears and abandoned his suspicions. Then Van Dorn, after playing with his cigar, went to the stationery counter and remarked casually, "By the by, George, do you keep fountain pens?"

Mr. Brotherton kept fountain pens, and Judge Van Dorn said: "There—that one over by the ink eraser—yes, that one—the one in the silver casing—I seem to have mislaid mine. Yale men gave it to me at the reunion in '91, as president of the class—had my initials on it—ten years—yes," he looked at the pen offered by the store keeper. "That will do." Mr. Brotherton watched the Judge as he put the pen in his vest pocket, after it had been filled.

The Judge picked up a Chicago paper, stowed it away with "Anglo-Saxon Supremacy" in his green bag. Then he swung gracefully out of the shop and left Mr. Brotherton wondering where and how Henry Fenn got that pen, and why he did not return it to its owner.

The air of mystery and malice—two unusual atmospheres for Henry Fenn to breathe—which he had put around the pen, impressed his friend with the importance of the thing.

"A mighty smooth proposition," said Grant Adams, sitting in the Amen Corner reading "A Hazard of New Fortunes," when Van Dorn had gone.

"Well, say, Grant," returned Mr. Brotherton, pondering on the subject of the lost pen. "Sometimes I think Tom is just a little too oleaginous—a little too oleaginous," repeated Mr. Brotherton, pleased with his big word.

That June night Henry Fenn passed from Congress Street and walked with a steady purpose manifest in his clicking heels. It was not a night's bat that guided his feet, no festive orgy, but the hard, firm footfall of a man who has been drunk a long time—terribly mean drunk. And terribly mean drunk he was. His eyes were blazing, and he mumbled as he walked. Down Market Street he turned and strode to the corner where the Traders' National Bank sign shone under the electrics. He looked up, saw a light burning in the office above, and suddenly changed his gait to a tip-toe. Up the stairs he crept to a door, under which a light was gleaming. He got a firm hold of the knob, then turned it quickly, thrust open the door and stepped quietly into the room. He grinned meanly at Tom Van Dorn who, glancing up over his shoulder from his book, saw the white face of Fenn leering at him. Van Dorn knew that this was the time when he must use all the wits he had.

"Why, hello—Henry—hello," said Van Dorn cheerfully. He coughed, in an attempt to swallow the saliva that came rushing into his mouth. Fenn did not answer, but stood and then began to walk around Van Dorn's desk, eyeing him with glowing-red eyes as he walked. Van Dorn tipped back his chair easily, put his feet on the desk before him, and spoke, "Sit down, Henry—make yourself at home." He cleared his throat nervously. "Anything gone wrong, Henry?" he asked as the man stood over him glaring at him.

"No," replied Fenn. "No, nothing's gone wrong. I've just got some exhibits here in a law suit. That's all."

He stood over Van Dorn, peering steadfastly at him. First he laid down a torn letter. Van Dorn shuddered almost imperceptibly as he recognized in the crumpled, wrenched paper his writing, but smiled suavely and said, "Well?"

"Well," croaked Fenn passionately. "That's exhibit 'A'. I had to fight a hell-cat for it; and this," he added as he lay down the silver-mounted pen, "this is exhibit 'B'. I found that in the porch swing this morning when I went out to get my drink hidden under the house." He cackled and Van Dorn's Adam's apple bobbed like a cork upon a wave.

"And this," cried Fenn, as he pulled a revolver, "God damn you, is exhibit 'C'. Now, don't you budge, or I'll blow you to hell—and," he added, "I guess I'll do it anyway."

He stood with the revolver at Van Dorn's temple—stood over his victim growling like a raging beast. His finger trembled upon the trigger, and he laughed. "So you were going to have a convenient, inexpensive lady friend, were you, Tom!" Fenn cuffed the powerless man's jaw with an open hand.

"Private snap?" he sneered. "Well, damn your soul—here's a lady friend of mine," he poked the cold barrel harder against the trembling man's temple and cried: "Don't wiggle, don't you move." Then he went on: "Kiss her, you damned egg-sucking pup—when you've done flirting with this, I'm going to kill you."

He emphasized the "you," and prodded the man's face with the barrel.

"Henry," whispered Van Dorn, "Henry, for God's sake, let me talk—give me a show, won't you?"

Fenn moved the barrel of the revolver over between the man's eyes and cried passionately: "Oh, yes, I'll give you a show, Tom—the same show you gave me."

He shifted the revolver suddenly and pulled the trigger; the bullet bored a hole through the book on "Anglo-Saxon Supremacy" on the desk.

Fenn drew in a deep breath. With the shot he had spilled some vial of wrath within him, though Van Dorn could not see the change that was creeping into Fenn's haggard face.

"You see she'll shoot, Tom," said Fenn.

Holding the smoking revolver to the man's head, Fenn reached for a chair and sat down. His rage was ebbing, and his mind was clear. He withdrew the weapon a few inches, and cried:

"Don't you budge an inch."

His hand was limp and shaking, but Van Dorn could not see it. "Tom, Tom," he cried. "God help me—help me." He repeated twice the word "me," then he went on:

"For being what I am—only what I am—" he emphasized the "I."

"For giving in to your devil as I give into mine—for falling as I have fallen—on another road—I was going to kill you."

The revolver slipped from his hands. He picked it up by the barrel. He rose crying in a weak voice,

"Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom," Van Dorn was lifting up in his chair, "Tom, Tom, God help us both poor, hell-cursed men," sobbed Fenn, and then with a fearful blow he brought the weapon down and struck the white, false forehead that gleamed beneath Fenn's wet face.

He stood watching the man shudder and close his eyes, watching the blood seep out along a crooked seam, then gush over the face and fine, black hair and silken mustache. A bloody flood streamed there while he watched. Then Fenn wiped dry the butt of his revolver. He felt of the gash in the forehead, and found that the bone was not crushed. He was sober, and an unnatural calm was upon his brain. He could feel the tears in his eyes. He stood looking at the face of the unconscious man a long, dreadful minute as one who pities rather than hates a foe. Then he stepped to the telephone, called Dr. Nesbit, glanced at the fountain pen and the crumpled letter, burst into a spasm of weeping, and tiptoed out of the room.



CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH WE SEE A FAT LITTLE RASCAL ON THE RACK

A year and a month and a day, an exceedingly hot day, after Judge Thomas Van Dorn had fallen upon the stair leading to his office and had cut that gash in his forehead which left the white thread of a scar upon his high, broad brow, Judge Van Dorn sat in chambers in his office in the court house, hearing an unimportant matter. Because the day was hot, the Judge wore a gray silk coat, without a vest, and because the matter was unimportant, no newspaper reporters were called in. The matter in hand was highly informal. The Judge, tilted back in his easy chair, toyed with his silken mustache, while counsel for defendant, standing by the desk before which the Judge's chair was swinging, handled the papers representing the defendant's answer, to the plaintiff's pleadings. The plaintiff herself, dressed in rather higher sleeves than would have been thought possible to put upon a human form and make them stand erect, with a rather larger hat than one would have said might be carried by a single human neck without bowing it; the plaintiff above mentioned was rattling the court's paper knife.

Plaintiff's counsel, a callow youth from the law offices of Joseph Calvin, to be exact, Joseph Calvin, Jr., sat meekly on the edge of a small chair in the corner and being a chip of the old block, had little to say. The court and said hereinbefore described plaintiff talked freely between whiles as the counsel for said defendant, Henry Fenn, ran over his papers, looking for particular phrases, statements or exhibits which he desired to present to the court.

It appeared from the desultory reading of the papers by the attorney for the said defendant, Henry Fenn, that he had no desire to impose upon the plaintiff, as above described, any hardships in the matter and that the agreement reached by counsel as to the disposition of the joint property should be carried out as indicated in the answer submitted to the court—see folio No. 3. Though counsel for defendant smilingly told the court that if the counsel were Henry Fenn, he should not give up property worth at least five thousand dollars in consideration of the cause of action being made cruelty and inhuman treatment rather than drunkenness, but, as counsel explained and as the court agreed when a man gets to going by the booze route he hasn't much sense—referring, of course, to said defendant, Henry Fenn, not present in person.

When counsel for the said defendant had finished, and had put all his papers upon the desk in front of the court, the court reached into his desk, and handed the counsel for defendant a cigar, which with proper apologies to the hereinabove and before described plaintiff, counsel lighted, and said:

"That's certainly a good one."

But as the court was writing upon the back of one of the papers, the court did not respond for a moment, but finally said absently, "Yes,—glad you think so; George Brotherton imports them for me."

And went on writing. Still writing the court said without looking up, "I don't know of anything else."

And the counsel for defendant said he didn't either and putting on his hat, smiling at the plaintiff aforesaid, counsel for said defendant Henry Fenn departed, and after a minute the court ceased writing, folded and blotted the back of the paper, handed it to young Joe Calvin, sitting meekly on the edge of the chair, saying: "Here Joey, take this to the clerk and file it," and Joey got up from the edge of the chair and vanished, closing the door behind him.

"Well?" said the plaintiff.

"Well?" echoed the court.

"Well," reiterated the plaintiff, gazing into the eyes of the court with somewhat more eagerness than the law requires under statute therefore made and provided.

"So it's all over," she continued, and added: "My part."

She rose—this plaintiff hereinbefore mentioned, came to the desk, stood over him a moment, and said softly, much more softly than the code prescribes, "Tom—I hope yours won't be any harder."

Whereupon the court, then and there being as herein above set forth, did with premeditation, and much show of emotion look up into the eyes of said plaintiff, said eyes being tear-dimmed and extraordinarily beautiful as to their coloring to-wit: brown, as to their expression to-wit: sad and full of love, and furthermore the court did with deliberation and after for a moment while he held the heavy bejeweled hand of said plaintiff above mentioned, and did press said hand to his lips and then did draw the said plaintiff closer and whisper:

"God—God, Margaret, so do I hope so—so do I."

And perhaps the court for a second thought of a little blue-eyed, fair-haired girl and a gentle woman who lived for him alone in all the world, and perhaps not; for this being a legal paper may set down only such matters as are of evidence. But it is witnessed and may be certified to that the court did drop his eyes for a second or two, that the white thread of a scar upon the forehead of the court did redden for a moment while he held the heavy bejewelled hand of plaintiff, hereinbefore mentioned, and that he did draw a deep breath, and did look out of the window, set high up in the court house, and that he did see the elm trees covering a home which, despite all his perfidy and neglect was full of love for him—love that needed no high sleeves nor great plumy hats, nor twinkling silver bangles, nor jangling gold chatelaines, to make it beautiful. But let us make it of record and set it down here, in this instrument that the court rose, looked into the great brown eyes and the fair face, and seeing the rich, shameless mouth and blazing color upon the features, did then and there fall down in his heart and worship that mask, and did take the hand that he held in both of his and standing before the woman did cry in a deep voice, full of agony:

"For God's sake, Margaret, let me come to you now—soon." And she—the plaintiff in this action gazed at the man who had been the court, but who now was man, and replied:

"Only when you may honestly—legally, Tom—it's best for both of us."

They walked to the door. The court pressed a button as she left, smiling, and when a man appeared with a note book the court said: "I have something to dictate," and the next day young Joseph Calvin handed the following news item to the Harvey Times and to the South Harvey Derrick.

"A divorce was granted to-day by Judge Thomas Van Dorn of the district court in chambers to Mrs. Margaret Mueller Fenn, from Henry Fenn. Charges of cruel and inhuman treatment filed by the attorneys for Mrs. Fenn were not met by Mr. Fenn and the court granted the decree and it was made absolute. It is understood that a satisfactory settlement of the joint property has been made. Mrs. Fenn will continue to hold the position she has held during the year past as chief clerk in the office of the superintendent of the Harvey Improvement Company. Mr. Fenn is former county attorney and is now engaged in the insurance business, having sold his real estate business to Joseph Calvin this morning."

And thus the decree of divorce between Henry Fenn and Margaret, his wife, whom God had joined together, was made absolute, and further deponent sayeth not.

But the town of Harvey had more or less to say about the divorce and what the town said, more or less concerned Judge Thomas Van Dorn. For although Henry Fenn sober would not speak of the divorce, Henry Fenn drunk, babbled many quotations about the "rare and radiant maiden, who was lost forever more." He was also wont to quote the line about the lover who held his mistress "something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse."

As for the Judge, his sensitive mind felt the disapproval of the community. But the fighting blood in him was roused, and he fought a braver fight than the cause justified. That summer he went to all the farmers' picnics in his district, spoke wherever he was invited to speak, and spoke well; whatever charm he had he called to his aid. When the French of South Harvey celebrated the Fall of the Bastille, Judge Van Dorn spoke most beautifully of liberty, and led off when they sung the Marseillaise; on Labor Day he was the orator of the occasion, and made a great impression among the workers by his remarks upon the dignity of labor. He quoted Carlyle and Ruskin and William Morris, and wept when he told them how the mob had crucified the Carpenter, who was labor's first prophet.

But one may say this for Judge Van Dorn: that with all his desire for the approval of his fellows, even in South Harvey, even at the meetings of men who he knew differed with him, he did not flinch from attacking on every occasion and with all his eloquence the unions that Grant Adams was promoting. The idea of mutual help upon which they rested seemed to make Van Dorn see red, and he was forever going out of his way to combat the idea. So bitter was his antagonism to the union idea that in the Valley he and Grant Adams became dramatized in the minds of the men as opponents.

But in Harvey, where men regarded Grant Adams's activities with tolerant indifference and his high talk of bettering industrial conditions as the madness of youth, Judge Van Dorn was the town's particular idol.

A handsome man he was as he stood out in the open under the bower made by the trees, and with the grace and charm of true oratory, spoke in his natural voice—a soft, penetrating treble that reached to the furthest man in the crowd; tall, well-built, oval-faced, commanding—a judge every inch of him, even if a young judge—was Tom Van Dorn. And when he had finished speaking at the Harvest Home Picnic, or at the laying of the corner stone of the new Masonic Temple, or at the opening of the Grant County fair, men said: