Mr. Magee promised to bear this counsel in mind, and went forward into the smoking-car. Long rows of red plush seats, unoccupied save for the mayor and Max, greeted his eye. He strolled to where they sat, about half-way down the car, and lighted an after-breakfast cigar.

Max slouched in the unresponsive company of a cigarette on one side of the car; across the aisle the mayor of Reuton leaned heavily above a card-table placed between two seats. He was playing solitaire. Mr. Magee wondered whether this was merely a display of bravado against scheming reformers, or whether Mr. Cargan found in it real diversion. Curious, he slid into the place across the table from the mayor.

"Napoleon," he remarked lightly, "whiled away many a dull hour with cards, I believe."

Clumsily the mayor shuffled the cards. He flung them down one by one on the polished surface of the table rudely, as though they were reform votes he was counting. His thick lips were tightly closed, his big hands hovered with unaccustomed uncertainty over the pasteboards.

"Quit your kidding," he replied. "I don't believe cards was invented in Nap's day. Was they? It's a shame a fellow can't have a little admiration for a great leader like Nap without all you funny boys jollying him about it. That boy sure knew how to handle the voters. I've read a lot about him, and I like his style."

"You let history alone," snarled Mr. Max, across the aisle, "or it'll repeat itself and another guy I know'll go to the island."

"If you mean me," returned Cargan, "forget it. There ain't no St. Helena in my future." He winked at Magee. "Lou's a little peevish this morning," he said. "Had a bad night."

He busied himself with the cards. Mr. Magee looked on, only half interested. Then, suddenly, his interest grew. He watched the mayor build, in two piles; he saw that the deck from which he built was thick. A weird suspicion shot across his mind.

"Tell me," he asked, "is this the admiral's game of solitaire?"

"Exactly what I was going to ask," said a voice. Magee looked up. Kendrick had come in, and stood now above the table. His tired eyes were upon it, fascinated; his lips twitched strangely.

"Yes," answered the mayor, "this is the admiral's game. You'd hardly expect me to know it, would you? I don't hang out at the swell clubs where the admiral does. They won't have me there. But once I took the admiral on a public service board with me—one time when I wanted a lot of dignity and no brains pretty bad—and he sort of come back by teaching me his game in the long dull hours when we had nothing to do but serve the public. The thing gets a hold on you, somehow. Let's see—now the spade—now the heart."

Kendrick leaned closer. His breath came with a noisy quickness that brought the fact of his breathing insistently to Magee's mind.

"I never knew—how it was played," he said.

Something told Mr. Magee that he ought to rise and drag Kendrick away from that table. Why? He did not know. Still, it ought to be done. But the look in Kendrick's eyes showed clearly that the proverbial wild horses could not do it then.

"Tell me how it's played," went on Kendrick, trying to be calm.

"You must be getting old," replied the mayor. "The admiral told me the young men at his club never took any interest in his game. 'Solitaire,' he says to me, 'is an old man's trade.' It's a great game, Mr. Kendrick."

"A great game," repeated Kendrick, "yes, it's a great game." His tone was dull. "I want to know how it's played," he said again.

"The six of clubs," reflected the mayor, throwing down another card. "Say, she's going fine now. There ain't much to it. You use two decks, exactly alike—shuffle 'em together—the eight of hearts—the jack of—say, that's great—you lay the cards down here, just as they come—like this—"

He paused. His huge hand held a giddy pasteboard. A troubled look was on his face. Then he smiled happily, and went on in triumph.

"And then you build, Mr. Kendrick," he said. "The reds and the blacks. You build the blacks on the left, and the reds on the right—do you get me? Then—say, what's the matter?"

For Kendrick had swayed and almost fallen on the admiral's game—the game that had once sent a man to hell.

"Go on," he said, bracing. "Nothing's the matter. Go on. Build, damn it, build!"

The mayor looked at him a moment in surprise, then continued.

"Now the king," he muttered, "now the ace. We're on the home stretch, going strong. There, it's finished. It's come out right. A great game, I tell you."

He leaned back. Kendrick's fever-yellowed face was like a bronze mask. His eyes were fiercely on the table and the two decks of cards that lay there.

"And when you've finished," he pointed. "When you've finished—"

Mr. Cargan picked up the deck on the left.

"All black," he said, "when the game comes out right."

"And the other?" Kendrick persisted softly. He pointed to the remaining deck. A terrible smile of understanding drew his thin lips taut. "And the other, Mr. Cargan?"

"Red," replied Cargan. "What else could it be? All red."

He picked it up and shuffled through it to prove his point. Kendrick turned like a drunken man and staggered back down the aisle. Magee rose and hurried after him. At the door he turned, and the look on his face caused Magee to shudder.

"You heard?" he said helplessly. "My God! It's funny, isn't it?" He laughed hysterically, and drawing out his handkerchief, passed it across his forehead. "A pleasant thing to think about—a pleasant thing to remember."

Professor Bolton pushed open the smoker door.

"I thought I'd join you," he began. "Why, David, what is it? What's the matter?"

"Nothing," replied Kendrick wildly. "There's nothing the matter. Let me—by—please." He crossed the swaying platform and disappeared into the other car.

For a moment the professor and Magee gazed after him, and then without a word moved down the car to join Cargan and Max. Magee's mind was dazed by the tragedy he had witnessed. "A pleasant thing to think about—" He did not envy Kendrick his thoughts.

The mayor of Reuton had pushed aside the cards and lighted a huge cigar.

"Well, Doc," he remarked jocosely, "how's trade? Sold any new schemes for renovating the world to the up-state rubes? I should think this would be sort of an off-season for the reform business. Peace on earth, good will toward men—that ain't exactly a good advertisement for the reformers, is it?"

"It's an excellent one," replied Professor Bolton. "The first essential of good will toward men is not to rob and debauch them."

"Oh, well, Doc, don't let's argue the matter," replied Cargan easily. "I ain't in the humor for it, anyhow. You got your beliefs, and I got my beliefs. And that ain't no reason why we should not smoke a couple of good cigars together. Have one?"

"Thanks. I—" reluctantly the old man took a gay-banded Havana from the mayor's huge fist. "You're very kind."

"I suppose it's sort of a blow to you," the mayor went on, "that your plans up there on the mountain went all to smash. It ought to teach you a lesson, Doc. There ain't nothing to the reform gag."

The train slowed down at a small yellow station. Mr. Magee peered out the window. "Hooperstown," he read, "Reuton—10 miles." He saw Mr. Max get up and leave the car.

"Not a thing to it, Doc," Cargan repeated, "Your bunch has tried to get me before. You've shouted from the housetops that you had the goods on me. What's always happened?"

"Your own creatures have acquitted you," replied the professor, from a cloud of Cargan cigar smoke.

"Fair-minded men decided that I hadn't done wrong. I tell you, Doc, there's dishonest graft, and I'm against that always. And there's honest graft—the rightful perquisites of a high office. That's the trouble with you church politicians. You can't see the difference between the two."

"I'm not a church politician," protested the professor. "I'm bitterly opposed to the lily-white crowd who continually rant against the thing they don't understand. I'm practical, as practical as you, and when—"

Noiselessly Mr. Max slid up to the group, and stood silent, his eyes wide, his yellow face pitiful, the fear of a dog about to be whipped in his every feature.

"Jim," he cried, "Jim! You got to get me out of this. You got to stand by me."

"Why, what's the matter, Lou?" asked the mayor in surprise.

"Matter enough," whined Max. "Do you know what's happened? Well, I'll tell—"

Mr. Max was thrust aside, and replaced by a train newsboy. Mr. Magee felt that he should always remember that boy, his straw colored hair, his freckled beaming face, his lips with their fresh perpetual smile.

"All the morning papers, gents," proclaimed the boy. "Get the Reuton Star. All about the bribery."

He held up the paper. It's huge black head-lines looked dull and old and soggy. But the story they told was new and live and startling.

"The Mayor Trapped," shrilled the head-lines. "Attempt to Pass Big Bribe at Baldpate Inn Foiled by Star Reporter. Hayden of the Suburban Commits Suicide to Avoid Disgrace."

"Give me a paper, boy," said the mayor. "Yes—a Star." His voice was even, his face unmoved. He took the sheet and studied it, with an easy smile. Clinging in fear to his side, Max read, too. At length Mr. Cargan spoke, looking up at Magee.

"So," he remarked. "So—reporters, eh? You and your lady friend? Reporters for this lying sheet—the Star?"

Mr. Magee smiled up from his own copy of the paper.

"Not I," he answered. "But my lady friend—yes. It seems she was just that. A Star reporter you can call her, and tell no lie, Mr. Mayor."



CHAPTER XXI

THE MAYOR IS WELCOMED HOME

It was a good story—the story which the mayor, Max, the professor and Magee read with varying emotions there in the smoking-car. The girl had served her employers well, and Mr. Magee, as he read, felt a thrill of pride in her. Evidently the employers had felt that same thrill. For in the captions under the pictures, in the head-lines, and in a first-page editorial, none of which the girl had written, the Star spoke admiringly of its woman reporter who had done a man's work—who had gone to Baldpate Inn and had brought back a gigantic bribe fund "alone and unaided".

"Indeed?" smiled Mr. Magee to himself.

In the editorial on that first page the triumphant cry of the Star arose to shatter its fellows in the heavens. At last, said the editor, the long campaign which his paper alone of all the Reuton papers had waged against a corrupt city administration was brought to a successful close. The victory was won. How had this been accomplished? Into the Star office had come rumors, a few days back, of the proposed payment of a big bribe at the inn on Baldpate Mountain. The paper had decided that one of its representatives must be on the ground. It had debated long whom to send. Miss Evelyn Rhodes, its well-known special writer, had got the tip in question; she had pleaded to go to the inn. The editor, considering her sex, had sternly refused. Then gradually he had been brought to see the wisdom of sending a girl rather than a man. The sex of the former would put the guilty parties under surveillance off guard. So Miss Rhodes was despatched to the inn. Here was her story. It convicted Cargan beyond a doubt. The very money offered as a bribe was now in the hands of the Star editor, and would be turned over to Prosecutor Drayton at his request. All this under the disquieting title "Prison Stripes for the Mayor".

The girl's story told how, with one companion, she had gone to Upper Asquewan Falls. There was no mention of the station waiting-room, nor of the tears shed therein on a certain evening, Mr. Magee noted. She had reached the inn on the morning of the day when the combination was to be phoned. Bland was already there, shortly after came the mayor and Max.

"You got to get me out of this," Magee heard Max pleading over Cargan's shoulder.

"Keep still!" replied the mayor roughly. He was reading his copy of the Star with keen interest now.

"I've done your dirty work for years," whined Max. "Who puts on the rubber shoes and sneaks up dark alleys hunting votes among the garbage, while you do the Old Glory stunt on Main Street? I do. You got to get me out of this. It may mean jail. I couldn't stand that. I'd die."

A horrible parody of a man's real fear was in his face. The mayor shook himself as though he would be rid forever of the coward hanging on his arm.

"Hush up, can't you?" he said. "I'll see you through."

"You got to," Lou Max wailed.

Miss Rhodes' story went on to tell how Hayden refused to phone the combination; how the mayor and Max dynamited the safe and secured the precious package, only to lose it in another moment to a still different contingent at the inn; how Hayden had come, of his suicide when he found that his actions were in danger of exposure—"a bitter smile for Kendrick in that" reflected Magee—and how finally, through a strange series of accidents, the money came into the hands of the writer for the Star. These accidents were not given in detail.

"An amusing feature of the whole affair," said Miss Evelyn Rhodes, "was the presence at the inn of Mr. William Hallowell Magee, the New York writer of light fiction, who had come there to escape the distractions of a great city, and to work in the solitude, and who immediately on his arrival became involved in the surprising drama of Baldpate."

"I'm an amusing feature," reflected Magee.

"Mr. Magee," continued Miss Rhodes, "will doubtless be one of the state's chief witnesses when the case against Cargan comes to trial, as will also Professor Thaddeus Bolton, holder of the Crandall Chair of Comparative Literature at Reuton University, and Mr. David Kendrick, formerly of the Suburban, but who retired six years ago to take up his residence abroad. The latter two went to the inn to represent Prosecutor Drayton, and made every effort in their power to secure the package of money from the reporter for the Star, not knowing her connection with the affair."

"Well, Mr. Magee?" asked Professor Bolton, laying down the paper which he had been perusing at a distance of about an inch from his nose.

"Once again, Professor," laughed Magee, "reporters have entered your life."

The old man sighed.

"It was very kind of her," he said, "not to mention that I was the person who compared blondes of the peroxide variety with suffragettes. Others will not be so kind. The matter will be resurrected and used against me at the trial, I'm sure. A plucky girl, Mr. Magee—a very plucky girl. How times do change. When I was young, girls of her age would scarcely have thought of venturing forth into the highways on such perilous missions. I congratulate you. You showed unusual perception. You deserve a great reward—the young lady's favor, let us say."

"You got to get me out of this," Max was still telling the mayor.

"For God's sake," cried Cargan, "shut up and let me think." He sat for a moment staring at one place, his face still lacking all emotion, but his eyes a trifle narrower than before. "You haven't got me yet," he cried, standing up. "By the eternal, I'll fight to the last ditch, and I'll win. I'll show Drayton he can't play this game on me. I'll show the Star. That dirty sheet has hounded me for years. I'll put it out of business. And I'll send the reformers howling into the alleys, sick of the fuss they started themselves."

"Perhaps," said Professor Bolton. "But only after the fight of your life, Cargan."

"I'm ready for it," cried Cargan. "I ain't down and out yet. But to think—a woman—a little bit of a girl I could have put in my pocket—it's all a big joke. I'll beat them—I'll show them—the game's far from played out—I'll win—and—if—I—don't—"

He crumbled suddenly into his seat, his eyes on that unpleasant line about "Prison Stripes for the Mayor". For an instant it seemed as though his fight was irrevocably lost, and he knew it. Lines of age appeared to creep from out the fat folds of his face, and stand mockingly there. He looked a beaten man.

"If I don't," he stammered pitifully, "well, they sent him to an island at the end. The reformers got Napoleon at the last. I won't be alone in that."

At this unexpected sight of weakness in his hero, Mr. Max set up a renewed babble of fear at his side. The train was in the Reuton suburbs now. At a neat little station it slowed down to a stop, and a florid policeman entered the smoking-car. Cargan looked up.

"Hello, Dan," he said. His voice was lifeless; the old-time ring was gone.

The policeman removed his helmet and shifted it nervously.

"I thought I'd tell you, Mr. Cargan," he said "I thought I'd warn you. You'd better get off here. There's a big crowd in the station at Reuton. They're waiting for you, sir; they've heard you're on this train. This lying newspaper, Mr. Cargan, it's been telling tales—I guess you know about that. There's a big mob. You better get off here, sir, and go down-town on a car."

If the mighty Cargan had looked limp and beaten for a moment he looked that way no more. He stood up, and his head seemed almost to touch the roof of the car. Over that big patrolman he towered; his eyes were cold and hard again; his lips curved in the smile of the master.

"And why," he bellowed, "should I get off here? Tell me that, Dan."

"Well, sir," replied the embarrassed copper, "they're ugly. There's no telling what they might do. It's a bad mob—this newspaper has stirred 'em up."

"Ugly, are they?" sneered Cargan. "Ever seen the bunch I would go put of my way for, Dan?"

"I meant it all right, sir," said Dan. "As a friend to a man who's been a friend to me. No, I never saw you afraid of any bunch yet, but this—"

"This," replied Cargan, "is the same old bunch. The same lily-livered crowd that I've seen in the streets since I laid the first paving stone under 'em myself in '91. Afraid of them? Hell! I'd walk through an ant hill as scared as I would through that mob. Thanks for telling me, Dan, but Jim Cargan won't be in the mollycoddle class for a century or two yet."

"Yes, sir," said the patrolman admiringly. He hurried out of the car, and the mayor turned to find Lou Max pale and fearful by his side.

"What ails you now?" he asked.

"I'm afraid," cried Max. "Did you hear what he said? A mob. I saw a mob once. Never again for me." He tried to smile, to pass it off as a pleasant jest, but he had to wet his lips with his tongue before he could go on. "Come on, Jim. Get off here. Don't be a fool."

The train began to move.

"Get off yourself, you coward," sneered Cargan. "Oh, I know you. It doesn't take much to make your stomach shrink. Get off."

Max eagerly seized his hat and bag.

"I will, if you don't mind," he said. "See you later at Charlie's." And in a flash of tawdry attire, he was gone.

The mayor of Reuton no longer sat limp in his seat. That brief moment of seeming surrender was put behind forever. He walked the aisle of the car, fire in his eyes, battle in his heart.

"So they're waiting for me, eh?" he said aloud. "Waiting for Jim Cargan. Now ain't it nice of them to come and meet their mayor?"

Mr. Magee and the professor went into the day coach for their baggage. Mrs. Norton motioned to the former.

"Well," she said, "you know now, I suppose. And it didn't do you no harm to wait. I sure am glad this to-do is all over, and that child is safe. And I hope you'll remember what I said. It ain't no work for a woman, no how, what with the shooting and the late hours."

"Your words," said Mr. Magee, "are engraven on my heart." He proceeded to gather her baggage with his own, and was thus engaged when Kendrick came up. The shadow of his discovery in the smoking-car an hour before still haunted his sunken eyes, but his lips were half smiling with the new joy of living that had come to him.

"Mr. Magee," he began, "I hardly need mention that the terrible thing which happened—in there—is between you and me—and the man who's dead. No one must know. Least of all, the girl who is to become my wife—it would embitter her whole life—as it has mine."

"Don't say that," Magee pleaded. "You will forget in time, I'm sure. And you may trust me—I had forgotten already." And indeed he had, on the instant when his eyes fell upon the Reuton Star.

Miss Thornhill approached, her dark smiling eyes on Magee. Kendrick looked at her proudly, and spoke suddenly, determinedly:

"You're right, I will forget. She shall help me."

"Mr. Magee," said the girl, "I'm so pleased at the splendid end to your impulsive philanthropy. I just knew the adventure couldn't have anything but a happy ending—it was so full of youth and faith and—and charity or its synonym. This mustn't be good-by. You must come and see me—come and see us—all."

"I shall be happy to," answered Magee sincerely. "It will always be a matter of regret to me that I was not able to serve you—also—on Baldpate Mountain. But out of it you come with something more precious than fine gold, and that shall be my consolation."

"Let it be," smiled Myra Thornhill, "as it is surely mine. Good-by."

"And good luck," whispered Magee, as he took Kendrick's hand.

Over his shoulder, as he passed to the platform, he saw them look into each other's eyes, and he felt that the memory of the admiral's game would in time cease to haunt David Kendrick.

A shadow had fallen upon the train—the shadow of the huge Reuton station. In the half-light on the platform Mr. Magee encountered the mayor of Reuton. Above the lessening roar of the train there sounded ahead of them the voices of men in turmoil and riot. Mr. Cargan turned upon Magee a face as placid and dispassionate as that of one who enters an apple orchard in May.

"The boys," he smiled grimly, "welcoming me home."

Then the train came to a stop, and Mr. Magee looked down into a great array of faces, and heard for the first time the low unceasing rumble of an angry mob. Afterward he marveled at that constant guttural roar, how it went on and on, humming like a tune, never stopping, disconnected quite from the occasional shrill or heavy voices that rang out in distinguishable words. The mayor looked coolly down into those upturned faces, he listened a moment to the rumble of a thousand throats, then he took off his derby with satiric politeness.

"Glad to see one and all!" he cried.

And now above the mutterings angry words could be heard, "That's him," "That's two-hundred-thousand-dollar Cargan," "How's the weather on Baldpate?" and other sarcastic flings. Then a fashion of derisive cat-calls came and went. After which, here and there, voices spoke of ropes, of tar and feathers. And still the mayor smiled as one for whom the orchard gate swung open in May.

A squad of policemen, who had entered the car from the rear, forced their way put on to the platform.

"Want us to see you through the crowd, Mr. Cargan?" the lieutenant asked.

New hoots and cries ascended to the station rafters. "Who pays the police?" "We do." "Who owns 'em?" "Cargan." Thus question and answer were bandied back and forth. Again a voice demanded in strident tones the ignominious tar and feathers.

Jim Cargan had not risen from the slums to be master of his town without a keen sense of the theatric. He ordered the police back into the car. "And stay there," he demanded. The lieutenant demurred. One look from the mayor sent him scurrying. Mr. Cargan took from his pocket a big cigar, and calmly lighted it.

"Some of them guys out there," he remarked to Magee, "belong to the Sunday-school crowd. Pretty actions for them—pillars of the church howling like beasts."

And still, like that of beasts, the mutter of the mob went on, now in an undertone, now louder, and still that voice that first had plead for tar and feathers plead still—for feathers and tar. And here a group preferred the rope.

And toward them, with the bland smile of a child on his great face, his cigar tilted at one angle, his derby at another, the mayor of Reuton walked unflinchingly.

The roar became mad, defiant. But Cargan stepped forward boldly. Now he reached the leaders of the mob. He pushed his way in among them, smiling but determined. They closed in on him. A little man got firmly in his path. He took the little man by the shoulders and stood him aside with some friendly word. And now he was past ten rows or more of them on his way through, and the crowd began to scurry away. They scampered like ants, clawing at one another's backs to make a path.

And so finally, between two rows of them, the mayor of Reuton went his way triumphantly. Somewhere, on the edge of the crowd, an admiring voice spoke. "Hello, Jim!" The mayor waved his hand. The rumble of their voices ceased at last. Jim Cargan was still master of the city.

"Say what you will," remarked Mr. Magee to the professor as they stood together on the platform of the car, "there goes a man."

He did not wait to hear the professor's answer. For he saw the girl of the Upper Asquewan station, standing on a baggage truck far to the left of the mob, wave to him over their heads. Eagerly he fought his way to her side. It was a hard fight, the crowd would not part for him as it had parted for the man who owned the city.



CHAPTER XXII

THE USUAL THING

"Hello, Mr. Hold-up Man!" The girl seized Mr. Magee's proffered hand and leaped down from the truck to his side.

"Bless the gods of the mountain," said Magee; "they have given me back my accomplice, safe and sound."

"They were black lonesome gods," she replied, "and they kept whispering fearful things in my ear I couldn't understand. I'm glad they didn't keep me."

"So am I." The crowd surged about them; many in it smiled and spoke admiringly to the girl. "It's great to be acquainted with the heroine of the hour," Mr. Magee continued. "I congratulate you. You have overthrown an empire of graft, it seems."

"Alone and unaided," she quoted, smiling mockingly up into his face.

"Absolutely alone and entirely unaided," said Billy Magee. "I'll swear to that in court."

Mrs. Norton panted up to them.

"Hello, dearie!" she cried. "Thank heaven you're safe. Have you been up to the house? How's Sadie getting along? I just know everything is topsyturvy."

"Not at all," replied Miss Rhodes. "Breakfast passed off like clockwork at seven, and even Mr. Golden had no complaints to offer. Dear, I must thank you for all you've done for me. It was splendid—"

"Not now," objected Mrs. Norton. "I got to get up to the house now. What with Christmas only two days away, and a lot of shopping to be done, I can't linger in this drafty station for thanks. I want you to bring Mr. Magee right up to the house for lunch. I'll have a meal ready that'll show him what suffering must have been going on inside me while I sat still watching that hermit man burlesquing the cook business."

"Delighted," said Magee. "I'll find you a cab." He led the way to a row of such vehicles, Mrs. Norton and the girl following.

"Seems like you're always putting me in a cab," remarked the older woman as she climbed inside. "I don't know what Mary and me would have done if it hadn't been for you. You're a mighty handy person to have around, Mr. Magee. Ain't he, dearie?" She winked openly at Magee.

"And a delightful one," agreed the girl, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Mrs. Norton was driven away up the snowy street. As Mr. Magee and the girl turned, they beheld the Hermit of Baldpate staring with undisguised exultation at the tall buildings of Reuton.

"Why, it's Mr. Peters!" the girl cried.

"Yes," replied Magee. "His prediction has come true. We and our excitement proved too much for him. He's going back to Brooklyn and to her."

"I'm so glad," she cried. She stretched out her hand to the hermit. He took it, somewhat embarrassed.

"Glad to see you," he said. "You certainly appear to have stirred things up, miss. But women are good at that. I've always said—"

"Mr. Magee tells me you're going back, after all?" she broke in.

"Yes," returned Peters. "I knew it. I told you so. It was all right in the summer, when the bands played, and the warm wind was hermiting on the mountain, too. But in the fall, it's always been hard, and I've heard the white lights calling, calling—why, I've even heard her—heard Ellen. This fall you came, and there was something doing on Baldpate—and I knew that when you went, I'd just naturally have to go, too. So—I'm going."

"Splendid," commented the girl.

"It'll be somewhat delicate," continued the hermit, "bursting in on Ellen after all these years. As I told Mr. Magee, I wish I had an inaugural address, or something like that."

"I have it," responded Evelyn Rhodes. "I'll write a story about you for to-morrow morning's paper. All about how the Christmas spirit has overcome the Hermit of Baldpate, and how he's going back to his wife, with his heart filled with love for her—it is filled, isn't it?"

"Well, yes," agreed Mr. Peters. "I reckon you might call it that."

"And then you can send her a copy of the paper, and follow it up in person."

"A good idea," commented Billy Magee.

"At first glance, yes," studied Peters. "But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I'm calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I'm afraid I can't let it be generally known that I've quit living in a shack on the mountain for love of somebody or other."

"Once more," smiled Magee, "big business muzzles the press."

"Not that I ain't obliged to you for the offer," added the hermit.

"Of course," said the girl, "I understand. And I wish you the best of luck—along with a merry Christmas."

"The same to you," replied the hermit heartily.

"Miss—er—Miss Rhodes and I will see you again," predicted Mr. Magee, "next summer at Baldpate Inn."

The hermit looked at the girl, who turned her face away.

"I hope it'll turn out that way, I'm sure," he said. "I'll let you have a reduction on all post-cards, just for old times' sake. Now I must find out about the New York trains."

He melted into the crowd, an odd figure still, his garb in a fashion long forgotten, his clumsily hacked hair brushing the collar of his ancient coat. Magee and the girl found the check room, and after he had been relieved of the burden of his baggage, set out up the main street of Reuton. It was a typical up-state town, deep in the throes of the holiday season. The windows of the stores were green with holly; the faces of the passers-by reflected the excitements of Christmas and of the upheaval in civic politics which were upon them almost together.

"Tell me," said the girl, "are you glad—at the way it has turned out? Are you glad I was no lady Captain Kidd?"

"It has all turned out—or is about to turn out—beautifully," Mr. Magee answered. "You may remember that on the veranda of Baldpate Inn I spoke of one summer hotel flirtation that was going to prove more than that. Let me—"

Her laugh interrupted.

"You don't even know my name."

"What's the matter with Evelyn Rhodes?" suggested Magee.

"Nothing. It's a perfectly good name. But it isn't mine. I just write under it."

"I prefer Mary, anyhow," smiled Billy Magee. "She called you that. It's Mary."

"Mary what?"

"You have no idea," said he, "how immaterial that is."

They came upon a throng blocking the sidewalk in front of a tall building of stone. The eyes of the throng were on bulletins; it muttered much as they had muttered who gathered in the station.

"The office of the Star," explained the girl. "The crowd is looking for new excitement. Do you know, for two whole hours this morning we had on exhibition in the window a certain package—a package of money!"

"I think," smiled Magee, "I've seen it somewhere."

"I think you have. Drayton came and took it from us as soon as he heard. But it was the very best proof we could have offered the people. They like to see for themselves. It's a passion with them. We've done for Cargan forever."

"Cargan says he will fight."

"Of course he will," she replied. "But this will prove Napoleon's Waterloo. Whether or not he is sent to prison—and perhaps he can escape that, he's very clever—his power in Reuton is broken. He can't possibly win at the next election—it comes very soon. I'm so glad. For years our editor has been fighting corruption, in the face of terrible odds and temptations. I'm so glad it's over now—and the Star has won."

"Through you," said Magee softly.

"With—some one—to help," she smiled. "I must go up-stairs now and find out what new task is set for me."

Mr. Magee postponed the protest on the tip of his tongue, and, climbing the gloomy stairs that newspapers always affect, they came into the city room of the Star. Though the paper had been long on the street, the excitement of the greatest coup of years still lingered in the place. Magee saw the deferential smiles that greeted the girl, and watched her as she made her way to the city editor's desk. In a moment she was back at his side.

"I've got my assignment," she smiled ruefully. They descended to the street. "It's wonderful," she went on, "how curt a city editor can be with any one who pulls off a good story. The job I've got now reminds me of the experience of an old New York reporter who used to work on the Star."

With difficulty they threaded their way through the crowd, and moved along beside the green-decked windows.

"He was the first man sent out by his paper on Park Row on the Spanish War assignment," she went on, "and he behaved rather brilliantly, I believe. Well, he came back after the fight was over, all puffed up and important, and they told him the city editor wanted him. 'They're going to send me to the Philippines,' he told me he thought as he went into the presence. When the city editor ordered him to rush down to a two-alarm fire in Houston Street he nearly collapsed. I know how he felt. I feel that way now."

"What was it—a one-alarm fire?" asked Magee.

"No," she replied, "a sweet little story about the Christmas toys. I've done it to death every Christmas for—three years. Oh, well, I can do it again. But it'll have to wait until after Mrs. Norton's lunch."

She led him into a street where every house was like its neighbor, even to the "Rooms" sign in the windows, and up the steps of one she could have recognized only by counting from the corner. They entered the murky and stereotyped atmosphere of a boarding-house hallway, with its inevitable hat-rack and the uncollected letters of the homeless on a table. Mrs. Norton came breezily forth to meet them.

"Well, Mr. Magee," she said, "I certainly am glad you've came. I'm busy on that lunch now. Dearie, show him into the parlor to wait."

Mr. Magee was shown in. That rooming-house parlor seemed to moan dismally as it received him. He strolled about and gazed at the objects of art which had at various times accrued to Mrs. Norton's personality: a steel engraving called Too Late, which depicted an angry father arriving at a church door to find his eloping daughter in the arms of stalwart youth, with the clergy looking on approvingly; another of Mr. John Drew assuming a commanding posture as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew; some ennuied flabby angels riding on the clouds; a child of unhealthy pink clasping lovingly an inflammable dog; on the mantel a miniature ship, under glass, and some lady statuettes whose toilettes slipped down—down.

And, on an easel, the sad portrait of a gentleman, undoubtedly the late lamented Norton. His uninteresting nose appeared to turn up at the constant odor of cookery in which it dwelt; his hair was plastered down over his forehead in a gorgeous abandoned curve such as some of the least sophisticated of Mr. John T. McCutcheon's gentlemen affect.

Mr. Magee stared round the room and smiled. Was the romance of reality never to resemble the romance of his dreams? Where were the dim lights, where the distant waltz, where the magic of moonlight amid which he was some day to have told a beautiful girl of his love? Hardly in Mrs. Norton's parlor.

She came and stood in the doorway. Hatless, coatless, smiling, she flooded the place with her beauty. Mr. Magee looked at the flabby angels on the wall, expecting them to hide their faces in shame. But no, they still rode brazenly their unstable clouds.

"Come in," he cried. "Don't leave me alone here again, please. And tell me—is this the gentleman who took the contract for making Mrs. Norton happy?"

"I—I can't come in," she said, blushing. She seemed to wish to avoid him. "Yes, that is Mr. Norton." She came nearer the easel, and smiled at the late lamented's tonsorial crown. "I must leave you—just a moment—"

Billy Magee's heart beat wildly. His breath came fast. He seized her by the hand.

"You're never going to leave me again," he cried. "Don't you know that? I thought you knew. You're mine. I love you. I love you. It's all I can say, my dearest. Look at me—look at me, please."

"It has happened so quickly," she murmured. "Things can't be true when they—happen so quickly."

"A woman's logic," said Mr. Magee. "It has happened. My beautiful girl. Look at me."

And then—she looked. Trembling, flushed, half frightened, half exultant, she lifted her eyes to his.

"My little girl!" he cried down at her.

A moment longer she held off, and then limply she surrendered. And Billy Magee held her close in his arms.

"Take care of me," she whispered. "I—I love you so." Her arm went timidly about his shoulders. "Do you want to know my name? It's Mary—"

Mary what? The answer was seemingly of no importance, for Mr. Magee's lips were on hers, crushing the word at its birth.

So they stood, amid Mrs. Norton's gloomy objects of art. And presently she asked:

"How about the book, dear?"

But Mr. Magee had forgot.

"What book?" he asked.

"The novel you went to Baldpate to write Don't you remember, dearest—no melodrama, no wild chase, no—love?"

"Why—" Mr. Magee paused for a moment in the joy of his discovery. Then he came back to the greater joy in his arms.

"Why, darling," he explained gently, "this is it."

THE END