Harvey drifted back into the shadows of the jail, powerless to help her, and saw her driven away with the man who had ruined her earthly life.

Fighting his grief and despair, he went to the nearest drug-store and telephoned Miss Randall of what he had seen.

"Druce out on bail! A murderer out on bail in Chicago!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Harvey, if only you had thought to jump into a taxicab and follow them to see where they have been taken."

"I'm no detective. I am going back to Millville. Perhaps I can get back my old job in the grocery store," he answered grimly.

"Hello! Miss Randall! Hello! I remember the number of the machine." He gave it.

"Good! Wait a minute till I see whose that is. Hold the wire." She consulted her list of the automobile numbers entered in Illinois and found that this one belonged to a professional bondsman named Comstock.

She gave Harvey the man's residence number.

"Go out there first thing in the morning and see if you can find out from the chauffeur where the machine went tonight. Keep a stiff upper lip, Mr. Spencer, you have really done splendidly."

Harvey went early next day to the address given him, a residence of the type called stone-fronted, in a district no longer fashionable. There was a garage, but no automobile. Harvey made a careful survey of the premises without gaining ground. He saw another of Mary Randall's aids come, linger about and go away; but remembering her advice about keeping a stiff upper lip, he stayed on. He was to be rewarded late in the afternoon.

A car rumbled into the garage. Its colored driver immediately began washing it and Harvey sauntered back into the yard. The number on it was the one printed on his memory.

From somewhere back in his tired brain came the impulse to say,

"I'm a repair man from Gavin's garage. Mr. Comstock told me to come over and take a look at his car. Said he had it out in the rain last night and it wasn't working right."

"Yes, sah; that car certainly has been drove last night. Some of the battery connections got wet." The chauffeur was glib enough.

"Lights and ignition out of order?" Harvey pretended to examine the car, asking seemingly careless questions and gaining from the negro the information that the car had gone from the jail with Druce to an obscure street far out on the northwest side. The man could not give the number of the house, but said it was one of three in the middle of "a short little street."

Harvey made the excuse that he must go back to the garage where he was employed to get his tools, and hurried away.

It was growing dark and a wild, stormy rain-wind was blowing when he reached the remote neighborhood described for him by the bondsman's talkative servant. He was gazing at the three forbidding dwellings standing near the center of the block, trying to make up his mind which to approach first, when he saw Elsie in her long rain-coat come out of the middle house, hesitate a moment, then hurry down the steps into the street.

He slipped into the shadow of a house, his heart thumping.

"Elsie!" he called softly in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

She stopped, startled.

"Is it Harvey?" Elsie peered doubtingly into the darkness, then stepped trustingly towards him as he replied,

"Yes, it's sure Harvey." He caught the sadness in her words and his voice shook. "Won't you come away with me now? Your mother wants you!"

"Your life is in danger with him. Why don't you leave him?" he added earnestly.

"Leave him," she repeated. "Oh, if I only could! My mother and Patience—how are they?"

"They are well and safe, only they want you. They're going back to Millville, to the same cottage. It's going to be all fixed over. Patience is going to be married—Mr. Harry Boland."

Tears streamed from Elsie's eyes. She leaned against the iron fence that skirted the sidewalk.

"Don't you see, Harvey, I just couldn't go home? I couldn't bear to make Patience—ashamed of me. Don't tell her that, though, will you? Tell them that I have to stay with my—my—oh, don't let mother know you saw me. Don't let her know any different."

"You poor little thing—"

She looked about her in alarm. "I mustn't stay here. You mustn't, either. It's no use, Harvey. The life's got me—I can't turn back."

The next moment she was running down the street as if hurrying from a pursuer.

Harvey saw her enter the corner drug-store, waited a little while, then decided he too had business in the drug-store. He would telephone Miss Randall—but he must be careful. Elsie was receiving a package from the drug clerk, as he entered the 'phone booth—and left while he was talking. Harvey was standing with his face to the wall, speaking in a whisper, lest his message would be overheard. He did not see Elsie depart.

He got the reformer herself on the telephone.

"I have found them," he said.

"Good!" Joy and relief were in her tones. "Watch them carefully, won't you? We'll have detectives there in a jiffy with a new warrant for Druce. This time for white slavery. He will not escape us again."

Harvey gave the number of the house where Druce and Elsie had been hidden, appointed a rendezvous with the detective and returned at once to watch the house. He decided that Elsie had hurried back while he was at the telephone.

In less than an hour an automobile rushed up to the house. Two men got out and hurried into the place. One of them he recognized as the lawyer he had seen at the entrance of the jail. There were not his detectives.

The storm had increased and the rain was driving in blinding torrents across the street.

Harvey saw a group of people suddenly emerge from the house. The chauffeur jumped down and took part with the struggling little crowd. He could hear Druce swearing loudly, calling out Elsie's name with words of abuse. The men pushed the drunken man into the car, and got in after him.

Harvey looked about for some sort of a vehicle, but none was in sight and the auto was actually starting. He sprang on the rear, spring and, crouching, hung on desperately. They drove for a long time; to him it seemed hours as his hands grew numb and his muscles ached from clinging to his precarious hold. Fortunately the storm had subsided.

The driver turned into a dark, cobble paved street. The auto swayed and jolted like a ship on the rocks. The road was full of pitch-holes and as the wheels slipped into them a blinding spray of muddy water was flung into Harvey's face. The machine put on more speed and swung around a corner. Another hole! The car careened, almost turned over, and Harvey was thrown into the street.

As he struggled to his feet the red rear light of the automobile was two blocks away. But he went on, gasping for breath, stumbling. Presently he found himself in the district near the river, close to the north side water front, which is deserted after night-fall.

He had hurried on like a man in a dream. Now he came to the edge of the river and stood staring down into the water.

Out in the stream he could see the shadowy outline of a boat. Looking more closely, he saw that he was scarcely two hundred feet from the craft. The darkness had multiplied the distance; it was now penetrated by a lantern light moving on the deck, evidently in the hand of someone who was standing aft on the boat.

There was distinct, loud talking and swearing between men.

Harvey thought that it was a fishing smack. Its demonstrative passengers were bent upon waking up the night and almost woke him up to the purpose of his night's errand when he heard a loud voice say:

"Cut that out, Druce. No more boozing, d'you hear?"

"D-r-u-c-e."

Harvey was as near fainting as a healthy young man might be with the shock of this surprise after his tremendous exertions and his fall. He stood as if petrified.

But his ears still caught the sound of swearing and he saw men moving quickly about on the deck, then the gray white of sails spreading like gaunt ghosts. The swish of water told him that the boat was moving, that his quarry was slipping into pitch-blackness ahead.

That was the finish of his courage.

Harvey felt his limbs trembling, felt something trickle down his face. He was beaten.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FORCES THAT CONQUER

When the tenderloin learned that Martin Druce had been released on a bond for thirty thousand dollars, the tenderloin laughed.

The laugh was low and cunning and there was more than the suggestion of a sneer in it. It rang from one end of the district to the other, convulsing dive-keepers who for days had been as funereal as undertakers. It sounded in dance halls and bagnios, in barrooms and gambling dens.

It eddied up into Chicago's higher air and found an echo in clubs frequented by distinguished financier-politicians.

John Boland had won! The brain that had never failed had proved its resourcefulness once again in this hour of dire trouble. Druce was gone. He would never be heard of in Chicago again. It had cost thirty thousand dollars, but what was thirty thousand dollars? Mary Randall and her crusaders were crushed. Anson was dead. Druce was gone.

What mattered it now how much evidence Mary Randall had gathered in against the Cafe Sinister! There would be a period of quiet. The tenderloin would carefully observe all the proprieties. Then the case of the State against Martin Druce would be called and Druce would not respond to that summons. And so Mary Randall's sensation would die an unnatural death—death from smothering, death from lack of expression. Afterward the tenderloin would resume its old operations. No wonder the tenderloin laughed!

John Boland felt none of this exultation when he returned to his office on the morning following Druce's release. An indefinable oppression weighed him down. He had won, he knew—and yet the air about him seemed charged with prescience of evil. He tried to shake it off and could not. He was anxious, too, about Harry. Why, he asked himself, should he worry about an ungrateful son. John Boland did not know the answer, yet the answer was very plain. His son Harry was his own flesh and blood and no man can cut himself off from his own flesh and blood without feeling some sort of reaction.

John Boland, the man of brain and iron was only human after all. He loved his son.

He was in a state of gloomy meditation when he opened his desk and resumed his day's work. The telephone bell jangled constantly. The councillors who had participated in the conference over Druce's case which had resulted so happily were calling up to congratulate Boland on the success of his maneuver. Somehow these felicitations did not please him as his fellow advisers had expected.

His mood was gloomy. He could not shake it off. Constantly the same question returned to his mind he had won, yes, but what difference did it make? Was he any happier? Was the world any better? Boland had never been worried by questions of this sort before. He could not answer them.

He was still in this gray mood when the guardian of his door announced the arrival of Grogan. Michael Grogan was, perhaps, Boland's most intimate friend. He had not taken Grogan into his confidence when he planned his coup to release Druce. He felt that Grogan would not be in sympathy with his campaign for destroying the work of the reformers. Still he was glad to see Grogan. After all he was a friend. And this morning John Boland, for the first time, perhaps, in his life, felt the need of a friend.

"John," said Grogan taking a seat, "I see you've 'sprung' Druce?"

"Yes? Mike you're an inveterate reader of the newspapers."

"They're yelling about it this morning."

"Let them yell."

"You did it?"

"Well Mike, I'm a modest man. I had something to do with it."

"It's a rotten business!"

"What!"

"I said it was a rotten business."

"The commercial interests of the city demanded it. Do you think I will stand idly by and see a bunch of half-baked reformers shake down the business institutions of Chicago?"

"John, they are right."

"O yes, I suppose if you take the mamby-pamby, hysterical, sentimental end of it, any campaign that hits at vice is right."

"It was a great movement. Mary Randall is a fine girl. You'll live to regret that you helped to thwart her."

"Pshaw, what's the matter with you, man? You're blood seems to be turning to milk. The papers will howl for a few days and then they'll forget it. We'll invite them to. We'll suggest that if they don't forget it the interests we represent may feel called upon to cut down their advertising. They'll forget it all right."

"No, John," Grogan spoke deliberately. "You can't kill off a great and righteous movement by choking a few newspapers. The newspapers are powerful but their power has its limits. That girl has built a fire under this town that will rage in spite of you or me, or any one else. We can't stop it." Grogan rose. "That's all," he said, "I just dropped in to let you know how I feel about it. I thought I might be able to persuade you to get out of this fight. I guess, John, you're incorrigible. Well, no hard feelings."

Boland laughed. "Have a drink as you go out. You need something to cheer you up."

Grogan stopped. "Where's Harry?" he asked suddenly.

Boland flushed and his brow darkened.

"I don't know," he answered. "He and I have had a misunderstanding. He insists on marrying this Welcome girl. I don't know where he is and I don't care."

Grogan looked surprised. "John," he said, "I'd feel sorry for you if I didn't know you are lying. You do care. You can't conceal it. You care now, and worse you'll be caring more and more as time goes on. John, there are some things even you can't do."

"Well, Mike, what are they?"

"You can't beat Nature and you can't beat God. Good day."

In vain Boland scoffed at Grogan's sentimentalism. Again and again the words rose in his mind:

You can't beat Nature and you can't beat God.

The telephone rang. At the other end of the wire was that senator who had been at his conference. He asked Boland in a frightened voice if he had seen the papers, and then rang off.

Boland, alarmed, sent a boy in haste for the latest editions. The boy returned and spread them out on the desk before him.

Again the telephone rang. This time it was the clergyman who had participated in the conference.

"Do you know that Mary Randall is out in a statement that she knows full details of what she calls the plot that resulted in the liberation of Martin Druce?" he demanded. "She says she will give the whole thing to the newspapers later. They are calling it in the streets below my study window now. Can't something be done to head off that statement?"

"What would you suggest? Why don't you see some of the editors?" Boland returned.

"Oh, that's impossible. My dear Boland, think of me. If my name should be published in this connection my reputation would be ruined."

Boland laughed savagely into the telephone and hung up the receiver, only to lift it again and hear another appeal for help, this from the publisher. He also feared ruin.

Another call. The politician whose power in a great political party was a by-word was barking at the other end of the wire. He accused Boland of destroying him.

"You've destroyed us," he yelped. "We're ruined. You've blundered."

Boland was beyond speech by this time. He seized his hat and rushed out into the street. Everywhere boys were shouting the extras. Several people who recognized him as he passed paused to look after him curiously. He walked directly to his club.

A few men gathered there reading newspapers paused to look after him curiously, bowed coldly and at once resumed reading. Others seemed to avoid him. Boland felt that the newspapers' conspicuous comment on a certain financial magnate prominent in the electrical world in connection with the vice-scandal pointed at him too plainly for any one in Chicago to misunderstand.

He called his car and drove to his lonely home.

That night John Boland had a strange vision. He saw an eternity of pain and everlasting darkness. Through it the nightmare of his past life in strangely terrifying pictures passed before his mind.

Scenes of his boyhood, the panorama of his young manhood, pictures of his battle for success against overwhelming forces in the great city. These pictures returned again and again, vivid in their relief. He saw again the death of his wife and the spirit of darkness that had then come to walk beside him, taunting him that now he was of necessity a cold, calculating, lonely, indomitable man, not knowing how to give to his only son fatherly tenderness.

This phase passed. He seemed to enter into a larger world full of terrifying monsters, all of human form. One he recognized as Druce, another as Anson, a third as the senator whose seat he had helped to get. And with them came a host of smaller figures, some struggling for life, and being crushed down into oblivion under his inexorable progress, some fighting with one another lest they too be torn down and crushed before him.

There were piteous girl faces and worn kindly faces of women and men and these had gone down before the others because they had not the power of resistance needed in this battle. It was a great whirling nightmare of continuous struggle.

And always walking by his side and seeming to grow stronger and more terrible as he tore his path through every obstacle strode his guide, the spirit of darkness.

At last they were alone, he and the spirit. And the spirit turned upon him and clutched him by the throat. He struggled in that grasp just as others had struggled in his own grasp, tortured and futile. And again those words from Grogan:

"You can't beat Nature and you can't beat God!"

Sweat stood out on John Boland's forehead.

He awoke with a mighty effort and sat upright. Around him was the emptiness and loneliness of the great bed-chamber. He saw with eyes wide open and brain alert a picture that looked like a reality and not a vision.

It was of a trembling man bent with age and loneliness.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE CALL OF ETERNITY

Elsie walked on and on eastward towards the lake. For a week she had been living alone in a room she had found near the park on the night that she left Harvey Spencer, telephoning in the drug-store. She had resolved that instant to go. It was to be "Now or never"—and she hurried away in an opposite direction from the hiding place—and from Druce.

The little money that he had put in her hands for drugs had somehow lasted her until now. She had been too ill to go out, her body racked with fever.

She was conscious that she must tomorrow find some work to do, for the landlady had twice asked her for the next week's rent. She looked in at the door of a laundry where a German woman was singing as she ironed children's dresses by the light of a flaring gas jet. It looked pleasant and peaceful in there. Perhaps that motherly woman would let her work with her. She would see tomorrow.

Elsie walked on towards the lake. She wanted to look at the water. She wanted to breathe the cool breath of great winds coming over the water to cool this fierce fire of shame and horror fevering her soul, flaming in her delicate cheeks.

Elsie came to the lake front at a wide high lot between two comfortable mansions on Sheridan Road.

Lights of homes shone through the night's darkness. Beams as of sunshine danced across the water.

A light from an upper chamber in the nearest home shone across her and streamed onward to the sands.

Elsie stood clasping and unclasping her little slender hands. The waters,—they could wash away that blow, the marks of that blow, wash away those words threatening death from one who had killed something in her heart. She realized that she was not afraid, facing the life to come.

She was afraid only to go on living in the same world with one who had taken her girlhood and her womanhood, afraid only of this frightful fever in her veins, of this poison that was consuming her.

Out yonder were the cool deeps of death—of death? What then? Far across the waves she saw a light.

It was as if her spirit went to meet the light, went in quest of the meaning of such a beacon light across black waters.

The light seemed to grow bigger and bigger as she gazed. By flinging her frail body into the dreadful surges could one reach peace and safety?

Faintly her spirit heard the answer of the pursuing hound of heaven, faintly she heard the call of eternity and of the Eternal Love.

The great black billows called to her. Elsie wondered what all the poor girls the waves toss up along the shores say to their Maker. She seemed to feel with them as she stood there, how the waves seize the bodies of the lost,—how the undertow takes them. Elsie put her hands to her face.

"Why am I here alone in the night?" she heard herself asking. Her voice sounded strangely familiar, yet unfamiliar as if some one were speaking to her. Then she knew that the voice was her own soul in the silence.

"Mother will forgive me, mother wants me back, mother will help me get well—if there is any health in me. Mother knows that it wasn't all my fault—" her thought defended her against that voice.

"Why am I here alone in the night?" the question was repeated.

"I will go home. I will begin again. Men begin again. Oh!..." A sob came from her lips.... "No, no, no!"

She felt with every nerve of her quivering being that in the slow upward climb of sex towards true love and true parenthood woman's battle is man's,—felt that God and Nature are now demanding not less of men.

The suffering girl could not put her certainty into words, but in her body and in her soul she knew—she knew.

Suddenly from the opened window of the nearest home she heard above the wind the cry of a baby, the loud, sweet, prolonged, fiercely-demanding cry of a hungry little baby.

A wistful smile twisted her lips as she listened.

Suddenly as the baby's cry was stopped she put her hands to her bosom and a strange lovely light shone on her face.



CHAPTER XXX

AT THE WEDDING FEAST

Brightly shone the sunshine on the fields and woods surrounding Millville and on the little house where Mrs. Welcome was busy putting the last touches to the order and sweetness of home.

Patience and her husband were coming on the noon train.

Later in the day a few of their friends had promised to come to the supper for which her mother had been making loaves of delicious cake.

"It is strange, strange that my child should be the wife of John Boland's son," she mused. "I wonder what my poor man would say. Would he feel less bitter if he could know that Boland sent me all that money, with that letter 'as justice to Tom Welcome's widow?' Patience and Harry are so happy now it makes me feel like wanting to forget the past. If only I could know where my baby girl is. But I just must go on trusting. Somehow I feel hopeful. Patience and Harry want me to be brave. Harry's father—he must find it hard to be brave too. He must be lonesome, estranged from his son, no one to comfort him. Perhaps he sent me that money really as a sign to Harry that he wants to be friends again. I won't say anything to Harry about it just yet, but maybe some of these days...." The direct train of her thought was interrupted by the sound of a bird singing on the bough of a tree close by the opened window.

She stepped out into the side porch and looked about her with a glance of pleasure in the neatness and charm of the little place. House and fence had been painted and mended, put in tidy order. A new gate and a cement sidewalk in front running down to the corner of the street spoke for the industry of Harvey Spencer who had worked like a son for her in his spare hours.

The song of the bird in the elm bough had dropped to a happy twittering. The fragrance of late garden blossoms filled the air. At the end of the deep yard, beyond the vegetable garden and close to the back gate Harvey had built a pretty summer house and over it a madeira vine hung its abundant quick growing wreaths of green.

Mrs. Welcome in her light summer dress, her gray hair moved a trifle by the soft warm breeze, walked slowly down the garden path and sat down for a few moments of rest in this quiet spot. A sudden sadness came upon her face as almost always these months since her home coming when she rested from her working.

But she rose resolutely and banished the thought.

"Today is my oldest daughter's day. I must think of nobody but Patience and make her coming home with her husband as glad as can be."

She spoke aloud, to make her resolution stronger and walked back towards the house, gathering nasturtiums and asparagus as she went, to decorate the fresh and pretty parlor, with its new white muslin curtains and wall paper and the piano which Harry Boland had sent.

"It's perfectly lovely, mother," Patience was saying to her in this room within the hour, Patience whom everybody in Millville loved, standing radiant and happy beside her equally radiant bridegroom. "How did you ever get those flowers to trail over that picture as if they just grew there?"

"You're a great success as a decorator, and we can't begin to thank you enough," said Harry Boland. "I think Patience and I are in great luck that we can make our home with you. It's all settled that I'm to have that office opposite the court-house, going to buy and sell real estate and work up a regular business."

"Yes, and mother, Harry finds that a whole lot of these cottages the mill people live in are really his own, from his mother's estate directly to him. He's going to put them all in decent order."

"Do you remember Michael Grogan? He is going to help us do things in Millville. He has promised to build us a club house and dance hall, a social center for the mill young people if you and Patience will help run it."

"That's fine. Young folks need their fun," responded Mrs. Welcome heartily. "Come along, Patey dear, and see the cakes mother has been baking for you and Harry."

Mary Randall and Michael Grogan, Harvey Spencer and his sister and brother-in-law were the five guests who assembled in the late afternoon to honor the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Boland.

Michael Grogan came first, arriving in a carriage of the hack type from the station. He brought a huge bouquet of roses for the bride and a case of grape-juice for the cheer of the festivity.

At supper he proposed the health of the young pair.

"May they always live happy ever after," said Grogan, standing up, glass in hand. "May they never have any troubles that they can't nip in the bud. As their principles demand of 'em to drink this stuff as the pure juice of the grape, may it be blessed to 'em forever and to their descendants."

Every body laughed and drank. Harry Boland toasted him in return:

"Here's the health of our very good friend, Mr. Michael Grogan. May all his mornings be golden and all his sunsets clear."

"Thanks for the sunrises in particular," said Grogan. "Now ladies and gentlemen I wish to toast the good health of another young lady who is with us today, one who has made me a great deal of trouble and scared me blue with blue envelopes. May she soon find a bridegroom for herself, one of them brave lads who can talk right back to her as I never could when she tackled this old man!" He lifted his grape-juice with a great flourish. "Here's to herself, Miss Mary Randall!"

Miss Randall blushed and nodded her thanks.

"Speech, speech," demanded Grogan.

"Thank you, thank you but I just can't, not here, not now," she said and quiet fell upon them.

The thoughts of all were with the young girl who had disappeared, for whom all had worked, suffered, prayed.

"I do want to say," Miss Randall, broke the silence, "that you all must know how glad I am that Mr. and Mrs. Harry Boland are to have a useful and happy life together and that I...." She stopped suddenly, looking out the opened door that led towards the garden, her whole expression changing, her lips parting, her breath coming quickly.

"What did you see out there?" asked Harvey Spencer, with the sharp intentness which he had learned from his maturing city experience.

"Now constable, don't get excited," chaffed Grogan, to whose aid Harvey's quick rise to prominence and office was in part due. "We don't want to be catching any burglars this happy day."

"What is it?" asked Patience Boland, rising.

"I—I don't know, to be really certain." Mary looked at Mrs. Welcome. "Somebody came in at the back gate and went into the summer-house."

Mrs. Welcome leaned heavily on the table.

Harvey ran to the window. Grogan looked over his shoulder.

"Oh, Miss Randall, please go out and see." Patience's arms were already about her mother. "Mumsey, mumsey, can it be?"

Mary went out into the porch and down the garden path.

It was Elsie Welcome who came out of the summer-house and slowly along between the flower borders. She was shockingly emaciated. She stopped and put her suit case down on the ground; its weight seemed too great for her spent strength.

Mary ran to her.

Elsie looked at her with sorrowful dark eyes.

"I am afraid to go in," she said.

"I hear people in there talking and laughing."

"They are all friends of yours."

"Is my mother—will my mother...?"

"Child, your mother's heart is breaking for the sight of you."

Elsie ran forward to the doorway of the familiar room. A step forward. Mother and daughter stood in a tender embrace.

The mother's face was radiant with great warmth of love. Patience rushed to her sister and clasped her close.

Michael Grogan had led a tiptoe retreat of the visitors leaving mother and daughters alone, but Patience called them back.

Elsie, smiling wanly, slipped like a little wraith across and into a chair beside her mother, and felt that dear hand clasping hers.

"It's so good to be here with you," she whispered, looking vaguely about at the others, then a dreadful fit of coughing seized her and she sank exhausted in her mother's arms.

Harvey helped carry her into the little room off the parlor.

"You dear little thing, all you need is lots of fresh eggs and your ma's nursing to set you up again," he said to her.

"Yes, Harvey, she is feeling very ill now, but we will all help her get well," said Patience, as they went out of the room together, leaving Elsie to rest in her mother's care.



CHAPTER XXXI

WITH THE ROSES OF LOVE

Mrs. Welcome came into the little bedroom very quietly one afternoon about a week later, in her hands a large glass bowl overflowing with roses.

She put it down on the table beside the bed and stood looking wistfully at the small dark head on the pillow.

Elsie felt her there, opened her eyes and smiled as she saw the flowers. A deeper color burned for a moment in her cheeks.

"Poor Harvey," she said. "Isn't he a dear, mamma?"

"He always thought the world and all of you," Mrs. Welcome sighed.

"I always liked him, but I never did love him, you know. I just let him come to see me because he wanted to, and all the girls had company."

"You might have loved him dearie if—if—"

"If I hadn't gone away, you mean, but I did go away." Elsie coughed violently.

"There, there, sweet, don't." Her mother helped her to sit up and held her in her arms.

"Harvey comes every day to ask how you are," said Mrs. Welcome when she was better. "He wants to see you when you feel able."

Elsie remained silent.

Out in the parlor they could hear Patience moving about, putting things in order, singing as she worked one of the songs she and Elsie used to sing when they were little girls.

"Young Mrs. Boland is some singer," said Elsie with a flash of her old fun. "Isn't it nice for our Patey to be so happy?"

"She and I want you to be happy too, and you will when you get well, my precious. You will laugh and sing as you used to."

"Mamma, I see through you," said Elsie. "I bet Harvey is here now. He brought these roses himself. He coaxed you to coax me to see him. All right. Shake up my pillows. Get Patey's pink boudoir cap and put your pink shawl around me and bring him in."

Her pallor was more marked by the bright cap and shawl and the flame in her cheeks seemed scarlet.

"Hello, Harvey," she greeted him almost in her old bright voice. "Thank you for the roses. They're—"

A violent coughing made it impossible for Elsie to finish speaking.

He came and stood beside her and took her hot little outstretched hand.

"You're so pretty and I'm so glad you let me come in," he said gently.

"Oh, Harvey, I'm the one that's glad," said Elsie, trying to speak brightly. She laid back on the pillow. The effort to talk exhausted her.

Harvey knelt down beside the bed so that his face was almost on a level with hers.

"I don't want you to get tired, dear," he said. "I just want you to rest and get well. Rest now!" He put his hand tenderly on her hot forehead.

"How cool your hand feels," she murmured. "Put it over my eyes. They burn so."

He obeyed her and they remained quiet for many minutes; through their hearts went many thoughts.

She moved slightly. He understood, removed his hand and waited.

When Elsie opened her eyes she looked directly into his kind eyes filled with grief and love.

"You mustn't be so sorry for me, Harvey," she whispered.

"You will be better soon, and then—remember, little dear, I still have the wedding ring."

Elsie sighed. "Poor old Harvey! There never was anybody so good as you are to me."

"I love you."

She patted his cheek. "It's so good of you to go on caring about me."

"I couldn't stop if I wanted to,—and I don't want to."

She put her thin arm about his neck. "Will you do something for me?"

"Anything on earth!"

A wan little funny gleam lighted her pretty dark eyes.

"This is on earth, all right. I'll tell you about it next time you come...." Suddenly Elsie sat up and grasped him. "There will be a next time, won't there, Harvey?" she asked him in a wild tone, a wave of terror seeming to go over her.

He held her gently.

"Don't be frightened, dear. Of course there is going to be a next time ... all the rest of our lives. You didn't think even for a minute that I would go back on you, did you, Elsie?"

She smiled and released herself, then smiled again. "No, no, I didn't mean that. Take a chair, Harvey, and tell me about the weather."

Harvey took the chair and once more possessed himself of her hand.

She smiled sweetly.

"Now let me ask you a favor. Let's name the day, Elsie," he said. "Promise to marry me,—as soon as you get well."

"When—I—get—well," Elsie looked wonderingly at him. She saw his passionate earnestness, his need of hope. Hope! It was fast fainting in her heart. "Yes, Harvey,—when I get well."

He bent over her and with deep tenderness kissed her.

Violent coughing seized her. It was the worst, the most prolonged Elsie had yet had. One spasm followed another, bringing her mother with remedies.

Harvey moved frantically about; he was the first to suggest the doctor and ran out to bring one. He did not realize, he could not know what had really happened.

When he returned Elsie had fallen asleep and the physician advised them not to waken her, promising to call early in the morning. The faithful Harvey went with him. He had her answer, "when I get well," she said.

Elsie remained until nearly day-break in a very deep sleep. The fever left her during this long repose. Her sister, who was watching beside her, thought she was better because her forehead grew damp and cool.

With the first early light of morning Elsie opened her eyes.

Patience pushed back the pretty tendrils of her dark hair. "It's sister watching with you, dear," she said.

"Where's mother?" murmured Elsie in a voice so weak that it frightened Patience.

"Mother! mother! Please come!" she called.

"She's coming," answered Patience as Mrs. Welcome came hurrying to the bedside.

She understood without a word, lifting Elsie in her arms, the frail little worn body against her heart. Tears streamed down her face; sobs shook her body.

Patience hurried weeping to summon Harry.

"Don't cry, Mother," moaned Elsie. "I am so glad I am home with you."

"Yes, Elsie, yes."

"I would have come long ago, but I didn't dare—so many girls never dare go home. Some of their mothers don't want them, but you—. Mother—"

"Yes my darling, yes!"

"I was afraid, so afraid. I went—and—looked—at the—lake." She seemed to her mother to wander a bit.

Her breathing became difficult. No more words came. A few quick fluttering breaths—Elsie was gone.



CHAPTER XXXII

AT MARY RANDALL'S SUMMER HOME

Lake Geneva season was at its close. Most of the lake dwellers had closed their houses and returned to town. For those who remained late autumn had her glories. Woods and groves were gay in foliage. Orchards bowed their heads beneath their loads of ripened fruit. In shorn fields the birds, preparing for southern migration, sang of a year crowned with plenty.

Vines hung deep about the broad veranda of the villa where Mary Randall was resting from her labors in the company of her uncle and aunt. She sat alone in a corner of the veranda one sunny day, waiting for the arrival of the journalist Ambrose, one of her most efficient aids.

Anna, her faithful maid came with an armful of flowers and began arranging them on the table.

"You love those old-fashioned flowers even more than I do, I believe, Anna," said Miss Randall.

"I do love them. They seem like the blossom of my vacation," said Anna.

"That's a pretty way to put it. Your vacation is to be a good long one. You have certainly earned it. You're as worn as I am, after our battle. I never should have got through it without you."

"Thank you, Miss Mary. Here comes the flower of all your workers,—Mr. Ambrose," said the girl, and withdrew.

"Good news," said the journalist cheerfully, coming to greet his friend, and noting with a sudden swift pleasure that a faint blush came to her cheeks and a new light to her eyes as she welcomed him. "Good news! As I was coming away the newspapers were out with the extra. The city council held a special meeting during the afternoon. They have abolished the segregated district. The city has formally adopted the policy of suppressing instead of circumscribing vice."

"That is the beginning of the end," said Miss Randall. "If our campaign has won that we have won all I hoped for."

"Yet many people believe that we failed."

"Even if we had failed we should have made progress. Every movement of this kind leaves its mark on the public conscience. It makes work easier for other crusaders."

"Yes," responded Ambrose, "because it brings out the facts. Facts are lasting. They cannot die."

"Progress comes through inculcation of these facts, by means of education. Schools and churches—and parents—must concentrate on the moral improvement of the rising generation, or we wrestle ineffectively."

"The kind of vice you have been specially fighting will be extinct within the next ten years," said Ambrose. "I don't mean that we shall have suppressed vice. That is a task for centuries. But our people in the United States will not stand for this trade in girls."

"I'd like to preach to men who have daughters to protect to take their wives and go out and see some of the shady places of the city for themselves. It would make any mother far more careful in future about the companions of their daughters."

"Yes, to whisper about 'wild oats' and to see a young man who wants to marry one's daughter in a dive are two very different things."

"We are going to have vice," said Miss Randall, "as long as economic conditions set the stage for it. A young girl housed in a poor tenement, ill-lighted, poorly heated, badly ventilated, fed and clothed insufficiently—see to it that she hears foul language, and witnesses drunkenness and quarrelling—then you have the condition that produces the delinquent city girl."

"We are attacking all those evils," said Ambrose. "The public conscience is rising against them. I predict the time when it will be regarded as great a disgrace for a city to possess a 'back of the yards,' a ghetto or a slum tenement district as it is now to have a district organized for the exploitation of women. It's coming. You and I shall see it."

Mary Randall had risen, deeply moved while he spoke. She leaned against the trellis and gazed far across the silver-shot lake at the sun sinking, a great ball of crimson fire among the dark trees.

"God speed the day!" she said.

Beyond the veranda in a darkened drawing-room Mary Randall's aunt had been resting and had heard this conversation. She rose and went softly away and out to a pergola where she found her husband smoking a cigar.

"Lucius," she said. "That young newspaper man who has been out here to see Mary is here again. They are talking in the veranda, settling all the problems of Chicago!"

Lucius Randall blew a cloud of smoke. "Well, my dear, that is the only way this old world gets ahead, for each generation to tackle its problems anew."

"I believe that young man likes Mary."

"Many young men do."

"But—I really believe Mary likes him. She talks to him with a sweet note in her voice, even when they are discussing the most impossible subjects."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Lucius Randall with much serenity.



AFTERWORD

In our modern crusade against that most ancient evil known as the white slave traffic we have made at least one serious advance. All over the world that conspiracy of silence which has fettered thought and prevented open action in the fight is ended.

Nowadays, as Havelock Ellis, author of the famous "Psychology of Sex," says in the Metropolitan discussion of this subject, "churches, societies, journalist, legislators, have all joined the ranks of the agitators. Not only has there been no voice on the opposite side, which was scarcely to be expected—for there has never been any anxiety to cry aloud in defense of 'white slavery' from the housetops—but there has been a new and noteworthy conquest over indifference and over that sacred silence which was supposed to encompass all sexual topics with suitable darkness. The banishment of that silence in the cause of social hygiene is, indeed, not the least significant feature of this agitation. * * *

"By insuring that our workers, and especially our women workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their wages, we shall not, indeed, have abolished prostitution, which is more than an economic phenomenon, but we shall more effectually check the white slave trader than by the most Draconic legislation the most imaginative vice crusader ever devised. And when we insure that these same workers have ample time and opportunity for free and joyous recreation we shall have done more to kill the fascination of the white slave traffic than by endless police regulations for the moral supervision of the young.

"No doubt the element of human nature in the manifestations we are concerned with will still be at work, an obscure instinct often acting differently in each sex, but tending to drive both into the same risks. Here we need even more fundamental social changes. It is sheer foolishness to suppose that when we raise our little dams in the path of a great stream of human impulse that stream will forthwith flow calmly back to its source. We must make our new channels concurrently with our dams. We can at least begin today a task of education which must slowly though surely undermine the white slave trader's stronghold. Such an education needs to be not merely instruction in the facts of sex and wise guidance concerning all the dangers and risks of the sexual life; it must also involve a training of the will, a development of the sense of responsibility, such as can never be secured by shutting our young people up in a hothouse, sheltered from every fortifying breath of the outside world."

It was in Illinois that Abraham Lincoln—a Southerner, Kentucky born—threw down the gage in his famous Bloomington speech in the matter of buying and selling human beings as slaves. It is in Illinois—in spite of much disgrace which the State's fair name has had forced upon it—that men and women have enlisted for life to fight in the battle against buying and selling white girls, to fight against that special dealing in "live stock" actually known to have gone on for years, which is Chicago's special shame as a distributing center.

There is eternal shouting and exhorting against the immorality and vice of the levee, but I wonder if it isn't society's hue and cry to divert attention from viciousness in what are called "the best circles," a condition that is a hundred times more important.

Will the churches be in some measure convinced that they must organize for a combined effort to save the children of today—that souls are more important than sectarianism, and that Sunday is not the only day in the week?

If every unmarried woman with money and time at her disposal were to devote part of her leisure to the care of one child there would be far less misery in the slums and many a little sister would be saved.

If there is to be any effective reform we must arouse society from its lethargic viewpoint too generally accepted that the devil is never so black as he is painted.

As long as mothers do not know who the young men are with whom their daughters spend evenings away from home so long will there be the troop of Little Lost Sisters tripping, stumbling down the trail that leads hellward.

Let us make the war against commercialized vice a bigger thing than a presidential campaign, bigger than any war, bigger than anything that was ever known in a woman's movement before in the world!

THE END