"He's goin' to give her some more of them roses," said Sam, explaining the matter to himself. But he worked for some time with his blond beard on his shoulder in his impatience to see them come out. At last, he could resist no longer. He knew a point where he could look through the glass and see whatever was taking place among the roses. He walked swiftly across the turf to that point. He looked in and saw Maud, whose back was turned toward him, talking as if she were pleading for her life, while Farnham listened with a clouded brow. Sleeny stood staring with stupid wonder while Maud laid her hand upon Farnham's shoulder. At that moment he heard footsteps on the gravel walk at some distance from him, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Belding approaching. Confused at his attitude of espionage, he walked away from his post, and, as he passed her, Mrs. Belding asked him if he knew where Mr. Farnham was.

"Yes," he answered, "he's in there. Walk right in;" and in the midst of his trouble of spirit he could hardly help chuckling at his own cleverness as he walked, in his amazement, back to the conservatory.

While she was in the house, Maud had confined herself to the subject of the vacancy in the library. She rushed at it, as a hunter at a hedge, to get away from the other matter which had tormented her for a week. When she found herself alone with Farnham she saw that it would be "horrid" to say what she had so long been rehearsing. "Now I can get that place, if you will help me. No earthly soul knows anything about it, and Minnie said she would give me a good chance before she let it out."

Farnham tried to show her the difficulties in the way. He was led by her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence. Whenever he paused, she would insist with a woman's disconcerting directness:

"But they don't know anything about it this time—they can't combine on anybody. You can certainly get one of them."

Farnham still argued against her sanguine hopes, till he at last affected her own spirits, and she grew silent and despondent. As she rose to go, he also took his hat to return to the garden, where he had left Sleeny, and they walked over the lawn together. As they approached the rose-house, she thought of her former visit and asked to repeat it. The warm breath of the flowers saluted her as she crossed the threshold, bringing so vivid a reminiscence of the enchantment of that other day, that there came with it a sudden and poignant desire to try there, in that bewitched atmosphere, the desperate experiment which would decide her fate. There was no longer any struggle in her mind. She could not, for her life, have kept silent now. She walked slowly beside him to the place where the pots of roses stood ranged on their frames, filling the air with dense fragrance. Her hands were icy cold and quick flushes passed through her, while her face reddened and paled like a horizon smitten by heat-lightning in a sultry night of summer. She looked at the moist brick pavement at her feet, her eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, and the long lashes nearly touched her cheeks.

"What sort will you have?" said Farnham, reaching for the gardener's shears.

"Never mind the roses," she said, in a dry voice which she hardly recognized as her own. "I have something to say to you."

He turned and looked at her with surprise. She raised her eyes to his with a great effort, and then, blushing fiery red, she said, in a clear, low voice, "I love you."

Like many another daughter and son of Eve, she was startled at the effect of these momentous words upon herself. Of all forms of speech these three words are the most powerful, the most wonderworking upon the being who utters them. It was the first time they had ever passed her lips, and they exalted and inebriated her. She was suddenly set free from the bashful constraint which had held her, and with a leaping pulse and free tongue she poured out her heart to the astonished and scandalized young man.

"Yes, I love you. You think it's horrid that I should say so, don't you? But I don't care, I love you. I loved you the first time I saw you, though you made me so angry about my glasses. But you were my master, and I knew it, and I never put them on again. And I thought of you day and night, and I longed for the day to come when I might see you once more, and I was glad when I did not get that place, so that I could come again and see you and talk with you. I can tell you over again every word you ever said to me. You were not like other men. You are the first real man I ever knew. I was silly and wild when I wanted to be your secretary. Of course, that wouldn't do. If I am not to be your wife, I must never see you again; you know that, don't you?" and, carried away by her own reckless words, she laid her hand on his shoulder. His frown of amazement and displeasure shook her composure somewhat. She turned pale and trembled, her eyes fell, and it seemed for an instant as if she would sink to the floor at his feet. He put his arm around her, to keep her from falling and pressed her closely to him. She threw her head back upon his shoulder and lifted her face to him. He looked down on her, and the frown passed from his brow as he surveyed her flushed cheeks, her red full lips parted in breathless eagerness; her dark eyes were wide open, the iris flecked with golden sparks and the white as clear and blue-tinged as in the eyes of a vigorous infant; her head lay on his shoulder in perfect content, and she put up her mouth to him as simply and as sure of a response as a pretty child. He was entirely aware of the ridiculousness of his position, but he stooped and kissed her.

Her work seemed all done; but her satisfaction lasted only a second. Her face broke into happy smiles.

"You do love me, do you not?" she asked.

"I certainly do not," he answered; and at that instant the door opened and Mrs. Belding saw this pretty group of apparent lovers on a rich background of Jacqueminot roses.

Startled more at the words of Farnham than at the entry of Mrs. Belding, Maud had started up, like Vivien, "stiff as a viper frozen." Her first thought was whether she had crushed her hat on his shoulder, and her hands flew instinctively to her head-gear. She then walked tempestuously past the astonished lady out into the garden and brushed roughly by Sleeny, who tried to detain her.

"Hold your tongue, Sam! I hate you and all men"; and with this general denunciation, she passed out of the place, flaming with rage and shame.

Mrs. Belding stood for a moment speechless, and then resorted to the use of that hard-worked and useful monosyllable,

"Well!" with a sharp, falling inflection.

"Well!" returned Farnham, with an easy, rising accent; and then both of them relieved the strained situation with a laugh.

"Come, now," said the good-natured woman, "I am a sort of guardian of yours. Give an account of yourself."

"That is easily given," said Farnham. "A young woman, whose name I hardly know, came to me in the garden this morning to ask for help to get some lady-like work to do. After discussing that subject threadbare, she came in here for a rose, and, apropos of nothing, made me a declaration and a proposal of honorable wedlock, dans toutes les formes."

"The forms were evident as I entered," said Mrs. Belding, dryly.

"I could not let her drop on the damp floor," said Farnham, who was astonished to find himself positively blushing under the amused scrutiny of his mother-confessor. "Consider, if you please, my dear madam, that this is the first offer I have ever received, and I was naturally somewhat awkward about declining it. We shall learn better manners as we go along."

"You did decline, then?" said Mrs. Belding, easily persuaded of the substantial truth of the story, and naturally inclined, as is the way of woman, to the man's side. Then, laughing at Arthur's discomfiture, she added, "I was about to congratulate you."

"I deserve only your commiseration."

"I must look about and dispose of you in some way. You are evidently too rich and too fascinating. But I came over to-day to ask you what I ought to do about my Lake View farm. I have two offers for it; if I had but one, I would take either—well, you know what I mean;" and the conversation became practical. After that matter was disposed of, she said, with a keen side-glance at Farnham, "That was a very pretty girl. I hope you will not be exposed to such another attack; I might not be so near the next time."

"That danger, thanks to you, is over; Mademoiselle will never return," he answered, with an air of conviction.

Mrs. Belding went home with no impression left of the scene she had witnessed but one of amusement. She thought of it only as "a good joke on Arthur Farnham." She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on her hat and hurried off to tell it. But she was a woman who lived very much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling. She was several times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance. So she restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment of it irritated her.

They were sitting on the wide porch which ran around two sides of the house just as twilight was falling. The air was full of drowsy calls and twitters from the grass and the trees. The two ladies had been sitting ever since dinner, enjoying the warm air of the early summer, talking very little, and dropping often into long and contented silences. Mrs. Belding had condescended to grenadine in consideration of the weather, and so looked less funereal than usual. Alice was dressed in a soft and vapory fabric of creamy bunting, in the midst of which her long figure lay reclined in an easy chair of Japanese bamboo; she might have posed for a statue of graceful and luxurious repose. There was light enough from the rising moon and the risen stars to show the clear beauty of her face and the yellow lustre of her hair; and her mother cast upon her from time to time a glance of pride and fondness, as if she were a recovered treasure to which the attraction of novelty had just been added anew.

"They say she looks as I did at her age," thought the candid lady; "but they must flatter me. My nose was never so straight as that: her nose is Belding all over. I wonder whom she will care about here? Mr. Furrey is a nice young man, but she is hardly polite to him. There he is now."

The young man came briskly up the walk, and ran up the steps so quickly that he tripped on the last one and dropped his hat. He cleverly recovered it, however, and made very elaborate bows to both the ladies, hoping that he found them quite well. Mrs. Belding bustled about to give him a chair, at which Alice knitted her pretty brows a little. She had scarcely moved her eyelashes to greet her visitor; but when Mrs. Belding placed a light chair near her daughter and invited Mr. Furrey to take it, the young lady rose from her reclining attitude and sat bolt upright with a look of freezing dignity. The youth was not at all abashed, but took his seat, with his hat held lightly by the brim in both hands. He was elegantly dressed, in as faithful and reverent an imitation as home talent could produce of the costume of the gentlemen who that year were driving coaches in New York. His collar was as stiff as tin; he had a white scarf, with an elaborate pin constructed of whips and spurs and horseshoes. He wore dog-skin gloves, very tight and red. His hair was parted in the middle with rigorous impartiality and shed rather rank fragrance on the night. He began conversation with an easy air, in which there was something of pleasurable excitement mixed.

"I come to receive your congratulations, ladies!"

"What, you are engaged?" said Mrs. Belding, and even the placid face of Miss Alice brightened with a look of pleased inquiry.

"Oh, dear, no; how could you think so?" he protested, with an arch look at Alice which turned her to marble again. "I mean I have this day been appointed assistant cashier of our bank!" Napoleon, informing Madame de Beauharnais [* - Perhaps Josephine told Napoleon herself, but I think she was clever enough to let him imagine he owed the appointment to his merits.] that he was to command the army of Italy, probably made less ado about it.

Mrs. Belding made haste to murmur her congratulations. "Very gratifying, I am sure,—at your age;" to which Alice responded like a chorus, but without any initiative warmth, "Very gratifying, I am sure."

Furrey went on at some length to detail all the circumstances of the event: how Mr. Lathers, the president of the bank, had sent for him, and how he complimented him; how he had asked him where he learned to write such a good hand; and how he had replied that it came sort of natural to him to write well, that he could make the American eagle with pen and ink before he was fifteen, all but the tail-feathers, and how he discovered a year later that the tail-feathers had to be made by holding the pen between the first and second fingers; with much more to the like innocent purpose, to which Mrs. Belding listened with nods and murmurs of approval. This was all the amiable young man needed to encourage him to indefinite prattle. He told them all about the men in the bank, their habits and their loves and their personal relations to him, and how he seemed somehow to be a general favorite among them all. Miss Alice sat very still and straight in her chair, with an occasional smile when the laughter of Mr. Furrey seemed to require it, but with her eyes turned to the moonlit night in vagrant reverie, and her mind in those distant and sacred regions where we cannot follow the minds of pure and happy girls.

"Now, you would hardly understand, if I did not tell you," said Mr. Furrey, "how it is that I have gained the confidence——"

At this moment Alice, who had been glancing over Mr. Furrey's shoulder for a moment with a look of interest in her eyes, which he thought was the legitimate result of his entertaining story, cried:

"Why, there comes Mr. Farnham, mamma."

"So it is," said her mother. "I suppose he wants to see me. Don't move, Mr. Furrey. Mr. Farnham and I will go into the house."

"By no means," said that gentleman, who by this time had mounted the steps. "I was sitting all alone on my porch and saw by the moon that yours was inhabited; and so I came over to improve my mind and manners in your society."

"I will get a chair for you," said Mrs. Belding.

"No, thank you; this balustrade will bear my weight, and my ashes will drop harmless on the flower-bed, if you will let me finish my cigar." And he seated himself between the chair of Furrey and the willow fabric in which Alice had resumed her place. This addition to the company was not at all to the taste of the assistant cashier, who soon took his leave, shaking hands with the ladies, with his best bow.

"After all, I do prefer a chair," said Farnham, getting down from his balustrade, and throwing away his cigar.

He sat with his back to the moonlight. On his left was Alice, who, as soon as Furrey took his departure, settled back in her willow chair in her former attitude of graceful ease. On the right was Mrs. Belding, in her thin, cool dress of gauzy black. Farnham looked from one to the other as they talked, and that curious exercise, so common to young men in such circumstances, went through his mind. He tried to fancy how Mrs. Belding looked at nineteen, and how Miss Belding would look at fifty, and the thought gave him singular pleasure. His eyes rested with satisfaction on the kindly and handsome face of the widow, her fine shoulders and arms, and comfortable form, and then, turning to the pure and exquisite features of the tall girl, who was smiling so freshly and honestly on him, his mind leaped forward through corning years, and he said to himself: "What a wealth of the woman there is there—for somebody." An aggressive feeling of disapproval of young Furrey took possession of him, and he said, sharply:

"What a very agreeable young man Mr. Furrey is?"

Mrs. Belding assented, and Miss Alice laughed heartily, and his mind was set at rest for the moment.

They passed a long time together. At first Mrs. Belding and Arthur "made the expenses" of the conversation; but she soon dropped away, and Alice, under the influence of the night and the moonlight and Farnham's frank and gentle provocation, soon found herself talking with as much freedom and energy as if it were a girls' breakfast. With far more, indeed,—for nature takes care of such matters, and no girl can talk to another as she can to a man, under favoring stars. The conversation finally took a personal turn, and Alice, to her own amazement, began to talk of her life at school, and with sweet and loving earnestness sang the praises of Madame de Veaudrey.

"I wish you could know her," she said to Farnham, with a sudden impulse of sympathy. He was listening to her intently, and enjoying her eager, ingenuous speech as much as her superb beauty, as the moon shone full on her young face, so vital and so pure at once, and played, as if glad of the privilege, about the curved lips, the flashing teeth, the soft eyes under their long lashes, and the hair over the white forehead, gleaming as crisply brilliant as fine-spun wire of gold.

"By her fruits I know her, and I admire her very much," he said, and was sorry for it the moment afterward, for it checked the course of the young girl's enthusiasm and brought a slight blush to her cheek.

"I ought to have known better," he said to himself with real penitence, "than to utter a stupid commonplace to such a girl when she was talking so earnestly." And he tried to make amends, and succeeded in winning back her attention and her slow unconscious smiles by talking to her of things a thousand miles away. The moon was silvering the tops of the linden-trees at the gates before they thought of the flight of time, and they had quite forgotten the presence of Mrs. Belding when her audible repose broke in upon their talk. They looked at each other, and burst into a frank laugh, full of confidence and comradeship, which the good lady heard in her dreams and waked, saying, "What are you laughing at? I did not catch that last witticism."

The young people rose from their chairs. "I can't repeat my own mots," said Arthur: "Miss Belding will tell you."

"Indeed I shall not," replied Alice. "It was not one of his best, mamma."

She gave him her hand as he said "Good-night," and it lay in his firm grasp a moment without reserve or tremor.

"You are a queer girl, Alice," said Mrs. Belding, as they walked into the drawing-room through the open window. "You put on your stiffest company manners for Mr. Furrey, and you seem entirely at ease with Mr. Farnham, who is much older and cleverer, and is noted for his sarcastic criticisms."

"I do not know why it is, mamma, but I do feel very much at home with Mr. Farnham, and I do not want Mr. Furrey to feel at home with me."

Upon this, Mrs. Belding laughed aloud. Alice turned in surprise, and her mother said, "It is too good to keep. I must tell you. It is such a joke on Arthur;" and, sitting in a low arm-chair, while Alice stood before her leaning upon the back of another, she told the whole story of the scene of the morning in the rose-house. She gave it in the fullest detail, interrupting herself here and there for soft cachinnations, unmindful of the stern, unsmiling silence with which her daughter listened.

She finished, with a loud nourish of merriment, and then asked: "Did you ever hear anything so funny in your life?"

The young lady was turning white and red in an ominous manner, and was biting her nether lip. Her answer to her mother's question was swift and brief:

"I never heard anything so horrid," and she moved majestically away without another word.

Mrs. Belding sat for a moment abashed. "There!" she said to herself, "I knew very well I ought not to tell her. But it was too good to keep, and I had nobody else to tell." She went to bed, feeling rather ill-used. As she passed her daughter's door, she said, "Good-night, Alice!" and a voice riot quite so sweet as usual replied, "Good-night, mamma," but the door was not opened.

Alice turned down her light and sat upon a cushioned seat in the embrasure of her open window. She looked up at the stars, which swam and glittered in her angry eyes. With trembling lips and clinched hands she communed with herself. "Why, why, why did mamma tell me that horrid story? To think there should be such women in the world! To take such a liberty with him, of all men! She could not have done it without some encouragement—and he could not have encouraged her. He is not that kind of a vulgar flirt at all. But what do I know about men? They may all be—but I did not think—what business have I thinking about it? I had better go to bed. I have spent all the evening talking to a man who—Oh! I wish mamma had not told me that wretched story. I shall never speak to him again. It is a pity, too, for we are such near neighbors, and he is so nice, if he were not—But I don't care how nice he is, she has spoiled him. I wonder who she was. Pretty, was she? I don't believe a word of it—some bold-faced, brazen creature. Oh! I shall hate myself if I cry;" but that was past praying for, and she closed her lattice and went to bed for fear the stars should witness her unwelcome tears.



X.

A WORD OUT OF SEASON.

Arthur Farnham awoke the next day with a flight of sweet hopes and fancies singing in his heart and brain. He felt cheerfully and kindly toward the whole human race. As he walked down into the city to transact some business he had there with his lawyer, he went out of his way to speak to little children. He gave all his acquaintances a heartier "Good-morning" than usual. He even whistled at passing dogs. The twitter of the sparrows in the trees, their fierce contentions on the grass, amused him. He leaned over the railing of the fountain in the square with the idlers, and took a deep interest in the turtles, who were baking their frescoed backs in the warm sun, as they floated about on pine boards, amid the bubbles of the clear water.

As he passed by the library building, Dr. Buchlieber was standing in the door. "Good luck," he said; "I was just wishing to see you. One of our young women resigned this morning, and I think there may be a chance for our handsome friend. The meeting, you remember, is this afternoon."

Farnham hardly recalled the name of the young lady in whose success he had been so interested, although recent intimate occurrences might have been expected to fix it somewhat permanently in his remembrance. But all female images except one had become rather vague in his memory. He assented, however, to what the doctor proposed, and going away congratulated himself on the possibility of doing Maud a service and ridding himself of the faintest tinge of remorse. He was not fatuous or conceited. He did not for a moment imagine that the girl was in love with him. He attributed her demonstration in the rose-house to her "congenital bad breeding," and thought it only one degree worse than other match-making manoeuvres of which he had been the object in the different worlds he had frequented. He gave himself no serious thought about it, and yet he was glad to find an apparent opportunity to be of use to her. She was poor and pretty. He had taken an interest in her welfare. It had not turned out very well. She had flung herself into his arms and been heartily kissed. He could not help feeling there was a balance against him.

As he turned the corner of the street which led to the attorney's office where he was going, he saw a man standing by the wall with his hat off, bowing to him. He returned the unusual salutation and passed on; it was some moments before he remembered that it was one of his colleagues on the Library Board. He regretted not having stopped and made the effort to engage his vote for Maud; but, on second thought, he reflected that it would be as well to rely upon the surprise of the three to prevent a combination at the meeting. When he reached the entrance of the building where his lawyer's offices were, he turned, with a sense of being pursued by a shuffling footstep which had hastened its speed the last few paces, and saw his colleague coming up the steps after him with a perspiring but resolute face.

"Hold on, Cap," he said, coming into the shade of the passage. "I was thinkin' o' comin' to see you, when I sighted you comin' round the corner."

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Pennybaker," said Arthur, taking the clumsy hand which was held out to him.

"Gettin' pretty hot, ain't it?" said Pennybaker, wiping his brow with his forefinger and dexterously sprinkling the floor with the proceeds of the action.

"No danger of frost, I think," Arthur assented, admiring the dexterity of Pennybaker, but congratulating himself that the shake-hands was disposed of.

"You bet your life. We're going to have it just sizzling from now on."

"Were you wishing to see me about anything in particular?" asked Farnham, who saw no other way of putting an end to a meteorological discussion which did not interest him.

"Well, yes," answered Pennybaker, getting around beside Farnham, and gazing at the wall opposite. "I heerd this mornin' that Minnie Bell was goin' to get married. My daughter is doing some sewing for her, and it slipped out that way. She was trying to keep it secret. Some girls is mighty funny that way. They will do anything to get engaged, and then they will lie like Sam Hill to make believe they ain't. Well, that makes a vacancy." He did not turn his head, but he cast a quick glance sideways at Farnham, who made no answer, and Pennybaker resumed: "So I thought I would come to you, honor bright, and see if we couldn't agree what to do. That's me. I'm open and square like a bottle of bitters."

Farnham gave no indication of his surprise at this burst of candor, but asked:

"What do you propose?"

"That's it," said Pennybaker, promptly. "I don't propose nothing—I expose. You hear me—I expose." He said this with great mystery, one eye being shut fast and the other only half open. He perceived that he had puzzled Farnham, and enjoyed it for a moment by repeating his mot with a chuckle that did not move a muscle of his face. "I'll tell you the whole thing. There's no use, between gentlemen, of playing the thing too fine." He took his knife from one pocket and from another a twist of tobacco, and, cutting off a mouthful, began his story:

"You see, me and Bud Merritt and Joe Dorman have most generally agreed on paternage, and that was all right. You are well fixed. You don't want the bother of them little giblets of paternage. We've 'tended to 'em for what there was in 'em and for the good of the party. Now Bud he wants to be auditor, and he's got Joe to go in with him, because, if he gits there, Joe's brother-in-law, Tim Dolan, will be his debbity. Bud is weak in the Third Ward, and he knows it, and he knows that Jake Runckel can swing that ward like a dead cat; and so they have fixed it all up to give the next vacancy to Jake for his sister. She's been turned out of the school for some skylarking, and weighs pretty heavy on Jake's hands. Very well. That's the game, and I'm a-kickin'! Do you hear me? I'm a-kickin'!"

Pennybaker pushed up his hat and looked Farnham fairly in the face. The assertion of his independence seemed to give him great gratification. He said once more, slowly closing one eye and settling back in his former attitude against the wall, while he aimed a deluge of tobacco-juice at the base of the wall before him: "I'm a-kickin' like a Texas steer."

He waited a moment to allow these impressive words to have their full effect, while Farnham preserved a serious and attentive face.

"Well, this bein' the case," continued Pennybaker, "I comes to you, as one gentleman to another, and I asks whether we can't agree against this selfish and corrupt game of Merritt and Dorman. For, you see, I don't get a smell out of what they're doin'. I'm out in the cold if their slate goes through."

"I don't see that I can be of any service to you, Mr. Pennybaker. If I have any influence in the matter, it shall be given to Miss Matchin, whom I proposed once before."

"Exactly! Now you're talkin'. Miss Matchin shall have it, on one little proviso that won't hurt you nor me nor nobody. Say the word, and it's a whack."

And he lifted up his hand to strike the bargain.

"What is it?" asked Farnham, in a tone which was severe and contemptuous, in spite of him.

"Namely, just this," answered Pennybaker, "You ain't on the make; you're fixed. You don't care about these d—— little things except to help a friend once 'n awhile," he said, in a large and generous way. "But I ain't that kind yet. I've got to look out for myself—pretty lively, too. Now, I'll tell you what's my racket. You let me perpose Miss Matchin's name and then go and tell her father that I put it through, and it'll be done slick as a whistle. That's all solid, ain't it?"

Farnham's brow clouded. He did not answer at once. Pennybaker repeated his question a little anxiously:

"That's all solid, ain't it?"

"You will excuse me, Mr. Pennybaker, if I do not quite understand your racket, as you call it. I do not see how you make anything out of this. Matchin is a poor man. You surely do not intend——"

"To strike Saul for a divvy? Nothing of the sort," said Pennybaker, without the least offence. "The whole thing lies just here. Among gentlemen there's no use being shy about it. My brother wants to be assessor in Saul Matchin's ward. Saul's got a lot of influence among the boys in the planing-mills, and I want his help. You see?"

Farnham thought he saw, and, after assenting to Pennybaker's eager demand, "That's all solid?" he walked away, too much relieved by the thought that Maud was provided for to question too closely the morality of the proceeding which the sordid rascal had exposed to him.

In the afternoon, at the meeting of the board, the programme agreed upon was strictly carried out.

Pennybaker proposed Miss Matchin's name as soon as the vacancy was announced, to the amazement of his late confederates. They moved a postponement, but to no purpose; Maud was elected; and the angry politicians had no better revenge than to say spitefully to Pennybaker on the stairs, as they went away, "How much did the Captain give you for that sell-out?"—a jeer which he met by a smile of conscious rectitude and a request to be informed the next time they organized a freeze-out against him. It must be said, however, that he lost no time in going to Matchin, informing him that he had succeeded in carrying Maud in by unheard-of exertions, and demanding and receiving on the spot five per cent of her year's salary, which he called "the usual commission."

Saul announced the appointment that evening at supper. Maud flushed crimson, and the tears started to her eyes. She was about to declare she would not have it, when her father's next words put a different face on the matter. "And it's no thanks to Cap'n Farnham, neither. He tried it oncet, and couldn't make the riffle. But me and Joel Pennybaker got together and done it. And now I hope, Mattie, you'll behave yourself and save money. It's like a fortun' comin' to you, if you're smart."

Maud found no reply ready. She could not wholly believe her father's story. She still fancied the appointment came from Farnham, and there was a certain bitterness in it; but, on the whole, she received it not without a secret complacency. Mrs. Matchin's pleasure was checked by her daughter's morose confusion. Sam made no pretence of being pleased, but sat, unmoved by Matchin's speech, in scowling silence, and soon went out without a word of comment. The scene he had witnessed in the rose-house had poisoned his mind; yet, whenever he looked at Maud, or tried to speak to her, he was met with an air of such fierce and beautiful defiance, that his eyes fell and his voice stuck in his throat. So the piece of good fortune, so anxiously awaited in the household, brought little delight when it came. Maud reported for duty next day, and soon learned the routine of her work; but she grew more and more silent at home, and Saul's hope of a wedding in the family died away.

Arthur Farnham walked away from the meeting with the feeling of a school-boy who has finished a difficult task and who thinks he deserves some compensating pleasure. The day had been fine and warm, but the breeze of the late afternoon was already blowing in from the lake, lending freshness and life to the air. The sky was filled with soft gray clouds, which sailed along at a leisurely rate, evidently on very good terms with the breeze. As Farnham walked up the avenue, he cast about in his mind for the sort of dissipation with which he would reward himself for the day's work and he decided for a ride.

But as he was drawing on his boots, it occurred to him, for the first time in his life, that it was a churlish and unneighborly proceeding for him to go riding alone day after day, and that he would be doing no more than his duty to offer his escort to Miss Belding. He said Miss Belding to his own thought—making it as formal and respectful as possible. So, sending an order to his groom to keep his horse at the stable for a moment, he walked over the lawn to the Belding cottage and asked for the ladies.

"I believe they are upstairs, sir. Walk into the drawing-room, and I will see," said the neat housemaid, smiling at Farnham, as indeed was the general custom of women. He took his seat in the cool and darkened room facing the door-way, which commanded a view of the stairs. He sat in a large willow chair very much at his ease, looking about the pretty salon, enjoying its pictures and ornaments and the fragrance of the roses in the vases, as if he had a personal interest in them. The maid came back and said the ladies would be down in a moment.

She had announced Farnham to Mrs. Belding, who had replied, "Tell him, in a moment." She was in the summer afternoon condition which the ladies call "dressing-sack," and after an inspection at the glass, which seemed unsatisfactory, she walked across the hall to her daughter's room. She found Alice standing by the window, looking out upon the lake.

"There, I am glad you are all dressed. Arthur Farnham has called, and you must go down and excuse me. I said I would come, but it will take me so long to dress, he will get tired of waiting. You run down and see him. I suppose there is nothing particular."

"Oh, mamma," said Alice, "I don't want to see him, and especially not alone."

Mrs. Belding made large eyes in her surprise. "Why, Alice, what has got into you?"

Alice blushed and cast down her eyes. "Mamma," she said, in a low voice, "do not ask me to go down. You know what you told me last night."

"There, that will do," said the mother, with a tone of authority. "Perhaps I was foolish to tell you that silly little story, but I am the judge of who shall visit this house. You are too young to decide these questions for me, and I insist that what I told you shall make no difference in your treatment of Mr. Farnham. You think too much of your own part in the matter. He has come to see me, and not you, and I wish you to go down and make my excuses for keeping him waiting. Will you go?"

"Yes, I will go," said the young girl. The blush had left her cheek and she had become a trifle pale. She had not raised her eyes from the floor during her mother's little speech; and when it was over and her mother had gone back to her room, Alice cast one glance at her mirror, and with a firm face walked down the stairs to the drawing-room. Farnham heard the rustle of her dress with a beating of the heart which filled him with a delicious surprise. "I am not past it, then," was the thought that came instantly to his mind, and in that one second was a singular joy. When she came in sight on the stairs, it was like a sudden enchantment to him. Her beautiful head, crowned with its masses of hair drawn back into a simple Greek knot; her tall, strong figure, draped in some light and clinging stuff which imposed no check on her natural grace and dignity, formed a charming picture as she came down the long stairs; and Farnham's eyes fastened eagerly upon her white hand as it glided along the dark walnut baluster. His heart went out to meet her. He confessed to himself, with a lover's instantaneous conviction, that there was nothing in the world so utterly desirable as that tall and fair-haired girl slowly descending the stairs. In the midst of his tumultuous feeling a trivial thought occurred to him: "I am shot through the heart by the blind archer," he said to himself; and he no longer laughed at the old-fashioned symbol of the sudden and fatal power of love.

But with all this tumult of joy in the senses waking up to their allegiance, there came a certain reserve. The goddess-like creature who had so suddenly become the mistress of his soul was a very serious personage to confront in her new majesty. He did not follow the impulse of his heart and rush forward as she entered the room. He merely rose and bowed. She made the faintest possible salutation, and, without taking a seat, conveyed her mother's excuses in a tone of such studied coldness that it amused Farnham, who took it as a school-girl's assumption of a grand and ceremonious manner suitable to a tete-a-tete with man.

"Thank you," he said, "but I did not come especially to see your mother. My object was rather to see you." She did not smile or reply, and he went on, with a slight sensation of chill coming upon him from this stony dignity, which, the more he observed it, seemed less and less amusing and not at all artificial. "I came to ask if you would not like to go to ride this afternoon. It is just gray enough for comfort."

"I thank you very much for being so kind as to think of me," she replied, "but it will not be convenient for me to go."

"Perhaps the morning will suit better. I will come to-morrow at any hour you say."

"I shall not be able to go to-morrow either, I think."

Even while exchanging these few words, Alice felt herself growing slightly embarrassed, and it filled her with dismay. "I am a poor creature," she thought, "if I cannot get this self-satisfied gentleman out of the house without breaking down. I can't stand here forever though," and so she took a seat, and as Arthur resumed his willow chair with an air of content, she could not but feel that as yet the skirmish was not in her favor. She called her angry spirit to her aid, and nerved herself to say something which would promptly close the interview.

His next words gave her the opportunity.

"But you surely do not intend to give up riding altogether?"

"Certainly not. I hope to ride a good deal. Andrews will go with me."

"Ah! Your objection to me as a groom is entirely personal, then."

"Now for it!" she thought to herself, and she said firmly, "Yes."

But the effort was too great, and after the word was launched her mouth broke up into a nervous smile, for which she despised herself, but which she could not control for her life.

Farnham was so pleased with the smile that he cared nothing for the word, and so he continued in a tone of anxious and coaxing good-nature, every word increasing her trouble:

"You are wrong as you can be. I am a much better groom than Andrews. He has rather more style, I admit, on account of his Scotch accent and his rheumatism. But I might acquire these. I will be very attentive and respectful. I will ride at a proper distance behind you, if you will occasionally throw a word and a smile over your shoulder at me."

As he spoke, a quick vision flashed upon him of the loveliness of the head and shoulder, and the coil of fair hair which he should have before him if he rode after her, and the illumination of the smile and the word which would occasionally be thrown back to him from these perfect lips and teeth and eyes. His voice trembled with love and eagerness as he pleaded for the privilege of taking her servant's place. Alice no longer dared to interrupt him, and hardly ventured to lift her eyes from the floor. She had come down with the firm purpose of saying something to him which would put an end to all intimacy, and here, before she had been five minutes in his presence, he was talking to her in a way that delighted her ears and her heart. He went rattling on as if fearful that a pause might bring a change of mood. As she rarely looked up, he could feast his eyes upon her face, where now the color was coming and going, and on her shapely hands, which were clasped in her lap. He talked of Colorado as if it were settled that they were to go there together, and they must certainly have some preliminary training in rough riding; and then, merely to make conversation, he spoke of other places that should only be visited on horseback, always claiming in all of them his post of groom. Alice felt her trouble and confusion of spirit passing away as the light stream of talk rippled on. She took little part in it at first, but from monosyllables of assent she passed on to a word of reply from time to time; and before she knew how it happened she was engaged in a frank and hearty interchange of thoughts and fancies, which brought her best faculties into play and made her content with herself, in spite of the occasional intrusion of the idea that she had not been true to herself in letting her just anger die so quickly away.

If Farnham could have seen into the proud and honest heart of the young girl he was talking to, he would have rested on the field he had won, and not tempted a further adventure. Her anger against him had been dissipated by the very effort she had made to give it effect, and she had fallen insensibly into the old relation of good neighborhood and unreserved admiration with which she had always regarded him. She had silenced her scruples by the thought that in talking pleasantly with him she was obeying her mother, and that after all it was not her business to judge him. If he could have known his own best interest, he would have left her then, when her voice and her smile had become gay and unembarrassed according to their wont, with her conscience at ease about his faults, and her mind filled with a pleasant memory of his visit.

But such wisdom was beyond his reach. He had felt suddenly, and once for all, in the last hour, the power and visible presence of his love. He had never in his life been so moved by any passion as he was by the joy that stirred his heart when he heard the rustle of her dress in the hall and saw her white hand resting lightly on the dark wood of the stairs. As she walked into the parlor, from her face and her hair, from every movement of her limbs, from every flutter of her soft and gauzy garments, there came to him an assertion of her power over him that filled him with a delicious awe. She represented to him, as he had never felt it before, the embodied mystery and majesty of womanhood. During all the long conversation that had followed, he had been conscious of a sort of dual operation of his mind, like that familiar to the eaters of hashish. With one part of him he had been carrying on a light and shallow conversation, as an excuse to remain in her presence and to keep his eyes upon her, and with all the more active energies of his being he had been giving himself up to an act of passionate adoration of her. The thoughts that uttered themselves to him, as he chatted about all sorts of indifferent things, were something like these: How can it have ever happened that such beauty, such dignity, such physical perfection could come together in one person, and the best and sweetest heart have met them there? If she knew her value, her pride would ruin her. In her there is everything, and everything else beside: Galatea, the statue, with a Christian soul. She is the best that could fall to any man, but better for me than for any one else. Anybody who sees her must love her, but I was made for nothing else but to love her. This is what mythologies meant. She is Venus: she loves laughter, and her teeth and lips are divine. She is Diana: she makes the night beautiful; she has the eye and the arm of an athlete goddess. But she is a woman: she is Mrs. Belding's daughter Alice. Thank heaven, she lives here. I can call and see her. To-morrow, I shall ride with her. She will love and marry some day like other women. Who is the man who shall ever kiss her between those straight brows? And fancies more audacious and extravagant fed the fever of his heart as he talked deliberate small talk, still holding his hat and whip in his hand.

He knew it was time he should go, but could not leave the joy of his eyes and ears. At last his thoughts, like a vase too full, ran over into speech. It was without premeditation, almost without conscious intention. The under-tone simply became dominant and overwhelmed the frivolous surface talk. She had been talking of her mother's plans of summer travel, and he suddenly interrupted her by saying in the most natural tone in the world: "I must see your mother before she decides. I hope you will make no plans without me. I shall go where you go. I shall never be away from you again, if I can help it. No, no, do not frown about it. I must tell you. I love you; my whole life is yours."

She felt terribly shocked and alarmed, not so much at his words as at her own agitation. She feared for a moment she could not rise from her seat, but she did so with an effort. He rose and approached her, evidently held in check by her inflexible face; for the crisis had brought a momentary self-control with it, and she looked formidable with her knit brows and closed lips.

"Do not go," he pleaded. "Do not think I have been wanting in respect and consideration. I could not help saying what I did. I cannot live without you any more than I can without light and sunshine. I ought to have waited and not startled you. But I have only begun to live since I loved you, and I feel I must not waste time."

She was deeply disturbed at these wild and whirling words, but still bore herself bravely. She felt her heart touched by the vibration of his ardent speech, but her maiden instinct of self defence enabled her to stand on her guard. Though beaten by the storm of his devotion, she said to herself that she could get away if she could keep from crying or sobbing, and one thought which came to her with the swiftness of lightning gave her strength to resist. It was this: "If I cry, he will take me in his arms, and we shall repeat the tableau mamma saw in the rose-house."

Strong in that stimulating thought, she said: "I am too sorry to hear you say these things. You know how much we have always thought of you. If you forget all this, and never repeat it, we may still be friends. But if you renew this subject, I will never speak to you again alone, as long as I live."

He began to protest; but she insisted, with the calm cruelty of a woman who sees her advantage over the man she loves. "If you say another word, it is the end of our acquaintance, and perhaps it is best that it should end. We can hardly be again as we were."

Farnham was speechless, like one waked in the cold air out of a tropical dream. He had been carried on for the last hour in a whirlwind of emotion, and now he had met an obstacle against which it seemed that nothing could be done. If he had planned his avowal, he might have been prepared for rejection; but he had been hurried into it with no thought of what the result would be, and he was equally unprovided for either issue. In face of the unwavering voice and bearing of Alice, who seemed ten times more beautiful than ever as she stood before him as steady and unresponsive as a young Fate, his hot speech seemed suddenly smitten powerless. He only said:

"It shall be as you wish. If I ever offend you again, I will take my punishment upon myself and get out of your way."

She did not dare to say another word, for fear it would be too kind. She gave him her hand; it was soft and warm as he pressed it; and if he had only known how much softer and warmer her heart was, he would have covered her hand with a thousand kisses. But he bowed and took his leave, and she stood by the lattice and saw him go away, with eyes full of tears and a breast filled with the tenderest ruth and pity—for him and for herself.



XI.

THE SANTA RITA SHERRY.

Farnham walked down the path to the gate, then turned to go to his own house, with no very definite idea of what direction he was taking. The interview he had just had was still powerfully affecting his senses, he was conscious of no depression from the prompt and decided refusal he had received. He was like a soldier in his first battle who has got a sharp wound which does not immediately cripple him, the perception of which is lost in the enjoyment of a new, keen, and enthralling experience. His thoughts were full of his own avowal, of the beauty of his young mistress, rather than of her coldness. Seeing his riding-whip in his hand, he stared at it an instant, and then at his boots, with a sudden recollection that he had intended to ride. He walked rapidly to the stable, where his horse was still waiting, and rode at a brisk trot out of the avenue for a few blocks, and then struck off into a sandy path that led to the woods by the river-side.

As he rode, his thoughts were at first more of himself than of Alice. He exulted over the discovery that he was in love as if some great and unimagined good fortune had happened to him. "I am not past it, then," he said to himself, repeating the phrase which had leaped from his heart when he saw Alice descending the stairs. "I hardly thought that such a thing could ever happen to me. She is the only one." His thoughts ran back to a night in Heidelberg, when he sat in the shadow of the castle wall with a German student of his acquaintance, and looked far over the valley at the lights of the town and the rippling waves of the Neckar, silvered by the soft radiance of the summer moon.

"Poor Hammerstein! How he raved that night about little Bertha von Eichholz. He called her Die Einzige something like a thousand times. It seemed an absurd thing to say; I knew dozens just like her, with blue eyes and Gretchen braids. But Hammerstein meant it, for he shot himself the week after her wedding with the assessor. But mine is the Only One—though she is not mine. I would rather love her without hope than be loved by any other woman in the world."

A few days before he had been made happy by perceiving that she was no longer a child; now he took infinite pleasure in the thought of her youth; he tilled his mind and his senses with the image of her freshness, her clear, pure color, the outline of her face and form. "She is young and fragrant as spring; she has every bloom and charm of body and soul," he said to himself, as he galloped over the shady woodland road. In his exalted mood, he had almost forgotten how he had left her presence. He delighted in his own roused and wakened passion, as a devotee in his devotions, without considering what was to come of it all. The blood was surging through his veins. He was too strong, his love was too new and wonderful to him, to leave any chance for despair. It was not that he did not consider himself dismissed. He felt that he had played a great stake foolishly, and lost. But the love was there, and it warmed and cheered his heart, like a fire in a great hall, making even the gloom noble.

He was threading a bridle-path which led up a gentle ascent to a hill overlooking the river, when his horse suddenly started back with a snort of terror as two men emerged from the thicket and grasped at his rein. He raised his whip to strike one of them down; the man dodged, and his companion said, "None o' that, or I'll shoot your horse." The sun had set, but it was yet light, and he saw that the fellow had a cocked revolver in his hand.

"Well, what do you want?" he asked.

"I want you to stop where you are and go back," said the man sullenly.

"Why should I go back? My road lies the other way. You step aside and let me pass."

"You can't pass this way. Go back, or I'll make you," the man growled, shifting his pistol to his left hand and seizing Farnham's rein with his right. His intention evidently was to turn the horse around and start him down the path by which he had come. Farnham saw his opportunity and struck the hand that held the pistol a smart blow. The weapon dropped, but went off with a sharp report as it fell. The horse reared and plunged, but the man held firmly to the rein. His companion, joined by two or three other rough-looking men who rushed from the thicket, seized the horse and held him firmly, and pulled Farnham from the saddle. They attempted no violence and no robbery. The man who had held the pistol, a black-visaged fellow with a red face and dyed mustache, after rubbing his knuckles a moment, said: "Let's take it out o' the —— whelp!" But another, to whom the rest seemed to look as a leader, said: "Go slow, Mr. Bowersox; we want no trouble here."

Farnham at this addressed the last speaker and said, "Can you tell me what all this means? You don't seem to be murderers. Are you horse-thieves?"

"Nothing of the kind," said the man. "We are Reformers."

Farnham gazed at him with amazement. He was a dirty-looking man, young and sinewy, with long and oily hair and threadbare clothes, shiny and unctuous. His eyes were red and furtive, and he had a trick of passing his hand over his mouth while he spoke. His mates stood around him, listening rather studiedly to the conversation. They seemed of the lower class of laboring men. Their appearance was so grotesque, in connection with the lofty title their chief had given them, that Farnham could not help smiling, in spite of his anger.

"What is your special line of reform?" he asked,—"spelling, or civil service?"

"We are Labor Reformers," said the spokesman. "We represent the toiling millions against the bloated capitalists and grinding monopolies; we believe that man is better——"

"Yes, no doubt," interrupted Farnham; "but how are you going to help the toiling millions by stopping my horse on the highway?"

"We was holding a meeting which was kep' secret for reasons satisfactory to ourselves. These two gentlemen was posted here to keep out intruders from the lodge. If you had 'a' spoke civil to them, there would have been no harm done. None will be done now if you want to go."

Farnham at once mounted his horse. "I would take it as a great favor," he said, "if you would give me your name and that of the gentleman with the pistol. Where is he, by the way?" he continued. The man they called Bowersox had disappeared from the group around the spokesman. Farnham turned and saw him a little distance away directly behind him. He had repossessed himself of his pistol and held it cocked in his hand.

"What do you want of our names?" the spokesman asked.

Farnham did not again lose sight of Bowersox. It occurred to him that the interview might as well be closed. He therefore said, carelessly, without turning:

"A man has a natural curiosity to know the names of new acquaintances. But no matter, I suppose the police know you," and rode away.

Bowersox turned to Offitt and said, "Why in —— did you let him go? I could have knocked his head off and nobody knowed it."

"Yes," said Offitt, coolly. "And got hung for it."

"It would have been self-defence," said Bowersox. "He hit me first."

"Well, gentlemen," said Offitt, "that closes up Greenwood Lodge. We can't meet in this grass any more. I don't suppose he knows any of us by sight, or he'd have us up to-morrow."

"It was a piece of —— nonsense, comin' out here, anyhow," growled Bowersox, unwilling to be placated. "You haven't done a —— thing but lay around on the grass and eat peanuts and hear Bott chin."

"Brother Bott has delivered a splendid address on 'The Religion of Nature,' and he couldn't have had a better hall than the Canopy to give it under," said Offitt. "And now, gentlemen, we'd better get back our own way."

As Farnham rode home he was not much puzzled by his adventure in the woods. He remembered having belonged, when he was a child of ten, to a weird and mysterious confraternity called "Early Druids," which met in the depths of groves, with ill-defined purposes, and devoted the hours of meeting principally to the consumption of confectionery. He had heard for the past few months of the existence of secret organizations of working-men—wholly outside of the trades-unions and unconnected with them—and guessed at once that he had disturbed a lodge of one of these clubs. His resentment did not last very long at the treatment to which he had been subjected; but still he thought it was not a matter of jest to have the roads obstructed by ruffians with theories in their heads and revolvers in their hands, neither of which they knew how to use. He therefore promised himself to consult with the chief of police the next morning in regard to the matter.

As he rode along, thinking of the occurrence, he was dimly conscious of a pleasant suggestion in something he had seen among the hazel brush, and searching tenaciously in his recollection of the affair, it all at once occurred to him that, among the faces of the men who came out of the thicket in the scuffle, was that of the blonde-bearded, blue-eyed young carpenter who had been at work in his library the day Mrs. Belding and Alice lunched with him. He was pleased to find that the pleasant association led him to memories of his love, but for a moment a cloud passed over him at the thought of so frank and hearty a fellow and such a good workman being in such company. "I must see if I cannot get him out of it," he said to himself, and then reverted again to thoughts of Alice.

Twilight was falling, and its melancholy influence was beginning to affect him. He thought less and less of the joy of his love and more of its hopelessness. By the time he reached his house he had begun to confront the possibility of a life of renunciation, and, after the manner of Americans of fortune who have no special ties, his mind turned naturally to Europe. "I cannot stay here to annoy her," he thought, and so began to plot for the summer and winter, and, in fancy, was at the second cataract of the Nile before his horse's hoofs, ringing on the asphalt of the stable-yard, recalled him to himself.

The next day, he was compelled to go to New York to attend to some matters of business. Before taking the train, he laid his complaint of being stopped on the road before the chief of police, who promised to make vigorous inquisition. Farnham remained several days in New York, and on his return, one warm, bright evening, he found his table prepared and the grave Budsey waiting behind his chair.

He ate his dinner hastily and in silence, with no great zest. "You have not forgot, sir," said Budsey, who was his external conscience in social matters, "that you are going this evening to Mrs. Temple's?"

"I think I shall not go."

"Mr. Temple was here this afternoon, sir, which he said it was most particular. I asked him would he call again. He said no, he was sure of seeing you to-night. But it was most particular, he said."

Budsey spoke in the tone of solemn and respectful tyranny which he always assumed when reminding Farnham of his social duties, and which conveyed a sort of impression to his master that, if he did not do what was befitting, his butler was quite capable of picking him up and deferentially carrying him to the scene of festivity, and depositing him on the door-step.

"What could Temple want to see me about 'most particular'?" Farnham asked himself. "After all, I may as well pass the evening there as anywhere."

Mr. Temple was one of the leading citizens of Buffland. He was the vice-president of the great rolling-mill company, whose smoke darkened the air by day and lighted up the skies at night as with the flames of the nether pit. He was very tall and very slender, with reddish-brown hair, eyes and mustache. Though a man of middle age, his trim figure, his fashionable dress, and his clean shaven cheek and chin gave him an appearance of youth. He was president of the local jockey club, and the joy of his life was to take his place in the judges' stand, and sway the destinies of the lean, keen-faced trainers who drove the trotting horses. He had the eye of a lynx for the detection of any crookedness in driving, and his voice would ring out over the track like the trump of doom, conveying fines and penalties to the luckless trickster who was trying to get some unfair advantage in the start. His voice, a deep basso, rarely was heard, in fact, anywhere else. Though excessively social, he was also extremely silent. He gave delightful dinner-parties and a great many of them, but rarely spoke, except to recommend an especially desirable wine to a favored guest. When he did speak, however, his profanity was phenomenal. Every second word was an oath. To those who were not shocked by it there was nothing more droll and incongruous than to hear this quiet, reserved, well-dressed, gentleman-like person pouring out, on the rare occasions when he talked freely, in a deep, measured, monotonous tone, a flood of imprecations which would have made a pirate hang his head. He had been, as a boy, clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat, and a vacancy occurring in the office of mate, he had been promoted to that place. His youthful face and quiet speech did not sufficiently impose upon the rough deck-hands of that early day. They had been accustomed to harsher modes of address, and he saw his authority defied and in danger. So he set himself seriously to work to learn to swear; and though at first it made his heart shiver a little with horror and his cheek burn with shame, he persevered, as a matter of business, until his execrations amazed the roustabouts. When he had made a fortune, owned a line of steamboats, and finally retired from the river, the habit had been fastened upon him, and oaths became to him the only form of emphatic speech. The hardest work he ever did in his life was, while courting his wife, a Miss Flora Ballston, of Cincinnati, to keep from mingling his ordinary forms of emphasis in his asseverations of affection. But after he was married, and thrown more and more into the company of women, that additional sense, so remarkable in men of his mould, came to him, and he never lapsed, in their presence, into his natural way of speech. Perhaps this was the easier, as he rarely spoke at all when they were by—not that he was in the least shy or timid, but because they, as a rule, knew nothing about stocks, or pig-iron, or wine, or trotting horses,—the only subjects, in his opinion, which could interest any reasonable creature.

When Farnham arrived at his house, it was already pretty well filled with guests. Mr. and Mrs. Temple were at the door, shaking hands with their friends as they arrived, she with a pleasant smile and word from her black eyes and laughing mouth, and he in grave and speechless hospitality.

"Good-evening, Mr. Farnham!" said the good-natured lady. "So glad to see you. I began to be alarmed. So did the young ladies. They were afraid you had not returned. Show yourself in the drawing-room and dispel their fears. Oh, Mr. Harrison, I am so glad you resolved to stay over."

Farnham gave way to the next comer, and said to Mr. Temple, who had pressed his hand in silence:

"Did you want to see me for anything special to-day?"

Mrs. Temple looked up at the word, and her husband said:

"No; I merely wanted you to take a drive with me."

Another arrival claimed Mrs. Temple's attention, and as Farnham moved away, Temple half-whispered in his ear, "Don't go away till I get a chance to speak to you. There is merry and particular bloom of h—— to pay."

The phrase, while vivid, was not descriptive, and Farnham could not guess what it meant. Perhaps something had gone wrong in the jockey club; perhaps Goldsmith Maid was off her feed; perhaps pig-iron had gone up or down a dollar a ton. These were all subjects of profound interest to Temple and much less to Farnham; so he waited patiently the hour of revelation, and looked about the drawing-room to see who was there.

It was the usual drawing-room of provincial cities. The sofas and chairs were mostly occupied by married women, who drew a scanty entertainment from gossip with each other, from watching the proceedings of the spinsters, and chiefly, perhaps, from a consciousness of good clothes. The married men stood grouped in corners and talked of their every-day affairs. The young people clustered together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection— only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet retirement of stairs and hall angles. At the further end of the long drawing-room, Farnham's eyes at last lighted upon the object of his quest. Alice sat in the midst of a group of young girls who had intrenched themselves in a corner of the room, and defied all the efforts of skirmishing youths, intent upon flirtation, to dislodge them. They seemed to be amusing themselves very well together, and the correct young men in white cravats and pointed shoes came, chatted, and drifted away. They were the brightest and gayest young girls of the place; and it would have been hard to detect any local color in them. Young as they were, they had all had seasons in Paris and in Washington; some of them knew the life of that most foreign of all capitals, New York. They nearly all spoke French and German better than they did English, for their accent in those languages was very sweet and winning in its incorrectness, while their English was high-pitched and nasal, and a little too loud in company. They were as pretty as girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens of less pretensions, who were better dressed by the local artists.

Farnham was stopped at some distance from the pretty group by a buxom woman standing near the open window, cooling the vast spread of her bare shoulders in a current of air, which she assisted in its office with a red-and-gold Japanese fan.

"Captain Farnham," she said, "when are you going to give that lawn-tennis party you promised so long ago? My character for veracity depends on it. I have told everybody it would be soon, and I shall be disgraced if it is delayed much longer."

"That is the common lot of prophets, Mrs. Adipson," replied Farnham. "You know they say in Wall Street that early and exclusive information will ruin any man. But tell me, how is your club getting on?" he continued disingenuously, for he had not the slightest interest in the club; but he knew that once fairly started on the subject, Mrs. Adipson would talk indefinitely, and he might stand there and torture his heart and delight his eyes with the beauty of Alice Belding.

He carried his abstraction a little too far, however, for the good lady soon perceived, from his wandering looks and vague replies, that she was not holding his attention. So she pettishly released him after following the direction of his eyes, and said, "There, I see you are crazy to go and talk to Miss Dallas. I won't detain you. She is awfully clever, I suppose, though she never took the trouble to be brilliant in my presence; and she is pretty when she wears her hair that way—I never liked those frizzes."

Farnham accepted his release with perhaps a little more gratitude than courtesy, and moved away to take a seat which had just been vacated beside Miss Dallas. He was filled with a boyish delight in Mrs. Adipson's error. "That she should think I was worshipping Miss Dallas from afar! Where do women keep their eyes? To think that anybody should look at Miss Dallas when Alice Belding was sitting beside her." It was pleasant to think, however, that the secret of his unhappy love was safe. Nobody was gossiping about it, and using the name of his beloved in idle conjectures. That was as it should be. His love was sacred from rude comment. He could go and sit by Miss Dallas, so near his beloved that he could see every breath move the lace on her bosom. He could watch the color come and go on her young cheek. He could hear every word her sweet voice uttered, and nobody would know he was conscious of her existence.

Full of this thought, he sat down by Miss Dallas, who greeted him warmly and turned her back upon her friends. By looking over her shining white shoulder, he could see the clear, pure profile of Alice just beyond, so near that he could have laid his hand on the crinkled gold of her hair. He then gave himself up to that duplex act to which all unavowed lovers are prone—the simultaneous secret worship of one woman and open devotion to another. It never occurred to him that there was anything unfair in this, or that it would be as reprehensible to throw the name of Miss Dallas into the arena of gossip as that of Miss Belding. That was not his affair; there was only one person in the universe to be considered by him. And for Miss Dallas's part, she was the last person in the world to suspect any one of being capable of the treason and bad taste of looking over her shoulder at another woman. She was, by common consent, the belle of Buffland. Her father was a widowed clergyman, of good estate, of literary tendencies, of enormous personal vanity, who had abandoned the pulpit in a quarrel with his session several years before, and now occupied himself in writing poems and sketches of an amorous and pietistic nature, which in his opinion embodied the best qualities of Swinburne and Chalmers combined, but which the magazines had thus far steadily refused to print.

He felt himself infinitely superior to the society of Buffland,—with one exception,—and only remained there because his property was not easily negotiable and required his personal care. The one exception was his daughter Euphrasia. He had educated her after his own image. In fact, there was a remarkable physical likeness between them, and he had impressed upon her every trick of speech and manner and thought which characterized himself. This is the young lady who turns her bright, keen, beautiful face upon Farnham, with eyes eager to criticise, a tongue quick to flatter and to condemn, a head stuffed full of poetry and artificial passion, and a heart saved from all danger by its idolatry of her father and herself.

"So glad to see you—one sees so little of you—I can hardly believe my good fortune—how have I this honor?" All this in hard, rapid sentences, with a brilliant smile.

Farnham thought of the last words of Mrs. Adipson, and said, intrepidly, "Well, you know the poets better than I do, Miss Euphrasia, and there is somebody who says, 'Beauty draws us by the simple way she does her hair'—or something like it. That classic fillet was the first thing I saw as I entered the room, and me voici!"

We have already said that the fault of Farnham's conversation with women was the soldier's fault of direct and indiscriminate compliment. But this was too much in Euphrasia's manner for her to object to it. She laughed and said, "You deserve a pensum of fifty lines for such a misquotation. But, dites-donc, monsieur"—for French was one of her favorite affectations, and when she found a man to speak it with, she rode the occasion to death. There had been a crisis in the French ministry a few days before, and she now began a voluble conversation on the subject, ostensibly desiring Farnham's opinion on the crisis, but really seizing the opportunity of displaying her familiarity with the names of the new cabinet. She talked with great spirit and animation, sometimes using her fine eyes point-blank upon Farnham, sometimes glancing about to observe the effect she was creating; which gave Farnham his opportunity to sigh his soul away over her shoulder to where Alice was sweetly and placidly talking with her friends.

She had seen him come in, and her heart had stood still for a moment; but her feminine instinct sustained her, and she had not once glanced in his direction. But she was conscious of every look and action of his; and when he approached the corner where she was sitting, she felt as if a warm and embarrassing ray of sunshine was coming near her, She was at once relieved and disappointed when he sat down by Miss Dallas. She thought to herself: "Perhaps he will never speak to me again. It is all my fault. I threw him away. But it was not my fault. It was his—it was hers. I do not know what to think. He might have let me alone. I liked him so much. I have only been a month out of school. What shall I do if he never speaks to me again?" Yet such is the power which, for self-defence, is given to young maidens that, while these tumultuous thoughts were passing through her mind, she talked and laughed with the girls beside her, and exchanged an occasional word with the young men in pointed shoes, as if she had never known a grief or a care.

Mr. Furrey came up to say good-evening, with his most careful bow. Lowering his voice, he said:

"There's Miss Dallas and Captain Farnham flirting in Italian."

"Are you sure they are flirting?"

"Of course they are. Just look at them!"

"If you are sure they are flirting, I don't think it is right to look at them. Still, if you disapprove of it very much, you might speak to them about it," she suggested, in her sweet, low, serious voice.

"Oh, that would never do for a man of my age," replied Furrey, in good faith. He was very vain of his youth.

"What I wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued. "There is going to be a Ree-gatta on the river the day after to-morrow, and I hope you will grant me the favor of your company. The Wissagewissametts are to row with the Chippagowaxems, and it will be the finest race this year. Billy Raum, you know, is stroke of the———"

Her face was still turned to him, but she had ceased to listen. She was lost in contemplation of what seemed to her a strange and tragic situation. Farnham was so near that she could touch him, and yet so far away that he was lost to her forever. No human being knew, or ever would know, that a few days ago he had offered her his life, and she had refused the gift. Nobody in this room was surprised that he did not speak to her, or that she did not look at him. Nobody dreamed that he loved her, and she would die, she resolved deliberately, before she would let anybody know that she loved him. "For I do love him with my whole heart," she said to herself, with speechless energy, which sent the blood up to her temples, and left her, in another instant, as pale as a lily.

Furrey at that moment had concluded his enticing account of the regatta, and she had quietly declined to accompany him. He moved away, indignant at her refusal, and puzzled by the blush which accompanied it.

"What did that mean?" he mused. "I guess it was because I said the crews rowed in short sleeves."

Farnham also saw the blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of Francois Coppee. He saw the clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral light in a starry night. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely, but he wondered "what that oaf could have said to make her blush like that. Can it be possible that he——" His brow knitted with anger and contempt.

"Mais, qu'est-ce que vous avez donc?" asked Euphrasia.

Farnham was saved from the necessity of an explanation by Mr. Temple, who came up at that moment, and, laying a hand on Arthur's shoulder, said:

"Now we will go into my den and have a glass of that sherry. I know no less temptation than Tio Pepe could take you away from Miss Dallas."

"Thank you awfully," said the young lady. "Why should you not give Miss Dallas herself an opportunity to decline the Tio Pepe?"

"Miss Dallas shall have some champagne in a few minutes, which she will like very much better. Age and wickedness are required to appreciate sherry."

"Ah! I congratulate your sherry; it is about to be appreciated," said the deserted beauty, tartly, as the men moved away.

They entered the little room which Temple called his den, which was a litter of letter-books, stock-lists, and the advertising pamphlets of wine-merchants. The walls were covered with the portraits of trotting horses; a smell of perpetual tobacco was in the air. Temple unlocked a cupboard, and took out a decanter and some glasses. He filled two, and gave one to Arthur, and held the other under his nose.

"Farnham," he said, with profound solemnity, "if you don't call that the"—(I decline to follow him in the pyrotechnical combination of oaths with which he introduced the next words)—"best sherry you ever saw, then I'm a converted pacer with the ringbone."

Arthur drank his wine, and did not hesitate to admit all that its owner had claimed for it. He had often wondered how such a man as Temple had acquired such an unerring taste.

"Temple," he said, "how did you ever pick up this wine; and, if you will excuse the question, how did you know it when you got it?"

Temple smiled, evidently pleased with the question. "You've been in Spain, haven't you?"

"Yes," said Farnham.

"You know this is the genuine stuff, then?"

"No doubt of it."

"How do you know?"

"The usual way—by seeing and drinking it at the tables of men who know what they are about."

"Well, I have never been out of the United States, and yet I have learned about wine in just the same way. I commenced in New Orleans among the old Spanish and French Creoles, and have kept it up since, here and there. I can see in five minutes whether a man knows anything about his wine. If he does, I remember every word he says—that is my strong point—head and tongue. I can't remember sermons and speeches, but I can remember every syllable that Sam Ward said one night at your grandfather's ten years ago; and if I have once tasted a good wine, I never forget its fashion of taking hold."

This is an expurgated edition of what he said; his profanity kept up a running accompaniment, like soft and distant rolling thunder.

"I got this wine at the sale of the Marquis of Santa Rita. I heard you speak of him, I don't know how long ago, and the minute I read in the paper that he had turned up his toes, I cabled the consul at Cadiz—you know him, a wild Irishman named Calpin—to go to the sale of his effects and get this wine. He cabled back, 'What shall I pay?' I answered, 'Head your dispatch again: Get means get!' Some men have got no sense. I did not mind the price of the wine, but it riled me to have to pay for the two cables."

He poured out another glass and drank it drop by drop, getting, as he said, "the worth of his money every time."

"Have some more?" he said to Farnham.

"No, thank you."

"Then I'll put it away. No use of giving it to men who would prefer sixty-cent whiskey."

Having done this, he turned again to Farnham, and said, "I told you the Old Boy was to pay. This is how. The labor unions have ordered a general strike; day not fixed; they are holding meetings all over town to-night. I'll know more about it after midnight."

"What will it amount to?" asked Farnham.

"Keen savey?" replied Temple, in his Mississippi River Spanish. "The first thing will be the closing of the mills, and putting anywhere from three thousand to ten thousand men on the streets. Then, if the strike gains the railroad men, we shall be embargoed, —— boiling, and safety-valve riveted down."

Farnham had no thought of his imperilled interests. He began instantly to conjecture what possibility of danger there might be of a disturbance of public tranquillity, and to wish that the Beldings were out of town.

"How long have you known this?" he asked.

"Only certainly for a few hours. The thing has been talked about more or less for a month, but we have had our own men in the unions and did not believe it would come to an extremity. To-day, however, they brought ugly reports; and I ought to tell you that some of them concern you."

Farnham lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

"We keep men to loaf with the tramps and sleep in the boozing kens. One of them told me to-day that at the first serious disturbance a lot of bad eggs among the strikers—not the unionists proper, but a lot of loose fish—intend to go through some of the principal houses on Algonquin Avenue, and they mentioned yours as one of them."

"Thank you. I will try to be ready for them," said Farnham. But, cool and tried as was his courage, he could not help remembering, with something like dread, that Mrs. Belding's house was next to his own, and that in case of riot the two might suffer together.

"There is one thing more I wanted to say," Mr. Temple continued, with a slight embarrassment. "If I can be of any service to you, in case of a row, I want to be allowed to help."

"As to that," Farnham said with a laugh, "you have your own house and stables to look after, which will probably be as much as you can manage."

"No," said Temple, earnestly, "that ain't the case. I will have to explain to you"—and a positive blush came to his ruddy face. "They won't touch me or my property. They say a man who uses such good horses and such bad language as I do—that's just what they say—is one of them, and sha'n't be racketed. I ain't very proud of my popularity, but I am willing to profit by it and I'll come around and see you if anything more turns up. Now, we'll go and give Phrasy Dallas that glass of champagne."



XII.

A HOLIDAY NOT IN THE CALENDAR.

The next morning while Farnham was at breakfast he received a note from Mr. Temple in these words:

"Strikes will begin to-day, but will not be general. There will be no disturbance, I think. They don't seem very gritty."

After breakfast he walked down to the City Hall. On every street corner he saw little groups of men in rather listless conversation. He met an acquaintance crossing the street.

"Have you heard the news?" The man's face was flushed with pleasure at having something to tell—"The firemen and stokers have all struck, and run their engines into the round-house at Riverley, five miles out. There won't be a train leave or come in for the present."

"Is that all?"

"No, that ain't a start. The Model Oil men have struck, and are all over the North End, shutting up the other shops. They say there won't be a lick of work done in town the rest of the week."

"Except what Satan finds for idle hands," Farnham suggested, and hastened his steps a little to the municipal buildings.

He found the chief of police in his office, suffering from nervousness and a sense of importance. He began by reminding him of the occurrence of the week before in the wood. The chief waited with an absent expression for the story to end, and then said, "My dear sir, I cannot pay any attention to such little matters with anarchy threatening our city. I must protect life and property, sir—life and property."

"Very well," rejoined Farnham, "I am informed that life and property are threatened in my own neighborhood. Can you detail a few policemen to patrol Algonquin Avenue, in case of a serious disturbance?"

"I can't tell you, my dear sir; I will do the best I can by all sections. Why, man," he cried, in a voice which suddenly grew a shrill falsetto in his agitation, "I tell you I haven't a policeman for every ten miles of street in this town. I can't spare but two for my own house!"

Farnham saw the case was hopeless, and went to the office of the mayor. That official had assumed an attitude expressive of dignified and dauntless energy. He sat in a chair tilted back on its hind feet; the boots of the municipal authority were on a desk covered with official papers; a long cigar adorned his eloquent lips; a beaver hat shaded his eyes.

He did not change his attitude as Farnham entered. He probably thought it could not be changed for the better.

"Good-morning, Mr. Quinlin."

"Good-morning, sirr, to you." This salutation was uttered through teeth shut as tightly as the integrity of the cigar would permit.

"There is a great deal of talk of possible disturbance to-night, in case the strikes extend. My own neighborhood, I am told, has been directly threatened. I called to ask whether, in case of trouble, I could rely on any assistance from the city authorities, or whether we must all look out for ourselves."

The mayor placed his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and threw his head back so that he could stare at Farnham from below his hat brim. He then said, in a measured voice, as if addressing an assembly: "Sirr! I would have you to know that the working-men of Buffland are not thieves and robbers. In this struggle with capital they have my profound sympathy. I expect their conduct to be that of perr-fect gentlemen. I, at least, will give no orders which may tend to array one class of citizens against another. That is my answer, sirr; I hope it does not disappoint you."

"Not in the least," said Farnham, putting on his hat. "It is precisely what I should have expected of you."

"Thank you, sirr. Call again, sirr."

As Farnham disappeared, the chief magistrate of the city tilted his hat to one side, shut an eye with profoundly humorous significance, and said to the two or three loungers who had been enjoying the scene:

"That is the sort of T-rail I am. That young gentleman voted agin me, on the ground I wasn't high-toned enough."

Farnham walked rapidly to the office of the evening newspaper. He found a man in the counting-room, catching flies and trimming their wings with a large pair of office shears. He said, "Can you put an advertisement for me in your afternoon editions?"

The man laid down his shears, but held on to his fly, and looked at his watch.

"Have you got it ready?"

"No, but I will not be a minute about it."

"Be lively! You haven't got but a minute."

He picked up his scissors and resumed his surgery, while Farnham wrote his advertisement. The man took it, and threw it into a tin box, blew a whistle, and the box disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. A few minutes later the boys were crying the paper in the streets. The advertisement was in these words:

"Veterans, Attention! All able-bodied veterans of the Army of the Potomac, and especially of the Third Army Corps, are requested to meet at seven this evening, at No. — Public Square."

From the newspaper office Farnham went to a gunsmith's. The dealer was a German and a good sportsman, whom Farnham knew very well, having often shot with him in the marshes west of the city. His name was Leopold Grosshammer. There were two or three men in the place when Farnham entered. He waited until they were gone, and then said:

"Bolty, have you two dozen repeating rifles?"

"Ja wohl! Aber, Herr Gott, was machen Sie denn damit?"

"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. They think there may be a riot in town, and they tell me at the City Hall that everybody must look out for himself. I am going to try to get up a little company of old soldiers for patrol duty."

"All right, mine captain, and I will be the first freiwilliger. But I don't dink you wants rifles. Revolvers and clubs—like the pleecemen— dat's de dicket."

"Have you got them?"

"Oh, yes, and the belts thereto. I got der gondract to furnish 'em to de city."

"Then you will send them, wrapped up in bundles, to my office in the Square, and come yourself there at seven."

"Freilich," said Leopold, his white teeth glistening through his yellow beard at the prospect of service.

Farnham spent an hour or two visiting the proprietors of the large establishments affected by the strikes. He found, as a rule, great annoyance and exasperation, but no panic. Mr. Temple said, "The poor ——— fools! I felt sorry for them. They came up here to me this morning,—their committee, they called it,—and told me they hated it, but it was orders! 'Orders from where?' I asked. 'From the chiefs of sections,' they said; and that was all I could get out of them. Some of the best fellows in the works were on the committee. They put 'em there on purpose. The sneaks and lawyers hung back."

"What will they do if the strike should last?" asked Farnham.

"They will be supported for awhile by the other mills. Our men are the only ones that have struck so far. They were told off to make the move, just as they march out a certain regiment to charge a battery. If we give in, then another gang will strike."

"Do you expect to give in?"

"Between us, we want nothing better than ten days' rest. We want to repair our furnaces, and we haven't a —— thing to do. What I told you this morning holds good. There won't be any riot. The whole thing is solemn fooling, so far."

The next man Farnham saw was in a far less placid frame of mind. It was Jimmy Nelson, the largest grocer in the city. He had a cargo of perishable groceries at the station, and the freight hands would not let them be delivered. "I talked to the rascals," he said. "I asked them what they had against me; that they was injuring Trade!" a deity of which Mr. Nelson always spoke with profound respect. "They laughed in my face, sir. They said, 'That's just our racket. We want to squeeze you respectable merchants till you get mad and hang a railroad president or two!' Yes, sir; they said that to me, and five thousand dollars of my stuff rotting in the depot."

"Why don't you go to the mayor?" asked Farnham, though he could not suppress a smile as he said it.

"Yes, I like that!" screamed Jimmy. "You are laughing at me. I suppose the whole town has heard of it. Well, it's a fact. I went and asked that infernal scoundrel what he was going to do. He said his function was to keep the peace, and there wasn't a word in the statutes about North Carliny water-melons. If I live till he gets out of office, I'll lick him."

"Oh, I think you won't do that, Jimmy."

"You think I won't!" said Nelson, absolutely incandescent with the story of his wrongs. "I'll swear by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that I will thrash the hide off him next spring—if I don't forget it."

Farnham went home, mounted his horse, and rode about the city to see what progress the strike was making. There was little disorder visible on the surface of things. The "sections" had evidently not ordered a general cessation of labor; and yet there were curious signs of demoralization, as if the spirit of work was partially disintegrating and giving way to something not precisely lawless, but rather listless. For instance, a crowd of workmen were engaged industriously and, to all appearance, contentedly upon a large school-building in construction. A group of men, not half their number, approached them and ordered them to leave off work. The builders looked at each other and then at their exhorters in a confused fashion for a moment, and ended by obeying the summons in a sullen and indifferent manner. They took off their aprons, went to the hydrant and washed their hands, then put on their coats and went home in silence and shamefacedness, amid the angry remonstrances of the master-builder. A little farther on Farnham saw what seemed like a burlesque of the last performance. Several men were at work in a hole in the street; the tops of their heads were just visible above the surface. A half-grown, ruffianly boy, with a boot-black's box slung over his shoulder, came up and shouted, "You —— —— rats, come out of that, or we'll knock the scalps off'n you." The men, without even looking to see the source of the summons, threw down their tools and got out of the hole. The boy had run away; they looked about for a moment, as if bewildered, and then one of them, a gray-headed Irishman, said, "Well, we'd better be a lavin' off, if the rest is," and they all went away.

In this fashion it came about that by nightfall all the squares and public places were thronged with an idle and expectant crowd, not actively mischievous or threatening, but affording a vast mass of inflammable material in case the fire should start in any quarter. They gathered everywhere in dense groups, exchanging rumors and surmises, in which fact and fiction were fantastically mingled.

"The rolling-mills all close to-morrow," said a sallow and hollow-eyed tailor. "That'll let loose twenty thousand men on the town,—big, brawny fellows. I'm glad my wife is in Clairfield."

"All you know about it! Clairfield is twice as bad off as here. The machine shops has all struck there, and the men went through the armory this afternoon. They're camped all along Delaware street, every man with a pair of revolvers and a musket."

"You don't say so!" said the schneider, turning a shade more sallow. "I'd better telegraph my wife to come home."

"I wouldn't hurry," was the impassive response. "You don't know where we'll be to-morrow. They have been drilling all day at Riverley, three thousand of 'em. They'll come in to-morrow, mebbe, and hang all the railroad presidents. That may make trouble."

Through these loitering and talking crowds Farnham made his way in the evening to the office which he kept, on the public square of the town, for the transaction of the affairs of his estate. He had given directions to his clerk to be there, and when he arrived found that some half-dozen men had already assembled in answer to his advertisement. Some of them he knew; one, Nathan Kendall, a powerful young man, originally from the north of Maine, now a machinist in Buffland, had been at one time his orderly in the army. Bolty Grosshammer was there, and in a very short time some twenty men were in the room. Farnham briefly explained to them his intention. "I want you," he said, "to enlist for a few days' service under my orders. I cannot tell whether there will be any work to do or not; but it is likely we shall have a few nights of patrol at least. You will get ten dollars apiece anyhow, and ordinary day's wages besides. If any of you get hurt, I will try to have you taken care of."

All but two agreed to the proposition. These two said "they had families and could not risk their skins. When they saw the advertisement they had thought it was something about pensions, or the county treasurer's office. They thought soldiers ought to have the first chance at good offices." They then grumblingly withdrew.

Farnham kept his men for an hour longer, arranging some details of organization, and then dismissed them for twenty-four hours, feeling assured that there would be no disturbance of public tranquillity that night. "I will meet you here to morrow evening," he said, "and you can get your pistols and sticks and your final orders."

The men went out one by one, Bolty and Kendall waiting for a while after they had gone and going out on the sidewalk with Farnham. They had instinctively appointed themselves a sort of bodyguard to their old commander, and intended to keep him in sight until he got home. As they reached the door, they saw a scuffle going on upon the sidewalk. A well-dressed man was being beaten and kicked by a few rough fellows, and the crowd was looking on with silent interest. Farnham sprang forward and seized one of the assailants by the collar; Bolty pulled away another. The man who had been cuffed turned to Kendall, who was standing by to help where help was needed, and cried, "Take me away somewhere; they will have my life;" an appeal which only excited the jeers of the crowd.

"Kendall, take him into my office," said Farnham, which was done in an instant, Farnham and Bolty following. A rush was made,—not very vicious, however,—and the three men got safely inside with their prize, and bolted the door. A few kicks and blows shook the door, but there was no movement to break it down; and the rescued man, when he found himself in safety, walked up to a mirror there was in the room and looked earnestly at his face. It was a little bruised and bloody, and dirty with mud, but not seriously injured.

He turned to his rescuers with an air more of condescension than gratitude. "Gentlemen, I owe you my thanks, although I should have got the better of those scoundrels in a moment. Can you assist me in identifying them?"

"Oh! it is Mayor Quinlin, I believe," said Farnham, recognizing that functionary more by his voice than by his rumpled visage. "No, I do not know who they were. What was the occasion of this assault?"

"A most cowardly and infamous outrage, sir," said the Mayor. "I was walking along the sidewalk to me home, and I came upon this gang of ruffians at your door. Impatient at being delayed,—for my time is much occupied,—I rebuked them for being in me way. One of them turned to me and insolently inquired, 'Do you own this street, or have you just got a lien on it?' which unendurable insult was greeted with a loud laugh from the other ruffians. I called them by some properly severe name, and raised me cane to force a passage,—and the rest you know. Now, gentlemen, is there anything I can do?"