"I shall wear one like it at your inauguration, Senator," said she brightly.

"For President? Thank you. But the dress reminds me, Anne," the Senator added with feeling, "of what you were twenty years ago: the sweetest and prettiest girl in the city."

"Oh, you always have the golden word," said she, "and thank you. But you'll not be elected president, only mayor of our own city."

"It might come—in time," the Senator thought.

"And now is the time," cried she so emphatically that he jumped. "Vandervelt told me that no man could be elected unless you said the word. Why shouldn't you say it for yourself? He told me in the same breath he'd like to see you in the place afore any friend he had, because you were a man o' your word, and no wan could lose be your election."

"Did he say all that?"

"Every word, and twice as much," she declared with eagerness. "Now think it over with all your clever brains, Senator dear, and lift up the Dillon name to the first place in the city. Oh, I'd give me life to see that glory."

"And to win it," Arthur added under his breath.

The Senator was impressed, and Arthur had a feeling akin to awe. Who can follow the way of the world? The thread of destiny for the great city up the bay lay between the fingers of this sweet, ambitious house-mother, and of the popular gladiator. Even though she should lead the Senator by the nose to humiliation, the scene was wonderfully picturesque, and her thought daring. He did not know enough history to be aware that this same scene had happened several hundred times in past centuries; but he went out to take another look at the house which sheltered a woman of pluck and genius. The secret of the villa was known. Anne had used it to help in the selection of the next Mayor. He laughed from the depths of his being as he walked along the shore.

The Everard children returned home early in September to enjoy the preparations for the entrance of Louis into the seminary. The time had arrived for him to take up the special studies of the priesthood, and this meant his separation from the home circle forever. He would come and go for years perhaps, but alas! only as a visitor. The soul of Arthur was knit with the lad's as Jonathan with David. He had never known a youth so gracious and so strange, whose heart was like a sanctuary where

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chants resound between.

It was with him as with Sir Galahad.

But all my heart is drawn above. My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine.

Parting with him was a calamity.

"How can you let him go?" he said to Mary Everard, busy with the preparations.

"I am a happy woman that God calls my boy to His service," she answered cheerfully. "The children go anyway ... it's nature. I left father and mother for my own home. How good it is to think he is going to the sanctuary. I know that he is going forever ... he is mine no more ... he will come back often, but he is mine no more. I am heart-broken ... I am keeping a gay face while he is here, for the child must not be worried with our grief ... time enough for that when he is gone ... and he is so happy. My heart is leaving me to go with him. Twenty years since he was born, and in all that time not a moment's pain on his account ... all his life has been ours ... as if he were the father of the family. What shall I be for the rest of my life, listening for his step and his voice, and never a sight or sound of him for months at a time. God give me strength to bear it. If I live to see him on the altar, I shall thank God and die...."

Twenty years she had served him, yet here came the inevitable end, as if such love had never been.

"Oh, you people of faith! I believe you never suffer, nor know what suffering is!"

"Not your kind of suffering, surely, or we would die. Our hope is always with us, and fortunately does not depend on our moods for its power."

Mona teased him into good humor. That was a great moment when in presence of the family the lad put on the dress of the seminary, Arthur's gift. Feeling like a prince who clothes his favorite knight in his new armor, Arthur helped him to don the black cassock, tied the ribbons of the surplice, and fixed the three-cornered cap properly on the brown, curly head. A pallor spread over the mother's face. Mona talked much to keep back her tears, and the father declared it a shame to make a priest of so fine a fellow, since there were too many priests in the world for its good. The boy walked about as proud as a young soldier dressed for his first parade. The Trumps, enraptured at the sight, clapped their hands with joy.

"Why, he's a priest," cried Constance, with a twist of her pretty mouth. "Louis is a priest."

"No, Baby," corrected Marguerite, the little mother, "but he is going to be one sometime."

The wonderful garments enchanted them, they feared to touch him, and protested when he swung them high and kissed them on the return flight. The boy's departure for the seminary stirred the region of Cherry Hill. The old neighbors came and went in a steady procession for two days to take their leave of him, to bless his parents, and to wish them the joy of seeing him one day at the altar as a priest of God. They bowed to him with that reverence which belonged to Monsignor, only more familiar and loquacious, and each brought his gift of respect or affection. Even the Senator and the Boss appeared to say a parting word.

"I wish you luck, Louis," the Senator said in his resonant voice, and with the speaker's chair before his eyes, "and I know you'll get it, because you have deserved it, sir. I've seen you grow up, and I've always been proud to know you, and I want to know you as long as I live. If ever you should need a hand like mine in the ga ... I mean, if ever my assistance is of any use to you, you know where to call."

"You have a hard road to travel," the genial Sullivan said at the close of his visit, "but your training has prepared you for it, and we all hope you will walk it honorably to the end. Remember we all take an interest in you, and what happens to you for good or ill will be felt in this parish."

Then the moment of parting came, and Arthur thought less of his own grief than of the revelation it contained for him. Was this the feeling which prompted the tears of his mother, and the tender, speechless embrace of his dear father in the far-off days when he set out for school? Was this the grief which made the parting moment terrible? Then he had thought it nothing that for months of the year they should be without his beloved presence! He shivered at the last embraces of Mary and Mona, at the tears of the children; he saw behind the father's mask of calmness; he wondered no more at himself as he stood looking after the train which bore the boy away. The city seemed as vacant all at once as if turned into a desert. The room in the attic, with its bed, its desk, and its altar, suddenly became a terrible place, like a body from which the soul has fled. Every feature of it gave him pain, and he hurried back with Mona to the frivolity of Anne in her villa by the sea.



CHAPTER X.

THE HUMORS OF ELECTION.

When the villa closed the Senator was hopelessly enmeshed in the golden net which had been so skilfully and genially woven by Anne during the summer. He believed himself to be the coming man, all his natural shrewdness and rich experience going for naught before the witchery of his sister's imagination. In her mind the climax of the drama was a Dillon at the top of the heap in the City Hall. Alas, the very first orders of the chief to his secretary swept away the fine-spun dreams of the Dillons, as the broom brushes into obscure dirt the wondrous cobweb. The Hon. John Sullivan spoke in short sentences, used each man according to that man's nature, stood above and ahead of his cleverest lieutenants, had few prejudices, and these noble, and was truly a hero on the battle-ground of social forces, where no artillery roars, no uniforms glare, and no trumpets sound for the poets. The time having come for action he gave Arthur his orders on the supposition that he understood the political situation, which he did in some degree, but not seriously. The Endicotts looked upon elections as the concern of the rabble, and this Endicott thought it perhaps an occasion for uproarious fun. His orders partly sobered him.

"Go to your uncle," said Sullivan, "and tell him he's not in the race. I don't know where he got that bee in his bonnet. Then arrange with Everard to call on Livingstone. Do what you can to straighten the Mayor out. He ought to be the candidate."

This dealing with men inspired him. Hitherto he had been playing with children in the garden of life; now he stood with the fighters in the terrible arena. And his first task was to extinguish the roseate dreams of Anne and her gladiator, to destroy that exquisite fabric woven of moonlit seas, enchanting dinners, and Parisian millinery. Never! Let the chief commit that sacrilege! He would not say the word whose utterance might wound the hearts that loved him. The Senator and Anne should have a clear field. High time for the very respectable citizens of the metropolis to secure a novelty for mayor, to get a taste of Roman liberty, when a distinguished member of the arena could wear the purple if he had the mind.

Birmingham forced him to change his attitude. The man of money was both good-hearted and large-minded, and had departed from the ways of commerce to seek distinction in politics. Stolid, without enthusiasm or dash, he could be stubbornly great in defence of principle. Success and a few millions had not changed his early theories of life. Pride in his race, delight in his religion, devotion to his party, increased in him as he rose to honor and fame. Arthur Dillon felt still more the seriousness of the position when this man came to ask his aid in securing the nomination.

"There never was a time in the history of the city," said Birmingham, "when a Catholic had such a chance to become mayor as now. Protestants would not have him, if he were a saint. But prejudice has abated, and confidence in us has increased since the war. Sullivan can have the position if he wants it. So can many others. All of them can afford to wait, while I cannot. I am not a politician, only a candidate. At any moment, by the merest accident, I may become one of the impossibles. I am anxious, therefore, to secure the nomination this year. I would like to get your influence. Where the balance is often turned by the weight of a hair one cannot be too alert."

"Do you think I have influence?" said Arthur humbly.

"You are the secretary," Birmingham answered, surprised.

"I shall have to use it in behalf of my uncle then."

"And if your uncle should not run?"

"I should be happy to give you my support."

Birmingham looked as blank as one before whom a door opens unexpectedly.

"You understand," continued Arthur, "that I have been absent too long to grasp the situation clearly. I think my uncle aspires...."

"A very worthy man," murmured Birmingham.

"You seem to think he has not much of a chance...."

"I know something of Sullivan's mind," Birmingham ventured, "and you know it still better. The exploits of the Senator in his youth—really it would be well for him not to expose himself to public ridicule...."

"I had not thought of that," said Arthur, when the other paused delicately. "You are quite right. He should not expose himself. As no other has done me the honor to ask my help, I am free to help you."

"You are more than kind. This nomination means election, and election means the opening of a fine career for me. Beyond lie the governorship, the senate, and perhaps higher things. To us these high offices have been closed as firmly as if they were in Sweden. I want the honor of breaking down the barriers."

"It is time. I hope you will get the honor," said Arthur gravely. He felt sadly about the Senator, and the shining ambition of his mother. How could he shatter their dreams? Yet in very pity the task had to be done, and when next he heard them vaporing on the glory of the future, he said casually:

"I know what your enemies will say if you come into contrast with Livingstone."

"I've heard it often enough," answered the Senator gayly. "If I'd listened to them I'd be still in the ring."

Then a suspicion overcame him, and he cried out bitterly:

"Do you say the same, Artie?"

"Rot. There isn't another like you in the whole world, uncle. If my vote could do it you'd go into the White House to-morrow. If you're in earnest in this business of the nomination, then I'm with you to the last ditch. Now when you become mayor of the first city in the land"—Oh, the smile which flashed on the faces of Anne and the Senator at this phrase!—"you become also the target of every journal in the country, of every comic paper, of every cartoonist. All your little faults, your blunders, past and present, are magnified. They sing of you in the music-halls. Oh, there would be no end to it! Ridicule is worse than abuse. It would hurt your friends more than you. You could not escape it, and no one could answer it. Is the prize worth the pain?"

Then he looked out of the window to escape seeing the pain in his mother's face, and the bitterness in the Senator's. He did not illustrate his contention with examples, for with these the Senator and his friends were familiar. A light arose on the poor man's horizon. Looking timidly at Anne, after a moment's pause, he said:

"I never thought of all that. You've put me on the right track, Artie. I thank you."

"What can I do," he whispered to Anne, "since it's plain he wants me to give in—no, to avoid the comic papers?"

"Whatever he wishes must be done," she replied with a gesture of despair.

"The boy is a wonder," thought the Senator. "He has us all under that little California thumb."

"I was a fool to think of the nomination," he said aloud as Arthur turned from the window. "Of course there'd be no end to the ridicule. Didn't the chap on Harper's, when I was elected for the Senate, rig me out as a gladiator, without a stitch on me, actually, Artie, not a stitch—most indecent thing—and show old Cicero in the same picture looking at me like John Everard, with a sneer, and singing to himself: a senator! No, I couldn't stand it. I give up. I've got as high as my kind can go. But there's one thing, if I can't be mayor myself, I can say who's goin' to be."

"Then make it Birmingham, uncle," Arthur suggested. "I would like to see him in that place next to you."

"And Birmingham it is, unless"—he looked at Anne limp with disappointment—"unless I take it into my head to name you for the place."

She gave a little cry of joy and sat up straight.

"Now God bless you for that word, Senator. It'll be a Dillon anyway."

"In that case I make Birmingham second choice," Arthur said seriously, accepting the hint as a happy ending to a rather painful scene.

The second part of the Chief's order proved more entertaining. To visit the Mayor and sound him on the question of his own renomination appeared to Arthur amusing rather than important; because of his own rawness for such a mission, and also because of their relationship. Livingstone was his kinsman. Of course John Everard gave the embassy character, but his reputation reflected on its usefulness. Nature had not yet provided a key to the character of Louis' father. Arthur endured him because Louis loved him, quoted him admiringly, and seemed to understand him most of the time; but he could not understand an Irishman who maintained, as a principle of history, the inferiority of his race to the English, traced its miseries to its silly pride, opposed all schemes of progress until his principle was accepted, and placed the salvation of his people in that moment when they should have admitted the inferiority imposed by nature, and laid aside their wretched conceit. This perverse nature had a sociable, even humorous side, and in a sardonic way loved its own.

"I have often wondered," Arthur said, when they were discussing the details of the mission to Livingstone, "how your tough fiber ever generated beings so tender and beautiful as Mona, and Louis, and the Trumps. And now I'm wondering why Sullivan associates you and me in this business. Is it his plan to sink the Mayor deeper in his own mud?"

"Whatever his plan I'd like to know what he means in sending with me to the noblest official in the city and the land, for that matter, the notorious orator of a cheap banquet."

"I think it means that Quincy must apologize to the Irish, or nominate himself," said Arthur slowly.

A lively emotion touched him when he first entered the room where the Mayor sat stately and gracious. In him the Endicott features were emphatic and beautiful. Tall, ruddy, perfectly dressed, with white hair and moustache shining like silver, and dark blue eyes full of fire, the aristocrat breathed from him like a perfume. His greeting both for Everard and Dillon had a graciousness tinged with contempt; a contempt never yet perceived by Everard, but perceived and promptly answered on Arthur's part with equal scorn.

"Mr. Dillon comes from Sullivan," said Everard, "to ask you, as a condition of renomination, that you take back your remarks on the Irish last winter. You did them good. They are so soaked in flattery, the flattery of budding orators, that your talk wakes them to the truth."

"I take nothing back," said the Mayor in a calm, sweet voice to which feeling gave an edge.

"Then you do not desire the nomination of Tammany Hall?" Arthur said with a placid drawl, which usually exasperated Everard and other people.

"But I do," the Mayor answered quickly, comprehending on the instant the quality of this antagonist, feeling his own insolence in the tone. "I merely decline the conditions."

"Then you must nominate yourself, for the Irish won't vote for you," cried Everard.

"The leaders would like to give you the nomination, Mr. Livingstone. You may have it, if you can find the means to placate offended voters for your behavior and your utterances on St. Patrick's Day."

"Go down on your knees at once, Mayor," sneered Everard.

"I hope Your Honor does not pay too much attention to the opinions of this gentleman," said Arthur with a gesture for his companion. "He's a Crusoe in politics. There's no one else on his island. You have a history, sir, which is often told in the Irish colony here. I have heard it often since my return home——"

"This is the gentleman who spoke of your policy at the Donnybrook banquet," Everard interrupted.

Livingstone made a sign for silence, and took a closer look at Arthur.

"The Irish do not like you, they have no faith in you as a fair man, they say that you are always planning against them, that you are responsible for the deviltries practised upon them through gospel missions, soup kitchens, kidnapping industries, and political intrigues. Whether these things be true, it seems to me that a candidate ought to go far out of his way to destroy such fancies."

"A very good word, fancies! Are you going to make your famous speech over again?" said Everard with the ready sneer.

"Can you deny that what I have spoken is the truth?"

"It is not necessary that he should," Livingstone answered quietly. "I am not interested in what some people say of me. Tell Mr. Sullivan I am ready to accept the nomination, but that I never retract, never desert a position."

This young man nettled and irritated the Mayor. His insolence, the insolence of his own class, was so subtly and politely expressed, that no fault could be found; and, though his inexperience was evident, he handled a ready blade and made no secret of his disdain. Arthur did not know to what point of the compass the short conversation had carried them, but he took a boy's foolish delight in teasing the irritated men.

"It all comes to this: you must nominate yourself," said Everard.

"And divide the party?"

"I am not sure it would divide the party," Livingstone condescended to say, for he was amused at the simple horror of Dillon. "It might unite it under different circumstances."

"That's the remark of a statesman. And it would rid us, Arthur Dillon, of Sullivan and his kind, who should be running a gin-mill in Hester street."

"If he didn't have a finer experience in politics, and a bigger brain for managing men than any three in the city," retorted Arthur icily. "He is too wise to bring the prejudices of race and creed into city politics. If Your Honor runs on an independent ticket, the Irish will vote against you to a man. One would think that far-seeing men, interested in the city and careful of the future, would hesitate to make dangerous rivalries of this sort. Is there not enough bigotry now?"

"Not that I know," said the Mayor with a pretence of indifference. "We are all eager to keep the races in good humor, but at the same time to prevent the ascendancy of a particular race, except the native. It is the Irish to-day. It will be the Germans to-morrow. Once checked thoroughly, there will be no trouble in the future."

The interview ended with these words. By that time Arthur had gone beyond his political depth, and was glad to make his adieu to the great man. He retained one honest conclusion from the interview.

"Birmingham can thank this pig-headed gentleman," said he to Everard, "for making him mayor of New York."

John snorted his contempt of the statement and its abettors. The report of Arthur disquieted the Chief and his counselors, who assembled to hear and discuss it.

"It's regrettable," was Sullivan's opinion. "Livingstone makes a fine figure in a campaign. He has an attractive name. His independence is popular, and does no harm. He hasn't the interests of the party at heart though. The question now is, can we persuade the Irish to overlook his peculiarities about the green and St. Patrick's Day?"

"A more pertinent question," Vandervelt said after a respectful silence, "would be as to the next available man. I favor Birmingham."

"And I," echoed the Senator.

Arthur listened to the amicable discussion that followed with thoughts not for the candidate, but for the three men who thus determined the history of the city for the next two years. The triumvirs! Cloudy scenes of half-forgotten history rose before him, strange names uttered themselves. Mark Antony and young Octavius and weak Lepidus! He felt suddenly the seriousness of life, and wonder at the ways of men; for he had never stood so near the little gods that harness society to their policies, never till now had he seen with his own eyes how the world is steered. The upshot of endless talk and trickery was the nomination of Birmingham, and the placing of an independent ticket in the field with the Mayor at its head.

"Now for the fun," said Grahame. "It's going to be a big fight. If you want to see the working out of principles keep close to me while the fight is on, and I'll explain things."

The explanation was intricate and long. What did not matter he forgot, but the picturesque things, which touched his own life afterwards very closely, he kept in mind. Trotting about with the journalist they encountered one day a cleric of distinguished appearance.

"Take a good look at him. He's the man that steers Livingstone."

"I thought it was John Everard."

"John doesn't even steer himself," said Grahame savagely. "But take a view of the bishop."

Arthur saw a face whose fine features were shaded by melancholy, tinged with jaundice, gloomy in expression; the mouth drooped at the corners, and the eyes were heavy; one could hardly picture that face lighted by humor or fancy.

"We refuse to discuss certain things in political circles here," Grahame continued. "One of them is the muddle made of politics every little while by dragging in religion. The bishop, Bishop Bradford is his name, never loses a chance to make a mud pie. The independent ticket is his pie this year. He secured Livingstone to bake it, for he's no baker himself. He believes in God, but still more does he believe that the Catholics of this city should be kept in the backyard of society. If they eat his pie, their only ambition will be to live in an American backyard. No word of this ever finds its way into the journals, but it is the secret element in New York politics."

"I thought everything got into the newspapers," Arthur complained. "Blamed if I can get hold of the thing."

"You're right, everything goes into the sewers, but not in a formal way. What's the reason for the independent ticket? Printed: revolt against a domineering boss. Private: to shake the Irish in politics. Do you see? Now, here is a campaign going on. It began last week. It ends in November. But the other campaign has neither beginning nor end. I'll give you object-lessons. There's where the fun comes in."

The first object-lesson brought Arthur to the gospel-hall managed by a gentleman whom he had not seen or thought of since the pleasant celebration of St. Patrick's day. Rev. Mr. McMeeter, evangelist of the expansive countenance, was warming up his gathering of sinners that night with a twofold theme: hell for sinners, and the same, embroidered intensely, for Rome.

"He handles it as Laocoon did the serpents," whispered Grahame.

In a very clerical costume, on a small platform, the earnest man writhed, twisted, and sweated, with every muscle in strain, his face working in convulsions, his lungs beating heaven with sound. He outdid the Trojan hero in the leaps across the platform, the sinuous gestures, the rendings of the enemy; until that moment when he drew the bars of hell for the unrepentant, and flung Rome into the abyss. This effective performance, inartistic and almost grotesque, never fell to the level of the ridiculous, for native power was strong in the man. The peroration raised Livingstone to the skies, chained Sullivan in the lowest depths of the Inferno, and introduced as a terrible example a brand just rescued from the burning.

"Study her, observe her," said Grahame. "These brands have had curious burnings."

She spoke with ease, a little woman in widow's weeds, coquettishly displaying silken brown hair under the ruching of a demure bonnet. Taking her own account—"Which some reporter wrote for her no doubt," Grahame commented—she had been a sinner, a slave of Rome, a castaway bound hand and foot to degrading superstition, until rescued by the noblest of men and led by spirit into the great work of rescuing others from the grinding slavery of the Church of Rome. Very tenderly she appealed to the audience to help her. The prayers of the saints were about to be answered. God had raised up a leader who would strike the shackles off the limbs of the children. The leader, of course, was Mayor Livingstone.

"You see how the spirit works," said Grahame.

Then came an interruption. The Brand introduced a girl of twelve as an illustration of her work of rescue among the dreadful hirelings of Rome. A feeble and ragged woman in the audience rose and cried out that the child was her lost Ellen. The little girl made a leap from the platform but was caught dexterously by the Brand and flung behind the scenes. A stout woman shook her fist in the Brand's face and called her out of her name; and also gave the evangelist a slap in the stomach which taught him a new kind of convulsion. His aids fell upon the stout woman, the tough men of the audience fell upon the aids, the mother of Ellen began shrieking, and some respectable people ran to the door to call the police. A single policeman entered cooly, and laid about him with his stick so as to hit the evangelists with frequency. For a few minutes all things turned to dust, confusion, and bad language. The policeman restored order, dismissed Ellen with her mother, calmed the stout woman, and cautioned the host. The Brand had watched the scene calmly and probably enjoyed it. When Arthur left with Grahame Mr. McMeeter had just begun an address which described the policeman as a satellite, a janizary, and a pretorian of Rome.

"They're doing a very neat job for Livingstone," said Grahame. "Maybe there are fifty such places about the town. Little Ellen was lucky to see her mother again. Most of these stolen children are shipped off to the west, and turned into very good Protestants, while their mothers grieve to death."

"Livingstone ought to be above such work."

"He is. He has nothing in common with a kidnapper like McMeeter. He just accepts what is thrown at him. McMeeter throws his support at him. Only high-class methods attract a man like Livingstone. Sister Claire, the Escaped Nun, is one of his methods. We'll go and see her too. She lectures at Chickering Hall to-night ... comes on about half after nine—tells all about her escape from a prison in a convent ... how she was enslaved ... How sin thrives in convents ... and appeals for help for other nuns not yet escaped ... with reference to the coming election and the great deliverer, Livingstone ... makes a pile of money."

"You seem envious," Arthur hinted.

"Who wouldn't? I can't make a superfluous cent being virtuous, and Sister Claire clears thousands by lying about her neighbors."

They took a seat among the reporters, in front of a decorous, severe, even godly audience, who awaited the coming of the Escaped Nun with religious interest. Amid a profound stillness, she came upon the stage from a rear door, ushered in by an impressive clergyman; and walked forward, a startling figure, to the speaker's place, where she stood with the dignity and modesty of her profession, and a self-possession all her own.

"Stunning," Grahame whispered. "Costume incorrect, but dramatic."

Her dress and veil were of pale yellow, some woolen stuff, the coif and gamp were of white linen, and a red cross marked the entire front of her dress, the arms of the cross resting on her bosom. Arthur stared. Her face of a sickly pallor had deep circles under the eyes, but seemed plump enough for her years. For a moment she stood quietly, with drooping head and uplifted eyes, her hands clasped, a picture of beauty. After a gasp and a pause the audience broke into warm applause long continued. In a sweet and sonorous voice she made her speech, and told her story. It sounded like the Lady of the Lake at times. Grahame yawned—he had heard it so often. Arthur gathered that she had somewhere suffered the tortures of the Inquisition, that innocent girls were enjoying the same experience in the convents of the country, that they were deserted both of God and man, and that she alone had taken up their cause. She was a devoted Catholic, and could never change her faith; if she appealed to her audience, it was only to interest them in behalf of her suffering sisters.

"That's the artistic touch," Grahame whispered again. "But it won't pay. Her revelations must get more salaciousness after election."

Arthur hardly heard him. Where had he seen and heard this woman before? Though he could not recall a feature of her face, form, dress, manner, yet he had the puzzling sense of having met her long ago, that her personality was not unfamiliar. Still her features baffled the sense. He studied her in vain. When her lecture ended, with drooping head and clasped hands, she modestly withdrew amid fervid acclamations.

Strange and bewildering were the currents of intrigue that made up a campaign in the great city; not to mention the hidden forces whose current no human could discern. Arthur went about exercising his talent for oratory in behalf of Birmingham, and found consolation in the sincere applause of humble men, and of boys subdued by the charm of his manner. He learned that the true orator expresses not only his own convictions and emotions, but also the unspoken thoughts, the mute feelings, the cloudy convictions of the simple multitude. He is their interpreter to themselves. The thought gave him reverence for that power which had lain long dormant in him until sorrow waked its noble harmonies. The ferment in the city astonished him. The very boys fought in the vacant lots, and reveled in the strategy of crooked streets and blind alleys. Kindly women, suddenly reminded that the Irish were a race of slaves, banged their doors, and flirted their skirts in scorn. Workmen lost their job here and there, mates fought at the workbench, the bully found his excuse to beat the weak, all in the name of Livingstone. The small business men, whose profits came from both sides, did severe penance for their sins of sanded sugar and deficient weight. The police found their nerves overstrained.

To him the entire drama of the campaign had the interest of an impossible romance. It was a struggle between a poor people, cast out by one nation, fighting for a footing on new soil, and a successful few, who had forgotten the sufferings, the similar struggle of their fathers. He rejoiced when Birmingham won. He had not a single regret for the defeat of Livingstone, though it hurt him that a bad cause should have found its leader in his kinsman.



CHAPTER XI.

AN ENDICOTT HEIR.

Meanwhile what of the world and the woman he had left behind? A year had passed, his new personality had begun to fit, and no word or sign direct from the Endicott circle had reached him. Time seemed to have created a profound silence between him and them. Indirectly, however, through the journals, he caught fleeting glimpses of that rage which had filled Sonia with hatred and despair. A description of his person appeared as an advertisement, with a reward of five thousand dollars for information that would lead to the discovery of his whereabouts, or to a certainty of his death. At another time the journals which printed both reward and notice, had a carefully worded plea from his Aunt Lois for letter or visit to soothe the anxieties of her last days. He shook over this reminder of her faithful love until he analyzed the circumstances which had probably led to this burst of publicity. Early in July a letter had informed Sonia of his visit to Wisconsin; two months later a second letter described, in one word, her character, and in six her sentence: adulteress, you shall never see me again. A week's work by her lawyers would have laid bare the fact that the Endicott estate had vanished, and that her own small income was her sole possession.

A careful study of his motives would have revealed in part his plans, and a detective had probably spent a month in a vain pursuit. The detective's report must have startled even the lawyers. All clues led to nothing. Sonia had no money to throw away, nor would she dare to appeal too strongly to Aunt Lois and Horace Endicott's friends, who might learn too much, if she were too candid. The two who loved him were not yet really worried by his disappearance, since they had his significant letter. In time their confidence would give place to anxiety, and heaven and earth would be moved to uncover his hiding-place. This loving notice was a trap set by Sonia. On the road which led from Mulberry Street to Cambridge, from the home of Anne Dillon to the home of Lois Endicott, Sonia's detective lay in wait for the returning steps of the lost husband, and Sonia's eyes devoured the shadows, her ears drank in every sound. He laughed, he grew warm with the feeling of triumph. She would watch and listen in vain. The judgment-seat of God was the appointment he had made for her.

He began now to wonder at the completeness of his own disappearance. His former self seemed utterly beyond the reach of men. The detectives had not only failed to find him, they had not even fallen upon his track by accident. How singular that an Irish colony in the metropolis should be so far in fact and sympathy from the aristocracy. Sonia and her detectives would have thought of Greenland and the Eskimos, Ashanti, Alaska, the court of China, as possible refuges, but never of Cherry Street and the children of Erin, who were farther off from the Endicotts and the Livingstones than the head-hunters of Borneo. Had her detectives by any chance met him on the road, prepared for any disguise, how dumb and deaf and sightless would they become when his position as the nephew of Senator Dillon, the secretary of Sullivan, the orator of Tammany Hall, and the pride of Cherry Hill, shone upon them.

This triumph he would have enjoyed the more could he have seen the effect which the gradual change in his personality had produced on Monsignor O'Donnell, for whom the Endicott episode proved the most curious experience of his career. Its interest was discounted by the responsibility imposed upon him. His only comfort lay in the thought that at any moment he could wash his hands of the affair, before annoying or dangerous consequences began to threaten. He suffered from constant misgivings. The drama of a change in personality went on daily under his eyes, and almost frightened him by its climaxes, which were more distinct to him than to Endicott. First, the pale, worn, savage, and blood-haunted boy who came to him in his first agony; then the melancholy, bearded, yet serene invalid who lay in Anne Dillon's house and was welcomed as her son; next, the young citizen of the Irish colony, known as a wealthy and lucky Californian, bidding for honors as the nephew of Senator Dillon; and last the surprising orator, the idol of the Irish people, their devoted friend, who spared neither labor nor money in serving them.

The awesome things in this process were the fading away of the Endicott and the growing distinctness of the Dillon. At first the old personality lay concealed under the new as under a mask; but something like absorption by degrees obliterated the outlines of Endicott and developed the Dillon. Daily he noticed the new features which sprang into sight between sunrise and sunrise. It was not only the fashion of dress, of body, and of speech, which mimics may adopt; but also a change of countenance, a turn of mind which remained permanent, change of gesture, a deeper color of skin, greater decision in movement; in fact, so many and so minute mutations that he could not recall one-tenth the number. Endicott for instance had possessed an eloquent, lustrous, round eye, with an expression delightfully indolent; in Dillon the roundness and indolence gave way to a malicious wrinkle at the outside corners, which gave his glance a touch of bitterness. Endicott had been gracefully slow in his movement; Dillon was nervous and alert. A fascination of terror held Monsignor as Arthur Dillon grew like his namesake more and more. Out of what depths had this new personality been conjured up? What would be the end of it? He said to himself that a single incident, the death of Sonia, would be enough to destroy on the instant this Dillon and resurrect the Endicott. Still he was not sure, and the longer this terrible process continued the less likely a change back to the normal.

Morbid introspection had become a part of the young man's pain. The study of the changes in himself proved more pleasant than painful. His mind swung between bitter depression, and warm, natural joy. His moments of deepest joy were coincident with an interesting condition of mind. On certain days he completely forgot the Endicott and became the Dillon almost perfectly. Then he no longer acted a part, but was absorbed in it. Most of the time he was Endicott playing the role of Dillon, without effort and with much pleasure, indeed, but still an actor. When memory and grief fled from him together, as on St. Patrick's Day, his new personality dominated each instant of consciousness, and banished thought of the old. Then a new spirit rose in him; not merely a feeling of relief from pain, but a positive influence which led him to do surprising and audacious things, like the speech at the banquet. It was a divine forgetfulness, which he prayed might be continuous. He loved to think that some years of his life would see the new personality in full possession of him, while the old would be but a feeble memory, a mere dream of an impossible past. Wonderful, if the little things of the day, small but innumerable, should wipe out in the end an entire youth that took twenty years in building. What is the past after all but a vague horizon made emphatic by the peaks of memory? What is the future but a bare plain with no emphasis at all? Man lives only in the present, like the God whose spirit breathes in him.

Sonia was bent on his not forgetting, however. His heart died within him when he read in the journals the prominent announcement of the birth of a son to the lost Horace Endicott, whose woful fate still troubled the short memory of editors. A son! He crushed the paper in his anguish and fell again into the old depression. Oh, how thoroughly had God punished the hidden crimes of this lost woman! A child would have saved her, and in her hatred of him she had ... he always refused to utter to himself the thought which here rose before his mind. His head bent in agony. This child was not his, perhaps not even hers. She had invented it as a trap for him. Were it really his little one, his flesh and blood, how eagerly he would have thrown off his present life and flown to its rescue from such a mother!

Sonia did not hope for such a result. It was her fraudulent mortgage on the future and its possibilities. The child would be heir to his property; would have the sympathy and inherit the possessions of his Aunt Lois; would lull the suspicions concerning its mother, and conciliate the gossips; and might win him back from hiding, if only to expose the fraud and take shame from the Endicotts. What a clever and daring criminal was this woman! With a cleverness always at fault because of her rare unscrupulousness. Even wickedness has its delicacy, its modesty, its propriety, which a criminal respects in proportion to his genius for crime. Sonia offended all in her daring, and lost at every turn. This trap would catch her own feet. A child! A son! He shuddered at the thought, and thanked God that he had escaped a new dishonor. His blood would never mingle with the puddle in Sonia's veins.

He would not permit her to work this iniquity, and to check her he must risk final success in his plan of disappearance by violating the first principle of the art: that there be no further connection with the past. The detectives were watching the path by which he would return, counting perhaps upon his rage over this fraudulent heir. He must give them their opportunity, if he would destroy Sonia's schemes against Aunt Lois, but felt sure that they would be unprepared to seize it, even if they dreamed it at hand. He had a plan which might accomplish his object without endangering his position; and one night he slipped away from the city on a train for Boston, got off at a lonely station, and plunged into the darkness without a word for a sleepy station-master.

At dawn after two hours' walk he passed the pond which had once seemed to him the door of escape. Poor old friend! Its gray face lay under the morning sky like the face of a dead saint, luminous in its outlines, as if the glory of heaven shone through; still, oh, so still, and deep as if it mirrored immensity. Little complaining murmurs, like the whimperings of a sleepy child, rose up from the reeds, sweeter than any songs. He paused an instant to compare the then and now, but fled with a groan as the old sorrow, the old madness, suddenly seized him with the powerful grip of that horrid time. In fact, every step of the way to Martha's house was torture. He saw that for him there were other dangers than Sonia and her detectives, in leaving the refuge which God had provided for him. Oh, never could he be too grateful for the blessing, never could he love enough the holy man who had suggested it, never could he repay the dear souls whose love had made it beautiful. They rose up before him as he hurried down the road, the lovable, humorous, rollicking, faulty clan; and he would not have exchanged them for the glories of a court, for the joys of Arcady.

The sun and he found Martha busy with household duties. She did not know him and he said not a word to enlighten her; he was a messenger from a friend who asked of her a service, the carrying of a letter to a certain woman in Boston; and no one should see her deliver the letter, or learn her name, or know her coming and going; for her friend, in hiding, and pursued, must not be discovered. Then she knew that he came from Horace, and shed tears that he lived well and happy, but could not believe, when he had made himself known, that this was the same man of a year before. They spent a happy day together in perfecting the details of her visit to Aunt Lois, which had to be accomplished with great care and secrecy. There was to be no correspondence between them. In two weeks he would come again to hear a report of her success or failure. If she were not at home, he would come two weeks later. She could tell Aunt Lois whatever the old lady desired to hear about him, and assure her that nothing would induce him ever to return to his former life. The letter said as much. When night came they went off over the hills together to the nearest railway station, where he left her to find her way to the city, while he went on to a different station and took a late train to New York. By these methods he felt hopeful that his violation of the rules of disappearing would have no evil results for him, beyond that momentary return of the old anguish which had frightened him more than Sonia's detectives.

In four weeks old Martha returned from her mission, and told this story as they sat in the pleasant kitchen near a cheery fire.

"I rented a room in the neighborhood of your Aunt Lois' house, and settled myself to wait for the most natural opportunity to meet her. It was long in coming, for she had been sick; but when she got better I saw her going out to ride, and a little later she took to walking in the park with her maid. There she often sat, and chatted with passing children, or with old women like herself, poor old things trying to get life from the air. The maid is a spy. She noted every soul about, and had an extra glance for me when your aunt spoke to me, after I had waited three weeks for a word. I told her my story, as I told it to you. She was interested, and I must go to her house to take lunch with her. I refused. I was not used to such invitations, but I would call on her at other times. And the maid listened the more. She was never out of hearing, nor out of sight, until Aunt Lois would get into a rage, and bid her take a walk. It was then I handed her the letter under my shawl. The maid's eyes could not see through the shawl. I told her what you bid me: that you would never return again, no more than if you were dead, that she must burn the letter so that none would know a letter had been received and burned, and that she would understand many things when she had read it; most particular that she was surrounded by spies, and that she must go right on as if nothing had happened, and deceive as she had been deceived.

"I met her only twice after that. I told her my plan to deceive the maid. I was a shrewd beggar studying to get money out of her, with a story about going to my son in Washington. She bid the maid secretly find out if I was worthy, and I saw the maid in private, and begged her to report of me favorably, and she might have half the money, and then I would go away. And the maid was deceived, for she brought me fifty dollars from your aunt, and kept thirty. She would not give even the twenty until I had promised to go away without complaint. So I went away, and stayed with a friend in Worcester. Since I came home I have not seen or heard of any stranger in this neighborhood. So that it is likely I have not been suspected or followed. And the letter was burned. And at the first fair chance your Aunt will go to Europe, taking with her her two dearest relatives. She called them Sonia Endicott and her child Horace, and she would keep them with her while she lived. At the last she sent you her love, though she could not understand some of the things you were doing, but that was your own business. And she never shed a tear, but kept smiling, and her smile was terrible."

He could believe that. Sonia might as well have lived in the glare of Vesuvius as in the enlightened smile of Aunt Lois. The schemer was now in her own toils, and only at the death of the brave old woman would she know her failure. Oh, how sweet and great is even human justice!

"If I do not see you again, Martha," said Arthur as he kissed the dear old mother farewell, "remember that I am happy, and that you made me so."



THE GREEN AGAINST THE RED.



CHAPTER XII.

THE HATE OF HANNIBAL.

Owen Ledwith had a theory concerning the invasion of Ireland, which he began to expound that winter. Since few know much more about the military art than the firing of a shotgun, he won the scorn of all except his daughter and Arthur Dillon. In order to demonstrate his theory Ledwith was willing to desert journalism, to fit out a small ship, and to sail into an Irish harbor from New York and back, without asking leave from any government; if only the money were supplied by the patriots to buy the ship and pay the sailors. His theory held that a fleet of many ships might sail unquestioned from the unused harbors of the American coast, and land one hundred thousand armed men in Ireland, where a blow might be struck such as never had been yet in the good cause. Military critics denied the possibility of such an invasion. He would have liked to perform the feat with a single ship, to convince them.

"I have a suspicion," he said one night to his daughter, "that this young Dillon would give me five thousand dollars for the asking. He is a Fenian now."

"Is it possible?" Honora cried in astonishment.

"Well, I don't see any reason for wonder, Nora. He has been listening to me for three months, vaporing over the wrongs of Ireland; he's of Celtic blood; he has been an adventurer in California; he has the money, it would seem. Why, the wonder would be if he did not do what all the young fellows are doing."

"I have not quite made up my mind about him yet, father," the young woman said thoughtfully.

"He's all man," said the father.

"True, but a man who is playing a part."

He laid down his pipe in his surprise, but she smiled assuringly.

"Well, it's fine acting, if you call it so, my love. In a little over a year he has made himself the pride of Cherry Hill. Your great friend,"—this with a sniff—"Monsignor O'Donnell, is his sponsor. He speaks like the orator born and with sincerity, though he knows little of politics. But he has ideas. Then did you ever meet a merrier lad? Such a singer and dancer, such a favorite among boys and girls! He seems to be as lovable as his uncle the Senator, and the proof of it is that all confide in him. However, I have faith in your instincts, Nora. What do they say?"

"He looks at us all like a spectator sitting in front of a stage. Of course I have heard the people talk about him. He is a popular idol, except to his mother who seems to be afraid of him. He has moods of sadness, gloom, and Miss Conyngham told me she would wager he left a wife in California. While all like him, each one has a curious thing to tell about him. They all say it is the sickness which he had on coming home, and that the queer things are leaving him. The impression he gives me is that of one acting a part. I must say it is fading every day, but it hinders me from feeling quite satisfied about him."

"Well, one thing is in his favor: he listens to me," said Ledwith. "He is one of the few men to whom I am not a crazy dreamer, crazy with love of Erin and hate of her shameless foe."

"And I love him for that, father," she said tenderly. "There is no acting in his regard and esteem for you, nothing insincere in his liking for us, even if we cannot quite understand it. For we are queer, Daddy," putting her arms about him. "Much love for our old home and much thinking how to help it, and more despair and worry, have shut us off from the normal life, until we have forgotten the qualities which make people liked. Poor Daddy!"

"Better that than doing nothing," he said sadly. "To struggle and fight once in a while mean living; to sit still would be to die."

Arthur was ushered in just then by the servant, and took his place comfortably before the fire. One could see the regard which they felt for him; on the part of Ledwith it was almost affection. Deeply and sincerely he returned their kindly feeling.

He had a host of reasons for his regard. Their position seemed as strange to the humdrum world as his own. They were looked on as queer people, who lived outside the ruts for the sake of an enslaved nation. The idea of losing three meals a day and a fixed home for a hopeless cause tickled the humor of the practical. Their devotion to an idea hardly surpassed their devotion to each other. He mourned for her isolation, she mourned over his failures to free his native land.

"I have almost given the cause up," he said once to Arthur, "because I feel my helplessness. I cannot agree with the leaders nor they with me. But if I gave up she would worry herself to death over my loss of hope. I keep on, half on her account, half in the hope of striking the real thing at the end."

"It seems to be also the breath of her life," said Arthur.

"No, it is not," the father replied. "Have you not heard her talk of your friend, Louis Everard? How she dwells on his calling, and the happiness of it! My poor child, her whole heart yearns for the cloister. She loves all such things. I have urged her to follow her inclinations, though I know it would be the stroke of death for me, but she will not leave me until I die."

"You must not take us too seriously," she had once said, "in this matter of Irish liberties. My father is hopelessly out of the current, for his health is only fair, and he has quarreled with his leaders. I have given up hope of achieving anything. But if he gives up he dies. So, I encourage him and keep marching on, in spite of the bitterest disappointments. Perhaps something may come of it in the end."

"Not a doubt of it," said Arthur, uttering a great thought. "Every tear, every thought, every heart-throb, every drop of sweat and blood, expended for human liberty, must be gathered up by God and laid away in the treasury of heaven. The despots of time shall pay the interest of that fund here or there."

A woman whose ideals embraced the freedom of an oppressed people, devotion to her father, and love for the things of God, would naturally have a strong title to the respect of Arthur Dillon; and she was, besides, a beautiful woman, who spoke great things in a voice so sweetly responsive to her emotions that father and friend listened as to music. The Ledwiths had a comfortable income, when they set to work, earned by his clever pen and her exquisite voice. The young man missed none of her public appearances, though he kept the fact to himself. She was on those occasions the White Lady in earnest. Her art had warmth indeed, but the coldness and aloofness of exalted purity put her beyond the zone of desire; a snowy peak, distinct to the eye, but inaccessible. When they were done with greetings Arthur brought up a specific subject.

"It has gone about that I have become a Fenian," he said, "and I have been called on to explain to many what chance the movement has of succeeding. There was nothing in the initiation which gave me that information."

"You can say: none," Ledwith answered bitterly. "And if you quote me as your authority there will be many new members in the brotherhood."

"Then why keep up the movement, if nothing is to come of it?"

"The fighting must go on," Ledwith replied, "from generation to generation in spite of failure. The Fenian movement will fail like all its predecessors. The only reason for its continuance is that its successor may succeed. Step by step! Few nations are as lucky as this to win in the first fight. Our country is the unluckiest of all. Her battle has been on seven hundred years."

"But I think there must be more consolation in the fight than your words imply;" Arthur declared. "There must be a chance, a hope of winning."

"The hope has never died but the chance does not yet exist, and there is no chance for the Fenians," Ledwith answered with emphasis. "The consolation lies for most of us in keeping up the fight. It is a joy to let our enemy, England, know, and to make her feel, that we hate her still, and that our hate keeps pace with her advancing greatness. It is pleasant to prove to her, even by an abortive rising, that all her crimes, rogueries, and diplomacies against us have been vain to quench our hate. We have been scattered over the world, but our hate has been intensified. It is joy to see her foam at the mouth like a wild beast, then whine to the world over the ingratitude of the Irish; to hear the representatives of her tax-payers howl in Parliament at the expense of putting down regular rebellions; to see the landlords flying out of the country they have ravaged, and the Orangemen white with the fear of slaughter. Then these movements are an education. The children are trained to a knowledge of the position, to hatred of the English power, and their generation takes up the fight where the preceding left it."

"Hate is a terrible thing," said the young man. "Is England so hateful then?"

Honora urged him by looks to change the subject, for her father knew no bounds in speaking of his country's enemy, but he would not lift his eyes to her face. He wished to hear Owen Ledwith express his feelings with full vent on the dearest question to his heart. The man warmed up as he spoke, fire in his eyes, his cheeks, his words, and gestures.

"She is a fiend from hell," he replied, hissing the words quietly. Deep emotion brought exterior calm to Ledwith. "But that is only a feeling of mine. Let us deal with the facts. Like the fabled vampire England hangs upon the throat of Ireland, battening on her blood. Populous England, vanishing Ireland! What is the meaning of it? One people remains at home by the millions, the other flies to other lands by the millions. Because the hell-witch is good to her own. For them the trade of the world, the opening of mines, the building of factories, the use of every natural power, the coddling of every artificial power. They go abroad only to conquer and tax the foreigner for the benefit of those at home. Their harbors are filled with ships, and their treasury with the gold of the world. For our people, there is only permission to work the soil, for the benefit of absentee landlords, or encouragement to depart to America. No mines, no factories, no commerce, no harbors, no ships, in a word no future. So the Irish do not stay at home. The laws of England accomplished this destruction of trade, of art, of education, oh, say it at once, of life. Damnable laws, fashioned by the horrid greed of a rich people, that could not bear to see a poor people grow comfortable. They called over to their departments of trade, of war, of art, to court, camp, and studio, our geniuses, gave them fame, and dubbed them Englishmen; the castaways, the Irish in America and elsewhere are known as 'the mere Irish.'"

"It is very bitter," said Arthur, seeing the unshed tears in Honora's eyes.

"I wonder how we bear it," Ledwith continued. "We have not the American spirit, you may be sure. I can fancy the colonists of a hundred years back meeting an Irish situation; the men who faced the Indian risings, and, worse, the subduing of the wilderness. For them it would have been equal rights and privileges and chances, or the bottom of the sea for one of the countries. But we are poetic and religious, and murderous only when a Cromwell or a Castlereagh opens hell for us. However, the past is nothing; it is the present which galls us. The gilding of the gold and the painting of the lily are symbols of our present sufferings. After stripping and roasting us at home, this England, this hell-witch sends abroad into all countries her lies and slanders about us. Her spies, her professors, her gospellers, her agents, her sympathizers everywhere, can tell you by the yard of our natural inferiority to the Chinese. Was it not an American bishop who protested in behalf of the Chinese of San Francisco that they were more desirable immigrants than the sodden Irish? God! this clean, patient, laborious race, whose chastity is notorious, whose Christianity has withstood the desertion of Christ——"

Honora gave a half scream at the blasphemy, but at once controlled herself.

"I take that back, child—it was only madness," Ledwith said. "You see, Dillon, how scarred my soul is with this sorrow. But the bishop and the Chinese! Not a word against that unfortunate people, whose miseries are greater even than ours, and spring from the same sources. At least they are not lied about, and a bishop, forsooth! can compare them, pagans in thought and act and habit though they be, with the most moral and religious people in the world, to his own shame. It is the English lie working. The Irish are inferior, and of a low, groveling, filthy nature; they are buried both in ignorance and superstition; their ignorance can be seen in their hatred of British rule, and their refusal to accept the British religion; wherever they go in the wide world, they reduce the average of decency and intelligence and virtue; for twenty years these lies have been sung in the ears of the nations, until only the enemies of England have a welcome for us. Behold our position in this country. Just tolerated. No place open to us except that of cleaning the sewers. Every soul of us compelled to fight, as Birmingham did the other day, for a career, and to fight against men like Livingstone, who should be our friends. And in the hearts of the common people a hatred for us, a disgust, even a horror, not inspired by the leprous Chinese. We have earned all this hatred and scorn and opposition from England, because in fighting with her we have observed the laws of humanity, when we should have wiped her people off the face of the earth as Saul smote Agag and his corrupt people, as Cromwell treated us. Do you wonder that I hate this England far more than I hate sin, or the devil, or any monstrous creature which feeds upon man."

"I do not wonder," said Arthur. "With you there is always an increasing hatred of England?"

"Until death," cried Ledwith, leaping from his seat, as if the fire of hate tortured him, and striding about the room. "To fight every minute against this monster, to fight in every fashion, to irritate her, to destroy a grain of her influence, in a single mind, in a little community, to expose her pretense, her sham virtues, her splendid hypocrisy, these are the breath of my life. That hate will never perish until——"

He paused as if in painful thought, and passed his hand over his forehead.

"Until the wrongs of centuries have been avenged," said Arthur. Ledwith sat down with a scornful laugh.

"That's a sentence from the orations of our patriotic orators," he sneered. "What have we to do with the past? It is dead. The oppressed and injured are dead. God has settled their cause long ago. It would be a pretty and consoling sight to look at the present difference between the English Dives and the Irish Lazarus! The vengeance of God is a terrible thing. No! my hate is of the present. It will not die until we have shaken the hold of this vampire, until we have humiliated and disgraced it, and finally destroyed it. I don't speak of retaliation. The sufferings of the innocent and oppressed are not atoned for by the sufferings of other innocents and other oppressed. The people are blameless. The leaders, the accursed aristocracy of blood, of place, of money, these make the corporate vampire, which battens upon the weak and ignorant poor; only in England they give them a trifle more, flatter them with skill, while the Irish are kicked out like beggars."

He looked at Dillon with haggard eyes. Honora sat like a statue, as if waiting for the storm to pass.

"I have not sworn an oath like Hannibal," he said, "because God cannot be called as a witness to hate. But the great foe of Rome never observed his oath more faithfully than I shall that compact which I have made with myself and the powers of my nature: to turn all my strength and time and capacity into the channel of hate against England. Oh, how poor are words and looks and acts to express that fire which rages in the weakest and saddest of men."

He sank back with a gesture of weariness, and found Honora's hand resting on his tenderly.

"The other fire you have not mentioned, Daddy," she said wistfully, "the fire of a love which has done more for Erin than the fire of hate. For love is more than hate, Daddy."

"Ay, indeed," he admitted. "Much as I hate England, what is it to my love for her victim? Love is more than hate. One destroys, the other builds."

Ledwith, quite exhausted by emotion, became silent. The maid entered with a letter, which Honora opened, read silently, and handed to her father without comment. His face flushed with pleasure.

"Doyle Grahame writes me," he explained to Arthur, "that a friend, who wishes to remain unknown, has contributed five thousand dollars to testing my theory of an invasion of Ireland. That makes the expedition a certainty—for May."

"Then let me volunteer the first for this enterprise," said Arthur blithely.

"And me the second," cried Honora with enthusiasm.

"Accepted both," said Ledwith, with a proud smile, new life stealing into his veins.

Not for a moment did he suspect the identity of his benefactor, until Monsignor, worried over the risk for Arthur came to protest some days later. The priest had no faith in the military enterprise of the Fenians, and, if he smiled at Arthur's interest in conspiracy, saw no good reasons why he should waste his money and expose his life and liberty in a feeble and useless undertaking. His protest both to Arthur and others was vigorous.

"If you have had anything to do with making young Dillon a Fenian," he said, "and bringing him into this scheme of invasion, Owen, I would like you to undo the business, and persuade him to stay at home."

"Which I shall not do, you may be sure, Monsignor," replied the patriot politely. "I want such men. The enemy we fight sacrifices the flower of English youth to maintain its despotism; why should we shrink from sacrifice?"

"I do not speak of sacrifice," said Monsignor. "One man is the same as another. But there are grave reasons which demand the presence of this young man in America, and graver reasons why he should not spend his money incautiously."

"Well, he has not spent any money yet, so far as I know," Ledwith said.

The priest hesitated a moment, while the other looked at him curiously.

"You are not aware, then, that he has provided the money for your enterprise?" Honora uttered a cry, and Ledwith sprang from his chair in delighted surprise.

"Do you tell me that?" he shouted. "Honora, Honora, we have found the right man at last! Oh, I felt a hundred times that this young fellow was destined to work immense good for me and mine. God bless him forever and ever."

"Amen," said Honora, rejoicing in her father's joy.

"You know my opinion on these matters, Owen," said Monsignor.

"Ay, indeed, and of all the priests for that matter. Had we no religion the question of Irish freedom would have been settled long ago. Better for us had we been pagans or savages. Religion teaches us only how to suffer and be slaves."

"And what has patriotism done for you?" Monsignor replied without irritation.

"Little enough, to be sure."

"Now, since I have told you how necessary it is that Dillon should remain in America, and that his money should not be expended——"

"Monsignor," Ledwith broke in impatiently, "let me say at once you are asking what you shall not get. I swear to you that if the faith which you preach depended on getting this young fellow to take back his money and to desert this enterprise, that faith would die. I want men, and I shall take the widow's only son, the father of the family, the last hope of a broken heart. I want money, and I shall take the crust from the mouth of the starving, the pennies from the poor-box, the last cent of the poor, the vessels of the altar, anything and everything, for my cause. How many times has our struggle gone down in blood and shame because we let our foolish hearts, with their humanity, their faith, their sense of honor, their ridiculous pride, rule us. I want this man and his money. I did not seek them, and I shall not play tricks to keep them. But now that they are mine, no man shall take them from me."

Honora made peace between them, for these were stubborn men, unwilling to make compromises. Monsignor could give only general reasons. Ledwith thought God had answered his prayers at last. They parted with equal determination.

What a welcome Arthur Dillon received from the Ledwiths on his next visit! The two innocents had been explaining their ideas for years, and traveling the earth to put them into action; and in all that time had not met a single soul with confidence enough to invest a dollar in them. They had spent their spare ducats in attempting what required a bank to maintain. They had endured the ridicule of the hard-hearted and the silent pity of the friends who believed them foolish dreamers. And behold a man of money appears to endow their enterprise, and to show his faith in it by shipping as a common member of the expedition. Was there ever such luck? They thanked him brokenly, and looked at him with eyes so full of tenderness and admiration and confidence, that Arthur swore to himself he would hereafter go about the earth, hunting up just such tender creatures, and providing the money to make their beautiful, heroic, and foolish dreams come true. He began to feel the truth of a philosopher's saying: the dreams of the innocent are the last reasoning of sages.

"And to this joy is added another," said Ledwith, when he could speak steadily. "General Sheridan has promised to lead a Fenian army the moment the Irish government can show it in the field."

"What does that mean?" said Arthur.

"What does it mean that an Irish army on Irish soil should have for its leader a brilliant general like Sheridan?" cried Ledwith. A new emotion overpowered him. His eyes filled with tears. "It means victory for a forlorn cause. Napoleon himself never led more devoted troops than will follow that hero to battle. Washington never received such love and veneration as he will from the poor Irish, sick with longing for a true leader. Oh, God grant the day may come, and that we may see it, when that man will lead us to victory."

His eyes flashed fire. He saw that far-off future, the war with its glories, the final triumph, the crowning of Sheridan with everlasting fame. And then without warning he suddenly fell over into a chair. Arthur lifted up his head in a fright, and saw a pallid face and lusterless eyes. Honora bathed his temples, with the coolness and patience of habit.

"It is nothing, nothing," he said feebly after a moment. "Only the foolishness of it all ... I can forget like a boy ... the thing will never come to pass ... never, never, never! There stands the hero, splendid with success, rich in experience, eager, willing, a demigod whom the Irish could worship ... his word would destroy faction, wipe out treason, weed out fools, hold the clans in solid union ... if we could give him an army, back him with a government, provide him with money! We shall never have the army ... nothing. Treason breeding faction, faction inviting treason ... there's our story. O, God, ruling in heaven, but not on earth, why do you torture us so? To give us such a man, and leave us without the opportunity or the means of using him!"

He burst into violent, silent weeping. Dillon felt the stab of that hopeless grief, which for the moment revived his own, although he could not quite understand it. Ledwith dashed away the tears after a little and spoke calmly.

"You see how I can yield to dreams like a foolish child. I felt for a little as if the thing had come to pass, and gave in to the fascination. This is the awaking. All the joy and sorrow of my life have come mostly from dreams."



CHAPTER XIII.

ANNE DILLON'S FELICITY.

Monsignor was not discouraged by his failure to detach Arthur from the romantic expedition to the Irish coast. With a view to save him from an adventure so hurtful to his welfare, he went to see Anne Dillon. Her home, no longer on Mulberry Street, but on the confines of Washington Square, in a modest enough dwelling, enjoyed that exclusiveness which is like the atmosphere of a great painting. One feels by instinct that the master hand has been here. Although aware that good fortune had wrought a marked change in Anne, Monsignor was utterly taken aback by a transformation as remarkable in its way as the metamorphosis of Horace Endicott.

Judy Haskell admitted him, and with a reverence showed him into the parlor; the same Judy Haskell as of yore, ornamented with a lace cap, a collar, deep cuffs, and an apron; through which her homeliness shone as defiantly as the face of a rough mountain through the fog. She had been instructed in the delicate art of receiving visitors with whom her intimacy had formerly been marked; but for Monsignor she made an exception, and the glint in her eye, the smile just born in the corner of her emphatic mouth, warned him that she knew of the astonishment which his good breeding concealed.

"We're mountin' the laddher o' glory," she said, after the usual questions. "Luk at me in me ould age, dhressed out like a Frinch sportin' maid. If there was a baby in the house ye'd see me, Father Phil, galivantin' behind a baby-carriage up an' down the Square. Faith, she does it well, the climbin', if we don't get dizzy whin we're halfway up, an' come to earth afore all the neighbors, flatter nor pancakes."

"Tut, tut," said Monsignor, "are you not as good as the best, with the blood of the Montgomerys and the Haskells in your veins? Are you to make strange with all this magnificence, as if you were Indians seeing it for the first time?"

"That's what I've been sayin' to meself since it began," she replied.

"Since what began?"

"Why, the changin' from Mulberry Sthreet Irish to Washington Square Yankees," Judy said with a shade of asperity. "It began wid the dog-show an' the opera. Oh, but I thought I'd die wid laughin', whin I had to shtan' at the doors o' wan place or the other, waitin' on Micksheen, or listenin' to the craziest music that ever was played or sung. After that kem politics, an' nothin' wud do her but she'd bate ould Livingstone for Mare all by herself. Thin it was Vandervelt for imbassador to England, an' she gev the Senator an' the Boss no pace till they tuk it up. An' now it's the Countess o' Skibbereen mornin', noon, an' night. I'm sick o' that ould woman. But she owns the soul of Anne Dillon."

"Well, her son can afford it," said Monsignor affably. "Why shouldn't she enjoy herself in her own way?"

"Thrue for you, Father Phil; I ought to call you Morrisania, but the ould names are always the shweetest. He has the money, and he knows how to spind it, an' if he didn't she'd show him. Oh, but he's the fine b'y! Did ye ever see annywan grow more an' more like his father, pace to his ashes. Whin he first kem it wasn't so plain, but now it seems to me he's the very spit o' Pat Dillon. The turn of his head is very like him."

At this point in a chat, which interested Monsignor deeply, a soft voice floated down from the upper distance, calling, "Judy! Judy!" in a delicate and perfect French accent.

"D'ye hear that, Father Phil?" whispered Judy with a grin. "It's nothin' now but Frinch an' a Frinch masther. Wait till yez hear me at it."

She hastened to the hall and cried out, "Oui, oui, Madame," with a murmured aside to the priest, "It's all I know."

"Venez en haut, Judy," said the voice.

"Oui, oui, Madame," answered Judy. "That manes come up, Father Phil," and Judy walked off upright, with folded arms, swinging her garments, actions belied by the broad grin on her face, and the sarcastic motion of her lips, which kept forming the French words with great scorn.

A few minutes afterward Anne glided into the room. The Montgomery girls had all been famous for their beauty in the earlier history of Cherry Hill, and Anne had been the belle of her time. He remembered her thirty years back, on the day of her marriage, when he served as altar-boy at her wedding; and recalled a sweet-faced girl, with light brown silken hair, languorous blue eyes, rose-pink skin, the loveliest mouth, the most provoking chin. Time and sorrow had dealt harshly with her, and changed her, as the fairies might, into a thin-faced, gray-haired, severe woman, whose dim eyes were hidden by glasses. She had retained only her grace and dignity of manner. He recalled all this, and drew his breath; for before him stood Anne Montgomery, as she had stood before him at the altar; allowing that thirty years had artistically removed the youthful brilliance of youth, but left all else untouched. The brown hair waved above her forehead, from her plump face most of the wrinkles had disappeared, her eyes gleamed with the old time radiance, spectacles had been banished, a subdued color tinted her smiling face.

"Your son is not the only one to astound me," said Monsignor. "Anne, you have brought back your youth again. What a magician is prosperity."

"It's the light-heartedness, Monsignor. To have as much money as one can use wisely and well, to be done with scrimpin' forever, gives wan a new heart, or a new soul. I feel as I felt the day I was married."

She might have added some information as to the share which modiste and beautifier might claim in her rejuvenation, but Monsignor, very strict and happily ignorant of the details of the toilet, as an ecclesiastic should be, was lost in admiration of her. It took him ten minutes to come to the object of his visit.

"He has long been ahead of you," she said, referring to Arthur. "I asked him for leave to visit Ireland, and he gave it on two conditions: that I would take Louis and Mona wid me, and refuse to interfere with this Fenian business, no matter who asked me. I was so pleased that I promised, and of course I can't go back on me word."

"This is a very clever young man," said Monsignor, admiring Anne's skill in extinguishing her beautiful brogue, which, however, broke out sweetly at times.

"Did you ever see the like of him?" she exclaimed. "I'm afraid of him. He begins to look like himself and like his father ... glory be to God ... just from looking at the pictures of the two and thinkin' about them. He's good and generous, but I have never got over being afeared of him. It was only when he went back on his uncle ... on Senator Dillon ... that I plucked up courage to face him. I had the Senator all ready to take the place which Mr. Birmingham has to-day, when Arthur called him off."

"He never could have been elected, Anne."

"I never could see why. The people that said that didn't think Mr. Vandervelt could be made ambassador to England, at least this time. But he kem so near it that Quincy Livingstone complimented me on my interest for Mr. Vandervelt. And just the same, Dan Dillon would have won had he run for the office. It was with him a case of not wantin' to be de trop."

"Your French is tres propos, Anne," said Monsignor with a laugh.

"If you want to hear an opinion of it," said the clever woman, laughing, too, "go and hear the complaints of Mary and Sister Magdalen. Mais je suis capable de parler Francais tout de meme."

"And are you still afraid of Arthur? Wouldn't you venture on a little protest against his exposing himself to needless danger?"

"I can do that, certainement, but no more. I love him, he's so fine a boy, and I wish I could make free wid him; but he terrifies me when I think of everything and look at him. More than wanst have I seen Arthur Dillon looking out at me from his eyes; and sometimes I feel that Pat is in the room with me when he is around. As I said, I got courage to face him, and he was grieved that I had to. For he went right into the contest over Vandervelt, and worked beautifully for the Countess of Skibbereen. I'm to dine with her at the Vandervelts' next week, the farewell dinner."

Her tones had a velvet tenderness in uttering this last sentence. She had touched one of the peaks of her ambition.

"I shall meet you there," said Monsignor, taking a pinch of snuff. "Anne, you're a wonderful woman. How have all these wonders come about?"

"It would take a head like your own to tell," she answered, with a meaning look at her handsome afternoon costume. "But I know some of the points of the game. I met Mr. Vandervelt at a reception, and told him he should not miss his chance to be ambassador, even if Livingstone lost the election and wanted to go to England himself. Then he whispered to me the loveliest whisper. Says he, 'Mrs. Dillon, they think it will be a good way to get rid of Mr. Livingstone if he's defeated,' says he; 'but if he wins I'll never get the high place, says he, 'for Tammany will be of no account for years.'"

Anne smiled to herself with simple delight over that whispered confidence of a Vandervelt, and Monsignor sat admiring this dawning cleverness. He noticed for the first time that her taste in dress was striking and perfect, as far as he could judge.

"'Then' says I, 'Mr. Vandervelt,' says I, 'there's only wan thing to be done, wan thing to be done,' says I. 'Arthur and the Senator and Doyle Grahame and Monsignor must tell Mr. Sullivan along wid Mr. Birmingham that you should go to England this year. 'Oh,' said he, 'if you can get such influence to work, nothing will stop me but the ill-will of the President.' 'And even there,' said I, 'it will be paving the way for the next time, if you make a good showing this time.' 'You see very far and well,' said he. That settled it. I've been dinin' and lunching with the Vandervelts ever since. You know yourself, Monsignor, how I started every notable man in town to tell Mr. Sullivan that Vandervelt must go to England. We failed, but it was the President did it; but he gave Mr. Vandervelt his choice of any other first-class mission. Then next, along came the old Countess of Skibbereen, and she was on the hands of the Vandervelts with her scheme of getting knitting-machines for the poor people of Galway. She wasn't getting on a bit, for she was old and queer in her ways, and the Vandervelts were worried over it. Then I said: 'why not get up a concert, and have Honora sing and let Tammany take up one end and society the other, and send home the Countess with ten thousand dollars?' My dear, they jumped at it, and the Countess jumped at me. Will you ever forget it, Monsignor dear, the night that Honora sang as the Genius of Erin? If that girl could only get over her craziness for Ireland and her father—but that's not what I was talking about. Well, the Countess has her ten thousand dollars, and says I'm the best-dressed woman in New York. So, that's the way I come to dine with the Vandervelts at the farewell dinner to the Countess, and when it comes off New York will be ringing with the name of Mrs. Montgomery Dillon."

"Is that the present name?" said Monsignor. "Anne, if you go to Ireland you'll return with a title. Your son should be proud of you."

"I'll give him better reason before I'm done, Monsignor."

The prelate rose to go, then hesitated a moment.

"Do you think there is anything?—do you think there could be anything with regard to Honora Ledwith?"

She stopped him with a gesture.

"I have watched all that. Not a thing could happen. Her thoughts are in heaven, poor child, and his are busy with some woman that bothered him long ago, and may have a claim on him. No wan told me, but my seein' and hearing are sharp as ever."

"Good-by, Mrs. Montgomery Dillon," he said, bowing at the door.

"Au plaisir, Monseigneur," she replied with a curtsey, and Judy opened the outer door, face and mien like an Egyptian statue of the twelfth dynasty.

Anne Dillon watched him go with a sigh of deep contentment. How often she had dreamed of men as distinguished leaving her presence and her house in this fashion; and the dream had come true. All her life she had dreamed of the elegance and importance, which had come to her through her strange son, partly through her own ambition and ability. She now believed that if one only dreams hard enough fortune will bring dreams true. As the life which is past fades, for all its reality, into the mist-substance of dreams, why should not the reverse action occur? Had she been without the rich-colored visions which illuminated her idle hours, opportunity might have found her a spiritless creature, content to take a salary from her son and to lay it by for the miserable days of old age. Out upon such tameness! She had found life in her dreams, and the two highest expressions of that life were Mrs. Montgomery Dillon and the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen.

As a pagan priestess might have arrayed herself for appearance in the sanctuary, she clothed herself in purple and gold on the evening of the farewell dinner.

Arthur escorted his mother and Honora to the Vandervelt residence.

As the trio made their bows, the aspirant for diplomatic honors rejoiced that his gratitude for real favors reflected itself in objects so distinguished. He was a grateful man, this Vandervelt, and broad-minded, willing to gild the steps by which he mounted, and to honor the humblest who honored him: an aristocrat in the American sense of the term, believing that those who wished should be encouraged to climb as high as natural capacity and opportunity permitted. The party sat down slightly bored, they had gone through it so often; but for Anne Dillon each moment and each circumstance shone with celestial beauty. She floated in the ether. The mellow lights, the glitter of silver and glass, the perfume of flowers, the soft voices, all sights and sounds, made up a harmony which lifted her body from the ground as on wings, more like a dream than her richest dreams. For conversation, some one started Lord Constantine on his hobby, and said Arthur was a Fenian, bent on destroying the hobby forever. In the discussion the Countess appealed to Anne.

"We are a fighting race," said she, with admirable caution picking her steps through a long paragraph. "There's—there are times when no one can hold us. This is such a time. A few months back the Fenian trouble could have been settled in one week. Now it will take a year."

"But how?" said Vandervelt. "If you had the making of the scheme, I'm sure it would be a success."

"In this way," she answered, bowing and smiling to his sincere compliment, "by making all the Irish Fenians, that is, those in Ireland, policemen."

The gentlemen laughed with one accord.

"Mr. Sullivan manages his troublesome people that way," she observed triumphantly.

"You are a student of the leader," said Vandervelt.

"Everybody should study him, if they want to win," said Anne.

"And that's wisdom," cried Lord Constantine.

The conversation turned on opera, and the hostess wondered why Honora did not study for the operatic stage. Then they all urged her to think of the scheme.

"I hope," said Anne gently, "that she will never try to spoil her voice with opera. The great singers give me the chills, and the creeps, and the shivers, the most terrible feeling, which I never had since the day Monsignor preached his first sermon, and broke down."

"Oh, you dear creature," cried the Countess, "what a long memory you have."

Monsignor had to explain his first sermon. So it went on throughout the dinner. The haze of perfect happiness gathered about Anne, and her speech became inspired. A crown of glory descended upon her head when the Dowager, hearing of her summer visit to Ireland with Mona and Louis in her care, exacted a solemn promise from her that the party should spend one month with her at Castle Moyna, her dower home.

"That lovely boy and girl," said the Countess, "will find the place pleasant, and will make it pleasant for me; where usually I can induce not even my son's children to come, they find it so dull."

It did not matter much to Anne what happened thereafter. The farewells, the compliments, the joy of walking down to the coach on the arm of Vandervelt, were as dust to this invitation of the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen. The glory of the dinner faded away. She looked down on the Vandervelts from the heights of Castle Moyna. She lost all at once her fear of her son. From that moment the earth became as a rose-colored flame. She almost ignored the adulation of Cherry Hill, and the astonished reverence of her friends over her success. Her success was told in awesome whispers in the church as she walked to the third pew of the middle aisle. A series of legends grew about it, over which the experienced gossips disputed in vain; her own description of the dinner was carried to the four quarters of the world by Sister Magdalen, Miss Conyngham, Senator Dillon, and Judy; the skeptical and envious pretended to doubt even the paragraph in the journals. At last they were struck dumb with the rest when it was announced that on Saturday last Mrs. Montgomery Dillon, Miss Mona Everard, and Mr. Louis Everard had sailed on the City of London for a tour of Europe, the first month of which would be spent at Castle Moyna, Ireland, as guests of the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen!



CHAPTER XIV.

ABOARD THE "ARROW."

One month later sailed another ship. In the depth of night the Arrow slipped her anchor, and stole away from the suspicious eyes of harbor officials into the Atlantic; a stout vessel, sailed with discretion, her trick being to avoid no encounters on the high seas and to seek none. Love and hope steered her course. Her bowsprit pointed, like the lance of a knight, at the power of England. Her north star was the freedom of a nation. War had nothing to do with her, however, though her mission was warlike: to prove that one hundred similar vessels might sail from various parts to the Irish coast, and land an army and its supplies without serious interference from the enemy. The crew was a select body of men, whose souls ever sought the danger of hopeless missions, as others seek a holiday. In spite of fine weather and bracing seas, the cloud of a lonely fate hung over the ship. Arthur alone was enthusiastic. Ledwith, feverish over slight success, because it roused the dormant appetite for complete success, and Honora, fed upon disappointment, feared that this expedition would prove ashen bread as usual; but the improvement in her father's health kept her cheerful. Doyle Grahame, always in high spirits, devoted his leisure to writing the book which was to bring him fame and much money. He described its motive and aim to his companions.

"It calls a halt," he said "on the senseless haste of Christians to take up such pagans as Matthew Arnold, and raises a warning cry against surrender to the pagan spirit which is abroad."

"And do you think that the critics will read it and be overcome?" asked Arthur.

"It will convince the critics, not that they are pagans, but that I am. They will review it, therefore, just to annoy me."

"You reason just like a critic, from anywhere to nowhere."

"The book will make a stir, nevertheless," and Doyle showed his confidence.

"It's to be a loud protest, and will tangle the supple legs of Henry Ward Beecher and other semi-pagans like a lasso."

"How about the legs of the publishers?"

"That's their lookout. I have nothing against them, and I hope at the close of the sale they will have nothing against me."

"When, where, with what title, binding and so forth?"

"Speak not overmuch to thy dentist," said Grahame slyly. "Already he knoweth too many of thy mouth's secrets."

The young men kept the little company alive with their pranks and their badinage. Grahame discovered in the Captain a rare personality, who had seen the globe in its entirety, particularly the underside, as a detective and secret service agent for various governments. He was a tall, slender man, rather like a New England deacon than a daring adventurer, with a refined face, a handsome beard, and a speaking, languid gray eye. He spent the first week in strict devotion to his duties, and in close observation of his passengers. In the second week Grahame had him telling stories after dinner for the sole purpose of diverting the sad and anxious thoughts of Honora, although Arthur hardly gave her time to think by the multiplied services which he rendered her. There came an afternoon of storm, followed by a nasty night, which kept all the passengers in the cabin; and after tea there, a demand was made upon Captain Richard Curran for the best and longest story in his repertory. The men lit pipes and cigars, and Honora brought her crotcheting. The rolling and tossing of the ship, the beating of the rain, and the roar of the wind, gave them a sense of comfort. The ship, in her element, proudly and smoothly rode the rough waves, showing her strength like a racer.

"Let us have a choice, Captain," said Grahame, as the officer settled himself in his chair. "You detectives always set forth your successes. Give us now a story of complete failure, something that remains a mystery till now."

"Mystery is the word," said Honora. "This is a night of mystery. But a story without an end to it——"

"Like the history of Ireland," said Ledwith dryly.

"Is the very one to keep us thinking and talking for a month," said Grahame. "Captain, if you will oblige us, a story of failure and of mystery."

"Such a one is fresh in my mind, for I fled from my ill-success to take charge of this expedition," said the Captain, whose voice was singularly pleasant. "The detective grows stale sometimes, as singers and musicians do, makes a failure of his simplest work, and has to go off and sharpen his wits at another trade. I am in that condition. For twenty months I sought the track of a man, who disappeared as if the air absorbed him where he last breathed. I did not find him. The search gave me a touch of monomania. For two months I have not been able to rest upon meeting a new face until satisfied its owner was not—let us say, Tom Jones."

"Are you satisfied, then," said Arthur, "that we are all right?"

"He was not an Irishman, but a Puritan," replied the Captain, "and would not be found in a place like this. I admit I studied your faces an hour or so, and asked about you among the men, but under protest. I have given up the pursuit of Tom Jones, and I wish he would give up the pursuit of me. I had to quiet my mind with some inquiries."

"Was there any money awaiting Tom? If so, I might be induced to be discovered," Grahame said anxiously.

"You are all hopeless, Mr. Grahame. I have known you and Mr. Ledwith long enough, and Mr. Dillon has his place secure in New York——"