She looks wistfully into her father's face. "Father, you won't quite understand me when I tell you that the tomato cans with their geraniums behind those gray lace curtains, that make Harvey people smile, are really not tomato cans at all. They are social dynamite bombs that one day will blow into splinters and rubbish the injustices, the cruel injustices of life that the poor suffer at the hands of their exploiters. The geranium is the flower, the spring flower of the divine discontent, which some day shall bear great and wonderful fruit."

"Rather a swift pace you're setting for a fat man, Laura," pipes the Doctor, adding earnestly: "There you go talking like Grant Adams! Don't let Grant Adams fool you, child: the end of the world isn't here. Grant's a good boy, Laura, and I like him; but he's getting a kind of Millerite notion that we're about to put on white robes and go straight up to glory, politically and socially and every which way, in a few years, and there's nothing to it. Grant's a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but"—the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, "there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don't get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o' doom for the established order!"

The daughter smiles at him, but she answers:

"Perhaps Grant is touched—touched with the mad impatience of God's fools, father. I don't always follow Grant. He goes his way and I go mine. But I am sure of this, that the thing which will really start South Harvey, and all the South Harveys in the world out of their dirt and misery, and vice, is not our dreams for them, but their dreams for themselves. They must see the vision. They must aspire. They must feel the impulse to sacrifice greatly, to consecrate themselves deeply, to give and give and give of themselves that their children may know better things. And it is my work to arouse their dreams, to inspire their visions, to make them yearn for better living. I am trying to teach them to use and to love beautiful things, that they may be restless among ugly things. I think beauty only serves God as the handmaiden of discontent! And, father, way down deep in my heart—I know—I know surely that I must do this—that it is my reason for being—now that life has taken the greater joy of home from me. So," she concludes solemnly; "these people whom I love, they need me, but father, God and you only know how I need them. I don't know about Grant,—I mean why he is going his solitary way, but perhaps somewhere in his heart there is a wound! Perhaps all of God's fools—those who live queer, unnormal self-forgetting lives, are the broken and rejected pieces of life's masonry which the builder is using in his own wise way. As for the plan, it is not ours. Grant and I, broken spawl in the rising edifice, we and thousands like us, odd pieces that chink in yet hold the strain—we must be content to hold the load and know always—always know that after all the wall is rising! That is enough."

And now we must put aside the pictures and get on with the story.



CHAPTER XXX

GRANT ADAMS PREACHING A MESSAGE OF LOVE RAISES THE VERY DEVIL IN HARVEY

The most dramatic agency in life is time—time that escapes the staged drama. The passing years, the ceaseless chiselling of continuous events upon a soul, the reaction of a creed upon the material routine of the days, the humdrum living through of life that brings to it its final color and form—these things shape us and guide us, make us what we are, and alas, the story and the stage may only mention them. It is all very fine to say that as the years of work and aspiration passed, Grant Adams's channel of life grew narrower. But what does that tell? Does it tell of the slow, daily sculpturing upon his character of the three big, emotional episodes of his life? To be a father in boyhood, a father ashamed, yet in duty bound to love and cherish his child; to face death in youth horribly and escape only when other men's courage save him; to react upon that experience in a great spiritual awakening that all but touched madness; and to face unspeakable pain and terror and possible death to justify one's fanatic consecration. Then day by day to renounce ambition, to feel no desire for those deeper things of the heart that gather about a home and the joys of a home; to be atrophied where others are quick and to be supersensitive and highstrung where others are dull; these are facts of Grant Adams's life, but the greater facts are hidden; for they pass under the slow and inexorably moving current of life. They are that part of the living through of life that may not be staged nor told.

But something of the living through is marked on the man. Here he stands toward the close of the century that bore him—a tall, spare, red-haired, flint-visaged, wire-knit man, prematurely middle-aging in late youth. Under his high white forehead are restless blue eyes—deep, clear, challenging, combative blue eyes, a big nose protrudes from under the eyes that marks a willful, uncompromising creature and a big strong mouth, not finely cut, but with thick, hard lips, often chapped, that cover large irregular teeth. The face is determined and dogged—almost brutal sometimes when at rest; but when a smile lights it, a charm and grace from another being illumines the solemn countenance and Grant Adams's heart is revealed. The face is Puritan—all Adams, dour New England Adams, and the smile Irish—from the joyous life of Mary Sands.

We may only see the face: here and there on it is the mark of the sculptor's tool: now and then a glare or a smile reveals what deep creases and gashes the winds of the passing years have made in the soul behind the mask. Here and there, as a rising strident voice in passionate exhortation lifts, we may hear the roar of the narrowing channel into which his life is rushed with augmented force as he hurries forward into his destiny. In that tumult, family, home, ambition, his very child itself that was his first deep wellspring of love, are slipping from him into the torrent. The flood washes about him; his one idea dominates him. He is restless under it—restless even with the employment of the hour. The unions, for which he has been working for more than half a decade, do not satisfy him. His aim is perfection and mortality irritates him, but does not discourage him. For even vanity is slipping from him in the erosion of the waters rushing down their narrowing groove.

But it is only his grim flint face we see; only his high strident, but often melodiously sympathetic voice we hear; only his wiry, lank body with its stump of a right arm that stands before us. The minutes—awful minutes some of them—the hours, painful wrestling hours, the days, doubt-ridden days, and the long monotonous story of the years, we may not know. For the living through of life still escapes us, and only life's tableau of the moment is before us.

* * * * *

Now whatever gloss of gayety Dr. Nesbit might put upon his opinion of Grant Adams and his work in the world, it was evident that the Doctor's opinion of that work was not high. But it was comparatively high; for Harvey's opinion of Grant Adams and his work was abysmal in its depth. He was running his life on a different motor from the motor which moved Harvey; the town was moving after a centripetal force—every one was for himself, and the devil was entitled to the hindermost. Grant Adams was centrifugal; he was not considering himself particularly and was shamelessly taking heed of the hindermost which was the devil's by right. And so men said in their hearts, if this man wins, there will be the devil to pay. For Grant was going about the district spreading discontent. He was calling attention to the violation of the laws in the mines; he was calling attention to the need of other laws to further protect the miners and smelter men. He was going about from town to town in the Valley building up the unions and urging the men to demand more wages, either in actual money or in shorter hours, improved labor conditions, and cheaper rent and better houses from the company which housed the families of the workers.

"Why," he asked, "should labor bear the burden of industry and take its leavings?"

"Why," he demanded, "should capital toil not nor spin and be clothed as Solomon in his glory?"

"Why," he argued, "should the profits of toil be used to buy more tools for toil and not more comforts for toil?"

"Why, why—" he challenged Market Street, "is the partnership of society, not a partnership, but a conspiracy?"

Now Market Street had long been wrathful at that persistent Why.

But when it became known that John Dexter had invited Grant Adams to occupy the pulpit of the Congregational Church one Sunday evening to state his case, Market Street's wrath choked it. For several years John Dexter had been preaching sermons that made the choir the only possible theme of conversation between him and Ahab Wright. John Dexter had been crucified a thousand times by the sordid greed of man in Harvey, and had cried out in the wilderness of his pulpit against it; but his cries fell upon deaf ears, or in dumb hearts.

The invitation to Grant to speak at John Dexter's Sunday evening service was more of a challenge to Harvey than Harvey comprehended. But even if the town did not entirely realize the seriousness of the challenge, at least the minister found himself summoned by Market Street to a meeting to discuss the wisdom of his invitation. Whereupon John Dexter accepted the invitation and, girding up his loins, went as a strong man rejoicing to run a race.

To what a judgment seat they summoned John Dexter! First, up spake Commerce. "Dr. Dexter," said Commerce—Commerce always referred to John Dexter as Doctor, though no Doctor was he and he knew it well, "Dr. Dexter, we feel that your encouragement—hum—uhm—well, your patronage of this man Adams, in his—well, shall we say incendiary—" a harsh word is incendiary, so Commerce stopped and touched its graying side whiskers reverently and patted its immaculate white necktie, and then went on: "—well perhaps indiscreet will do!" With Commerce indeed there is no vast difference between the indiscreet and the incendiary. "—indiscreet agitation against the—well—uhm—the way we have to conduct business, is—is regrettable,—at least regrettable!"

"Why?" interrupted John Dexter sharply, throwing Commerce sadly out of balance. But the Law, which is the palladium of our liberties, answered for Commerce in a slow snarling, "because he is preaching discontent."

"But Mr. Calvin," returned John Dexter quickly, "if any one would come to town preaching discontent to Wright & Perry, showing them how to make more money, to enlarge their profits, to rise among their fellow merchants—would you refuse to give him audience in a pulpit?" The Law did not deign to answer the preacher and then Industry took heart to say, pulling its military goatee vigorously, and clearing its dear old throat for a passage at arms: "'Y gory man, there's always been a working class and they've always had to work like sixty and get the worst of it, I guess, and they always will—what say? You can't improve on the way the world is made. And when she's made, she's made—what say? I tell you now, you're wasting your time on that class of people."

The antagonists looked into each other's kindly eyes. Industry triumphing in its logic, the minister hunting in his heart for the soft answer that would refute the logic without hurting its author. "Captain," he said, "there was once a wiser than we who went about preaching a new order, spreading discontent with injustice, whose very mother was of the lowest industrial class."

"Yes—and you know what happened to Him," sneered the Courts, which are the keystones of government in the structure of civilization. "And," continued the Courts, in a grand and superior voice, "you can't drag business into religion, sir. Religion is one thing and I respect it,"—titters from the listening angels, "—and business is another thing, and we think, sir, that you are trying to mix the insoluble, and as business men who have our own deep religious convictions—" inaudible guffaws from the angels, "—we feel the sacrilege of asking this blatherskite Adams to speak on any subject in so sacred a place as our consecrated pulpit, sir." Hoarse hoots from the angels.

No soft benignity beamed in the preacher's face as he turned to the Courts. "My pulpit, Judge," answered John Dexter sternly, "first of all stands for the gospel of Justice between man and man. It will afford sanctuary for the thief and the Magdalene, but only the penitent thief and the weeping Magdalene!" And John Dexter brought down a resounding fist on the table before him. "I believe that the first duty of religion is to preach shame on the wicked, that they may quit their wickedness, and if," John Dexter's voice rose as he went on, "in the light of our widening intelligence we see that employers are organized wickedly to rob their workers of justice in one way or another, I stand with those who would make the thief disgorge for his own soul's sake, incidentally, but chiefly that justice may come into an evil world and men may not mock the mercy and goodness of God by pointing at the evil men do unrebuked in His name, and under His servants' noses. My pulpit is a free pulpit, sir. When it is not that, I shall leave it. And even though I do not agree sometimes with a man's message, so long as my pulpit is free, any man who desires to cry stop thief, in the darkness of this world, may lift his voice there, and no man shall say him nay! Have you gentlemen anything further to offer?"

Commerce ceased rubbing its hands. Its alter ego, Business, was obviously getting ready to say something, but was only whistling for the station, and the crowd knew it would be a minute before his stuttering speech should arrive. Patriotism was leaning forward with its hands back of its ears, smiling pleasantly at what he did not understand, and Industry, who saw the strings in which his world was wrapped up for delivery, cut, and the world sprawled in confusion before him by the preacher's defiance, was pulling his military goatee solemnly when Science toddled in, white-clad, pink-faced, smoking his short pipe and clicking his cane rather more snappily than usual. He saw that he had punctuated an embarrassed situation. Only Religion and Patriotism were smiling. Science brought his cane down with a whack and piped out:

"So you are going to muzzle John Dexter, are you—you witch-burning old pharisees. I heard of your meeting, and I just thought I'd come around to the bonfire! What are you trying to do here, anyway?"

At last Business which had been whistling for the station was ready to pull in; so it unloaded itself thus: "We are p-protesting, Doc, at th-th-th-th m-m-m-man Adams—this l-l-labor sk-sk-skate and s-s-socialist occupying J-J-John Dexter's p-pulp-p-pit!"

Science looked at Business a grave moment, then burst out, "What are you all afraid of! Here you are, a lot of grown men with fat bank accounts sitting around in a blue funk because Grant Adams does a little more or less objectionable talking. I don't agree with Grant much more than you do. But you're a lot of old hens, cackling around here because Grant Adams invades the roost to air his views. Let him talk. Let 'em all talk. Talk is cheap; otherwise we wouldn't have free speech." He grinned cynically as he asked, "Haven't you any faith in the Constitution of the fathers? They were smart enough to know that free speech was a safety valve; let 'em blow off. Then go down and organize and vote 'em afterwards according to the dictates of your own conscience. Politics is the antidote for free speech!" The Doctor glared at the Courts, smiled amiably at Business and winked conspicuously at Religion. Religion blushed at the blasphemy and as there seemed to be nothing further before the house the Doctor and John Dexter left the room.

But the honest indignation of Market Street that an agitator should appear in a pulpit—that an agitator for anything, should appear in any pulpit—waxed strong. For it was assumed that religion had nothing to do with social conduct; religion was solely a matter of individual salvation. Religion was a matter concerned entirely with getting to heaven oneself, and not at all a matter of getting others to heaven except as they took the narrow and individual path. The idea that environment affects character and that society through politics and social and economic institutions may change a man's environments and thus affect the characters and the chances for Heaven of whole sections of the population, was an idea which had not been absorbed by Market Street in Harvey. So Market Street raged.

That evening when Grant Adams returned from work he received two significant notes. One was from John Dexter and ran:

"Dear Grant: Fearing that you may hear of the comment my invitation to you to speak in my pulpit is causing and fearing that you may either decide at the last minute not to come or that you will modify your remarks out of consideration for me, I write to say that while of course I may not agree with everything you advocate, yet my pulpit is a free pulpit and I cannot consent that you restrict its freedom in saying your full say as a man, any more than I could consent to have my own freedom restricted. Yours in the faith—J. D."

The other note ran: "Father says to tell you to tone it down. I have delivered his message. I say here is your chance to get the truth where it is most needed, and even if for the most part it falls on stony ground—you still must sow it.—L. N. VD."

Sunday evening saw a large congregation in the pews of the Rev. John Dexter's church. In the front and middle portion of the church were the dwellers on the Hill, those whose lines fell in pleasant places. They were the "Haves" of the town,—conspicuous and highly respectable with rustle of silks and flutter of ribbons.

And back of these sat a score of men and women from South Harvey, the "Have-nots," the dwellers in the dreary valley. There was Denny Hogan, late of the mines, but now of the smelter—with his curly hair plastered over his forehead, and with his wife, she that was Violet Mauling holding a two-year-old baby with sweaty, curly red hair to her breast asleep; there was Ira Dooley, also late of the mines, but now proprietor of a little game of chance over the Hot Dog Saloon; there was Pat McCann, a pit boss and proud of it, with Mrs. McCann—looking her eyes out at Mrs. Nesbit's hat. There was John Jones, in his Sunday best, and Evan Hughes and Tom Williams, the wiry little Welsh miners who had faced death with Grant Adams five years before. They were with him that night at the church with all the pride in him that they could have if he were one of the real nobility, instead of a labor agitator with a little more than local reputation. And there were Dick and his boy Mugs and the silent Mrs. Bowman and Bennie her youngest and Mary the next to the youngest. And Mrs. Bowman in the South Harvey colony was a person of consequence, for she nodded to the Nesbits and the Mortons and to Laura and to Mrs. Calvin and to all the old settlers of Harvey—rather conspicuously. She had the gratification of noting that South Harvey saw the nobility nod back. With the South Harvey people came Amos Adams in his rough gray clothes and rough gray beard. Jasper Adams, in the highest possible collar, and in the gayest possible shell-pink necktie and under the extremest clothes that it might be possible for the superintendent of a Sunday School to wear, shared a hymnal, when the congregation rose to sing, with the youngest Miss Morton. There were those who thought the singing was merely a duet between young Mr. Adams and the youngest Miss Morton—so much feeling did they put into the music. Mr. Brotherton was so impressed, that he marked young Adams for a tryout at the next funeral where there was a bass voice needed, making the mental reservation that no one needed to look at the pimples of a boy who could sing like that.

When the congregation sat down after the first hymn John Dexter formally presented Grant Adams to the congregation. The young man rose, walked to the chancel rail and stood for a moment facing his audience without speaking. The congregation saw a tall, strong featured, uncouth man with large nose and a big mouth—clearly masculine and not finely chiselled. In these features there was something almost coarse and earthy; but in the man's eyes and forehead, there lurked the haunting, fleeting shadow of the eternal feminine in his soul. His eyes were deep and blue and tender, and in repose always seemed about to smile, while his forehead, high and broad, topped by a shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance shine with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that "Mad Adams." As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn's, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. He began speaking with his arms behind him to hide the crippled arm which was tipped with a gloved iron claw. His voice was low and gentle, yet his hearers felt its strength in reserve.

"I suppose," he began slowly, "every man has his job in the world, and I presume my job seems rather an unnecessary one to some of my friends, and I can hardly blame them. For the assumption of superiority that it may seem to require upon the whole must be distasteful to them. For as a professional apostle of discontent, urging men to cease the worship of things as they are, I am taking on myself a grave burden—that of leading those who come with me, into something better. In the end perhaps, you will not be proud of me. For my vision may be a delusion. Time may leave me naked to the cold truth of life, and I may awaken from my dreaming to reality. That is possible. But now I see my course; now I feel the deep call of a duty I cannot resist." He was speaking softly and in hardly more than a conversational tone, with his hand at his side and his gloved claw behind him. He lifted his hand and spoke in a deeper tone.

"I have come to you—to those of you who lead sheltered lives of comfort, amid work and scenes you love, to tell you of your neighbors; to call to you in their name, and in the name of our common God for help. I have come from the poor—to tell you of their sorrows, to beg of you to come over into Macedonia and help us; for without you we are helpless. True—God knows how true—the poor outnumber you by ten to one. True, they have the power within them to rise, but their strength is as water in their hands. They need you. They need your neighborly love."

As he spoke something within him, some power of his voice or of his presence played across the congregation like a wind. The wind which at first touched a few who bent forward to hear him, was moving every one. Faces gradually set in attention. He went on:

"How wonderful is this spirit of life that has come rolling in through the eons, rolling in from some vast illimitable sea of life that we call God. For ages and ages on this planet life could only give to new life the power to feed and propagate, could only pass on to new life the heritage of instinct; then another impulse of the outer sea washed in and there came a day when life could imitate, could learn a little, could pass on to new life some slight power of growth. And then came welling in from the unknown bourne another wave, and lo! life could reason, and God heard men whisper, Father, and deep called unto deep. Since then through the long centuries, through the gray ages, life slowly has been rising, slowly coming in from the hidden sea that laves the world. Millions and millions of men are doomed to know nothing of this life that gives us joy; millions are held bound in a social inheritance that keeps them struggling for food, over outworn paths, mere creatures of primal instinct, whose Godhood is taken from them at birth; by you—by you who get what you do not earn from those who earn what they do not get."

He turned to the group near the rear of the room, looked at them and continued:

"The poor need your neighborly sacrifice, and in that neighborly love and sacrifice you will grow in stature more than they. What you give you will keep; what you lose you will gain. The brotherhood you build up will bless and comfort you.

"The poor," he exclaimed passionately, "need you, but how, before God you need them! For only a loving understanding of your neighbors' lives will soften your calloused hearts. Long benumbing hours of grimy work, sordid homes amid daily and hourly scenes of filth and shame!" He leaned forward and cried: "Listen to me, Ahab Wright," and he thrust forward his iron claw toward the merchant while the congregation gasped, "what if you had to strip naked and bathe in a one-roomed hut before your family every night when you came home, dirty and coal-stained from your day's work! the beggar and the harlot and the thief nearby." He moved his accusing claw and the startled eyes of the crowd followed it as it pointed to Daniel Sands and Grant exclaimed: "Listen, Uncle Dan Sands, how would you like to have your daughter see the things the children see who live in your tenements next to the Burned District, which is your property also! Poisoned food, cheap, poisoned air, cheap, poisoned thoughts—all food and air and ideas, the cast-off refuse of your daily lives who live in these sheltered homes. You have a splendid sewer system up here; but it flows into South Harvey and the Valley towns, a great open ravine, because you people sitting here who own the property down there won't tax yourselves to enclose those sewers that poison us!" A faint—rather dazed smile ran over the congregation like a wraith of smoke. He felt that the smoke proved that he had struck fire. He went on: "Love, great aspiring love of fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, love stifled by fell circumstance, by cruel events, and love that winces in agony at seeing children and father and brother go down in the muck all around them—that is the heritage of poverty.

"Hear me, Kyle Perry and John Kollander. I know you think poverty is the social punishment of the unfit. But I tell you poverty is not the punishment of the weak. Poverty is a social condition to which millions are doomed and from which only hundreds escape when the doom of birth is sealed. What has Ahab Wright given to Harvey more than James McPherson, who discovered coal here? What has Daniel Sands done for Harvey more than Tom Williams, who has spent his life at hard work mining coal? Is not his coal as valuable as Uncle Daniel's interest? Friends—think of these things!"

The wraith of smoke that had appeared when Grant first began speaking personally to the men of Harvey, in a minute had grown to a surer evidence of fire. The smiling ceased. Angry looks began flashing over the faces before Grant, like darts of flame. And after these looks came a great black cloud of wrath that was as perceptible as a gust of smoke. He felt that soon the fire would burst forth. But he hurried on with his message: "Poverty is not the social punishment of the weak, I repeat it. Poverty is a social inheritance of the many, a condition which holds men hard and fast—a condition that you may change, you who have so much. All this coal and oil and mineral have profited you greatly, oh, men of Harvey. You are rich, Daniel Sands. You are prosperous, Ahab Wright. You have every comfort around you and yours, John Kollander, and you, Joseph Calvin, are rearing your children in luxury compared with Dick Bowman's children. Hasn't he worked as hard as you? Here are Ira Dooley and Denny Hogan. They started as equals with you up here and have worked as hard and have lived average lives. Yet if their share is a fair share of the earnings of this community, you have an unfair share. How did you get it?" He leaned out over the chancel rail, pointed a bony, accusing finger at the congregation and glared at the eyes before him angrily. Quickly he recovered his poise but brought his steel claw down on the pulpit beside him with a sharp clash as he cried again, "How did you get it?"

Then it was that the flame of indignation burst forth. It came first in a hiss and another and a third—then a crackling fire of hisses greeted his last sentence. When the hissing calmed, his voice rose slightly. He went on:

"We of the middle classes—we have risen above the great mass below us: we are permitted to learn—a little—to imitate and expand somewhat. But above us, thank God, is another group in the social organization. Here at the top stand the blessed, privileged few who are the world's prophets and dreamers and seers—they know God; they drink deep of the rising tide of everlasting life that is booming in, flooding the world with mercy and love and brotherhood; and what they see in one century—and die for disclosing—we all see in the next century and fight to hold it fast!" He stood looking at the floor, then opened wide his glaring eyes, a fanatic's mania blazing in them, lifted his arms and cried with a great voice like a trumpet: "You—you—you who have known God's mercy and his goodness and his love—why, in the dead Christ's name do you sit here and let the flood of life be dammed away from your brothers, stealing the waters of life like thieves from your brethren by your cruel laws and customs and the chains of social circumstance!"

They tried to hiss again but he hurried on as one possessed of a demon: "A little love, a little sacrifice, a little practical brotherly care from each of you each day would help. We don't want your alms, we want justice. Thousands of babies—loved just as yours are loved—are slaughtered every month through poisoned food that comes from commercial greed. Thousands of fathers and brothers over this land are killed every year because it is cheaper to kill them than to protect them by machinery guarded and watched. Their blood is upon you—for by your laws, by your middle class courts you could stop its flowing. Thousands of mothers die every week from poor housing—you could stop that if you would. They are stopping it by laws in other lands. Millions of girls the world over are led like sheep to shameful lives because of industrial conditions that your vote and voice could change; and yet," his voice lost its accusing tone and he spoke gently, even tenderly, "as babies they cuddled in their mothers' arms and roused all the hope and inspired all the love that a soft little body may bring. Millions and millions of mothers who clasp their children to them in hope, must see those children go into life to be broken and crushed by the weight from above."

As Grant was speaking he noticed that Morty Sands was nodding his head off in gorgeous approval. Then without thinking how his words might cut, he cried, "And look at our good friend Morty Sands who enjoys every luxury and is arrayed as the lilies of the field! What does Morty give to society that he can promise the girl who marries him, comfort and ease and all the happiness that physical affluence may bring? And then there sits Mugs Bowman. What can Mugs offer his girl except a life of hard, grinding work, a houseful of children and a death perhaps of slow disease? Yet Mugs must have his houseful of children for they must all work to support Morty. Where is the justice in a society organized like this?

"For Christ's living sake," cried the man as his face glowed in his emotion, "let life wash in from its holy source to these our brothers. Shame on you—you greedy ones, you dollar worshipers—you dam the stream, you muddy the waters, you poison the well of life—shame—shame!" he cried and then paused, gloated perhaps in his pause, for the storm he saw gathering in the crowd, to break. His face was transfigured by the passion in his heart and seemed illumined with wrath.

"The flag—the flag!" bawled deaf John Kollander, rising, "He is desecrating Old Glory!"

Then fire met fire and the conflagration was past control. It raged over the church noisily.

"Look-a here, young man," called Joseph Calvin, standing in his seat.

"The flag—will no one defend the flag!" bellowed John Kollander, while Rhoda, his wife, looked on with amiable approval.

"P-put him out," stuttered Kyle Perry, and his clerks and understrappers joined the clamor.

"Well, say, men," cried George Brotherton in the confusion of hissing and groaning, "can't you let the man talk? Is free speech dead in this town?" His great voice silenced the crowd, and John Dexter was in the pulpit holding out his hands. As he spoke the congregation grew silent, and they heard him say:

"This is a free pulpit; this man shall not be disturbed." But Joseph Calvin stamped noisily out of the church. John Kollander and his wife marched out behind him with military tread and Kyle Perry and Ahab Wright with their families followed, amid a shuffling of feet and a clamor of voices. The men from South Harvey kept their places. There was a whispering among them and Grant, fearing that they would start trouble, called to them sternly:

"My friends must respect this house. Let property riot—poverty can wait. It has waited a long time and is used to it."

When Market Street was gone, the speaker drew a deep breath and said in a low, quiet voice charged with pent-up emotion: "Now that we are alone, friends,—now that they are gone whose hearts needed this message, let me say just this: God has given you who live beautiful lives the keeping of his treasure. Let us ask ourselves this: Shall we keep it to share it with our brethren in love, or shall we guard it against our brethren in hate?"

He walked back to the rear of the room and sat, with his head bowed down, beside his friends, spent and weary while the services closed.

At the church door Laura Van Dorn saw the despair that was somewhat a physical reaction from weariness. So she cut her way through the group and went to him, taking his arm and drawing him aside into the homebound walk, as quickly as she could. He remained grim and spoke only in answer to challenge or question from Laura. It was plain to her that he felt that his speech was a failure; that he had not made himself understood; that he had overstated his case. She was not sure herself that he had not lost more ground than he had gained in the town. But she wrapped him about in a garment of kindness—an almost maternal tenderness that was balm to his heart. She did not praise his speech but she let him know that she was proud of him, that her heart was in all that he had said, even if he felt definitely that there were places in his adventure where her head was not ready to go. She held no check upon the words that came to her lips, for she felt, even deeper and surer than she felt her own remoteness from the love which her girlhood had known, that in him it was forever dead. No touch of his hand; no look of his eye, no quality of his voice had come to her since her childhood, in which she could find trace or suggestion that sex was alive in him. The ardor that burned so wildly upon his face, the fire in his eyes that glowed when he spoke of his work and his problems, seemed to have charred within him all flower and beauty of romance. But they left with him a hunger for sympathy. A desire to be mothered and a longing for a deep and sweet understanding which made Laura more and more necessary to him as he went into his life's pilgrimage. As they reached a corner, he left her with her family while he turned away for a night walk.

As he walked, he was continually coming upon lovers passing or meeting him in the night; and Grant seeing them felt his sense of isolation from life renewed, but was not stirred to change his course. For hours he wandered through the town and out of it into the prairies, with his heart heavy and wroth at the iniquities of men which make the inequities of life. For his demon kept him from sleep. If another demon, and perhaps a gentler, tried to whisper to him that night of another life and a sweeter, tried to turn him from his course into the normal walks of man, tried to break his purpose and tempt him to dwell in the comely tents of Kedar—if some gentler angels that would have saved him from a harsher fate had beckoned to him and called him that night, through passing lovers' arms and the murmur of loving voices, his eyes were blind and his ears were deaf and his heart was hot with another passion.

Amos Adams was in bed when Grant came into the house. On the table was a litter of writing paper. Grant sat down for a minute under the lamp. His father in the next room stirred, and asked:

"What kept you?" And then, "I had a terrific time with Mr. Left to-night." The father appeared in the doorway. "But just look there what I got after a long session."

On the page were these words written in a little round, old-fashioned hand, some one's interminably repeated prayer. "Angels guide him—angels strengthen him; angels pray for him." These words were penned clear across the page and on the next line and the next and the next to the very bottom of the page, in a weary monotony, save that at the bottom of the sheet the pen had literally run into the paper, so heavily was the hand of the writer bearing down! Under that, written in the fine hand used by Mr. Left was this:

"Huxley:—On earth I wrote that I saw one angel—'the strong, calm angel playing for love.' Now I see the forces of good leading the world forward, compelling progress; all are personal—just as the Great All Encompassing Force is personal, just as human consciousness is personal. The positive forces of life are angels—not exact—but the best figure. So it is true that was written, 'there is more joy in Heaven'—and 'the angels sang for joy.' This also is only a figure—but the best I can get through to you. Angels guide us, angels strengthen us, angels pray for us."



CHAPTER XXXI

IN WHICH JUDGE VAN DORN MAKES HIS BRAGS AND DR. NESBIT SEES A VISION

It was the last day of the last year of the Nineteenth Century—and a fair, beautiful day it was. The sun shone over Harvey in spite of the clouds from the smelter in South Harvey, and in spite of the clouds that were blown by the soft, south wind up the Wahoo Valley from other smelters and other coal mines, and a score of great smoke stacks in Foley and Magnus and Plain Valley, where the discovery of coal and oil and gas, within the decade that was passing, had turned the Valley into a straggling town almost twenty miles long. So high and busy were the chimneys that when the south wind blew toward the capital of this industrial community, often the sun was dimmed in Harvey by a haze. But on this fair winter's day the air was dry and cold and even in Harvey shadows were black and clear, and the sun's warmth had set the redbirds to singing in the brush and put so much joy into the world that Judge Thomas Van Dorn had ventured out with his new automobile—a chugging, clattering wonder that set all the horses of Greeley County on their hind feet, making him a person of distinction in the town far beyond his renown as a judge and an orator and a person of more than state-wide reputation. But the Judge's automobile was frail and prone to err—being not altogether unlike its owner in that regard. Thus many a time when it chugged out of his barn so proudly, it came limping back behind a span of mules. And so it happened on that bright, beautiful, December day that the Judge was sitting upon a box in Captain Morton's shop, while the Captain at his little forge was welding some bits of metal together and discoursing upon the virtues of his Household Horse, which he was assembling in small quantities—having arranged with a firm in South Chicago to cast the two iron pieces that were needed.

"Now, for instance, on a clothes wringer," the Captain was saying: "It's a perfect wonder on a clothes wringer: I have the agency of a clothes wringer that is making agents rich all over the country. But women don't like clothes wringers; why? Because they require such hard work. All right—hitch on my Household Horse, and the power required is reduced three-fifths and a day's wash may be put on the line as easy as a girl could play The Maiden's Prayer on a piano—eh? Or, say, put it on a churn—same Horse—one's all that's needed to a house. Or make it an ice cream freezer or a cradle or a sewing machine, or anything on earth that runs by a crank—and 'y gory, man, you make housework a joy. I sold Laura one—traded her one for lessons for Ruth, and she says wash-day at the Doctor's is like Sunday now—what say? Lila's so crazy about it they can't keep her out of the basement while the woman works,—likes to dabble in the water you know like all children, washing her doll clothes, what say?"

But the Judge said nothing. The Captain tinkered with the metal, and dipped it slowly in and out of a tub of dirty water to temper it, and as he tried it in the groove where it belonged upon the automobile backed up to the shop, he found that it was not exactly true, and went to work to spring it back into line. The Judge looked around the shop—a barny, little place filled with all sorts of wheels and pulleys and levers and half-finished inventions that wouldn't work, and that, even if they would work, would be of little consequence. There was an attempt to make a self-oiler for buggy wheels, a half-finished contrivance that was supposed to keep cordwood stacked in neat rows; an automatic contraption to prevent coffeepots from burning; a cornsheller that would all but work; a molasses faucet with an alcohol burner which was supposed to make the sirup flow faster—but which instead sometimes blew up and burned down grocery stores, and there were steamers and churns and household contrivances which the Captain had introduced into the homes of Harvey in past years, not of his invention, to be sure, but contrivances that had inspired his eloquence, and were mute witnesses to his prowess—trophies of the chase. Above the forge were rows of his patent sprockets, all neatly wrapped in brown paper, and under this row of merchandise was a clipping from the Times describing the Captain's invention, and predicting—at five cents a line—that it would revolutionize the theory of mechanics and soon become a household need all over the world.

As the Judge looked idly at the Captain's treasures while the Captain tinkered with the steel, he took off his hat, and the Captain, peering through his glasses, remarked:

"Getting kind of thin on top, Tom—eh? Doc, he's leaning a little hard on his cane. Joe Calvin, he's getting rheumatic, and you're getting thin-haired. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

"So you believe the Lord runs things here in Harvey, do you, Cap?" asked the Judge, who was playing with a bit of wire.

"Well—I suppose if you come right down to it," answered the Captain, "a man's got to have the consolation of religion in some shape or other or he's going to get mighty discouraged—what say?"

"Why," scoffed the Judge, "it's a myth—there's nothing to it. Look at my wife—I mean Margaret—she changes religion as often as she changes dogs. Since we've been married she's had three religions. And what good does it do her?"

The Captain, sighting down the edge of the metal, shook his head, and the Judge went on: "What good does any religion do? I've broken the ten commandments, every one of them—and I get on. No one bothers me, because I keep inside the general statutes. I've beat God at his own game. I tell you, Cap, you can do what you please just so you obey the state and federal laws and pay your debts. This God-myth amuses me."

Captain Morton did not care to argue with the Judge. So he said, by way of making conversation for a customer, and neighbor and guest:

"I hear, well, to be exact, George Brotherton was telling me and the girls the other night that the Company is secretly dropping out the members of the unions that Grant Adams has been organizing down in South Harvey."

"Yes—that Adams is another one of your canting, God-and-morality fellows. Always watch that kind. I tell you, Captain," barked the Judge, "about the only thing my wife and I have agreed on for a year is that this Adams fellow is a sneaking, pharisaical hound. Lord, how she hates him! Sometimes I think women hate hard enough to compete with your God, who according to the preachers, is always slipping around getting even with fellows for their sins. God and women are very much alike, anyway," sneered the Judge. In the silence that followed, both men were attracted by a noise behind them—the rustling of straw. They looked around and saw the figure of a little girl—a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, shy, little girl, trying to slip out of the place. She had evidently been in the loft gathering eggs, for her apron was full, and she had her foot on the loft ladder.

"Why, Lila, child," exclaimed the Captain, "I clean forgot you being up there—did you find any eggs? Why didn't you come down long ago?"

"Come here, Lila," called the Judge. The child stood by the ladder hesitatingly, holding her little apron corners tightly in her teeth basketing the eggs—too embarrassed now that she was down the ladder, to use her hands.

"Lila," coaxed the Judge, reaching his hand into his pocket, "won't you let Papa give you a dollar for candy or something. Come on, daughter." He put out his hands. She shook her head. She had to pass him to get to the door. "You aren't afraid of your Papa are you, Lila—come—here's a dollar for you—that's a good girl."

Her mouth quivered. Big tears were dropping down her cheeks. The Captain's quick eye saw that something had hurt her. He went over to her, put his arm about her, took the eggs from her apron, fondled her gently without speaking. The Judge drew nearer "Lila—come—that's a good girl—here, take the money. Oh Lila, Lila," he cried, "won't you take it for Papa—won't you, my little girl?"

The child looked up at him with shy frightened eyes, and suddenly she put down her head and ran past him. He tried to hold her—to put the silver into her hand, but she shrank away and dropped the coin before him.

"Shy child, Judge—very shy. Emma let her gather the eggs this morning, she loves to hunt eggs," chuckled the Captain, "and she went to the loft just before you came in. I clean forgot she hadn't come down."

The Captain went on with his work.

"I suppose, Cap," said Van Dorn quietly, "she heard more or less of what I said." The Captain nodded.

"How much did she understand?" the Judge asked.

"More'n you'd think, Judge—more'n you'd think. But," added Captain Morton after a pause, "I know the little skite like a top, Judge—and there's one thing about her: She's a loyal little body. She'll never tell; you needn't be worrying about that."

The Judge sighed and added sadly: "It wasn't that, Cap—it was—" But the Judge left his sentence in the air. The mending was done. The Judge paid the old man and gave him a dollar more than he asked, and went chugging off in a cloud of smoke, while the Captain, thinking over what the Judge had said, sighed, shook his head, and bending over his work, cackled in an undertone, snatches of a tune that told of a land that is fairer than day. He had put together three sprockets and was working on the fourth when he looked up and saw his daughter Emma sitting on the box that the Judge had vacated. The Captain put his hand to his back and stood up, looking at his eldest daughter with loving pride.

"Emma," he said at length, "Judge Tom says women are like God." He stood near her and smoothed her hair, and patted her cheek as he pressed her head against his side. "I guess he's right—eh? Lila was in the loft getting eggs and she overheard a lot of his fool talk." The daughter made no reply. The Captain worked on and finally said: "It kind of hit Tom hard to have Lila hear him; took the tuck out of him, eh?"

Emma still waited. "My dear, the more I know of women the better I think of God, and the surer I am of God, the better I think of women—what say?" He sat on the box beside her and took her hand in his hard, cracked, grimy hand, "'Y gory, girl, I tell you, give me a line on a man's idea of God and I can tell you to a tee what he thinks of women—eh?" The Captain dropped the hand for a moment and looked out of the door into the alley.

"Well, Father, I agree with you in general about women but in particular I don't care about Mrs. Herdicker and I wish Martha had another job, though I suppose it's better than teaching school." The daughter sighed. "Honest, father, sometimes when I've been on my feet all day, and the children have been mean, and the janitor sticks his head in and grins, so I'll know the superintendent is in the building and get the work off the board that the rules don't allow me to put on, or one of the other girls sends a note up to watch for my spelling for he's cranky on spelling to-day, I just think, 'Lordee, if I had a job in some one's kitchen, I'd be too happy to breathe.' But then—"

"Yes—yes, child—I know it's hard work now—but 'y gory, Emmy, when I get this sprocket introduced and going, I'll buy you six superintendents in a brass cage and let you feed 'em biled eggs to make 'em sing—eh?" He smiled and patted his daughter's hair and rose to go back to work. The girl plucked at his coat and said: "Now sit down, father, I want to talk to you," she hesitated. "It's about Mr. Brotherton. You know he's been coming out here for years and I thought he was coming to see me, and now Martha thinks he comes to see her, and Martha always stays there and so does Ruth, and if he is coming to see me—" she stopped. Her father looked at her in astonishment. "Why, father," she went on,—"why not? I'm twenty-five, and Martha's twenty-two and even Ruth is seventeen—he might even be coming to see Ruth," she added bitterly.

"Yes, or Epaminondas—the cat—eh?" cut in the old man. Then he added, indignantly, "Well, how about this singing Jasper Adams—who's he coming to see? Or Amos—he comes around here sometimes Saturday night after G. A. R. meeting, with me—what say? Would you want us all to clear out and leave you the front room with him?" demanded the perturbed Captain.

Then the father put his arm about his child tenderly: "Twenty-five years old—twenty-five years—why, girl, in my time a girl was an old maid laid on the shelf at twenty-five—and here you are," he mused, "just thinking of your first beau and here I am needing your mother worse than I ever did in my life. Law-see' girl—how do I know what to do—what say?" But he did know enough to draw her to him and kiss her and sigh. "Well—maybe I can do something—maybe—we'll see." And then she left him and he went to his work. And as he worked the thought struck him suddenly that if he could put one of his sprockets in the Judge's automobile where he had seen a chain, that it would save power and stop much of the noise. So as he worked he dreamed that his sprocket was adopted by the makers of the new machines, and that he was rich—exceedingly rich and that he took the girls to visit the Ohio kin, and that Emma had her trip to the Grand Canyon, that Martha went to Europe and that Ruthie "took vocal" of a teacher in France whose name he could not pronounce.

As he hammered away at his bench he heard a shuffling at the door and looking up saw Dr. Nesbit in the threshold.

"Come in, Doctor; sit down and talk," shrilled the Doctor before the Captain could speak, and when the Doctor had seated himself upon the box by the workbench, the Captain managed to say: "Surely—come right in, I'm kind of lonesome anyhow."

"And I'm mad," cried the Doctor. "Just let me sit here and blow off a little to my old army friend."

"Well—well, Doctor, it's queer to see you hot under the collar—eh?" The Doctor began digging out his pipe and filling it, without speaking. The Captain asked: "What's gone wrong? Politics ain't biling? what say?"

"Well," returned the Doctor, "you know Laura works at her kindergarten down there in South Harvey, and she got me to pass that hours-of-service law for the smelter men at the extra session last summer. Good law! Those men working there in the fumes shouldn't work over six hours a day—it will kill them. I managed by trading off my hide and my chances of Heaven to get a law through, cutting them down to eight hours in smelter work. Denny Hogan, who works on the slag dump, is going to die if he has to do it another year on a ten-hour shift. He's been up and down for two years now—the Hogans live neighbors to Laura's school and I've been watching him. Well," and here the Doctor thumped on the floor with his cane, "this Judge—this vain, strutting peacock of a Judge, this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I've just been reading his decision, and I'm hot—good and hot."

The Captain interrupted:

"I saw Violet Hogan and the children—dressed like princesses, walking out to-day—past the Judge's house—showing it to them—what say? My, how old she looks, Doctor!"

"Well—the damned villain—the infernal scoundrel—" piped the Doctor. "I just been reading that decision. The men showed in their lawsuit that the month before the law took effect the company, knowing the law had been passed, went out and sold their switch and sold the slag dump, to a fake railroad company that bought a switch engine and two or three cars, and incorporated as a railroad, and then—the same people owning the smelter and the railroad, they set all the men in the smelter that they could working on the slag dump, so the men were working for the railroad and not for the smelter company and didn't come within the eight hour law. And now the Judge stands by that farce; he says that the men working there under the very chimney of the smelter on the slag dump where the fumes are worst, are not subject to the law because the law says that men working for the smelters shall not work more than eight hours, and these men are working for a cheating, swindling subterfuge of a railroad. That's judge-made law. That's the kind of law that makes anarchists. Law!" snorted the Doctor, "Law!—made by judges who have graduated out of the employ of corporations—law!—is just what the Judge on the bench dares to read into the statute. I tell you, Cap, if the doctors and engineers and preachers were as subservient to greed and big money as the lawyers are, we would soon lose our standing. But when a lawyer commits some flagrant malpractice like that of Tom Van Dorn's—the lawyers remind us that the courts are sacred institutions."

The Doctor's pipe was out and in filling it again, he jabbed viciously at the bowl with his knife, and in the meantime the Captain was saying:

"Well, I suppose he found the body of the decisions leaning that way, Doc—you know Judges are bound by the body of the law."

"The body of the law—yes, damn 'em, I've bought 'em to find the body of the law myself."

The Doctor sputtered along with his pipe and cried out in his high treble—"I never had any more trouble buying a court than a Senator. And lawyers have no shame about hiring themselves to crooks and notorious lawbreakers. And some lawyers hire themselves body and soul to great corporations for life and we all know that those corporations are merely evading the laws and not obeying them; and lawyers—at the very top of the profession—brazenly hire out for life to that kind of business. What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors—but we call them quacks. We don't allow 'em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public—they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack—a hair-splitting, owl-eyed, venal quack—who doles out the bread pills of injustice, and the strychnine stimulants of injustice and the deadening laudanum of injustice, and falls back on the body of the decisions to uphold him in his quackery. Justice demands that he take that fake corporation, made solely to evade the law, and shake its guts out and tell the men who put up this job, that he'll put them all in jail for contempt of court if they try any such shenanigan in his jurisdiction again. That would be justice. This—this decision—is humbug and every one knows it. What's more—it may be murder. For men can't work on that slag dump ten hours a day without losing their lives."

The captain tapped away at his sprocket. He had his own ideas about the sanctity of the courts. They were not to be overthrown so easily. The Doctor snorted: "Burn their bodies, and blear their minds, and then wail about our vicious lower classes—I'm getting to be an anarchist."

He prodded his cane among the debris on the floor and then he began to twitch the loose skin of his lower face and smiled. "Thank you, Cap," he chirped. "How good and beautiful a thing it is to blow off steam in a barn to your old army friend."

The Captain looked around and smiled and the Doctor asked: "What was that you were saying about Violet Hogan?"

"I said I saw her to-day and she looked faded and old—she's not so much older than my Emma—eh?"

"Still," said the Doctor, "Violet's had a tough time—a mighty tough time; three children in six years. The last one took most of her teeth; young horse doctor gave her some dope that about killed her; she's done all the cooking, washing, scrubbing and made garden for the family in that time—up every morning at five, seven days in the week to get breakfast for Dennis—Emma would look broken if she'd had that." The Doctor paused. "Like her mother—weak—vain—puts all of Denny's wages on the children's backs—Laura says Violet spends more on frills for those kids than we spend for groceries—and Violet goes around herself looking like the Devil before breakfast." The Doctor rested his chin on his cane. "Remember her mother—Mrs. Mauling—funny how it breeds that way. The human critter, Cap, is a curious beast—but he does breed true—mostly." The Doctor loafed, whistling, around the work shop, prodding at things with his cane, and wound up leaning against one end of the bench.

"Last day of the century," he piped, "makes a fellow pause and study. I've seen fifty-three years of the old century—seen the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the fast printing press, the transcontinental railroad, the steam thresher, the gasoline engine—and all its wonders clear down to Judge Tom's devil wagon. That's a good deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized—leaving the homes of the people, and herding into the great factories. I've seen steam revolutionize the daily habits of men, and distort their thoughts; one man can't run a steam engine; it takes more than one man to own one. So have I seen capital rise in the world until it is greater than kings, greater than courts, greater than governments—greater than God himself as matters stand, Cap—I'm terribly afraid that's true."

The Doctor was serious. His high voice was calm, and he smoked a while in peace. "But," he added reflectively—"Cap, I want to tell you something more wonderful than all; I've seen seven absolutely honest men elected this year to the State Senate—I've sounded them, felt them out, had all kinds of reports from all kinds of people on those seven men. Each man thinks he's alone, and there are seven."

The Doctor leaned over to the Captain and said confidentially, "Cap—we meet next week. Listen here. I was elected without a dollar of the old spider's money. He fought me for that smelter law on the quiet. Now look here; you watch my smoke. I'm going to organize those seven, and make eight and you're going to see some fighting."

"You ain't going to fight the party, are you, Doc?" asked the amazed Captain, as though he feared that the Doctor would fall dead if he answered yes. But the Doctor grinned and said: "Maybe—if it fights me."

"Well, Doc—" cried the Captain, "don't you think—"

"You bet I think—that's what's the matter. The smelter lawsuit's made me think. They want to control government so they can have a license to murder. That's what it means. Watch 'em blight Denny Hogan's lungs down on the dump; watch 'em burn 'em up and crush 'em in the mines—by evading the mining laws; watch 'em slaughter 'em on the railroads; murder is cheap in this country—if you control government and get a slaughter license."

The Doctor laughed. "That's the old century—and say, Cap—I'm with the new. You know old Browning—he says:

"It makes me mad To think what men will do an' I am dead."

The Doctor waved his cane furiously, and grinned as he threw back his head, laughed silently, kicked out one leg, and stood with one eye cocked, looking at the speechless Captain. "Well, Cap—speak up—what are you going to do about it?"

"'Y gory, Doc, you certainly do talk like a Populist—eh?" was all the Captain could reply. The Doctor toddled to the door, and standing there sang back: "Well, Cap—do you think the Lord Almighty laid off all the angels and quit work on the world when he invented Tom Van Dorn's automobile—that it is the last new thing that will ever be tried?"

And with that, the Doctor went out into the alley and through his alley gate into his house. But the Captain's mind was set going by the Doctor's parting words. He was considering what might follow the invention of Tom Van Dorn's automobile. There was that chain, and there was his sprocket. It would work—he knew it would work and save much power and much noise. But the sprocket must be longer, and stronger. Then, he thought, if the wire spokes and the ball-bearing and rubber tires of the bicycle had made the automobile possible, and now that they were getting the gasoline engine of the automobile perfected so that it would generate such vast power in such a small space—what if they could conserve and apply that power through his invention—what if the gasoline engine might not through his Household Horse some day generate and use a power that would lift a man off the earth? What then? As he tapped the bolts and turned the screws and put his little device together, he dreamed big dreams of the future when men should fly, and the boundaries of nations would disappear and tariffs would be impossible. This shocked him, and he tried to figure out how to prevent smuggling by flying machines; but as he could not, he dreamed on about the time when war would be abolished among civilized men, because of his invention.

So while he was dreaming in matter—forming the first vague nebulae of coming events, the infinite intelligence washing around us all, floating this earth, and holding the stars in their courses, sent a long, thin fleck of a wave into the mind of this man who stood working and dreaming in the twilight while the old century was passing. And while he saw his vision, other minds in other parts of the earth saw their visions. Some of these myriad visions formed part of his, and his formed part of theirs, and all were part of the great vision that was brooding upon the bourne of time and space. And other visions, parts of the great vision of the Creator, were moving with quickening life in other minds and hearts. The disturbed vision of justice that flashed through the Doctor's mind was a part of the vast cycle of visions that were hovering about this earth. It was not his alone, millions held part of it; millions aspired, they knew not why, and staked their lives upon their faith that there is a power outside ourselves that makes for righteousness. And as the waves of infinite, resistless, all-encompassing love laved the world that New Year's night that cast the new Century upon the strange shores of time, let us hope that the dreams of strong men stirred them deeply that they might move wisely upon that mysterious tide that is drawing humanity to its unknown goal.



CHAPTER XXXII

WHEREIN VIOLET HOGAN TAKES UP AN OLD TRADE AND MARGARET VAN DORN SEEKS A HIGHER PLANE

The new Century brought to Harvey such plenitude that all night and all day the smelter fires painted the sky up and down the Wahoo Valley; all night long and all day long the miners worked in the mines, and all through the night and the long day the great cement factory and the glass factories belched forth their lurid fumes. The trolley cars went creaking and moaning around the curves through the mean, dirty, squalid, little streets of the mining and manufacturing towns. They whined impatiently as they sailed across the prairie grass under the befogged sunshine between the settlements, but always they brought up with their loads at Harvey. So Harvey grew to be a prosperous inland city, and the Palace Hotel with its onyx and marble office, once the town's pride, found itself with all its striving but a third-class hostelry, while the three-story building of the Traders' Bank looked low and squatty beside its six and seven storied neighbors. The tin cornices of Market Street were wiped away, and yellow brick and terra cotta and marble took the place of the old ornaments of which the young town had been so proud. The thread of wires and pipes that made the web of the spider behind the brass sign, multiplied and the pipes and the rails and the cables that carried his power grew taut and strong. New people by thousands had come into the town and gradually the big house, the Temple of Love on Hill Crest, that had been deserted during the first years of its occupancy, filled up. Judge Thomas Van Dorn and his handsome wife were seen in the great hotels of New York and Boston, and in Europe more or less, though the acquaintances they made in Europe and in the East were no longer needed to fill their home. But the old settlers of Harvey maintained their siege. It was at a Twelfth Night festivity when young people from all over the Valley and from all over the West were masqueing in the great house, that Judge Van Dorn, to please a pretty girl from Baltimore whom the Van Dorns had met in Italy, shaved his mustache and appeared before the guests with a naked lip. The pursed, shrunken, sensuous lips of the cruel mouth showed him so mercilessly that Mrs. Van Dorn could not keep back a little scream of horror the first time he stood before her with his shaved lip. But she changed her scream to a baby giggle, and he did not know how he was revealed. So he went about ever after, preening himself that his smooth face gave him youth, and strutting inordinately because some of the women he knew told him he looked like a boy of twenty-five—instead of a man in his forties. He was always suave, always creakingly debonaire, always, even in his meannesses, punctilious and airy.

So the old settlers sometimes were fooled by his attitude toward Margaret, his wife. He bore toward her in public that shallow polish of attention, which puzzled those who knew that they were never together by themselves when he could help it, that he spent his evenings at the City Club, and that often at the theater they sat almost back to back unconsciously during the whole performance. But after the curtain was down, the polite husband was the soul of attendance upon the beautiful wife—her coat, her opera glasses, her trappings of various sorts flew in and out of his eager hands as though he were a conjurer playing with them for an audience. For he was a proud man, and she was a vain woman, and they were striving to prove to a disapproving world that the bargain they had made was a good one.

Yet the old settlers of Harvey felt instinctively that the price of their Judge's bargain was not so trifling a matter as at first the happy couple had esteemed it. The older people saw the big house glow with light as the town spread over the hill and prosperity blackened the Valley. The older people played their quiet games of bridge, by night, and said little. Judge Van Dorn polished the periods of his orations, kept himself like a race horse, strutted like a gobbler, showed his naked mouth, held himself always tightly in hand, kept his eye out for a pretty face, wherever it might be found, drank a little too much at night at the City Club; not much too much but a very little too much—so much that he needed something to brighten his eyes in the morning.

But whatever the Judge's views were on the chess game of the cosmos, Margaret, his wife, had no desire to beat God at his own game. She was a seeker, who always was looking for a new God. God after God had passed in weary review before her. She was always ready to tune up with the infinite, and to ignore the past—a most comfortable thing to do under the circumstances.

As she turned into Market Street one February morning of the New Year in the New Century, leading her dachshund, she was revolving a deep problem in her head. She was trying to get enough faith to believe that her complexion did not need a renovation. She knew that the skin-thought she kept holding was earth-bound and she had tried to shake it, but it wouldn't shake. She had progressed far enough in the moment's cult to overcome a food-thought when her stomach hurt her, by playing a stiff game of bridge for a little stake. But the skin-thought was with her, and she was nervous and irritable and upon the verge of tears for nothing at all. Moreover, her dog kept pulling at his leash, so altogether her cup was running over and she went into Mr. Brotherton's store to ask him to try to find an English translation of a highly improper German book with a pious title about which she had heard from a woman from Chicago who had been visiting her.

Now Mr. Brotherton had felt the impulse of the town's prosperity in his business. The cigar stand was gone. In its place was a handsome plain glass case containing expensive books—books bound in vellum, books in hand-tooled leather, books with wide, ragged margins of heavy linen paper around deep black types with illuminated initials at the chapter heads; books filled with extravagant illustrations, books so beautiful that Mr. Brotherton licked his chops with joy when he considered the difference between the cost mark and the price mark. The Amen Corner was gone—the legend that had come down from the pool room, "Better go to bed lonesome than wake up in debt," had been carted to the alley. While the corner formerly occupied by the old walnut bench still held a corner seat, it was a corner seat with sharp angles, with black stain upon it, and upholstered in rich red leather, and red leather pillows lounged luxuriously in the corners of the seat; a black, angular table and a red, angular shade over a green angular lamp sat where the sawdust box had been. True—a green angular smoker's set also was upon the table—the only masculine appurtenance in the corner; but it was clearly a sop thrown out to offended and exiled mankind—a mere mockery of the solid comfort of the sawdust box, filled with cigar stubs and ashes that had made the corner a haven for weary man for nearly a score of years. Above the black-stained seat ran a red dado and upon that in fine old English script, where once the old sign of the Corner had been nailed, there ran this legend:

"'The sweet serenity of Books' and Wallpaper, Stationery and Office Supplies."

For Mr. Brotherton's commercial spirit could not permit him to withhold the fact that he had enlarged his business by adding such household necessities as wall paper and such business necessities as stationery and office supplies. Thus the town referred ever after to Mr. Brotherton's "Sweet serenity of Books and Wallpaper," and so it was known of men in Harvey.

When Mrs. Van Dorn entered, she was surprised; for while she had heard casually of the changes in Mr. Brotherton's establishment, she was not prepared for the effulgence of refined and suppressed grandeur that greeted her.

Mr. Brotherton, in a three buttoned frock coat, a rich black ascot tie and suitable gray trousers, came forward to meet her.

"Ah, George," she exclaimed in her baby voice, "really what a lit-ry," that also was from her Chicago friend, "what a lit-ry atmosphere you have given us."

Mr. Brotherton's smile pleaded guilty for him. He waved her to a seat among the red cushions. "How elegant," she simpered, "I just think it's perfectly swell. Just like Marshall Field's. I must bring Mrs. Merrifield in when she comes down—Mrs. Merrifield of Chicago. You know, Mr. Brotherton," it was the wife of the Judge who spoke, "I think we should try to cultivate those whose wide advantages make our association with them a liberal education. What is it Emerson says about Friendship—in that wonderful essay—I'm sure you'll recall it."

And Mr. Brotherton was sure he would too, and indicated as much, for as he had often said to Mr. Fenn in their literary confidences, "Emerson is one of my best moving lines." And Mrs. Van Dorn continued confidentially: "Now there's a book, a German book—aren't those Germans candid—you know I'm of German extraction, and I tell the Judge that's where I get my candor. Well, there's a German book—I can't pronounce it, so I've written it out—there; will you kindly order it?" Mr. Brotherton took the slip and went to the back of the store to make a memorandum of the order. He left the book counter in charge of Miss Calvin—Miss Ave Calvin—yes, Miss Ave Maria Calvin, if you must know her full name, which she is properly ashamed of. But it pleased her mother twenty years before and as Mr. Calvin was glad to get into the house on any terms when the baby was named, it went Ave Maria Calvin, and Ave Maria Calvin stood behind the counter reading the Bookman and trying to remember the names of the six best sellers so that she could order them for stock.

Mrs. Van Dorn, who kept Mrs. Calvin's one card conspicuously displayed in her silver card case in the front hall, saw an opportunity to make a little social hay, so she addressed Miss Calvin graciously: "Good morning, Ave—how is your dear mother? What a charming effect Mr. Brotherton has produced!" Then Mrs. Van Dorn dropped the carefully modulated voice a trifle lower: "When the book comes that I just ordered, kindly slip it to one side; I wouldn't have Mr. Brotherton—he might misunderstand. But you can read it if you wish—take it home over night. It's very broadening."

When Mr. Brotherton returned the baby voice prattled at him. The voice was saying, "I was just telling Ave how dead swell it is here. I just can't get over it—in Harvey—dear old Harvey; do you remember when I was a little school teacher down in the Prospect schoolhouse and you used to order Chautauqua books—such an innocent little school girl—don't you remember? We wouldn't say how long ago that was, would we, Mr. Brotherton? Oh, dear, no. Isn't it nice to talk over old times? Did you know the Jared Thurstons have left Colorado and have moved to Iowa where Jared has started another paper? Lizzie and I used to be such chums—she and Violet and I—where is Violet now, Mr. Brotherton? Oh, yes, I remember Mrs. Herdicker said she lives next door to the kindergarten—down in South Harvey. Isn't it terrible the way Anne Sands did—just broke her father's heart. And Nate Perry quarrelling with ten million dollars. Isn't this a strange world, Mr. Brotherton?"

Mr. Brotherton confessed for the world and Mrs. Van Dorn shook her over-curled head sadly. She made some other talk with Mr. Brotherton which he paraphrased later for Henry Fenn and when Mrs. Van Dorn went out, Mr. Brotherton left the door open to rid the room of the scent of attar of roses and said to Miss Calvin:

"Well, s—," but checked himself and went on in his new character of custodian of "The Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper," but he added as a compromise:

"'And for bonnie Annie Laurie' I certainly would make a quick get-away!"

After which reflection, Mr. Brotherton walked down the long store room to his dark stained desk, turned on the electric under the square copper shade, and began to figure up his accounts. But a little social problem kept revolving in his head. It was suggested by Mrs. Van Dorn and by something she had said. Beside Mrs. Van Dorn in her tailored gown and seal-skin, with her spanking new midwinter hat to match her coat, dragging the useless dog after her, he saw the picture of another woman who had come in the day before—a woman no older than Margaret Van Dorn—yet a broken woman, with rounded shoulders who rarely smiled, wishing to hide her broken teeth, who wheeled one baby and led another, and shooed a third and slipped into the corner near the magazine counter and thumbed over the children's fashions in the Delineator eagerly and looked wistfully at the beautiful things in the store. Her red hands and brown skin showed that she had lived a rough, hard life, and that it had spent her and wasted her and taken everything she prized—and given her nothing—nothing but three overdressed children and a husband whose industrial status had put its heavy mark on her.

Mr. Brotherton's memory went back ten years, and recalled the two girls together—Violet and Margaret. Both were light-headed and vain; so far as their relations with Van Dorn were concerned, one was as blamable as the other. Yet one had prospered and the other had not—and the one who had apparently suffered most had upon the whole lived the cleaner, more normal life—and Mr. Brotherton drummed his penholder upon the black desk before him and questioned the justice of life.

But, indeed, if we must judge life's awards and benefits from the material side there is no justice in life. If there was any difference between the two women whom Tom Van Dorn had wronged—difference in rewards or punishments, it must have been in their hearts. It is possible that in her life of motherhood and wifehood, in the sacrifices that broke her body and scarred her face, Violet Mauling may have been compensated by the love she bore the children upon whom she lavished her life. For she had that love, and she did squander—in blind vain folly—the strength of her body, afterwards the price of her soul—upon her children. As for Margaret Van Dorn—Mr. Brotherton was no philosopher. He could not pity her. Yet she too had given all. She had given her mind—and it was gone. She had given her heart and it was gone also, and she had given that elusive blending of the heart and mind we call her soul—and that was gone, too. Mr. Brotherton could see that they were gone—all gone. But he could not see that her loss was greater than Violet's.

That night when Dennis Hogan came in for his weekly Fireside Companion as he said, "for the good woman," Mr. Brotherton, for old sake's sake, put in something in paper backs by Marie Corelli, and a novel by Ouida; and then, that he might give until it hurt, he tied up a brand new Ladies' Home Journal, and said, as he locked up the store and stepped into the chill night air with Mr. Hogan: "Dennis—tell Violet—I sent 'em in return for the good turns she used to do me when I was mayor and she was in Van Dorn's office and drew up the city ordinances—she'll remember."

"Indeed she will, George Brotherton—that she will. Many's the night she's talked me to sleep of them golden days of her splendor—indeed she will."

They walked on together and Hogan said: "Well—I turn at the next crossin'. I'm goin' home and I'm glad of it. Up in the mornin' at five; off on the six-ten train, climbin' the slag dump at seven, workin' till six, home on the six-fifteen train, into the house at seven; to bed at ten, up at five, eat and work and sleep—sleep and eat and work, fightin' the dump by day and fightin' the fumes in me chist by night—all for a dollar and sixty a day; and if we jine a union, we get canned, and if we would seek dissipation, we're invited to go down to the Company hall and listen to Tommy Van Dorn norate upon what he calls the 'de-hig-nity of luh-ay-bor.' Damn sight of dignity labor has, lopin' three laps ahead of the garnishee from one year's end to the other."

He laughed a good-natured, creaking laugh, and said as he waved his hand to part with Mr. Brotherton—"Well, annyhow, the good woman will thank you for the extra readin'; not that she has time to read it, God knows, but it gives the place a tone when Laura Nesbit drops in for a bit of a word of help about the makin' of the little white things she's doin' for the Polish family on 'D' Street these days." In another minute Brotherton heard the car moaning at the curve, and saw Hogan get in. It was nearly midnight when Hogan got to sleep; for the papers that Brotherton sent brought back "the grandeur that was Greece," and he had to hear how Mr. Van Dorn had made Mr. Brotherton mayor and how they had both made Dr. Nesbit Senator, and how ungrateful the Doctor was to turn against the hand that fed him, and many other incidents and tales that pointed to the renown of the unimpeachable Judge, who for seven years had reigned in the humble house of Hogan as a first-rate god.

That night Hogan tossed as the fumes in his lungs burned the tissues and at five he got up, made the fire, helped to dress the oldest child while his wife prepared the breakfast. He missed the six-ten car, and being late at work stopped in to take a drink at the Hot Dog, near the dump on the company ground, thinking it would put some ginger into him for the day's work. For two hours or so the whiskey livened him up, but as the forenoon grew old, he began to yawn and was tired.

"Hogan," called the dump-boss, "go down to the powder house and bring up a box of persuaders."

The slag was hard and needed blasting. Hogan looked up, said "What?" and before the dump boss could speak again Hogan had started down and around the dump to the powder house, near the saloon. He went into the powder house, and then came out, carrying a heavy box. At the sidewalk edge, Hogan, who was yawning, stumbled—they saw him stumble, two men standing in the door of the Hot Dog saloon a block away, and they told the people at the inquest that that was the last they saw. A great explosion followed. The men about the dump huddled for a long minute under freight cars, then crawled out, and the dump boss called the roll; Hogan was missing. In an hour they came and took Mrs. Hogan to the undertaker's room near the smelter—where so many women had stood beside death in its most awful forms. She had her baby in her arms, with another plucking at her skirts and she stood mutely beside the coffin that they would not open. For she knew what other women knew about the smelter, knew that when they will not open the coffin, it must not be opened. So the little procession rode to the Hogan home, where Laura Van Dorn was waiting. Perhaps it was because she could not see the face of the dead that it seemed unreal to the widow. But she did not moan nor cry—after the first scream that came when she knew the worst. Stolidly she went through her tasks until after the funeral.

Then she called Laura into the kitchen and said, as she pressed out her black satin and tried to hide the threadbare seams that had been showing for years: "Mrs. Van Dorn, I'm going to do something you won't like." To Laura's questioning eyes Violet answered: "I know your ma, or some one else has told you all about me—but," she shut her mouth tightly and said slowly:

"But no matter what they say—I'm going to the Judge; he's got to make the railroad company pay and pay well. It's all I've got on earth—for the children. We have three dollars in my pocketbook and will have to wait until the fifteenth before I get his last month's wages, and I know they'll dock him up to the very minute of the day—that day! I wouldn't do it for anything else on earth, Mrs. Van Dorn—wild horses couldn't drag me there—but I'm going to the Judge—for the children. He can help."

So, putting on her bedraggled black picture hat with the red ripped off, Violet Hogan mounted the courthouse steps and went to the office of the Judge. A sorry, broken, haggard figure she cut there in the Judge's office. She would have told him her story—but he interrupted: "Yes, Violet—I read it in the Times. But what can I do—you know I'm not allowed to take a case and, besides, he was working for the railroad, and you know, Violet, he assumed the risk. What do they offer you?"

"Judge—for God's sake don't talk that way to me. That's the way you used to talk to those miners' wives—ugh!" she cried. "I remember it all—that assumed risk. Only this—he was working ten hours a day on a job that wouldn't let him sleep, and he oughtn't to be working but eight hours, if they hadn't sneaked under the law. They've offered me five hundred, Judge—five hundred—for a man, five hundred for our three children—and me. You can make them do better—oh, I know you can. Oh, please for the sake—oh!"

She looked at him with her battered face, and as her mouth quivered, she tried to hide her broken teeth. He saw she was about to give way to tears. He dreaded a scene. He looked at her impatiently and finally gripping himself after a decision, he said:

"Now, Violet, take a brace. Five hundred is what they always give in these cases." He smiled suavely at her and she noticed for the first time that his lip was bare and started at the cruel mouth that leered at her.

"But," he added expansively, "for old sake's sake—I'm going to do something for you." He rose and stood over her. "Now, Violet," he said, strutting the diagonal of his room, and smiling blandly at her, "we both know why I shouldn't give you my personal check—nor why you shouldn't have any cash that you cannot account for. But the superintendent of the smelter, who is also the general manager of the railroad, is under some obligations to me, and I'll give you this note to him." He sat down and wrote:

"For good reasons I desire one hundred dollars added to your check to the widow of Dennis Hogan who presents this, and to have the same charged to my personal account on your books."

He signed his name with a flourish, and after reading the note handed it to the woman.

She looked at him and her mouth opened, showing her broken, ragged teeth. Then she rose.

"My God, Tom Van Dorn—haven't you any heart at all! Six hundred dollars with three little children—and my man butchered by a law you made—oh," she cried as she shook her head and stood dry-eyed and agonized before him—"I thought you were a man—that you were my friend way down deep in your heart—I thought you were a man."

She picked up the paper, and at the door turned and said: "And you could get me thousands from the company for my hundreds by the scratch of your pen—and I thought you were a man." She opened the door, looked at him beseechingly, and repeating her complaint, turned away and left him.

She heard the click of the door-latch behind her and she knew that the man behind the door in whom she had put her faith was laughing at her. Had she not seen him laugh a score of times in other years at the misery of other women? Had they not sat behind this door, he and she, and made sport of foolish women who came asking the disagreeable, which he ridiculed as the impossible? Had she not sat with him and laughed at his first wife, when she had gone away after some protest? The thought of his mocking face put hate into her heart and she went home hardened toward all the world. Laura Van Dorn was with the Hogan children, and when Violet entered the house, she gathered them to her heart with a mad passion and wept—a woman without hope—a woman spurned and mocked in the only holy place she had in her heart.

Laura saw the widowed mother hysterically fondling the children, madly caressing them, foolishly chattering over them, and when Violet made it clear that she wished to be alone, Laura left. But if she could have heard Violet babbling on during the evening, of the clothes she would buy for the youngsters, about the good times they would have with the money, about the ways they were going to spend the little fortune that was theirs, Laura Van Dorn—thrifty, frugal, shrewd Laura, might have helped the thoughtless woman before it was too late. But even if Laura had interfered, it would have been but for a few months or a few years at most.

The end was inevitable—whether it had been five hundred or six hundred or five thousand or six thousand. For Violet was a prodigal bred and born. At first she tried to get some work. But when she found she had to leave the children alone in the house or in care of a neighbor or on the streets, she gave up her job. For when she came home, she found the foolish frills and starched tucks in which she kept them, dirty and torn, and some way she felt that they were losing social caste by the low estate of their clothes, so she bought them silks and fine linens while her money lasted, and when it was gone in the spring—then they were hungry, and needy; and she could not leave them by day.

If the poor were always wise, and the rich were always foolish, if hardship taught us sense, and indulgence made us giddy, what a fine world it would be. How virtue would be rewarded. How vice would be rebuked. But wisdom does not run with social rank, nor with commercial rating. Some of us who are poor are exceedingly foolish, and some of those who are rich have a world of judgment. And Violet Hogan,—poor and mad with a mother love that was as insane as an animal's when she saw her children hungry and needy, knew before she knew anything else that she must live with them by day. So she went out at night—went out into the streets—not of South Harvey—but over into the streets of Foley, down to Magnus and Plain Valley—out into the dark places. There Violet by night took up the oldest trade in the world, and came home by day a mad, half crazed mothering animal who covers her young in dread and fear.

When Laura knew the truth—knew it surely in spite of Violet's studied deceptions, and her outright falsehoods, the silver in the woman's laugh was muffled for a long time. She tried to help the mad mother; but the mother would not admit the truth, would not confess that she needed help. Violet maintained the fiction that she was working in the night shift at the glass factory in Magnus, and by day she starched and ironed and pressed and washed for the overdressed children and as she said, "tried to keep them somebody." Moreover, she would not let them play with the dirty children of the neighborhood, but such is the fear of social taint among women, that soon the other mothers called their children home when the Hogan children appeared.

When Violet discovered that her trade was branding her children—she moved to Magnus and became part of the drab tide of life that flows by us daily with its heartbreak unheeded, its sorrows unknown, its anguish pent up and uncomforted.

Now much meditation on the fate of Violet Hogan and upon the luck of Margaret Van Dorn had made George Brotherton question the moral government of the universe and, being disturbed in his mind, he naturally was moved to language. So one raw spring day when no one was in the Amen Corner but Mr. Fenn, in a moment of inadvertent sobriety, Mr. Brotherton opened up his heart and spoke thus:

"Say, Henry—what's a yogi?" Mr. Fenn refused to commit himself. Mr. Brotherton continued: "The Ex was in here the other day and she says that she thinks she's going to become a yogi. I asked her to spell it, and I told her I'd be for her against all comers. Then she explained that a yogi was some kind of an adept who could transcend space and time, and—well say, I said 'sure,' and she went on to ask me if I was certain we were not thinking matter instead of realizing it, and I says:

"'I bite; what's the sell?'

"And the Ex says—'Now, seriously, Mr. Brotherton, something tells me that you have in your mind, if you would only search it out, vague intimations, left-over impressions of the day you were an ox afield.'

"And, well say, Henry, I says, 'No, madam, it is an ass that rises in me betimes.'

"And the Ex says, 'George Brotherton, you just never can talk sense.'

"So while I was wrapping up 'Sappho' and ordering her a book with a title that sounded like a college yell, she told me she was getting on a higher plane, and I bowed her out. Say, Hen—now wouldn't that jar you?—the Ex getting on a higher plane."

Mr. Fenn grinned—a sodden grin with a four days' beard on it, and dirty teeth, and heavy eyes, then looked stupidly at the floor and sighed and said,

"George, did you know I've quit?" To Mr. Brotherton's kindly smile the other man replied:

"Yes, sir, sawed 'er right off short—St. Patrick's Day. I thought I'd ought to quit last Fourth of July—when I tried to eat a live pinwheel. I thought I had gone far enough." He lifted up his burned-out eyes in the faded smile that once shone like an arc light, and said:

"Man's a fool to get tangled up with liquor. George, when I get my board bill paid—I'm going to quit the auctioning line, and go back to law. But my landlady's needing that money, and I'm a little behind—"

Mr. Brotherton made a motion for his pocket. "No, I don't want a cent of your money, George," Fenn expostulated. "I was just telling you how things are. I knew you'd like to know."