"I didn't think," she said to Helen—"I didn't think I'd—I'd care so to leave it—when—when—the time—came."

She turned and brushed away her tears in time to see Travis come smiling up.

"Why, Maggie," he said playfully flipping the tip of her ear as he passed her. "I thought you left us yesterday afternoon. You'll not be forgetting us now that you will not see us again, will you?"

She flushed and Helen heard her say: "Forget you—ever? Oh, please, Mr. Travis—" and her voice trembled.

"Oh, tut," he said, frowning quickly—"nothing like that here. Of course, you will hate to leave the old mill and the old machine. Come, Maggie, you needn't wait—you're a good girl—we all know that."

He turned to Helen and watched her as she drew in the threads. Her head was bent over, and her great coil of hair sat upon it like a queen on a throne.

What a neck and throat she had—what a beautiful queenly manner!

Travis smiled an amused smile when he thought of it—an ironical sneering smile; but he felt, as he stood there, that the girl had fascinated him in a strange way, and now that she was in his power, "now that Fate, or God has combined to throw her into my arms—almost unasked for—is it possible that I am beginning to fall in love with her?"

He had forgotten Maggie and stood looking at Helen. And in that look Maggie saw it all. He heard her sit down suddenly.

"I would go if I were you, Maggie—you are a good girl and we shall not forget you."

"May I stay a little while longer?" she asked. "I won't ever come back any more, you know."

Travis turned quickly and walked off. He came back and spoke to Helen.

"Remember, I am to take you home to-night. But it will be later than usual, on account of the pay-roll."

As he shut the door Maggie turned, and her heart being too full to speak, she came forward and dropped on her knees, burying her face in Helen's lap. "You must not notice me," she said—"don't—don't—oh, don't look at me."

Helen stroked her cheek and finally she was quiet.

Then she looked into Helen's face. "Do you know—oh, will you mind if I speak to you—or perhaps I shouldn't—but—but—don't you see that he loves you?"

Helen reddened to her ears.

"I am foolish—sick—nervous—I know I am silly an' yet I don't see how he could help it—you are so queenly—beautiful—so different from any that are here. He—he—has forgotten me—"

Helen looked at her quickly.

"Why, I don't understand," she said.

"I mean," she stammered, "he used to notice us common girls—me and the others—"

"I don't understand you," said Helen, half indignantly.

"Oh, don't pay no 'tention to me," she said. "I, I fear I am sick, you know—sicker than I thought," and she coughed violently.

She lay with her head in Helen's lap. "Please," she said timidly, looking up into Helen's face at last—"please let me stay this way a while. I never knew a mother—nobody has ever let me do this befo', an' I am so happy for it."

Helen stroked her face and hair anew, and Maggie kneeled looking up at her eagerly, earnestly, hungrily, scanning every feature of the prettier girl with worshipping eyes.

"How could he he'p it—how could he he'p it," she said softly—"yes—yes—you are his equal and so beautiful."

"I don't understand you, Maggie—indeed I do not."

Maggie arose quickly: "Good-bye—let me kiss you once mo'—I feel like I'll never see you again—an'—an'—I've learned to love you so!"

Helen raised her head and kissed her.

Then Maggie passed quickly out, and with her eyes only did she look back and utter a farewell which carried with it both a kiss and a tear. And something else which was a warning.

And Helen never forgot.



CHAPTER V

PAY-DAY

It was Saturday afternoon and pay-day, and the mill shut down at six o'clock.

When Helen went in Kingsley sat at the Superintendent's desk, issuing orders on the Secretary and Treasurer, Richard Travis, who sat at his desk near by and paid the wages in silver.

Connected with the mill was a large commissary or store—a cheap modern structure which stood in another part of the town, filled with the necessaries of life as well as the flimsy gewgaws which delight the heart of the average mill hand. In establishing this store, the directors followed the usual custom of cotton-mills in smaller towns of the South; paying their employees part in money and part in warrants on the store. It is needless to add that the prices paid for the goods were, in most cases, high enough to cut the wages to the proper margin. If there was any balance at the end of the month, it was paid in money.

Kingsley personally supervised this store, and his annual report to the directors was one of the strong financial things of his administration.

A crowd of factory hands stood around his desk, and the Superintendent was busy issuing orders on the store, or striking a balance for the Secretary and Treasurer to pay in silver.

They stood around tired, wretched, lint- and dust-covered, but expectant. Few were there compared with the number employed; for the wages of the minors went to their parents, and as minors included girls under eighteen and boys under twenty-one, their parents were there to receive their wages for them.

These children belonged to them as mercilessly as if they had been slaves, and despite the ties of blood, no master ever more relentlessly collected and appropriated the wages of his slaves than did the parents the pitiful wages of their children.

There are two great whippers-in in the child slavery of the South—the mills which employ the children and the parents who permit it—encourage it. Of these two the parents are often the worse, for, since the late enactment of child labor laws, they do not hesitate to stultify themselves by false affidavits as to the child's real age.

Kingsley had often noticed how promptly and even proudly the girls, after reaching eighteen, and the boys twenty-one, had told him hereafter to place their wages to their own credit, and not to the parent's. They seemed to take a new lease on life. Decrepit, drawn-faced, hump-shouldered and dried up before their time, the few who reached the age when the law made them their own masters, looked not like men and women who stand on the threshold of life, but rather like over-worked middle-aged beings of another period.

Yet that day their faces put on a brighter look.

They stood around the office desk, awaiting their turn. The big engine had ceased to throb and the shuttles to clatter and whirl. The mill was so quiet that those who had, year in and year out, listened to its clatter and hum, seemed to think some overhanging calamity was about to drop out of the sky of terrible calm.

"Janette Smith," called out Kingsley.

She came forward, a bony, stoop-shouldered woman of thirty-five years who had been a spooler since she was fifteen.

"Seventy-seven hours for the week"—he went on mechanically, studying the time book, "making six dollars and sixteen cents. Rent deducted two dollars. Wood thirty-five cents. Due commissary for goods furnished—here, Mr. Kidd," he said to the book-keeper, "let me see Miss Smith's account." It was shoved to him across the desk. Kingsley elevated his glasses. Then he adjusted them with a peculiar lilt—it was his way of being ironical:

"Oh, you don't owe the store anything, Miss Smith—just eleven dollars and eighty cents."

The woman stood stoically—not a muscle moved in her face, and not even by the change of an eye did she indicate that such a thing as the ordinary human emotions of disappointment and fear had a home in the heart.

"Mother was sick all last month," she said at last in a voice that came out in the same indifferent, unvarying tone. "I had to overdraw."

Kingsley gave his eye-glasses another lilt. They said as plainly as eye-glasses could: "Well, of course, I made her sick." Then he added abruptly: "We will advance you two dollars this week—an' that will be all."

"I hoped to get some little thing that she could eat—some relish," she began.

"Not our business, Miss Smith—sorry—very sorry—but try to be more economical. Economy is the great objective haven of life. Emerson says so. And Browning in a most beautiful line of poetry says the same thing," he added.

"The way to begin economy is to begin it—Emerson is so helpful to me—he always comes in at the right time."

"And it's only to be two dollars," she added.

"That's all," and he pushed her the order. She took it, cashed it and went hurriedly out, her poke bonnet pulled over her face. But there were hot tears and a sob under her bonnet.

And so it went on for two hours—some drawing nothing, but remaining to beg for an order on the store to keep them running until next week.

One man with six children in the mill next came forward and drew eighteen dollars. He smiled complacently as he drew it and chucked the silver into his pocket. This gave Jud Carpenter, standing near, a chance to get in his mill talk.

"I tell you, Joe Hopper," he said, slapping the man on the back, "that mill is a great thing for the mothers an' fathers of this little settlement. What 'ud we do if it warn't for our chillun?"

"You're talkin now—" said Joe hopefully.

"It useter be," said Jud, looking around at his crowd, "that the parents spoiled the kids, but now it is the kids spoilin' the parents."

His audience met this with smiles and laughter.

"I never did know before," went on Jud, "what that old sayin' really meant: 'A fool for luck an' a po' man for chillun.'"

Another crackling laugh.

"How much did Joe Hopper's chillun fetch 'im in this week?"

Joe jingled his silver in his pocket and spat importantly on the floor.

"I tell you, when I married," said Jud, "I seed nothin' but poverty an' the multiplication of my part of the earth ahead of me—poverty, I tell you, starvation an' every new chile addin' to it. But since you started this mill, Mister Kingsley (Kingsley smiled and bowed across the desk at him), I've turned what everybody said 'ud starve us into ready cash. And now I say to the young folks: 'Marry an' multiply an' the cash will be forthcomin'.'"

This was followed by loud laughs, especially from those who were blessed with children, and they filed up to get their wages.

Jim Stallings, who had four in the mill, was counted out eleven dollars. As he pocketed it he looked at Jud and said:

"Oh, no, Jud; it don't pay to raise chillun. I wish I had the chance old Sollerman had. I'd soon make old Vanderbilt look like shin plaster."

He joined in the laughter which followed.

In the doorway he cut a pigeon-wing in which his thin, bowed legs looked comically humorous.

Jud Carpenter was a power in the mill, standing as he did so near to the management. To the poor, ignorant ones around him he was the mouth-piece of the mill, and they feared him even more than they did Kingsley himself, Kingsley with his ironical ways and lilting eye-glasses. With them Jud's nod alone was sufficient.

They were still grouped around the office awaiting their turn. In the faces of some were shrewdness, cunning, hypocrisy. Some looked out through dull eyes, humbled and brow-beaten and unfeeling. But all of them when they spoke to Jud Carpenter—Jud Carpenter who stood in with the managers of the mill—became at once the grinning, fawning framework of a human being.

"Yes, boys," said Jud patronizingly as Stallings went out, "this here mill is a god-send to us po' folks who've got chillun to burn. They ain't a day we ortenter git down on our knees an' thank Mr. Kingsley an' Mister Travis there. You know I done took down that sign I useter have hangin' up in my house in the hall—that sign which said, God bless our home? I've put up another one now."

"What you done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to the end man, knowing the joke which was coming.

"Why, I've put up," said Jud brutally, "'Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me.' That's scriptural authority for cotton mills, ain't it?"

The paying went on, after the uproarious laughter had subsided, and down the long row only the clinking of silver was heard, intermingled now and then with the shrill voice of some creature disputing with Kingsley about her account. Generally it ran thus: "It cyant be thet away. Sixty hours at five cents an hour—wal, but didn't the chillun wuck no longer than that? I cyant—I cyant—I jes' cyant live on that little bit."

Such it was, and it floated down the line to Helen like the wail of a lost soul. When her time came Kingsley met her with a smile. Then he gave her an order and Travis handed her a bright crisp ten-dollar bill.

She looked at him in astonishment. "But—but," she said. "Surely, I didn't earn all this, did I? Maggie—you had to pay Maggie for teaching me this week. It was she who earned it. I cannot take it."

Kingsley smiled: "If you must know—though we promised her we would not tell you," he said—"no, Miss Conway, you did not earn but five dollars this week. The other five is Maggie's gift to you—she left it here for you."

She looked at him stupidly—in dazed gratitude. Travis came forward:

"I've ordered Jim to take you home to-night. I cannot leave now."

And he led her out to where the trotters stood. He lifted her in, pressing her hand as he did so—but she did not know it—she burned with a strange fullness in her throat as she clutched her money, the first she had ever earned, and thought of Maggie—Maggie, dying and unselfish.

Work—it had opened a new life to her. Work—and never before had she known the sweetness of it.

"Oh, father," she said when she reached home, "I have made some money—I can support you and Lily now."

When Travis returned Jud Carpenter met him at the door.

"I had a mess o' trouble gittin' that gal into the mill. Huh! but ain't she a beaut! I guess you 'orter tip me for throwin' sech a peach as that into yo' arms. Oh, you're a sly one—" he went on whisperingly—"the smoothest one with women I ever seed. But you'll have to thank me for that queen. Guess I'll go down an' take a dram. I want to git the lint out of my throat."

"I'll be down later," said Travis as he looked at his watch. "Charley Biggers and I. It's our night to have a little fun with the boys."

"I'll see you there," said Jud.

The clinking of silver, questions, answers, and expostulations went on. In the midst of it there was the sudden shrill wail of an angry child.

"I wants some of my money, Paw—I wants to buy a ginger man."

Then came a cruel slap which was heard all over the room, and the boy of ten, a wild-eyed and unkempt thing, staggered and grasped his face where the blow fell.

"Take that, you sassy meddling up-start—you belong to me till you are twenty-one years old. What 'ud you do with a ginger man 'cept to eat it?" He cuffed the boy through the door and sent him flying home.

It was Joe Sykes, the wages of whose children kept him in active drunkenness and chronic inertia. He was the champion loafer of the town.

In a short time he had drawn a pocketful of silver, and going out soon overtook Jud Carpenter.

"I tell you, Jud, we mus' hold these kids down—we heads of the family. I've mighty nigh broke myself down this week a controllin' mine. Goin' down to take a drink or two? Same to you."



CHAPTER VI

THE PLOT

A village bar-room is a village hell.

Jud Carpenter and Joe Hopper were soon there, and the silver their children had earned at the mill began to go for drinks.

The drinks made them feel good. They resolved to feel better, so they drank again. As they drank the talk grew louder. They were joined by others from the town—ne'er-do-wells, who hung around the bar—and others from the mill.

And so they drank and sang and danced and played cards and drank again, and threw dice for more drinks.

It was nearly nine o'clock before the Bacchanal laugh began to ring out at intervals—so easily distinguished from the sober laugh, in that it carries in its closing tones the queer ring of the maniac's.

Only the mill men had any cash. The village loafers drank at their expense, and on credit.

"And why should we not drink if we wish," said one of them. "Our children earned the money and do we not own the children?"

Twice only were they interrupted. Once by the wife of a weaver who came in and pleaded with her husband for part of their children's money. Her tears touched the big-hearted Billy Buch, and as her husband was too drunk to know what he was doing, Billy took what money he had left and gave it to the wife. She had a sick child, she told Billy Buch, and what money she had would not even buy the medicine.

Billy squinted the corner of one eye and looked solemnly at the husband: "He ha'f ten drinks in him ag'in, already. I vill gif you pay for eet all for the child. An' here ees one dollar mo' from Billy Buch. Now go, goot voman."

The other interruption was the redoubtable Mrs. Billings; her brother, also a slubber, had arrived early, but had scarcely taken two delightful, exquisite drinks before she came on the scene, her eyes flashing, her hair disheveled, and her hand playing familiarly with something under her apron.

Her presence threw them into a panic.

"Mine Gott!" said Billy, turning pale. "Eet es Meeses Billings an' her crockery."

Half a dozen jubilants pointed out a long-haired man at a center table talking proudly of his physical strength and bravery.

"Cris Ham?" beckoned Mrs. Billings, feeling nervously under her apron. "Come with me!"

"I'll be along t'orectly, sis."

"You will come now," she said, and her hands began to move ominously beneath her apron.

"To be sho'," he said as he walked out with her. "I didn't know you felt that away about it, sis."

It was after ten o'clock when the quick roll of a buggy came up to the door, and Richard Travis and Charley Biggers alighted.

They had both been drinking. Slowly, surely, Travis was going down in the scale of degeneracy. Slowly the loose life he was leading was lowering him to the level of the common herd. A few years ago he would not have thought of drinking with his own mill hands. To-night he was there, the most reckless of them all. Analyzed, it was for the most part conceit with him; the low conceit of the superior intellect which would mingle in infamy with the lowest to gain its ignorant homage. For Intellect must have homage if it has to drag it from the slums.

Charley Biggers was short and boyish, with a fat, round face. When he laughed he showed a fine set of big, sensual teeth. His eyes were jolly, flighty, insincere. Weakness was written all over him, from a derby hat sitting back rakishly on his forehead to the small, effeminate boot that fitted so neatly his small effeminate foot. He had a small hand and his little sensual face had not a rough feature on it. It was set off by a pudgy, half-formed dab of a nose that let his breath in and out when his mouth happened to be shut. His eyes were the eyes of one who sees no wrong in anything.

They came in and pulled off their gloves, daintily. They threw their overcoats on a chair. Travis glanced around the circle of the four or five who were left and said pompously:

"Come up, gentlemen, and have something at my expense." Then he walked up to the bar.

They came. They considered it both a pleasure and an honor, as Jud Carpenter expressed it, to drink with him.

"It is a good idea to mingle with them now and then," whispered Travis to Charley. "It keeps me solid with them—health, gentlemen!"

Charley Biggers showed his good-natured teeth:

"Health, gentlemen," he grinned.

Then he hiccoughed through his weak little nose.

"Joe Hopper can't rise, gentlemen, Joe is drunk, an'—an' a widderer, besides," hiccoughed Joe from below.

Joe had been a widower for a year. His wife, after being the mother of eleven children, who now supported Joe in his drunkenness, had passed away.

Then Joe burst into tears.

"What's up, Joe?" asked Jud kindly.

"Liza's dead," he wailed.

"Why, she's been dead a year," said Jud.

"Don't keer, Jud—I'm jes'—jes' beginnin' to feel it now"—and he wept afresh.

It was too much for Charley Biggers, and he also wept. Travis looked fixedly at the ceiling and recited portions of the Episcopal burial service. Then Jud wept. They all wept.

"Gentlemen," said Travis solemnly, "let us drink to the health of the departed Mrs. Hopper. Here's to her!"

This cheered all except Joe Hopper—he refused to be comforted. They tried to console him, but he only wept the more. They went on drinking and left him out, but this did not tend to diminish his tears.

"Oh, Mister Hopper, shet up," said Jud peremptorily—"close up—I've arranged for you to marry a grass-widder."

This cheered him greatly.

"O Jud—Jud—if I marry a grass-widder whut—whut'll I be then?"

"Why? a grasshopper, sure," said Travis.

They all roared. Then Jud winked at Travis and Travis winked at the others. Then they sat around a table, all winking except poor Joe, who continued to weep at the thought of being a grasshopper. He did not quite understand how it was, but he knew that in some way he was to be changed into a grasshopper, with long green wings and legs to match.

"Gentlemen," said Jud seriously—"it is our duty to help out po' Joe. Now, Joe, we've arranged it for you to marry Miss Kate Galloway—the grass-widder."

"Not Miss Kate," said Travis with becoming seriousness.

"Why not her, Mr. Travis?" asked Jud, winking.

"Because his children will be Katydids," said Travis.

This brought on thundering roars of laughter and drinks all around. Only Joe wept—wept to think his children would be katydids.

"Now, Joe, it's this way. I've talked it all over and arranged it. That's what we've met for to-night—ain't it, gents?" said Jud.

"Sure—sure," they all exclaimed.

"Now, Joe, you mus' dry yo' tears an' become reconciled—we've got a nice scheme fixed for you."

"I'll never be reconciled—never," wailed Joe. "Liza's dead an'—I'm a grasshopper."

"Now, wait till I explain to you—but, dear, devoted friend, everything is ready. The widder's been seen an' all you've got to do is to come with us and get her."

"She's a mighty handsome 'oman," said Jud, winking his eye. "Dear—dear frien's—all—I'm feelin' reconciled already"—said Joe.

They all joined in the roar. Jud winked. They all winked. Jud went on:

"Joe, dear, dear Joe—we have had thy welfare at heart, as the books say. We wanted thee to become a millionaire. Thou hast eleven children to begin with. They pay you—"

"Eighteen dollars a week, clear,"—said Joe proudly.

"Well, now, Joe—it's all arranged—you marry the widder an' in the course of time you'll have eleven mo'. That's another eighteen dollars—or thirty-six dollars a week clear in the mills."

"Now, but I hadn't thought of that," said Joe enthusiastically—"that's a fact. When—when did you say the ceremony'd be performed?"

"Hold on," said Jud, "now, we've studied this thing all out for you. You're a Mormon—the only one of us that is a Mormon—openly."

They all laughed.

"Openly—" he went on—"you've j'ined the Mormon church here up in the mountains."

"But we don't practise polygamy—now"—said Joe.

"That's only on account of the Grand Jury and the law—not yo' religion. You see—you'll marry an' go to Utah—but—es the kids come you'll sen' 'em all down here to the mills—every one a kinder livin' coupon. All any man's got to do in this country to git rich is to marry enough wives."

"Can I do that—do the marryin' in Utah an' keep sendin' the—the chilluns down to the mill?" His eyes glittered.

"Sart'inly"—said Jud—"sure!"

"Then there's Miss Carewe"—he went on—"you haf'ter cal'clate on feedin' several wives in one, with her. But say eleven mo' by her. That's thirty-seven mo'."

Joe jumped up.

"Is she willin'?"

"Done seen her," said Jud; "she say come on."

"Hold on," said Travis with feigned anger. "Hold on. Joe is fixin' to start a cotton-mill of his own. That'll interfere with the Acme. No—no—we must vote it down. We mustn't let Joe do it."

Joe had already attempted to rise and start after his wives. But in the roar of laughter that followed he sat down and began to weep again for Liza.

It was nearly midnight. Only Travis, Charley Biggers and Jud remained sober enough to talk. Charley was telling of Tilly and her wondrous beauty.

"Now—it's this way," he hiccoughed—"I've got to go off to school—but—but—I've thought of a plan to marry her first, with a bogus license and preacher."

There was a whispered conversation among them, ending in a shout of applause.

"What's the matter with you takin' yo' queen at the same time?" asked Jud of Travis.

Travis, drunk as he was, winced to think that he would ever permit Jud Carpenter to suggest what he had intended should only be known to himself. His tongue was thick, his brain whirled, and there were gaps in his thoughts; but through the thickness and heaviness he thought how low he had fallen. Lower yet when, despite all his vanishing reserve, all his dignity and exclusiveness, he laughed sillily and said:

"Just what I had decided to do—two queens and an ace."

They all cheered drunkenly.



CHAPTER VII

MRS. WESTMORE TAKES A HAND

"What are you playing, Alice?"

The daughter arose from the piano and kissed her mother, holding for a moment the pretty face, crowned with white hair, between her two palms.

"It—it is an old song which Tom and I used to love to sing."

The last of the sentence came so slowly that it sank almost into silence, as of one beginning a sentence and becoming so absorbed in the subject as to forget the speech. Then she turned again to the piano, as if to hide from her mother the sorrow which had crept into her face.

"You should cease to think of that. Such things are dreams—at present we are confronted by very disagreeable realities."

"Dreams—ah, mother mine"—she answered with forced cheeriness—"but what would life be without them?"

"For one thing, Alice"—and she took the daughter's place at the piano and began to play snatches of an old waltz tune—"it would be free from all the morbid unnaturalness, the silliness, the froth of things. There is too much hardness in every life—in the world—in the very laws of life, for such things ever to have been part of the original plan. For my part, I think they are the product of man and wine or women or morphine or some other narcotic."

"We make the dreams of life, but the realities of it make us," she added.

"Oh, no, mother. 'Tis the dreams that make the realities. Not a great established fact exists but it was once the vision of a dreamer. Our dreams to-day become the realities of to-morrow."

"Do you believe Tom is not dead—that he will one day come back?" asked her mother abruptly.

It was twilight and the fire flickered, lighting up the library. But in the flash of it Mrs. Westmore saw Alice's cheek whiten in a hopeless, helpless, stricken way.

Then she walked to the window and looked out on the darkness fast closing in on the lawn, clustering denser around the evergreens and creeping ghostlike toward the dim sky line which shone clear in the open.

The very helplessness of her step, her silence, her numbed, yearning look across the lawn told Mrs. Westmore of the death of all hope there.

She followed her daughter and put her arms impulsively around her.

"I should not have hurt you so, Alice. I only wanted to show you how worse than useless it is ... but to change the subject, I do wish to speak to you of—our condition."

Alice was used to her mother's ways—her brilliancy—her pointed manner of going at things—her quick change of thought—of mood, and even of temperament. An outsider would have judged Mrs. Westmore to be fickle with a strong vein of selfishness and even of egotism. Alice only knew that she was her mother; who had suffered much; who had been reduced by poverty to a condition straitened even to hardships. To help her the daughter knew that she was willing to make any sacrifice. Unselfish, devoted, clear as noonday in her own ideas of right and wrong, Alice's one weakness was her blind devotion to those she loved. A weakness beautiful and even magnificent, since it might mean a sacrifice of her heart for another. The woman who gives her time, her money, her life, even, to another gives but a small part of her real self. But there is something truly heroic when she throws in her heart also. For when a woman has given that she has given all; and because she has thrown it in cold and dead—a lifeless thing—matters not; in the poignancy of the giving it is gone from her forever and she may not recall it even with the opportunity of bringing it back to life.

She who gives her all, but keeps her heart, is as a priest reading mechanically the Sermon on the Mount from the Bible. But she who gives her heart never to take it back again gives as the Christ dying on the Cross.

"Now, here is the legal paper about"—

Her voice failed and she did not finish the sentence.

Alice took the paper and glanced at it. She flushed and thrust it into her pocket. They were silent a while and Mrs. Westmore sat thinking of the past. Alice knew it by the great reminiscent light which gleamed in her eyes. She thought of the time when she had servants, money, friends unlimited—of the wealth and influence of her husband—of the glory of Westmoreland.

Every one has some secret ambition kept from the eyes of every living soul—often even to die in its keeper's breast. It is oftenest a mean ambition of which one is ashamed and so hides it from the world. It is often the one weakness. Alice never knew what was her mother's. She did not indeed know that she had one, for this one thing Mrs. Westmore had kept inviolately secret. But in her heart there had always rankled a secret jealousy when she thought of The Gaffs. It had been there since she could remember—a feeling cherished secretly, too, by her husband: for in everything their one idea had been that Westmoreland should surpass The Gaffs,—that it should be handsomer, better kept, more prosperous, more famous.

Now, Westmoreland was gone—this meant the last of it. It would be sold, even the last hundred acres of it, with the old home on it. Gone—gone—all her former glory—all her family tradition, her memories, her very name.

Gone, and The Gaffs remained!

Remained in all its intactness—its beauty—its well equipped barns with all the splendor of its former days. For so great was the respect of Schofield's army for the character of Colonel Jeremiah Travis that his home escaped the torch when it was applied to many others in the Tennessee Valley. And Richard Travis had been shrewd enough after the war to hold his own. Joining the party of the negro after the war, he had been its political ruler in the county. And the Honorable Richard Travis had been offered anything he wanted. At present he was State Senator. He with others called himself a Republican—one of the great party of Lincoln to which the negroes after their enfranchisement united themselves. It was a fearful misnomer. The Republican party in the South, composed of ninety-nine ignorant negroes to one renegade white, about as truly represented the progressive party of Lincoln as a black vampire the ornithology of all lands. Indeed, since the war, there has never been in the South either a Republican or a Democratic party. The party line is not drawn on belief but on race and color. The white men, believing everything they please from free trade to protection, vote a ticket which they call Democratic. The negroes, and a few whites who allied themselves with them for the spoils of office, vote the other ticket. Neither of them represent anything but a race issue.

To this negro party belonged Richard Travis—and the price of his infamy had been Honorable before his name.

But Mrs. Westmore cared nothing for this. She only knew that he was a leader of men, was handsome, well reared and educated, and that he owned The Gaffs, her old rival. And that there it stood, a fortune—a refuge—a rock—offered to her and her daughter, offered by a man who, whatever his other faults, was brave and dashing, sincere in his idolatrous love for her daughter. That he would make Alice happy she did not doubt; for Mrs. Westmore's idea of happiness was in having wealth and position and a splendid name. Having no real heart, how was it possible for her to know, as Alice could know, the happiness of love?

An eyeless fish in the river of Mammoth Cave might as well try to understand what light meant.

He would make Alice happy, of course he would; he would make her happy by devotion, which he was eager to give her with an unstinted hand. Alice needed it, she herself needed it. It was common sense to accept it,—business sense. It was opportunity—fate. It was the reward of a life—the triumph of it—to have her old rival—enemy—bound and presented to her.

And nothing stood between her and the accomplishment of it all but the foolish romance of her daughter's youth.

And so she sat building her castles and thinking:

"With The Gaffs, with Richard Travis and his money would come all I wish, both for her and for me. Once more I would hold the social position I once held: once more I would be something in the world. And Alice, of course, she would be happy; for her's is one of those trusting natures which finds first where her duty points and then makes her heart follow."

But Mrs. Westmore wisely kept silent. She did not think aloud. She knew too well that Alice's sympathetic, unselfish, obedient spirit was thinking it over.

She sat down by her mother and took up a pet kitten which had come purring in, begging for sympathy. She stroked it thoughtfully.

Mrs. Westmore read her daughter's thoughts:

"So many people," the mother said after a while, "have false ideas of love and marriage. Like ignorant people when they get religion, they think a great and sudden change must come over them—changing their very lives."

She laughed her ringing little laugh: "I told you of your father's and my love affair. Why, I was engaged to three other men at the same time—positively I was. And I would have been just as happy with any of them."

"Why did you marry father, then?"

Her mother laughed and tapped the toe of her shoe playfully against the fender: "It was a silly reason; he swam the Tennessee River on his horse to see me one day, when the ferry-boat was a wreck. I married him."

"Would not the others have done as well?"

"Yes, but I knew your father was brave. You cannot love a coward—no woman can. But let a man be brave—no matter what his faults are—the rest is all a question of time. You would soon learn to love him as I did your father."

Mrs. Westmore was wise. She changed the subject.

"Have you noticed Uncle Bisco lately, mother?" asked Alice after a while.

"Why, yes; I intended to ask you about him."

"He says there are threats against his life—his and Aunt Charity's. He had a terrible dream last night, and he would have me to interpret it."

"Quite Biblical," laughed her mother. "What was it?"

"They have been very unhappy all day—you know the negroes have been surly and revengeful since the election of Governor Houston—they believe they will be put back into slavery and they know that Uncle Bisco voted with his white friends. It is folly, of course—but they beat Captain Roland's old body servant nearly to death because he voted with his old master. And Uncle Bisco has heard threats that he and Aunt Charity will be visited in a like manner. I think it will soon blow over, though at times I confess I am often worried about them, living alone so far off from us, in the cabin in the wood."

"What was Uncle Bisco's dream?" asked Mrs. Westmore.

"Why, he said an angel had brought him water to drink from a Castellonian Spring. Now, I don't know what a Castellonian Spring is, but that was the word he used, and that he was turned into a live-oak tree, old and moss-grown. Then he stood in the forest surrounded by scrub-oaks and towering over them and other mean trees when suddenly they all fell upon him and cut him down. Now, he says, these scrub-oaks are the radical negroes who wish to kill him for voting with the whites. You will laugh at my interpretation," she went on. "I told him that the small black oaks were years that still stood around him, but that finally they would overpower him and he would sink to sleep beneath them, as we must all eventually do. I think it reassured him—but, mamma, I am uneasy about the two old people."

"If the Bishop were here—"

"He would sleep in the house with a shotgun, I fear," laughed Alice.

They were silent at last: "When did you say Richard was coming again, Alice?"

"To-morrow night—and—and—I hear Clay in his laboratory. I will go and talk to him before bed time."

She stooped and kissed her mother. To her surprise, she found her mother's arms around her neck and heard her whisper brokenly:

"Alice—Alice—you could solve it all if you would. Think—think—what it would mean to me—to all of us—oh, I can stand this poverty no longer—this fight against that which we cannot overcome."

She burst into a flood of tears. Never before had Alice seen her show her emotions over their condition, and it hurt her, stabbed her to the vital spot of all obedience and love.

With moistened eyes she went into her brother's room.

And Mrs. Westmore wrote a note to Richard Travis. It did not say so in words but it meant: "Come and be bold—you have won."



CHAPTER VIII

A QUESTION BROUGHT HOME

"I shall go to Boston next week to meet the directors of the mill and give in my annual report."

The three had been sitting in Westmoreland library this Sunday night—for Richard Travis came regularly every Sunday night, and he had been talking about the progress of the mill and the great work it was doing for the poor whites of the valley. "I imagine," he added, "that they will be pleased with the report this year."

"But are you altogether pleased with it in all its features?" asked Alice thoughtfully.

"Why, what do you mean, Alice?" asked her mother, surprised.

"Just this, mother, and I have been thinking of talking to Richard about it for some time."

Travis took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at her quizzically.

She flushed under his gaze and added: "If I wasn't saying what I am for humanity's sake I would be willing to admit that it was impertinent on my part. But are you satisfied with the way you work little children in that mill, Richard, and are you willing to let it go on without a protest before your directors? You have such a fine opportunity for good there," she added in all her old beautiful earnestness.

"Oh, Alice, my dear, that is none of our affair. Now I should not answer her, Richard," and Mrs. Westmore tapped him playfully on the arm.

"Frankly, I am not," he said to Alice. "I think it is a horrible thing. But how are we to remedy it? There is no law on the subject at all in Alabama—"

"Except the broader, unwritten law," she added.

Travis laughed: "You will find that it cuts a small figure with directors when it comes in conflict with the dividends of a corporation."

"But how is it there?" she asked,—"in New England?"

"They have seen the evils of it and they have a law against child labor. The age is restricted to twelve years, and every other year they must go to a public school before they may be taken back into the mill. But even with all that, the law is openly violated, as it is in England, where they have been making efforts to throttle the child-labor problem for nearly a century, and after whose law the New England law was patterned."

"Why, by the parents of the children falsely swearing to their age."

Alice looked at him in astonishment.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked.

"Why, certainly—and it would be the same here. If we had a law the lazy parents of many of them would swear falsely to their children's ages."

"There could be some way found to stop that," she said.

"It has not been found yet," he added. "What is to prevent two designing parents swearing that an eight year old child is twelve—and these little poor whites," he added with a laugh, "all look alike from eight to sixteen—scrawny—hard and half-starved. In many cases no living man could swear whether they are six or twelve."

"If you really should make it a rule to refuse all children under twelve," she added, "tell me how many would go out of your mill."

"In other words, how many under twelve do we work there?" he asked.

She nodded.

He thought a while and then said: "About one hundred and twenty-five."

She started: "That is terrible—terrible! Couldn't you—couldn't you bring the subject up before the directors for—for—"

"Your sake—yes"—he said, admiringly.

"Humanity's—God's—Right's—helpless, ignorant, dying children!"

"Do you know," he added quickly, "how many idle parents these hundred and twenty-five children support—actually support? Why, about fifty. Now do you see? The whole influence of these fifty people will be to violate the law—to swear the children are twelve or over. Yes, I am opposed to it—so is Kingsley—but we are powerless."

"My enthusiasm has been aroused, of late, on the subject," Alice went on, "by the talks and preaching of my old friend, Mr. Watts."

Travis frowned: "The old Bishop of Cottontown," he added ironically—"and he had better stop it—he will get into trouble yet."

"Why?"

"Because he is doing the mill harm."

"And I don't suppose one should do a corporation harm," she said quickly,—"even to do humanity good?"

"Oh, Alice, let us drop so disagreeable a subject," said her mother. "Come, Richard and I want some music."

"Any way," said Alice, rising, "I do very much hope you will bring the subject up in your visit to the directors. It has grown on me under the talks of the old Bishop and what I have seen myself—it has become a nightmare to me."

"I don't think it is any of our business at all," spoke up Mrs. Westmore quickly.

Alice turned her big, earnest eyes and beautiful face on her mother.

"Do you remember when I was six years old?" she asked.

"Of course I do."

"Suppose—suppose—that our poverty had come to us then, and you and papa had died and left brother and me alone and friendless. Then suppose we had been put into that mill to work fourteen hours a day—we—your own little ones—brother and I"—

Mrs. Westmore sprang up with a little shriek and put her hands over her daughter's mouth.

Richard Travis shrugged his shoulders: "I had not thought of it that way myself," he said. "That goes home to one."

Richard Travis was always uplifted in the presence of Alice. It was wonderful to him what a difference in his feelings, his behavior, his ideas, her simple presence exerted. As he looked at her he thought of last night's debauch—the bar-room—the baseness and vileness of it all. He thought of his many amours. He saw the purity and grandeur of her in this contrast—all her queenliness and beauty and simplicity. He even thought of Maggie and said to himself: "Suppose Alice should know all this.... My God! I would have no more chance of winning her than of plucking a star from the sky!"

He thought of Helen and it made him serious. Helen's was a different problem from Maggie's. Maggie was a mill girl—poor, with a bed-ridden father. She was nameless. But Helen—she was of the same blood and caste of this beautiful woman before him, whom he fully expected to make his wife. There was danger in Helen—he must act boldly, but decisively—he must take her away with him—out of the State, the South even. Distance would be his protection, and her pride and shame would prevent her ever letting her whereabouts or her fate be known.

Cold-bloodedly, boldly, and with clear-cut reasoning, all this ran through his mind as he stood looking at Alice Westmore.

We are strangely made—the best of us. Men have looked on the Madonna and wondered why the artist had not put more humanity there—had not given her a sensual lip, perhaps. And on the Cross, the Christ was thinking of a thief.

Two hours later he was bidding her good-bye.

"Next Sunday, do you remember—Alice—next Sunday night you are to tell me—to fix the day, Sweet?"

"Did mother tell you that?" she asked. "She should let me speak for myself."

But somehow he felt that she would. Indeed he knew it as he kissed her hand and bade her good-night.

Richard Travis had ridden over to Westmoreland that Sunday night, and as he rode back, some two miles away, and within the shadows of a dense clump of oaks which bordered the road, he was stopped by two dusky figures. They stood just on the edge of the forest and came out so suddenly that the spirited saddle mare stopped and attempted to wheel and bolt. But Travis, controlling her with one hand and, suspecting robbers, had drawn his revolver with the other, when one of them said:

"Friends, don't shoot."

"Give the countersign," said Travis with ill-concealed irritation.

"Union League, sir. I am Silos, sir."

Travis put his revolver back into his overcoat pocket and quieted his mare.

The two men, one a negro and the other a mulatto, came up to his saddle-skirt and stood waiting respectfully.

"You should have awaited me at The Gaffs, Silos."

"We did, sir," said the mulatto, "but the boys are all out here in the woods, and we wanted to hold them together. We didn't know when you would come home."

"Oh, it's all right," said Travis pettishly—"only you came near catching one of my bullets by mistake. I thought you were Jack Bracken and his gang."

The mulatto smiled and apologized. He was a bright fellow and the barber of the town.

"We wanted to know, sir, if you were willing for us to do the work to-night, sir?"

"Why bother me about it—no need for me to know, Silos, but one thing I must insist upon. You may whip them—frighten them, but nothing else, mind you, nothing else."

"But you are the commander of the League—we wanted your consent."

Travis bent low over the saddle and talked earnestly to the man a while. It was evidently satisfactory to the other, for he soon beckoned his companion and started off into the woods.

"Have you representatives from each camp present, Silos?"

The mulatto turned and came back.

"Yes—but the toughest we could get. I'll not stay myself to see it. I don't like such work, sir—only some one has to do it for the cause—the cause of freedom, sir."

"Of course—why of course," said Travis. "Old Bisco and his kind are liable to get all you negroes put back into slavery—if the Democrats succeed again as they have just done. Give them a good scare."

"We'll fix him to-night, boss," said the black one, grinning good naturedly. Then he added to himself: "Yes, I'll whip 'em—to death."

"I heard a good deal of talk among the boys, to-night, sir," said the mulatto. "They all want you for Congress next time."

"Well, we'll talk about that, Silos, later. I must hurry on."

He started, then wheeled suddenly:

"Oh, say, Silos—"

The latter came back.

"Do your work quietly to-night—Just a good scare—If you disturb"—he pointed to the roof of Westmoreland in the distance showing above the beech tops. "You know how foolish they are about old Bisco and his wife—"

"They'll never hear anything." He walked off, saying to himself: "A nigger who is a traitor to his race ought to be shot, but for fear of a noise and disturbin' the ladies—I'll hang 'em both,—never fear."

Travis touched his mare with the spur and galloped off.

Uncle Bisco and his wife were rudely awakened. It was nearly midnight when the door of their old cabin was broken open by a dozen black, ignorant negroes, who seized and bound the old couple before they could cry out. Bisco was taken out into the yard under a tree, while his wife, pleading and begging for her husband's life, was tied to another tree.

"Bisco," said the leader, "we cum heah to pay you back fur de blood you drawed frum our backs whilst you hilt de whip ob slabery an' oberseed fur white fo'ks. An' fur ebry lick you giv' us, we gwi' giv' you er dozen on your naked back, an' es fur dis ole witch," said the brute, pointing to old Aunt Charity, "we got de plain docyments on her fur witchin' Br'er Moses' little gal—de same dat she mek hab fits, an' we gwi' hang her to a lim'."

The old man drew himself up. In every respect—intelligence, physical and moral bravery—he was superior to the crowd around him. Raised with the best class of whites, he had absorbed many of their virtues, while in those around him were many who were but a few generations removed from the cowardice of darkest Africa.

"I nurver hit you a lick you didn't deserve, suh, I nurver had you whipped but once an' dat wus for stealin' a horg which you sed yo'se'f you stole. You ken do wid me es you please," he went on, "you am menny an' kin do it, an' I am ole an' weak. But ef you hes got enny soul, spare de po' ole 'oman who ain't nurver dun nothin' but kindness all her life. De berry chile you say she witched hes hed 'leptis fits all its life an' Cheerity ain't dun nuffin' but take it medicine to kwore it. Don't hurt de po' ole 'oman," he exclaimed.

"Let 'em do whut dey please wid me, Bisco," she said: "Dey can't do nuffin' to dis po' ole body but sen' de tired soul on dat journey wher de buterful room is already fix fur it, es you read dis berry night. But spare de ole man, spare 'im fur de secun' blessin' which Gord dun promised us, an' which boun' ter cum bekase Gord can't lie. O Lord," she said suddenly, "remember thy po' ole servants dis night."

But her appeals were fruitless. Already the "witch council" of the blacks was being formed to decide their fate. And it was an uncanny scene that the moon looked down on that night, under the big trees on the banks of the Tennessee. They formed in a circle around the "Witch Finder," an old negro whose head was as white as snow, and who was so ignorant he could scarcely speak even negro dialect.

Both his father and mother were imported from Africa, and the former was "Witch Finder" for his tribe there. The negroes said the African Witch Finder had imparted his secret only to his son, and that it had thus been handed down in one family for many generations.

The old negro now sat upon the ground in the center of the circle. He was a small, bent up, wiry-looking black, with a physiognomy closely resembling a dog's, which he took pains to cultivate by drawing the plaits of his hair down like the ears of a hound, while he shaped his few straggling strands of beard into the under jaw of the same animal. Three big negroes had led him, blind-folded, into the circle, chanting a peculiar song, the music of which was weird and uncanny. And now as he sat on the ground the others regarded him with the greatest reverence and awe. It was in one of the most dismal portions of the swamp, a hundred yards or two from the road that led to the ferry at the river. Here the old people had been brought from their homes and tied to this spot where the witch council was to be held. Before seating himself the Witch Finder had drawn three rings within a circle on the ground with the thigh bone of a dog. Then, unbuttoning his red flannel shirt, he took from his bosom, suspended around his neck, a kind of purse, made from the raw-hide of a calf, with white hair on one side and red on the other, and from this bag he proceeded to take out things which would have given Shakespeare ideas for his witch scene in Macbeth. A little black ring, made of the legs of the black spider and bound together with black horse hair; a black thimble-like cup, not much longer than the cup of an acorn, made of the black switch of a mule containing the liver of a scorpion. The horny head and neck of the huge black beetle, commonly known to negroes as the black Betsy Bug; the rattle and button of a rattlesnake; the fang-tooth of a cotton-mouth moccasin, the left hind foot of a frog, seeds of the stinging nettle, and pods of peculiar plants, all incased in a little sack made of a mole's hide. These were all given sufficient charm by a small round cotton yarn, in the center of which was a drop of human blood. They were placed on the ground around him, but he held the ball of cotton yarn in his hand, and ordered that the child be brought into the ring. The poor thing was frightened nearly to death at sight of the Witch Finder, and when he began slowly to unwind his ball of cotton thread and chant his monotonous funeral song, she screamed in terror. At a signal from the "Witch Finder," Aunt Charity was dragged into the ring, her hands tied behind her. The sight of such brutality was too much for the child, and she promptly had another fit. No other evidence was needed, and the Witch Finder declared that Aunt Charity was Queen of Witches. The council retired, and in a few minutes their decision was made: Uncle Bisco was to be beaten to death with hickory flails and his old wife hung to the nearest tree. Their verdict being made, two stout negroes came forward to bind the old man to a tree with his arms around it. At sight of these ruffians the old woman broke out into triumphant song:

"O we mos' to de home whar we all gwi' res', Cum, dear Lord, cum soon! An' take de ole weary ones unto yo' bres', Cum, dear Lord, cum soon! Fur we ole an' we tired an' we hungry fur yo' sight, An' our lim's dey am weary, fur we fou't er good fight, An' we longin' fur de lan' ob lub an' light— Cum, dear Lord, cum soon."

And it was well that she sang that song, for it stopped three horsemen just as they forded the creek and turned their horses' heads into the lane that led to the cabin. One who was tall and with square shoulders sat his horse as if born in the saddle. Above, his dark hair was streaked with white, but the face was calm and sad, though lit up now with two keen and kindly eyes which glowed with suppressed excitement. It was the face of splendid resolve and noble purpose, and the horse he rode was John Paul Jones. The other was the village blacksmith. A negro followed them, mounted on a raw-bone pony, and carrying his master's Enfield rifle.

The first horseman was just saying: "Things look mighty natural at the old place, Eph; I wonder if the old folks will know us? It seems to me—"

He pulled up his horse with a jerk. He heard singing just over to his left in the wood. Both horsemen sat listening:

O we mos' to de do' ob our Father's home— Lead, dear Lord, lead on! An' we'll nurver mo' sorrer an' nurver mo' roam— Lead, dear Lord, lead on! An' we'll meet wid de lam's dat's gohn on befo' An' we lie in de shade ob de good shepherd's do', An' he'll wipe away all ob our tears as dey flow— Lead, dear Lord, lead on!

"Do you know that voice, Eph?" cried the man in front to his body servant. "We must hurry"; and he touched the splendid horse with the heel of his riding boot.

But the young negro had already plunged two spurs into his pony's flanks and was galloping toward the cabin.

It was all over when the white rider came up. Two brutes had been knocked over with the short heavy barrel of an Enfield rifle. There was wild scattering of others through the wood. An old man was clinging in silent prayer to his son's knees and an old woman was clinging around his neck, and saying:

"Praise God—who nurver lies—it's little Ephrum—come home ag'in."

Then they looked up and the old man raised his hands in a pitiful tumult of joy and fear and reverence as he said:

"An' Marse Tom, so help me God—a-ridin' John Paul Jones!"



CHAPTER IX

THE PEDIGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT

Man may breed up all animals but himself. Strive as he may, the laws of heredity are hidden. "Like produces like or the likeness of an ancestor" is the unalterable law of the lower animal. Not so with man—he is a strange anomaly. Breed him up—up—and then from his high breeding will come reversion. From pedigrees and plumed hats and ruffled shirts come not men, but pygmies—things which in the real fight of life are but mice to the eagles which have come up from the soil with the grit of it in their craws and the strength of it in their talons.

We stop in wonder—balked. Then we see that we cannot breed men—they are born; not in castles, but in cabins.

And why in cabins? For therein must be the solution. And the solution is plain: It is work—work that does it.

We cannot breed men unless work—achievement—goes with it.

From the loins of great horses come greater horses; for the pedigree of work—achievement—is there. Unlike man, the race-horse is kept from degeneracy by work. Each colt that comes must add achievement to pedigree when he faces the starter, or he goes to the shambles or the surgeon.

Why may not man learn this simple lesson—the lesson of work—of pedigree, but the pedigree of achievement?

The son who would surpass his father must do more than his father did. Two generations of idleness will beget nonentities, and three, degenerates.

The preacher, the philosopher, the poet, the ruler—it matters not what his name—he who first solves the problem of how to keep mankind achieving will solve the problem of humanity.

And now to Helen Conway for the first time in her life this simple thing was happening—she was working—she was earning—she was supporting herself and Lily and her father. Not only that, but gradually she was learning to know what the love of one like Clay meant—unselfish, devoted, true.

If to every tempted woman in the world could be given work, and to work achievement, and to achievement independence, there would be few fallen ones.

All the next week Helen went to the mill early—she wanted to go. She wanted to earn more money and keep Lily out of the mill. And she went with a light heart, because for the first time in her life since she could remember, her father was sober. Helen's earnings changed even him. There was something so noble in her efforts that it uplifted even the drunkard. In mingled shame and pride he thought it out: Supported by his daughter—in a mill and such a daughter! He arose from it all white-lipped with resolve: "I will be a Conway again!" He said it over and over. He swore it.

It is true he was not entirely free from that sickening, sour, accursed smell with which she had associated him all her life. But that he was himself, that he was making an earnest effort, she knew by his neatly brushed clothes, his clean linen, his freshly shaved face, his whole attire which betokened the former gentleman.

"How handsome he must have been when he was once a Conway!" thought Helen.

He kissed his daughters at the breakfast table. He chatted with them, and though he said nothing about it, even Lily knew that he had resolved to reform.

After breakfast Helen left him, with Lily sitting on her father's lap, her face bright with the sunshine of it:

"If papa would always be like this"—and she patted his cheek.

Conway started. The very intonation of her voice, her gesture, was of the long dead mother.

Tears came to his eyes. He kissed her: "Never again, little daughter, will I take another drop."

She looked at him seriously: "Say with God's help—" she said simply. "Mammy Maria said it won't count unless you say that."

Conway smiled. "I will do it my own self."

But Lily only shook her head in a motherly, scolding way.

"With God's help, then," he said.

Never was an Autumn morning more beautiful to Helen as she walked across the fields to the mill. She had learned a nearer way, one which lay across hill and field. The path ran through farms, chiefly The Gaffs, and cut across the hills and meadow land. Through little dells, amid fragrant groves of sweet gum and maples, their beautiful many-colored leaves now scattered in rich profusion around. Then down little hollows where the brooks sputtered and frothed and foamed along, the sun all the time darting in and out, as the waters ran first in sunshine and then in shadow. And above, the winds were so still, that the jumping of the squirrel in the hickories made the only noise among the leaves which still clung to the boughs.

All so beautiful, and never had Helen been so happy.

She was earning a living—she was saving Lily from the mill and her father from temptation.

Her path wound along an old field and plunged into scrub cedar and glady rocks. A covey of quail sprang up before her and she screamed, frightened at the sudden thunder of their wings.

Then the path ran through a sedge field, white with the tall silvered panicled-leaves of the life-everlasting.

Beyond her she saw the smoke-stack of the mill, and a short cut through a meadow of The Gaffs would soon take her there.

She failed to see a warning on the fence which said: Keep out—Danger.

Through the bars she went, intent only on soon reaching the mill beyond and glorying in the strong rich smell of autumn in leaf and grass and air.

"What a beautiful horse that is in the pasture," she thought, and then her attention went to a meadow lark flushed and exultant. She heard shouts, and now—why was Jim, the stable boy, running toward her so fast, carrying a pitchfork in his hands and shouting: "Whoa—there, Antar—Antar,—you, sir!"

And the horse! One look was enough. With ears laid back, and mouth wide open, with eyes blazing with the fire of fury he was plunging straight at her.

Helpless, she turned in sickening doubt, to feel that her limbs were limp in the agony of fear. She heard the thunder of the man-eating stallion's hoofs just behind her and she butted blindly, as she sank down, into some one who held bravely her hand as she fell, and the next instant she heard a thundering report and smelt a foul blast of gunpowder. She looked up in time to see the great horse pitch back on his haunches, rear, quiver a moment and strike desperately at the air with his front feet and fall almost upon her.

When she revived, the stable boy stood near by the dead stallion, pale with fright and wonder. A half-grown boy stood by her, holding her hand.

"You are all right now," he said quietly as he helped her to arise. In his right hand he held a pistol and the foul smoke still oozed up from the nipple where the exploded cap lay shattered, under the hammer.

He was perfectly cool—even haughtily so. He scarcely looked at Helen nor at Jim, who kept saying nervously:

"You've killed him—you've killed him—what will Mr. Travis say?"

The boy laughed an ironical laugh. Then he walked up and examined the shot he had made. Squarely between the great eyes the ball had gone, and scarcely had the glaring, frenzied eye-balls of the man-eater been fixed in the rigid stare of death. He put his fingers on it, and turning, said:

"A good shot, running—and at twenty paces!"

Then he stood up proudly, and his blue eyes flashed defiance as he said:

"And what will Mr. Travis say? Well, tell him first of all that this man-eating stallion of his caught the bullet I had intended for his woman-eating master—this being my birth-day. And tell him, if he asks you who I am, that last week I was James Adams, but now I am James Travis. He will understand."

He came over to Helen gallantly—his blue eyes shining through a smile which now lurked in them:

"This is Miss Conway, isn't it? I will see you out of this."

Then, taking her hand as if she had been his big sister, he led her along the path to the road and to safety.



CHAPTER X

MARRIED IN GOD'S SIGHT

Night—for night and death, are they not one? A farm cabin in a little valley beyond the mountain. An Indian Summer night in November, but a little fire is pleasant, throwing its cheerful light on a room rough from puncheon floor to axe-hewn rafters, but cleanly-tidy in its very roughness. It looked sinewy, strong, honest, good-natured. There was roughness, but it was the roughness of strength. Knots of character told of the suffering, struggles and privations of the sturdy trees in the forest, of seams twisted by the tempests; rifts from the mountain rocks; fibre, steel-chilled by the terrible, silent cold of winter stars.

And now plank and beam and rafter and roof made into a home, humble and honest, and giving it all back again under the warm light of the hearth-stone.

On a bed, white and beautifully clean, lay a fragile creature, terribly white herself, save where red live coals gleamed in her cheeks beneath the bright, blazing, fever-fire burning in her eyes above.

She coughed and smiled and lay still, smiling.

She smiled because a little one—a tiny, sickly little girl—had come up to the bed and patted her cheek and said: "Little mother—little mother!"

There were four other children in the room, and they sat around in all the solemn, awe-stricken sorrow of death, seen for the first time.

Then a man in an invalid chair, helpless and with a broken spine, spoke, as if thinking aloud:

"She's all the mother the little 'uns ever had, Bishop—'pears like it's cruel for God to take her from them."

"God's cruelty is our crown," said the old man—"we'll understand it by and by."

Then the beautiful woman who had come over the mountain arose from the seat by the fireside, and came to the bed. She took the little one in her arms and petted and soothed her.

The child looked at her timidly in childish astonishment. She was not used to such a beautiful woman holding her—so proud and fine—from a world that she knew was not her world.

"May I give you some nourishment now, Maggie?"

The girl shook her head.

"No—no—Miss Alice," and then she smiled so brightly and cheerfully that the little one in Alice Westmore's arms clapped her hands and laughed: "Little mother—be up, well, to-morrow."

Little Mother turned her eyes on the child quickly, smiled and nodded approval. But there were tears—tears which the little one did not understand.

An hour went by—the wind had ceased, and with it the rain. The children were asleep in bed; the father in his chair.

A cold sweat had broken out on the dying girl's forehead and she breathed with a terrible effort. And in it all the two watchers beside the bed saw that there was an agony there but not the fear of death. She kept trying to bite her nails nervously and saying:

"There is only— ... one thing— ... one ... thing...."

"Tell me, Maggie," said the old man, bending low and soothing her forehead with his hands, "tell us what's pesterin' you—maybe it hadn't oughter be. You mustn't worry now—God'll make everything right—to them that loves him even to the happy death. You'll die happy an' be happy with him forever. The little 'uns an' the father, you know they're fixed here—in this nice home an' the farm—so don't worry."

"That's it!.... Oh, that's it!.... I got it that way— ... all for them ... but it's that that hurts now...."

He bent down over her: "Tell us, child—me an' Miss Alice—tell us what's pesterin' you. You mustn't die this way—you who've got such a right to be happy."

The hectic spark burned to white heat in her cheek. She bit her nails, she picked at the cover, she looked toward the bed and asked feebly: "Are they asleep? Can I talk to you two?"

The old man nodded. Alice soothed her brow.

Then she beckoned to the old preacher, who knelt by her side, and he put his arms around her neck and raised her on the pillow. And his ear was close to her lips, for she could scarcely talk, and Alice Westmore knelt and listened, too. She listened, but with a griping, strained heartache,—listened to a dying confession from the pale lips, and the truth for the first time came to Alice Westmore, and kneeling, she could not rise, but bent again her head and heard the pitiful, dying confession. As she listened to the broken, gasping words, heard the heart-breaking secret come out of the ruins of its wrecked home, her love, her temptation, her ignorance in wondering if she were really married by the laws of love, and then the great martyrdom of it all—giving her life, her all, that the others might live—a terrible tightening gathered around Alice Westmore's heart, her head fell with the flooding tears and she knelt sobbing, her bloodless fingers clutching the bed of the dying girl.

"Don't cry," said Maggie. "I should be the one to weep, ... only I am so happy ... to think ... I am loved by the noblest, best, of men, ... an' I love him so, ... only he ain't here; ... but I wouldn't have him see me die. Now—now ... what I want to know, Bishop, ..." she tried to rise. She seemed to be passing away. The old man caught her and held her in his arms.

Her eyes opened: "I—is—" she went on, in the agony of it all with the same breath, "am ... am I married ... in God's sight ... as well as his—"

The old man held her tenderly as if she were a child. He smiled calmly, sweetly, into her eyes as he said:

"You believed it an' you loved only him, Maggie—poor chile!"

"Oh, yes—yes—" she smiled, "an' now—even now I love him up—right up—as you see ... to the door, ... to the shadow, ... to the valley of the shadow...."

"And it went for these, for these"—he said looking around at the room.

"For them—my little ones—they had no mother, you kno'—an' Daddy's back. Oh, I didn't mind the work, ... the mill that has killed ... killed me, ... but, ... but was I"—her voice rose to a shrill cry of agony—"am I married in God's sight?"

Alice quivered in the beauty of the answer which came back from the old man's lips:

"As sure as God lives, you were—there now—sleep and rest; it is all right, child."

Then a sweet calmness settled over her face, and with it a smile of exquisite happiness.

She fell back on her pillow: "In God's sight ... married ... married ... my—Oh, I have never said it before ... but now, ... can't I?"

The Bishop nodded, smiling.

"My husband, ... my husband, ... dear heart, ... Good-bye...."

She tried to reach under her pillow to draw out something, and then she smiled and died.

When Alice Westmore dressed her for burial an hour afterwards, her heart was shaken with a bitterness it had never known before—a bitterness which in a man would have been a vengeance. For there was the smile still on the dead face, carried into the presence of God.

Under the dead girl's pillow lay the picture of Richard Travis.

The next day Alice sent the picture to Richard Travis, and with it a note.

"It is your's," she wrote calmly, terribly calm—"from the girl who died believing she was your wife. I am helping bury her to-day. And you need not come to Westmoreland to-morrow night, nor next week, nor ever again."

And Richard Travis, when he read it, turned white to his hard, bitter, cruel lips, the first time in all his life.

For he knew that now he had no more chance to recall the living than he had to recall the dead.



CHAPTER XI

THE QUEEN IS DEAD—LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

All that week at the mill, Richard Travis had been making preparations for his trip to Boston. Regularly twice, and often three times a year, he had made the same journey, where his report to the directors was received and discussed. After that, there were always two weeks of theatres, operas, wine-suppers and dissipations of other kinds—though never of the grossest sort—for even in sin there is refinement, and Richard Travis was by instinct and inheritance refined.

He was not conscious—and who of his class ever are?—of the effects of the life he was leading—the tightening of this chain of immoral habits, the searing of what conscience he had, the freezing of all that was generous and good within him.

Once his nature had been as a lake in midsummer, its surface shimmering in the sunlight, reflecting something of the beauty that came to it. Now, cold, sordid, callous, it lay incased in winter ice and neither could the sunlight go in nor its reflection go out. It slept on in coarse opaqueness, covered with an impenetrable crust which he himself did not understand.

"But," said the old Bishop more than once, "God can touch him and he will thaw like a spring day. There is somethin' great in Richard Travis if he can only be touched."

But vice cannot reason. Immorality cannot deduce. Only the moral ponders deeply and knows both the premises and the conclusions, because only the moral thinks.

Vice, like the poisonous talons of a bird of prey, while it buries its nails in the flesh of its victim, carries also the narcotic which soothes as it kills.

And Richard Travis had arrived at this stage. At first it had been with him any woman, so there was a romance—and hence Maggie. But he had tired of these, and now it was the woman beautiful as Helen, or the woman pure and lovely as Alice Westmore.

What a tribute to purity, that impurity worships it the more as itself sinks lower in the slime of things. It is the poignancy of the meteorite, which, falling from a star, hisses out its life in the mud.

The woman pure—Alice—the very thought of her sent him farther into the mud, knowing she could not be his. She alone whom he had wanted to wed all his life, the goal of his love's ambition, the one woman in the world he had never doubted would one day be his wife.

Her note to him—"Never ... never ... again"—he kept reading it over, stunned, and pale, with the truth of it. In his blindness it had never occurred to him that Alice Westmore and Maggie would ever meet. In his blindness—for Wrong, daring as a snake, which, however alert and far-seeing it may be in the hey-day of its spring, sees less clearly as the Summer advances, until, in the August of its infamy, it ceases to see altogether and becomes an easy victim for all things with hoofs.

Then, the poignant reawakening. Now he lay in the mud and above him still shone the star.

The star—his star! And how it hurt him! It was the breaking of a link in the chain of his life.

Twice had he written to her. But each time his notes came back unopened. Twice had he gone to Westmoreland to see her. Mrs. Westmore met him at the door, cordial, sympathetic, but with a nervous jerk in the little metallic laugh. His first glance at her told him she knew everything—and yet, knew nothing. Alice was locked in her room and would not see him.

"But, oh, Richard," and again she laughed her little insincere, unstable, society laugh, beginning with brave frankness in one corner of her mouth and ending in a hypocritical wave of forgetfulness before it had time to finish the circle, but fluttering out into a cynical twitching of a thing which might have been a smile or a sneer—

"True love—you know—dear Richard—you must remember the old saying."

She pressed his hand sympathetically. The mouth said nothing, but the hand said plainly: "Do not despair—I am working for a home at The Gaffs."

He pitied her, for there was misery in her eyes and in her laugh and in the very touch of her hand. Misery and insincerity, and that terrible mental state when weakness is roped up between the two and knows, for once in its life, that it has no strength at all.

And she pitied him, for never before on any human face had she seen the terrible irony of agony. Agony she had often seen—but not this irony of it—this agony that saw all its life's happiness blasted and knew it deserved it.

Richard Travis, when he left Westmoreland, knew that he left it forever.

"The Queen is dead—long live the Queen," he said bitterly.

And then there happened what always happens to the thing in the mud—he sank deeper—desperately deeper.

Now—now he would have Helen Conway. He would have her and own her, body and soul. He would take her away—as he had planned, and keep her away. That was easy, too—too far away for the whisper of it ever to come back. If he failed in that he would marry her. She was beautiful—and with a little more age and education she would grace The Gaffs. So he might marry her and set her up, a queen over their heads.

This was his determination when he went to the mill the first of the week. All the week he watched her, talked with her, was pleasant, gallant and agreeable. But he soon saw that Helen was not the same. There was not the dull wistful resignation in her look, and despair had given way to a cheerfulness he could not understand. There was a brightness in her eyes which made her more beautiful.

The unconscious grip which the shamelessness of it all had over him was evidenced in what he did. He confided his plans to Jud Carpenter, and set him to work to discover the cause.

"See what's wrong," he said significantly. "I am going to take that girl North with me, and away from here. After that it is no affair of yours."

"Anything wrong?" He had reached the point of his moral degradation when right for Helen meant wrong for him.

Jud, with a characteristic shrewdness, put his finger quickly on the spot.

Edward Conway was sober. Clay saw her daily.

"But jes' wait till I see him ag'in—down there. I'll make him drunk enough. Then you'll see a change in the Queen—hey?"

And he laughed knowingly. With a little more bitterness she would go to the end of the world with him.

It was that day he held her hands in the old familiar way, but when he would kiss her at the gate she still fled, crimson, away.

The next morning Clay Westmore walked with her to the mill, and Travis lilted his eyebrows haughtily:

"If anything of that kind happens," he said to himself, "nothing can save me."

He watched her closely—how beautiful she looked that day—how regally beautiful! She had come wearing the blue silk gown, with the lace and beads which had been her mother's. In sheer delight Travis kept slipping to the drawing-in room door to watch her work. Her posture, beautifully Greek, before the machine, so natural that it looked not unlike a harp in her hand; her half-bent head and graceful neck, the flushed face and eyes, the whole picture was like a Titian, rich in color and life.

And she saw him and looked up smiling.

It was not the smile of happiness. He did not know it because, being blind, he could not know. It was the happiness of work—achievement.

He came in smiling. "Why are you so much happier than last week?"

"Would you really like to know?" she said, looking him frankly in the eyes.

He touched her hair playfully. She moved her head and shook it warningly.

"It is because I am at work and father is trying so hard to reform."

"I thought maybe it was because you had found out how much I love you."

It was his old, stereotyped, brazen way, but she did not know it and blushed prettily.

"You are kind, Mr. Travis, but—but that mustn't be thought of. Please, but I wish you wouldn't talk that way."

"Why, it is true, my queen—of The Gaffs?" he said smiling.

She began to work again.

He came over to her and bent low:

"You know I am to take you Monday night"—

Her hands flew very rapidly—her cheeks mantled into a rich glow. One of the threads snapped. She stopped, confused.

Travis glanced around. No one was near. He bent and kissed her hair:

"My queen," he whispered, "my beautiful queen."

Then he walked quickly out. He went to his office, but he still saw the beautiful picture. It thrilled him and then there swept up over him another picture, and he cried savagely to himself:

"I'll make her sorry. She shall bow to that fine thing yet—my queen."

Nor would it leave him that day, and into the night he dreamed of her, and it was the same Titian picture in a background of red sunset. And her machine was a harp she was playing. He wakened and smiled:

"Am I falling in love with that girl? That will spoil it all."

He watched her closely the next day, for it puzzled him to know why she had changed so rapidly in her manner toward him. He had ridden to Millwood to bring her to the mill, himself; and he had some exquisite roses for her—clipped in the hot-house by his own hands. It was with an unmistakable twitch of jealousy that he learned that Clay Westmore had already come by and gone with her.

"I know what it is now," he said to Jud Carpenter at the mill that morning; "she is half in love with that slow, studious fellow."

Jud laughed: "Say, excuse me, sah—but hanged if you ain't got all the symptoms, y'self, boss?"

Travis flushed:

"Oh, when I start out to do a thing I want to do it—and I'm going to take her with me, or die trying."

Jud laughed again: "Leave it to me—I'll fix the goggle-eyed fellow."

That night when the door bell rang at Westmoreland, Jud Carpenter was ushered into Clay's workshop. He sat down and looked through his shaggy eyebrows at the lint and dust and specimens of ore. Then he spat on the floor disgustedly.

"Sorry to disturb you, but be you a surveyor also?"

The big bowed glasses looked at him quietly and nodded affirmatively.

"Wal, then," went on Jud, "I come to git you to do a job of surveying for the mill. It's a lot of timber land on the other side of the mountain—some twenty miles off. The Company's bought five thousand acres of wood and they want it surveyed. What'll you charge?"

Clay thought a moment: "Going and coming, on horse-back—it will take me a week," said Clay thoughtfully. "I shall charge a hundred dollars."

"An' will you go right away—to-morrow mornin'?"

Clay nodded.

"Here's fifty of it," said Jud—"the Company is in a hurry. We want the survey by this day week. Let me see, this is Sat'dy—I'll come next Sat'dy night."

Clay's face flushed. Never before had he made a hundred dollars in a week.

"I'll go at once."

"To-morrow at daylight?" asked Jud, rising.

Clay looked at him curiously. There was something in the tone of the man that struck him as peculiar, but Jud went on in an easy way.

"You see we must have it quick. All our winter wood to run the mill is there an' we can't start into cordin' till it's surveyed an' the deed's passed. Sorry to hurry you"—

Clay promised to start at daylight and Jud left.

He looked at his watch. It was late. He would like to tell Helen about it—he said aloud: "Making a hundred dollars a week. If I could only keep up that—I'd—I'd—"

He blushed. And then he turned quietly and went to bed. And that was why Helen wondered the next day and the next, and all the next week why she did not see Clay, why he did not come, nor write, nor send her a message. And wondering the pang of it went into her hardening heart.