"It is not believed by many that his intention was burglary, though what his designs were can only be left to conjecture, as he is far beyond the age when boys perform such actions out of a sense of mischief. He had evidently occupied his hiding-place some time, and an idea of his coolness may be obtained from his having procured and eaten a full meal through an unknown source. Judge Pike is justly incensed, and swears that he will prosecute him on this and other charges as soon as he can be found. Much sympathy is felt for the culprit's family, who feel his shame most keenly, but who, though sorrowing over the occurrence, declare that they have put up with his derelictions long enough, and will do nothing to step between him and the Judge's righteous indignation."

The Pike Mansion, "scene of festivity, music, and mirth" (not quite so unalloyed, after all, the stricken Flitcroft keeping his room for a week under medical supervision), had not been the only bower of the dance in Canaan that evening: another Temple of Terpsichore had shone forth with lights, though of these there were not quite a myriad. The festivities they illumined obtained no mention in the paper, nor did they who trod the measures in this second temple exhibit any sense of injury because of the Tocsin's omission. Nay, they were of that class, shy without being bashful, exclusive yet not proud, which shuns publicity with a single-heartedness almost unique in our republic, courting observation neither in the prosecution of their professions nor in the pursuit of happiness.

Not quite a mile above the northernmost of the factories on the water-front, there projected into the river, near the end of the crescent bend above the town, a long pier, relic of steamboat days, rotting now, and many years fallen from its maritime uses. About midway of its length stood a huge, crazy shed, long ago utilized as a freight storeroom. This had been patched and propped, and a dangerous-looking veranda attached to it, over-hanging the water. Above the doorway was placed a sign whereon might be read the words, "Beaver Beach, Mike's Place." The shore end of the pier was so ruinous that passage was offered by a single row of planks, which presented an appearance so temporary, as well as insecure, that one might have guessed their office to be something in the nature of a drawbridge. From these a narrow path ran through a marsh, left by the receding river, to a country road of desolate appearance. Here there was a rough enclosure, or corral, with some tumble-down sheds which afforded shelter, on the night of Joseph Louden's disgrace, for a number of shaggy teams attached to those decrepit and musty vehicles known picturesquely and accurately as Night-Hawks. The presence of such questionable shapes in the corral indicated that the dance was on at Beaver Beach, Mike's Place, as surely as the short line of cabs and family carriages on upper Main Street made it known that gayety was the order of the night at the Pike Mansion. But among other differences was this, that at the hour when the guests of the latter were leaving, those seeking the hospitalities of Beaver Beach had just begun to arrive.

By three o'clock, however, joy at Mike's Place had become beyond question unconfined, and the tokens of it were audible for a long distance in all directions. If, however, there is no sound where no ear hears, silence rested upon the country-side until an hour later. Then a lonely figure came shivering from the direction of the town, not by the road, but slinking through the snow upon the frozen river. It came slowly, as though very tired, and cautiously, too, often turning its head to look behind. Finally it reached the pier, and stopped as if to listen.

Within the house above, a piano of evil life was being beaten to death for its sins and clamoring its last cries horribly. The old shed rattled in every part with the thud of many heavy feet, and trembled with the shock of noise—an incessant roar of men's voices, punctuated with women's screams. Then the riot quieted somewhat; there was a clapping of hands, and a violin began to squeak measures intended to be Oriental. The next moment the listener scrambled up one of the rotting piles and stood upon the veranda. A shaft of red light through a broken shutter struck across the figure above the shoulders, revealing a bloody handkerchief clumsily knotted about the head, and, beneath it, the face of Joe Louden.

He went to the broken shutter and looked in. Around the blackened walls of the room stood a bleared mob, applausively watching, through a fog of smoke, the contortions of an old woman in a red calico wrapper, who was dancing in the centre of the floor. The fiddler—a rubicund person evidently not suffering from any great depression of spirit through the circumstance of being "out on bail," as he was, to Joe's intimate knowledge—sat astride a barrel, resting his instrument upon the foamy tap thereof, and playing somewhat after the manner of a 'cellist; in no wise incommoded by the fact that a tall man (known to a few friends as an expert in the porch-climbing line) was sleeping on his shoulder, while another gentleman (who had prevented many cases of typhoid by removing old plumbing from houses) lay on the floor at the musician's feet and endeavored to assist him by plucking the strings of the fiddle.

Joe opened the door and went in. All of the merry company (who were able) turned sharply toward the door as it opened; then, recognizing the new-comer, turned again to watch the old woman. One or two nearest the door asked the boy, without great curiosity, what had happened to his head. He merely shook it faintly in reply, and crossed the room to an open hallway beyond. At the end of this he came to a frowzy bedroom, the door of which stood ajar. Seated at a deal table, and working by a dim lamp with a broken chimney, a close-cropped, red-bearded, red-haired man in his shirt-sleeves was jabbing gloomily at a column of figures scrawled in a dirty ledger. He looked up as Joe appeared in the doorway, and his eyes showed a slight surprise.

"I never thought ye had the temper to git somebody to split yer head," said he. "Where'd ye collect it?"

"Nowhere," Joe answered, dropping weakly on the bed. "It doesn't amount to anything."

"Well, I'll take just a look fer myself," said the red-bearded man, rising. "And I've no objection to not knowin' how ye come by it. Ye've always been the great one fer keepin' yer mysteries to yerself."

He unwound the handkerchief and removed it from Joe's head gently. "WHEE!" he cried, as a long gash was exposed over the forehead. "I hope ye left a mark somewhere to pay a little on the score o' this!"

Joe chuckled and dropped dizzily back upon the pillow. "There was another who got something like it," he gasped, feebly; "and, oh, Mike, I wish you could have heard him going on! Perhaps you did—it was only three miles from here."

"Nothing I'd liked better!" said the other, bringing a basin of clear water from a stand in the corner. "It's a beautiful thing to hear a man holler when he gits a grand one like ye're wearing to-night."

He bathed the wound gently, and hurrying from the room, returned immediately with a small jug of vinegar. Wetting a rag with this tender fluid, he applied it to Joe's head, speaking soothingly the while.

"Nothing in the world like a bit o' good cider vinegar to keep off the festerin'. It may seem a trifle scratchy fer the moment, but it assassinates the blood-p'ison. There ye go! It's the fine thing fer ye, Joe—what are ye squirmin' about?"

"I'm only enjoying it," the boy answered, writhing as the vinegar worked into the gash. "Don't you mind my laughing to myself."

"Ye're a good one, Joe!" said the other, continuing his ministrations. "I wisht, after all, ye felt like makin' me known to what's the trouble. There's some of us would be glad to take it up fer ye, and—"

"No, no; it's all right. I was somewhere I had no business to be, and I got caught."

"Who caught ye?"

"First, some nice white people"—Joe smiled his distorted smile—"and then a low-down black man helped me to get away as soon as he saw who it was. He's a friend of mine, and he fell down and tripped up the pursuit."

"I always knew ye'd git into large trouble some day." The red-bearded man tore a strip from an old towel and began to bandage the boy's head with an accustomed hand. "Yer taste fer excitement has been growin' on ye every minute of the four years I've known ye."

"Excitement!" echoed Joe, painfully blinking at his friend. "Do you think I'm hunting excitement?"

"Be hanged to ye!" said the red-bearded man. "Can't I say a teasing word without gittin' called to order fer it? I know ye, my boy, as well as ye know yerself. Ye're a queer one. Ye're one of the few that must know all sides of the world—and can't content themselves with bein' respectable! Ye haven't sunk to 'low life' because ye're low yourself, but ye'll never git a damned one o' the respectable to believe it. There's a few others like ye in the wide world, and I've seen one or two of 'em. I've been all over, steeple-chasin', sailorman, soldier, pedler, and in the PO-lice; I've pulled the Grand National in Paris, and I've been handcuffed in Hong-Kong; I've seen all the few kinds of women there is on earth and the many kinds of men. Yer own kind is the one I've seen the fewest of, but I knew ye belonged to it the first time I laid eyes on ye!" He paused, then continued with conviction: "Ye'll come to no good, either, fer yerself, yet no one can say ye haven't the talents. Ye've helped many of the boys out of a bad hole with a word of advice around the courts and the jail. Who knows but ye'd be a great lawyer if ye kept on?"

Young people usually like to discuss themselves under any conditions—hence the rewards of palmistry,—but Joe's comment on this harangue was not so responsive as might have been expected. "I've got seven dollars," he said, "and I'll leave the clothes I've got on. Can you fix me up with something different?"

"Aha!" cried the red-bearded man. "Then ye ARE in trouble! I thought it 'd come to ye some day! Have ye been dinnymitin' Martin Pike?"

"See what you can do," said Joe. "I want to wait here until daybreak."

"Lie down, then," interrupted the other. "And fergit the hullabaloo in the throne-room beyond."

"I can easily do that"—Joe stretched himself upon the bed,—"I've got so many other things to remember."

"I'll have the things fer ye, and I'll let ye know I have no use fer seven dollars," returned the red-bearded man, crossly. "What are ye sniffin' fer?"

"I'm thinking of the poor fellow that got the mate to this," said Joe, touching the bandage. "I can't help crying when I think they may have used vinegar on his head, too."

"Git to sleep if ye can!" exclaimed the Samaritan, as a hideous burst of noise came from the dance-room, where some one seemed to be breaking a chair upon an acquaintance. "I'll go out and regulate the boys a bit." He turned down the lamp, fumbled in his hip-pocket, and went to the door.

"Don't forget," Joe called after him.

"Go to sleep," said the red-bearded man, his hand on the door-knob. "That is, go to thinkin', fer ye won't sleep; ye're not the kind. But think easy; I'll have the things fer ye. It's a matter of pride with me that I always knew ye'd come to trouble."



VI

YE'LL TAK' THE HIGH ROAD AND I'LL TAK' THE LOW ROAD

The day broke with a scream of wind out of the prairies and such cloudbursts of snow that Joe could see neither bank of the river as he made his way down the big bend of ice. The wind struck so bitterly that now and then he stopped and, panting and gasping, leaned his weight against it. The snow on the ground was caught up and flew like sea spume in a hurricane; it swirled about him, joining the flakes in the air, so that it seemed to be snowing from the ground upward as much as from the sky downward. Fierce as it was, hard as it was to fight through, snow from the earth, snow from the sky, Joe was grateful for it, feeling that it veiled him, making him safer, though he trusted somewhat the change of costume he had effected at Beaver Beach. A rough, workman's cap was pulled down over his ears and eyebrows; a knitted comforter was wound about the lower part of his face; under a ragged overcoat he wore blue overalls and rubber boots; and in one of his red-mittened hands he swung a tin dinner-bucket.

When he reached the nearest of the factories he heard the exhaust of its engines long before he could see the building, so blinding was the drift. Here he struck inland from the river, and, skirting the edges of the town, made his way by unfrequented streets and alleys, bearing in the general direction of upper Main Street, to find himself at last, almost exhausted, in the alley behind the Pike Mansion. There he paused, leaning heavily against a board fence and gazing at the vaguely outlined gray plane which was all that could be made of the house through the blizzard. He had often, very often, stood in this same place at night, and there was one window (Mrs. Pike's) which he had guessed to be Mamie's.

The storm was so thick that he could not see this window now, but he looked a long time through the thickness at that part of the gray plane where he knew it was. Then his lips parted.

"Good-bye, Mamie," he said, softly. "Goodbye, Mamie."

He bent his body against the wind and went on, still keeping to the back ways, until he came to the alley which passed behind his own home, where, however, he paused only for a moment to make a quick survey of the premises. A glance satisfied him; he ran to the next fence, hoisted himself wearily over it, and dropped into Roger Tabor's back yard.

He took shelter from the wind for a moment or two, leaning against the fence, breathing heavily; then he stumbled on across the obliterated paths of a vegetable-garden until he reached the house, and beginning with the kitchen, began to make the circuit of the windows, peering cautiously into each as he went, ready to tap on the pane should he catch a glimpse of Ariel, and prepared to run if he stumbled upon her grandfather. But the place seemed empty: he had made his reconnaisance apparently in vain, and was on the point of going away, when he heard the click of the front gate and saw Ariel coming towards him, her old water-proof cloak about her head and shoulders, the patched, scant, faded skirt, which he knew so well, blowing about her tumultuously. At the sound of the gate he had crouched close against the side of the house, but she saw him at once.

She stopped abruptly, and throwing the water-proof back from her head, looked at him through the driven fog of snow. One of her hands was stretched towards him involuntarily, and it was in that attitude that he long remembered her: standing in the drift which had piled up against the gate almost knee-deep, the shabby skirt and the black water-proof flapping like torn sails, one hand out-stretched like that of a figure in a tableau, her brown face with its thin features mottled with cold and unlovely, her startled eyes fixed on him with a strange, wild tenderness that held something of the laughter of whole companionship in it mingling with a loyalty and championship that was almost ferocious—she looked an Undine of the snow.

Suddenly she ran to him, still keeping her hand out-stretched until it touched his own.

"How did you know me?" he said.

"Know you!" was all the answer she made to that question. "Come into the house. I've got some coffee on the stove for you. I've been up and down the street waiting for you ever since it began to get light."

"Your grandfather won't—"

"He's at Uncle Jonas's; he won't be back till noon. There's no one here."

She led him to the front-door, where he stamped and shook himself; he was snow from head to foot.

"I'm running away from the good Gomorrah," he said, "but I've stopped to look back, and I'm a pretty white pillar."

"I know where you stopped to look back," she answered, brushing him heartily with her red hands. "You came in the alley way. It was Mamie's window."

He did not reply, and the only visible token that he had any consciousness of this clairvoyance of hers was a slight lift of his higher eyebrow. She wasted no time in getting him to the kitchen, where, when she had removed his overcoat, she placed him in a chair, unwound the comforter, and, as carefully as a nurse, lifted the cap from his injured head. When the strip of towel was disclosed she stood quite still for a moment with the cap in her hand; then with a broken little cry she stooped and kissed a lock of his hair, which escaped, discolored, beneath the bandage.

"Stop that!" he commanded, horribly embarrassed.

"Oh, Joe," she cried, "I knew! I knew it was there—but to SEE it! And it's my fault for leaving you—I HAD to go or I wouldn't have—I—"

"Where'd you hear about it?" he asked, shortly.

"I haven't been to bed," she answered. "Grandfather and I were up all night at Uncle Jonas's, and Colonel Flitcroft came about two o'clock, and he told us."

"Did he tell you about Norbert?"

"Yes—a great deal." She poured coffee into a cup from a pot on the stove, brought it to him, then placing some thin slices of bread upon a gridiron, began to toast them over the hot coals. "The Colonel said that Norbert thought he wouldn't get well," she concluded; "and Mr. Arp said Norbert was the kind that never die, and they had quite an argument."

"What were you doing at Jonas Tabor's?" asked Joe, drinking his coffee with a brightening eye.

"We were sent for," she answered.

"What for?"

She toasted the bread attentively without replying, and when she decided that it was brown enough, piled it on a warm plate. This she brought to him, and kneeling in front of him, her elbow on his knee, offered for his consideration, looking steadfastly up at his eyes. He began to eat ravenously.

"What for?" he repeated. "I didn't suppose Jonas would let you come in his house. Was he sick?"

"Joe," she said, quietly, disregarding his questions—-"Joe, have you GOT to run away?"

"Yes, I've got to," he answered.

"Would you have to go to prison if you stayed?" She asked this with a breathless tensity.

"I'm not going to beg father to help me out," he said, determinedly. "He said he wouldn't, and he'll be spared the chance. He won't mind that; nobody will care! Nobody! What does anybody care what I do!"

"Now you're thinking of Mamie!" she cried. "I can always tell. Whenever you don't talk naturally you're thinking of her!"

He poured down the last of the coffee, growing red to the tips of his ears. "Ariel," he said, "if I ever come back—"

"Wait," she interrupted. "Would you have to go to prison right away if they caught you?"

"Oh, it isn't that," he laughed, sadly. "But I'm going to clear out. I'm not going to take any chances. I want to see other parts of the world, other kinds of people. I might have gone, anyhow, soon, even if it hadn't been for last night. Don't you ever feel that way?"

"You know I do," she said. "I've told you—how often! But, Joe, Joe,—you haven't any MONEY! You've got to have money to LIVE!"

"You needn't worry about that," returned the master of seven dollars, genially. "I've saved enough to take care of me for a LONG time."

"Joe, PLEASE! I know it isn't so. If you could wait just a little while—only a few weeks,—only a FEW, Joe—"

"What for?"

"I could let you have all you want. It would be such a beautiful thing for me, Joe. Oh, I know how you'd feel; you wouldn't even let me give you that dollar I found in the street last year; but this would be only lending it to you, and you could pay me back sometime—"

"Ariel!" he exclaimed, and, setting his empty cup upon the floor, took her by the shoulders and shook her till the empty plate which had held the toast dropped from her hand and broke into fragments. "You've been reading the Arabian Nights!"

"No, no," she cried, vehemently. "Grandfather would give me anything. He'll give me all the money I ask for!"

"Money!" said Joe. "Which of us is wandering? MONEY? Roger Tabor give you MONEY?"

"Not for a while. A great many things have to be settled first."

"What things?"

"Joe," she asked, earnestly, "do you think it's bad of me not to feel things I OUGHT to feel?"

"No."

"Then I'm glad," she said, and something in the way she spoke made him start with pain, remembering the same words, spoken in the same tone, by another voice, the night before on the veranda. "I'm glad, Joe, because I seemed all wrong to myself. Uncle Jonas died last night, and I haven't been able to get sorry. Perhaps it's because I've been so frightened about you, but I think not, for I wasn't sorry even before Colonel Flitcroft told me about you."

"Jonas Tabor dead!" said Joe. "Why, I saw him on the street yesterday!"

"Yes, and I saw him just before I came out on the porch where you were. He was there in the hall; he and Judge Pike had been having a long talk; they'd been in some speculations together, and it had all turned out well. It's very strange, but they say now that Uncle Jonas's heart was weak—he was an old man, you know, almost eighty,—and he'd been very anxious about his money. The Judge had persuaded him to risk it; and the shock of finding that he'd made a great deal suddenly—"

"I've heard he'd had that same shock before," said Joe, "when he sold out to your father."

"Yes, but this was different, grandfather says. He told me it was in one of those big risky businesses that Judge Pike likes to go into. And last night it was all finished, the strain was over, and Uncle Jonas started home. His house is only a little way from the Pikes', you know; but he dropped down in the snow at his own gate, and some people who were going by saw him fall. He was dead before grandfather got there."

"I can't be sorry," said Joe, slowly.

"Neither can I. That's the dreadful part of it! They say he hadn't made a will, that though he was sharper than anybody else in the whole world about any other matter of business, that was the one thing he put off. And we're all the kin he had in the world, grandfather and I. And they say"—her voice sank to a whisper of excitement—"they say he was richer than anybody knew, and that this last business with Judge Pike, the very thing that killed him—something about grain—made him five times richer than before!"

She put her hand on the boy's arm, and he let it remain there. Her eyes still sought his with a tremulous appeal.

"God bless you, Ariel!" he said. "It's going to be a great thing for you."

"Yes. Yes, it is." The tears came suddenly to her eyes. "I was foolish last night, but there had been such a long time of WANTING things; and now—and now grandfather and I can go—"

"You're going, too!" Joe chuckled.

"It's heartless, I suppose, but I've settled it! We're going—"

"I know," he cried. "You've told me a thousand times what HE'S said—ten times a thousand. You're going to Paris!"

"Paris! Yes, that's it. To Paris, where he can see at last how the great ones have painted,—where the others can show him! To Paris, where we can study together, where he can learn how to put the pictures he sees upon canvas, and where I—"

"Go on," Joe encouraged her. "I want to hear you say it. You don't mean that you're going to study painting; you mean that you're going to learn how to make such fellows as Eugene ask you to dance. Go ahead and SAY it!"

"Yes—to learn how to DRESS!" she said.

Joe was silent for a moment. Then he rose and took the ragged overcoat from the back of his chair. "Where's that muffler?" he asked.

She brought it from where she had placed it to dry, behind the stove.

"Joe," she said, huskily, "can't you wait till—"

"Till the estate is settled and you can coax your grandfather to—"

"No, no! But you could go with us."

"To Paris?"

"He would take you as his secretary."

"Aha!" Joe's voice rang out gayly as he rose, refreshed by the coffee, toast, and warmth she had given him. "You've been story-reading, Ariel, like Eugene! 'Secretary'!"

"Please, Joe!"

"Where's my tin dinner-pail?" He found it himself upon the table where he had set it down. "I'm going to earn a dishonest living," he went on. "I have an engagement to take a freight at a water-tank that's a friend of mine, half a mile south of the yards. Thank God, I'm going to get away from Canaan!"

"Wait, Joe!" She caught at his sleeve. "I want you to—"

He had swung out of the room and was already at the front-door. She followed him closely.

"Good-bye, Ariel!"

"No, no! WAIT, Joe!"

He took her right hand in his own, and gave it a manly shake. "It's all right," he said.

He threw open the door and stepped out, but she sought to detain him. "Oh, have you GOT to go?" she cried.

"Don't you ever worry about me." He bent his head to the storm as he sprang down the steps, and snow-wreaths swirled between them.

He disappeared in a white whirlwind.

She stood for several minutes shivering in the doorway. Then it came to her that she would not know where to write to him. She ran down to the gate and through it. Already the blizzard had covered his footprints.



VII

GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME

The passing of Joseph from Canaan was complete. It was an evanishment for which there was neither sackcloth nor surprise; and though there came no news of him it cannot be said that Canaan did not hear of him, for surely it could hear itself talk. The death of Jonas Tabor and young Louden's crime and flight incited high doings in the "National House" windows; many days the sages lingered with the broken meats of morals left over from the banquet of gossip. But, after all, it is with the ladies of a community that reputations finally rest, and the matrons of Canaan had long ago made Joe's exceedingly uncertain. Now they made it certain.

They did not fail of assistance. The most powerful influence in the town was ponderously corroborative: Martin Pike, who stood for all that was respectable and financial, who passed the plate o' Sundays, who held the fortunes of the town in his left hand, who was trustee for the widow and orphan,—Martin Pike, patron of all worthy charities, courted by ministers, feared by the wicked and idle, revered by the good,—Judge Martin Pike never referred to the runaway save in the accents of an august doomster. His testimony settled it.

In time the precise nature of the fugitive's sins was distorted in report and grew vague; it was recalled that he had done dread things; he became a tradition, a legend, and a warning to the young; a Richard in the bush to frighten colts. He was preached at boys caught playing marbles "for keeps": "Do you want to grow up like Joe Louden?" The very name became a darkling threat, and children of the town would have run had one called suddenly, "HERE COMES JOE LOUDEN!" Thus does the evil men do live after them, and the ill-fame of the unrighteous increase when they are sped!

Very little of Joseph's adventures and occupations during the time of his wandering is revealed to us; he always had an unwilling memory for pain and was not afterwards wont to speak of those years which cut the hard lines in his face. The first account of him to reach Canaan came as directly to the windows of the "National House" as Mr. Arp, hastening thither from the station, satchel in hand, could bring it.

This was on a September morning, two years after the flight, and Eskew, it appears, had been to the State Fair and had beheld many things strangely affirming his constant testimony that this unhappy world increaseth in sin; strangest of all, his meeting with our vagrant scalawag of Canaan. "Not a BLAMEBIT of doubt about it," declared Eskew to the incredulous conclave. "There was that Joe, and nobody else, stuck up in a little box outside a tent at the Fair Grounds, and sellin' tickets to see the Spotted Wild Boy!" Yes, it was Joe Louden! Think you, Mr. Arp could forget that face, those crooked eyebrows? Had Eskew tested the recognition? Had he spoken with the outcast? Had he not! Ay, but with such peculiar result that the battle of words among the sages began with a true onset of the regulars; for, according to Eskew's narrative, when he had delivered grimly at the boy this charge, "I know you—YOU'RE JOE LOUDEN!" the extraordinary reply had been made promptly and without change of countenance: "POSITIVELY NO FREE SEATS!"

On this, the house divided, one party maintaining that Joe had thus endeavored to evade recognition, the other (to the embitterment of Mr. Arp) that the reply was a distinct admission of identity and at the same time a refusal to grant any favors on the score of past acquaintanceship.

Goaded by inquiries, Mr. Arp, who had little desire to recall such waste of silver, admitted more than he had intended: that he had purchased a ticket and gone in to see the Spotted Wild Boy, halting in his description of this marvel with the unsatisfactory and acrid statement that the Wild Boy was "simply SPOTTED,"—and the stung query, "I suppose you know what a spot IS, Squire?" When he came out of the tent he had narrowly examined the ticket-seller,—who seemed unaware of his scrutiny, and, when not engaged with his tickets, applied himself to a dirty law-looking book. It was Joseph Louden, reasserted Eskew, a little taller, a little paler, incredibly shabby and miraculously thin. If there were any doubt left, his forehead was somewhat disfigured by the scar of an old wound—such as might have been caused by a blunt instrument in the nature of a poker.

"What's the matter with YOU?" Mr. Arp whirled upon Uncle Joe Davey, who was enjoying himself by repeating at intervals the unreasonable words, "Couldn't of be'n Joe," without any explanation. "Why couldn't it?" shouted Eskew. "It was! Do you think my eyes are as fur gone as yours? I saw him, I tell you! The same ornery Joe Louden, run away and sellin' tickets for a side-show. He wasn't even the boss of it; the manager was about the meanest-lookin' human I ever saw—and most humans look mighty mean, accordin' to my way of thinkin'! Riffraff of the riffraff are his friends now, same as they were here. Weeds! and HE'S a weed, always was and always will be! Him and his kind ain't any more than jimpsons; overrun everything if you give 'em a chance. Devil-flowers! They have to be hoed out and scattered—even then, like as not, they'll come back next year and ruin your plantin' once more. That boy Joe 'll turn up here again some day; you'll see if he don't. He's a seed of trouble and iniquity, and anything of that kind is sure to come back to Canaan!"

Mr. Arp stuck to his prediction for several months; then he began to waver and evade. By the end of the second year following its first utterance, he had formed the habit of denying that he had ever made it at all, and, finally having come to believe with all his heart that the prophecy had been deliberately foisted upon him and put in his mouth by Squire Buckalew, became so sore upon the subject that even the hardiest dared not refer to it in his presence.

Eskew's story of the ticket-seller was the only news of Joe Louden that came to Canaan during seven years. Another citizen of the town encountered the wanderer, however, but under circumstances so susceptible to misconception that, in a moment of illumination, he decided to let the matter rest in a golden silence. This was Mr. Bantry.

Having elected an elaborate course in the Arts, at the University which was of his possessions, what more natural than that Eugene should seek the Metropolis for the short Easter vacation of his Senior year, in order that his perusal of the Masters should be uninterrupted? But it was his misfortune to find the Metropolitan Museum less interesting than some intricate phases of the gayety of New York—phases very difficult to understand without elaborate study and a series of experiments which the discreetly selfish permit others to make for them. Briefly, Eugene found himself dancing, one night, with a young person in a big hat, at the "Straw-Cellar," a crowded hall, down very deep in the town and not at all the place for Eugene.

Acute crises are to be expected at the "Straw-Cellar," and Eugene was the only one present who was thoroughly surprised when that of this night arrived, though all of the merrymakers were frightened when they perceived its extent. There is no need to detail the catastrophe. It came suddenly, and the knife did not flash. Sick and thinking of himself, Eugene stood staring at the figure lying before him upon the reddening floor. A rabble fought with the quick policemen at the doors, and then the lights went out, extinguished by the proprietor, living up to his reputation for always being thoughtful of his patrons. The place had been a nightmare; it became a black impossibility. Eugene staggered to one of the open windows, from the sill of which a man had just leaped.

"Don't jump," said a voice close to his ear. "That fellow broke his leg, I think, and they caught him, anyway, as soon as he struck the pavement. It's a big raid. Come this way."

A light hand fell upon his arm and he followed its leading, blindly, to find himself pushed through a narrow doorway and down a flight of tricky, wooden steps, at the foot of which, silhouetted against a street light, a tall policeman was on guard. He laid masterful hands on Eugene.

"'SH, Mack!" whispered a cautious voice from the stairway. "That's a friend of mine and not one of those you need. He's only a student and scared to death."

"Hurry," said the policeman, under his breath, twisting Eugene sharply by him into the street; after which he stormed vehemently: "On yer way, both of ye! Move on up the street! Don't be tryin' to poke yer heads in here! Ye'd be more anxious to git out, once ye got in, I tell ye!"

A sob of relief came from Bantry as he gained the next corner, the slight figure of his conductor at his side. "You'd better not go to places like the 'Straw-Cellar,'" said the latter, gravely. "I'd been watching you for an hour. You were dancing with the girl who did the cutting."

Eugene leaned against a wall, faint, one arm across his face. He was too ill to see, or care, who it was that had saved him. "I never saw her before," he babbled, incoherently, "never, never, never! I thought she looked handsome, and asked her if she'd dance with me. Then I saw she seemed queer—and wild, and she kept guiding and pushing as we danced until we were near that man—and then she—then it was all done—before—"

"Yes," said the other; "she's been threatening to do it for a long time. Jealous. Mighty good sort of a girl, though, in lots of ways. Only yesterday I talked with her and almost thought I'd calmed her out of it. But you can't tell with some women. They'll brighten up and talk straight and seem sensible, one minute, and promise to behave, and mean it too, and the next, there they go, making a scene, cutting somebody or killing themselves! You can't count on them. But that's not to the point, exactly, I expect. You'd better keep away from the 'Straw-Cellar.' If you'd been caught with the rest you'd have had a hard time, and they'd have found out your real name, too, because it's pretty serious on account of your dancing with her when she did it, and the Canaan papers would have got hold of it and you wouldn't be invited to Judge Pike's any more, Eugene."

Eugene dropped his arm from his eyes and stared into the face of his step-brother.

"Joe Louden!" he gasped.

"I'll never tell," said Joe. "You'd better keep out of all this sort. You don't understand it, and you don't—you don't do it because you care." He smiled wanly, his odd distorted smile of friendliness. "When you go back you might tell father I'm all right. I'm working through a law-school here—and remember me to Norbert Flitcroft," he finished, with a chuckle.

Eugene covered his eyes again and groaned.

"It's all right," Joe assured him. "You're as safe as if it had never happened. And I expect"—he went on, thoughtfully—"I expect, maybe, you'd prefer NOT to say you'd seen me, when you go back to Canaan. Well, that's all right. I don't suppose father will be asking after me—exactly."

"No, he doesn't," said Eugene, still white and shaking. "Don't stand talking. I'm sick."

"Of course," returned Joe. "But there's one thing I would like to ask you—"

"Your father's health is perfect, I believe."

"It—it—it was something else," Joe stammered, pitifully. "Are they all—are they all—all right at—at Judge Pike's?"

"Quite!" Eugene replied, sharply. "Are you going to get me away from here? I'm sick, I tell you!"

"This street," said Joe, and cheerfully led the way.

Five minutes later the two had parted, and Joe leaned against a cheap restaurant sign-board, drearily staring after the lamps of the gypsy night-cab he had found for his step-brother. Eugene had not offered to share the vehicle with him, had not even replied to his good-night.

And Joe himself had neglected to do something he might well have done: he had not asked Eugene for news of Ariel Tabor. It will not justify him entirely to suppose that he assumed that her grandfather and she had left Canaan never to return, and therefore Eugene knew nothing of her; no such explanation serves Joe for his neglect, for the fair truth is that he had not thought of her. She had been a sort of playmate, before his flight, a friend taken for granted, about whom he had consciously thought little more than he thought about himself—and easily forgotten. Not forgotten in the sense that she had passed out of his memory, but forgotten none the less; she had never had a place in his imaginings, and so it befell that when he no longer saw her from day to day, she had gone from his thoughts altogether.



VIII

A BAD PENNY TURNS UP

Eugene did not inform Canaan, nor any inhabitant, of his adventure of "Straw-Cellar," nor did any hear of his meeting with his step-brother; and after Mr. Arp's adventure, five years passed into the imperishable before the town heard of the wanderer again, and then it heard at first hand; Mr. Arp's prophecy fell true, and he took it back to his bosom again, claimed it as his own the morning of its fulfilment. Joe Louden had come back to Canaan.

The elder Louden was the first to know of his prodigal's return. He was alone in the office of the wooden-butter-dish factory, of which he was the superintendent, when the young man came in unannounced. He was still pale and thin; his eyebrows had the same crook, one corner of his mouth the same droop; he was only an inch or so taller, not enough to be thought a tall man; and yet, for a few moments the father did not recognize his son, but stared at him, inquiring his business. During those few seconds of unrecognition, Mr. Louden was somewhat favorably impressed with the stranger's appearance.

"You don't know me," said Joe, smiling cheerfully. "Perhaps I've changed in seven years." And he held out his hand.

Then Mr. Louden knew; he tilted back in his desk-chair, his mouth falling open. "Good God!" he said, not noticing the out-stretched hand. "Have YOU come back?"

Joe's hand fell.

"Yes, I've come back to Canaan."

Mr. Louden looked at him a long time without replying; finally he remarked:

"I see you've still got a scar on your forehead."

"Oh, I've forgotten all about that," said the other, twisting his hat in his hands. "Seven years wipes out a good many grievances and wrongs."

"You think so?" Mr Louden grunted. "I suppose it might wipe out a good deal with some people. How'd you happen to stop off at Canaan? On your way somewhere, I suppose."

"No, I've come back to stay."

Mr. Louden plainly received this as no pleasant surprise. "What for?" he asked, slowly.

"To practise law, father."

"What!"

"Yes," said the young man. "There ought to be an opening here for me. I'm a graduate of as good a law-school as there is in the country—"

"You are!"

"Certainly," said Joe, quietly. "I've put myself through, working in the summer—"

"Working!" Mr. Louden snorted. "Side-shows?"

"Oh, worse than that, sometimes," returned his son, laughing. "Anything I could get. But I've always wanted to come back home and work here."

Mr. Louden leaned forward, a hand on each knee, his brow deeply corrugated. "Do you think you'll get much practice in Canaan?"

"Why not? I've had a year in a good office in New York since I left the school, and I think I ought to get along all right."

"Oh," said Mr. Louden, briefly. "You do?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

"Who do you think in Canaan would put a case in your hands?"

"Oh, I don't expect to get anything important at the start. But after a while—"

"With your reputation?"

The smile which had faded from Joe's lips returned to them. "Oh, I know they thought I was a harum-scarum sort of boy," he answered lightly, "and that it was a foolish thing to run away for nothing; but you had said I mustn't come to you for help—"

"I meant it," said Mr. Louden.

"But that's seven years ago, and I suppose the town's forgotten all about it, and forgotten me, too. So, you see, I can make a fresh start. That's what I came back for."

"You've made up your mind to stay here, then?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe," said Mr. Louden, with marked uneasiness, "that Mrs. Louden would be willing to let you live with us."

"No," said Joe, gently. "I didn't expect it." He turned to the window and looked out, averting his face, yet scoring himself with the contempt he had learned to feel for those who pity themselves. His father had not even asked him to sit down. There was a long silence, disturbed only by Mr. Louden's breathing, which could be heard, heavy and troubled.

At last Joe turned again, smiling as before. "Well, I won't keep you from your work," he said. "I suppose you're pretty busy—"

"Yes, I am," responded his father, promptly. "But I'll see you again before you go. I want to give you some advice."

"I'm not going," said Joe. "Not going to leave Canaan, I mean. Where will I find Eugene?"

"At the Tocsin office; he's the assistant editor. Judge Pike bought the Tocsin last year, and he thinks a good deal of Eugene. Don't forget I said to come to see me again before you go."

Joe came over to the older man and held out his hand. "Shake hands, father," he said. Mr. Louden looked at him out of small implacable eyes, the steady hostility of which only his wife or the imperious Martin Pike, his employer, could quell. He shook his head.

"I don't see any use in it," he answered. "It wouldn't mean anything. All my life I've been a hard-working man and an abiding man. Before you got in trouble you never did anything you ought to; you ran with the lowest people in town, and I and all your folks were ashamed of you. I don't see that we've got a call to be any different now." He swung round to his desk emphatically, on the last word, and Joe turned away and went out quietly.

But it was a bright morning to which he emerged from the outer doors of the factory, and he made his way towards Main Street at a lively gait. As he turned the corner opposite the "National House," he walked into Mr. Eskew Arp. The old man drew back angrily.

"Lord 'a' mercy!" cried Joe, heartily. "It's Mr. Arp! I almost ran you down!" Then, as Mr. Arp made no response, but stood stock-still in the way, staring at him fiercely, "Don't you know me, Mr. Arp?" the young man asked. "I'm Joe Louden."

Eskew abruptly thrust his face close to the other's. "NO FREE SEATS!" he hissed, savagely; and swept across to the hotel to set his world afire.

Joe looked after the irate, receding figure, and watched it disappear into the Main Street door of the "National House." As the door closed, he became aware of a mighty shadow upon the pavement, and turning, beheld a fat young man, wearing upon his forehead a scar similar to his own, waddling by with eyes fixed upon him.

"How are you, Norbert?" Joe began. "Don't you remember me? I—" He came to a full stop, as the fat one, thrusting out an under lip as his only token of recognition, passed balefully on.

Joe proceeded slowly until he came to the Tocsin building. At the foot of the stairway leading up to the offices he hesitated for a few moments; then he turned away and walked towards the quieter part of Main Street. Most of the people he met took no notice of him, only two or three giving him second glances of half-cognizance, as though he reminded them of some one they could not place, and it was not until he had come near the Pike Mansion that he saw a full recognition in the eyes of one of the many whom he knew, and who had known him in his boyhood in the town. A lady, turning a corner, looked up carelessly, and then half-stopped within a few feet of him, as if startled. Joe's cheeks went a sudden crimson; for it was the lady of his old dreams.

Seven years had made Mamie Pike only prettier. She had grown into her young womanhood with an ampleness that had nothing of oversufficiency in it, nor anywhere a threat that some day there might be too much of her. Not quite seventeen when he had last seen her, now, at twenty-four, her amber hair elaborately becoming a plump and regular face, all of her old charm came over him once more, and it immediately seemed to him that he saw clearly his real reason for coming back to Canaan. She had been the Rich-Little-Girl of his child days, the golden princess playing in the Palace-Grounds, and in his early boyhood (until he had grown wicked and shabby) he had been sometimes invited to the Pike Mansion for the games and ice-cream of the daughter of the house, before her dancing days began. He had gone timidly, not daring ever to "call" her in "Quaker Meeting" or "Post-office," but watching her reverently and surreptitiously and continually. She had always seemed to him the one thing of all the world most rare, most mysterious, most unapproachable. She had not offered an apparition less so in those days when he began to come under the suspicion of Canaan, when the old people began to look upon him hotly, the young people coldly. His very exclusion wove for him a glamour about her, and she was more than ever his moon, far, lovely, unattainable, and brilliant, never to be reached by his lifted arms, but only by his lifted eyes. Nor had his long absence obliterated that light; somewhere in his dreams it always had place, shining, perhaps, with a fainter lustre as the years grew to seven, but never gone altogether. Now, at last, that he stood in her very presence again, it sprang to the full flood of its old brilliance—and more!

As she came to her half-stop of surprise, startled, he took his courage in two hands, and, lifting his hat, stepped to her side.

"You—you remember me?" he stammered.

"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly.

"Ah, that's kind of you!" he cried, and began to walk on with her, unconsciously. "I feel like a returned ghost wandering about—invisible and unrecognized. So few people seem to remember me!"

"I think you are wrong. I think you'll find everybody remembers you," she responded, uneasily.

"No, I'm afraid not," he began. "I—"

"I'm afraid they do!"

Joe laughed a little. "My father was saying something like that to me a while ago. He meant that they used to think me a great scapegrace here. Do you mean that?"

"I'd scarcely like to say," she answered, her face growing more troubled; for they were close on the imperial domain.

"But it's long ago—and I really didn't do anything so outrageous, it seems to me." He laughed again. "I know your father was angry with me once or twice, especially the night I hid on your porch to watch you—to watch you dance, I mean. But, you see, I've come back to rehabilitate myself, to—"

She interrupted him. They were not far from her gate, and she saw her father standing in the yard, directing a painter who was at work on one of the cast-iron deer. The Judge was apparently in good spirits, laughing with the workman over some jest between them, but that did not lessen Mamie's nervousness.

"Mr. Louden," she said, in as kindly a tone as she could, "I shall have to ask you not to walk with me. My father would not like it."

Joe stopped with a jerk.

"Why, I—I thought I'd go in and shake hands with him,—and tell him I—"

Astonishment that partook of terror and of awe spread itself instantly upon her face.

"Good gracious!" she cried. "NO!"

"Very well," said Joe, humbly. "Good-bye."

He was too late to get away with any good grace. Judge Pike had seen them, and, even as Joe turned to go, rushed down to the gate, flung it open, and motioned his daughter to enter. This he did with one wide sweep of his arm, and, with another sweep, forbade Joe to look upon either moon OR sun. It was a magnificent gesture: it excluded the young man from the street, Judge Pike's street, and from the town, Judge Pike's town. It swept him from the earth, abolished him, denied him the right to breathe the common air, to be seen of men; and, at once a headsman's stroke and an excommunication, destroyed him, soul and body, thus rebuking the silly Providence that had created him, and repairing Its mistake by annihilating him. This hurling Olympian gesture smote the street; the rails of the car-track sprang and quivered with the shock; it thundered, and, amid the dumfounding uproar of the wrath of a god, the Will of the Canaanite Jove wrote the words in fiery letters upon the ether:

"CEASE TO BE!"

Joe did not go in to shake hands with Judge Pike.

He turned the next corner a moment later, and went down the quiet street which led to the house which had been his home. He did not glance at that somewhat grim edifice, but passed it, his eyes averted, and stopped in front of the long, ramshackle cottage next door. The windows were boarded; the picket-fence dropped even to the ground in some sections; the chimneys sagged and curved; the roof of the long porch sprinkled shingles over the unkempt yard with every wind, and seemed about to fall. The place was desolate with long emptiness and decay: it looked like a Haunted House; and nailed to the padlocked gate was a sign, half obliterated with the winters it had fronted, "For Sale or Rent."

Joe gat him meditatively back to Main Street and to the Tocsin building. This time he did not hesitate, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon the door of the assistant editor.

"Oh," said Eugene. "YOU'VE turned up, you?"

Mr. Bantry of the Tocsin was not at all the Eugene rescued from the "Straw-Cellar." The present gentleman was more the electric Freshman than the frightened adventurer whom Joe had encountered in New York. It was to be seen immediately that the assistant editor had nothing undaintily business-like about him, nor was there the litter on his desk which one might have expected. He had the air of a gentleman dilettante who amused himself slightly by spending an hour or two in the room now and then. It was the evolution to the perfect of his Freshman manner, and his lively apparel, though somewhat chastened by an older taste, might have been foretold from that which had smitten Canaan seven years before. He sat not at the orderly and handsome desk, but lay stretched upon a divan of green leather, smoking a cigar of purest ray and reading sleepily a small verse-looking book in morocco. His occupation, his general air, the furniture of the room, and his title (doubtless equipped with a corresponding salary) might have inspired in an observant cynic the idea that here lay a pet of Fortune, whose position had been the fruit of nepotism, or, mayhap, a successful wooing of some daughter, wife, or widow. Eugene looked competent for that.

"I've come back to stay, 'Gene," said Joe.

Bantry had dropped his book and raised himself on an elbow. "Exceedingly interesting," he said. "I suppose you'll try to find something to do. I don't think you could get a place here; Judge Pike owns the Tocsin, and I greatly fear he has a prejudice against you."

"I expect he has," Joe chuckled, somewhat sadly. "But I don't want newspaper work. I'm going to practice law."

"By Jove! you have courage, my festive prodigal. VRAIMENT!"

Joe cocked his head to one side with his old look of the friendly puppy. "You always did like to talk that noveletty way, 'Gene, didn't you?" he said, impersonally.

Eugene's color rose. "Have you saved up anything to starve on?" he asked, crisply.

"Oh, I'm not so badly off. I've had a salary in an office for a year, and I had one pretty good day at the races—"

"You'd better go back and have another," said his step-brother. "You don't seem to comprehend your standing in Canaan."

"I'm beginning to." Joe turned to the door. "It's funny, too—in a way. Well—I won't keep you any longer. I just stopped in to say good-day—" He paused, faltering.

"All right, all right," Eugene said, briskly. "And, by-the-way, I haven't mentioned that I saw you in New York."

"Oh, I didn't suppose that you would."

"And you needn't say anything about it, I fancy."

"I don't think," said Joe,—"I don't think that you need be afraid I'll do that. Good-bye."

"Be sure to shut the door, please; it's rather noisy with it open. Good-bye." Eugene waved his hand and sank back upon the divan.

Joe went across the street to the "National House." The sages fell as silent as if he had been Martin Pike. They had just had the pleasure of hearing a telephone monologue by Mr. Brown, the clerk, to which they listened intently: "Yes. This is Brown. Oh—oh, it's Judge Pike? Yes indeed, Judge, yes indeed, I hear you—ha, ha! Of course, I understand. Yes, Judge, I heard he was in town. No, he hasn't been here. Not yet, that is, Judge. Yes, I hear. No, I won't, of course. Certainly not. I will, I will. I hear perfectly, I understand. Yes, sir. Good-bye, Judge."

Joe had begun to write his name in the register. "My trunk is still at the station," he said. "I'll give you my check to send down for it."

"Excuse me," said the clerk. "We have no rooms."

"What!" cried Joe, innocently. "Why, I never knew more than eight people to stay here at the same time in my life."

"We have no rooms," repeated the clerk, curtly.

"Is there a convention here?"

"We have no rooms, I say!"

Joe looked up into the condensed eyes of Mr. Brown. "Oh," he said, "I see."

Deathly silence followed him to the door, but, as it closed behind him, he heard the outbreak of the sages like a tidal wave striking a dump-heap of tin cans.

Two hours later he descended from an evil ark of a cab at the corral attached to Beaver Beach, and followed the path through the marsh to the crumbling pier. A red-bearded man was seated on a plank by the water edge, fishing.

"Mike," said Joe, "have you got room for me? Can you take me in for a few days until I find a place in town where they'll let me stay?"

The red-bearded man rose slowly, pushed back his hat, and stared hard at the wanderer; then he uttered a howl of joy and seized the other's hands in his and shook them wildly.

"Glory be on high!" he shouted. "It's Joe Louden come back! We never knew how we missed ye till ye'd gone! Place fer ye! Can I find it? There ain't a imp o' perdition in town, includin' myself, that wouldn't kill me if I couldn't! Ye'll have old Maggie's room, my own aunt's; ye remember how she used to dance! Ha, ha! She's been burnin' below these four years! And we'll have the celebration of yer return this night. There'll be many of 'em will come when they hear ye're back in Canaan! Praise God, we'll all hope ye're goin' to stay a while!"



IX

"OUTER DARKNESS"

If any echo of doubt concerning his undesirable conspicuousness sounded faintly in Joe's mind, it was silenced eftsoons. Canaan had not forgotten him—far from it!—so far that it began pointing him out to strangers on the street the very day of his return. His course of action, likewise that of his friends, permitted him little obscurity, and when the rumors of his finally obtaining lodging at Beaver Beach, and of the celebration of his installation there, were presently confirmed, he stood in the lime-light indeed, as a Mephistopheles upsprung through the trap-door.

The welcoming festivities had not been so discreetly conducted as to accord with the general policy of Beaver Beach. An unfortunate incident caused the arrest of one of the celebrators and the ambulancing to the hospital of another on the homeward way, the ensuing proceedings in court bringing to the whole affair a publicity devoutly unsought for. Mr. Happy Fear (such was the habitual name of the imprisoned gentleman) had to bear a great amount of harsh criticism for injuring a companion within the city limits after daylight, and for failing to observe that three policemen were not too distant from the scene of operations to engage therein.

"Happy, if ye had it in mind to harm him," said the red-bearded man to Mr. Fear, upon the latter's return to society, "why didn't ye do it out here at the Beach?"

"Because," returned the indiscreet, "he didn't say what he was goin' to say till we got in town."

Extraordinary probing on the part of the prosecutor had developed at the trial that the obnoxious speech had referred to the guest of the evening. The assaulted party, one "Nashville" Cory, was not of Canaan, but a bit of drift-wood haply touching shore for the moment at Beaver Beach; and—strange is this world—he had been introduced to the coterie of Mike's Place by Happy Fear himself, who had enjoyed a brief acquaintance with him on a day when both had chanced to travel incognito by the same freight. Naturally, Happy had felt responsible for the proper behavior of his protege—was, in fact, bound to enforce it; additionally, Happy had once been saved from a term of imprisonment (at a time when it would have been more than ordinarily inconvenient) by help and advice from Joe, and he was not one to forget. Therefore he was grieved to observe that his own guest seemed to be somewhat jealous of the hero of the occasion and disposed to look coldly upon him. The stranger, however, contented himself with innuendo (mere expressions of the face and other manner of things for which one could not squarely lay hands upon him) until such time as he and his sponsor had come to Main Street in the clear dawn on their way to Happy's apartment—a variable abode. It may be that the stranger perceived what Happy did not; the three bluecoats in the perspective; at all events, he now put into words of simple strength the unfavorable conception he had formed of Joe. The result was mediaevally immediate, and the period of Mr. Cory's convalescence in the hospital was almost half that of his sponsor's detention in the county jail.

It needed nothing to finish Joe with the good people of Canaan; had it needed anything, the trial of Happy Fear would have overspilled the necessity. An item of the testimony was that Joseph Louden had helped to carry one of the ladies present—a Miss Le Roy, who had fainted—to the open air, and had jostled the stranger in passing. After this, the oldest woman in Canaan would not have dared to speak to Joe on the street (even if she wanted to), unless she happened to be very poor or very wicked. The Tocsin printed an adequate account (for there was "a large public interest"), recording in conclusion that Mr. Louden paid the culprit's fine which was the largest in the power of the presiding judge in his mercy to bestow. Editorially, the Tocsin leaned to the facetious: "Mr. Louden has but recently 'returned to our midst.' We fervently hope that the distinguished Happy Fear will appreciate his patron's superb generosity. We say 'his patron,' but perhaps we err in this. Were it not better to figure Mr. Louden as the lady in distress, Mr. Fear as the champion in the lists? In the present case, however, contrary to the rules of romance, the champion falls in duress and passes to the dungeon. We merely suggest, en passant, that some of our best citizens might deem it a wonderful and beauteous thing if, in addition to paying the fine, Mr. Louden could serve for the loyal Happy his six months in the Bastile!"

"En passant," if nothing else, would have revealed to Joe, in this imitation of a better trick, the hand of Eugene. And, little doubt, he would have agreed with Squire Buckalew in the Squire's answer to the easily expected comment of Mr. Arp.

"Sometimes," said Eskew, "I think that 'Gene Bantry is jest a leetle bit spiderier than he is lazy. That's the first thing he's written in the Tocsin this month—one of the boys over there told me. He wrote it out of spite against Joe; but he'd ought to of done better. If his spite hadn't run away with what mind he's got, he'd of said that both Joe Louden and that tramp Fear ought to of had ten years!"

"'Gene Bantry didn't write that out of spite," answered Buckalew. "He only thought he saw a chance to be kind of funny and please Judge Pike. The Judge has always thought Joe was a no-account—"

"Ain't he right?" cried Mr. Arp.

"I don't say he ain't." Squire Buckalew cast a glance at Mr. Brown, the clerk, and, perceiving that he was listening, added, "The Judge always IS right!"

"Yes, sir!" said Colonel Flitcroft.

"I can't stand up for Joe Louden to any extent, but I don't think he done wrong," Buckalew went on, recovering, "when he paid this man Fear's fine."

"You don't!" exclaimed Mr. Arp. "Why, haven't you got gumption enough to see—"

"Look here, Eskew," interposed his antagonist. "How many friends have you got that hate to hear folks talk bad about you?"

"Not a one!" For once Eskew's guard was down, and his consistency led him to destruction. "Not a one! It ain't in human nature. They're bound to enjoy it!"

"Got any friends that would FIGHT for you?"

Eskew walked straight into this hideous trap. "No! There ain't a dozen men ever LIVED that had! Caesar was a popular man, but he didn't have a soul to help him when the crowd lit on him, and I'll bet old Mark Antony was mighty glad they got him out in the yard before it happened,—HE wouldn't have lifted a finger without a gang behind him! Why, all Peter himself could do was to cut off an ear that wasn't no use to anybody. What are you tryin' to get AT?"

The Squire had him; and paused, and stroked his chin, to make the ruin complete. "Then I reckon you'll have to admit," he murmured, "that, while I ain't defendin' Joe Louden's character, it was kind of proper for him to stand by a feller that wouldn't hear nothin' against him, and fought for him as soon as he DID hear it!"

Eskew Arp rose from his chair and left the hotel. It was the only morning in all the days of the conclave when he was the first to leave.

Squire Buckalew looked after the retreating figure, total triumph shining brazenly from his spectacles. "I expect," he explained, modestly, to the others,—"I expect I don't think any more of Joe Louden than he does, and I'll be glad when Canaan sees the last of him for good; but sometimes the temptation to argue with Eskew does lead me on to kind of git the better of him."

When Happy Fear had suffered—with a give-and-take simplicity of patience—his allotment of months in durance, and was released and sent into the streets and sunshine once more, he knew that his first duty lay in the direction of a general apology to Joe. But the young man was no longer at Beaver Beach; the red-bearded proprietor dwelt alone there, and, receiving Happy with scorn and pity, directed him to retrace his footsteps to the town.

"Ye must have been in the black hole of incarceration indeed, if ye haven't heard that Mr. Louden has his law-office on the Square, and his livin'-room behind the office. It's in that little brick buildin' straight acrost from the sheriff's door o' the jail—ye've been neighbors this long time! A hard time the boy had, persuadin' any one to rent to him, but by payin' double the price he got a place at last. He's a practisin' lawyer now, praise the Lord! And all the boys and girls of our acquaintance go to him with their troubles. Ye'll see him with a murder case to try before long, as sure as ye're not worth yer salt! But I expect ye can still call him by his name of Joe, all the same!"

It was a bleak and meagre little office into which Mr. Fear ushered himself to offer his amends. The cracked plaster of the walls was bare (save for dust); there were no shelves; the fat brown volumes, most of them fairly new, were piled in regular columns upon a cheap pine table; there was but one window, small-paned and shadeless; an inner door of this sad chamber stood half ajar, permitting the visitor unreserved acquaintance with the domestic economy of the tenant; for it disclosed a second room, smaller than the office, and dependent upon the window of the latter for air and light. Behind a canvas camp-cot, dimly visible in the obscurity of the inner apartment, stood a small gas-stove, surmounted by a stew-pan, from which projected the handle of a big tin spoon, so that it needed no ghost from the dead to whisper that Joseph Louden, attorney-at-law, did his own cooking. Indeed, he looked it!

Upon the threshold of the second room reposed a small, worn, light-brown scrub-brush of a dog, so cosmopolitan in ancestry that his species was almost as undeterminable as the cast-iron dogs of the Pike Mansion. He greeted Mr. Fear hospitably, having been so lately an offcast of the streets himself that his adoption had taught him to lose only his old tremors, not his hopefulness. At the same time Joe rose quickly from the deal table, where he had been working with one hand in his hair, the other splattering ink from a bad pen.

"Good for you, Happy!" he cried, cheerfully. "I hoped you'd come to see me to-day. I've been thinking about a job for you."

"What kind of a job?" asked the visitor, as they shook hands. "I need one bad enough, but you know there ain't nobody in Canaan would gimme one, Joe."

Joe pushed him into one of the two chairs which completed the furniture of his office. "Yes, there is. I've got an idea—"

"First," broke in Mr. Fear, fingering his shapeless hat and fixing his eyes upon it with embarrassment,—"first lemme say what I come here to say. I—well—" His embarrassment increased and he paused, rubbing the hat between his hands.

"About this job," Joe began. "We can fix it so—"

"No," said Happy. "You lemme go on. I didn't mean fer to cause you no trouble when I lit on that loud-mouth, 'Nashville'; I never thought they'd git me, or you'd be dragged in. But I jest couldn't stand him no longer. He had me all wore out—all evening long a-hintin' and sniffin' and wearin' that kind of a high-smile 'cause they made so much fuss over you. And then when we got clear in town he come out with it! Said you was too quiet to suit HIM—said he couldn't see nothin' TO you! 'Well,' I says to myself, 'jest let him go on, jest one more,' I says, 'then he gits it.' And he did. Said you tromped on his foot on purpose, said he knowed it,—when the Lord-a'mightiest fool on earth knows you never tromped on no one! Said you was one of the po'rest young sports he ever see around a place like the Beach. You see, he thought you was jest one of them fool 'Bloods' that come around raisin' a rumpus, and didn't know you was our friend and belonged out there, the same as me or Mike hisself. 'Go on,' I says to myself, 'jest one more!' 'HE better go home to his mamma,' he says; 'he'll git in trouble if he don't. Somebody 'll soak him if he hangs around in MY company. I don't like his WAYS.' Then I HAD to do it. There jest wasn't nothin' LEFT—but I wouldn't of done you no harm by it—"

"You didn't do me any harm, Happy."

"I mean your repitation."

"I didn't have one—so nothing in the world could harm it. About your getting some work, now—"

"I'll listen," said Happy, rather suspiciously.

"You see," Joe went on, growing red, "I need a sort of janitor here—"

"What fer?" Mr. Fear interrupted, with some shortness.

"To look after the place."

"You mean these two rooms?"

"There's a stairway, too," Joe put forth, quickly. "It wouldn't be any sinecure, Happy. You'd earn your money; don't be afraid of that!"

Mr. Fear straightened up, his burden of embarrassment gone from him, transferred to the other's shoulders.

"There always was a yellow streak in you, Joe," he said, firmly. "You're no good as a liar except when you're jokin'. A lot you need a janitor! You had no business to pay my fine; you'd ort of let me worked it out. Do you think my eyes ain't good enough to see how much you needed the money, most of all right now when you're tryin' to git started? If I ever take a cent from you, I hope the hand I hold out fer it 'll rot off."

"Now don't say that, Happy."

"I don't want a job, nohow!" said Mr. Fear, going to the door; "I don't want to work. There's plenty ways fer me to git along without that. But I've said what I come here to say, and I'll say one thing more. Don't you worry about gittin' law practice. Mike says you're goin' to git all you want—and if there ain't no other way, why, a few of us 'll go out and MAKE some fer ye!"

These prophecies and promises, over which Joe chuckled at first, with his head cocked to one side, grew very soon, to his amazement, to wear a supernatural similarity to actual fulfilment. His friends brought him their own friends, such as had sinned against the laws of Canaan, those under the ban of the sheriff, those who had struck in anger, those who had stolen at night, those who owed and could not pay, those who lived by the dice, and to his other titles to notoriety was added that of defender of the poor and wicked. He found his hands full, especially after winning his first important case—on which occasion Canaan thought the jury mad, and was indignant with the puzzled Judge, who could not see just how it had happened.

Joe did not stop at that. He kept on winning cases, clearing the innocent and lightening the burdens of the guilty; he became the most dangerous attorney for the defence in Canaan; his honorable brethren, accepting the popular view of him, held him in personal contempt but feared him professionally; for he proved that he knew more law than they thought existed; nor could any trick him—failing which, many tempers were lost, but never Joe's. His practice was not all criminal, as shown by the peevish outburst of the eminent Buckalew (the Squire's nephew, esteemed the foremost lawyer in Canaan), "Before long, there won't be any use trying to foreclose a mortgage or collect a note—unless this shyster gets himself in jail!"

The wrath of Judge Martin Pike was august—there was a kind of sublimity in its immenseness—on a day when it befell that the shyster stood betwixt him and money.

That was a monstrous task—to stand between these two and separate them, to hold back the hand of Martin Pike from what it had reached out to grasp. It was in the matter of some tax-titles which the magnate had acquired, and, in court, Joe treated the case with such horrifying simplicity that it seemed almost credible that the great man had counted upon the ignorance and besottedness of Joe's client—a hard-drinking, disreputable old farmer—to get his land away from him without paying for it. Now, as every one knew such a thing to be ludicrously impossible, it was at once noised abroad in Canaan that Joe had helped to swindle Judge Pike out of a large sum of money—it was notorious that the shyster could bamboozle court and jury with his tricks; and it was felt that Joe Louden was getting into very deep waters indeed. THIS was serious: if the young man did not LOOK OUT, he might find himself in the penitentiary.

The Tocsin paragraphed him with a fine regularity after this, usually opening with a Walrus-and-the-Carpenter gravity: "The time has come when we must speak of a certain matter frankly," or, "At last the time has arrived when the demoralization of the bar caused by a certain criminal lawyer must be dealt with as it is and without gloves." Once when Joe had saved a half-witted negro from "the extreme penalty" for murder, the Tocsin had declared, with great originality: "This is just the kind of thing that causes mobs and justifies them. If we are to continue to permit the worst class of malefactors to escape the consequences of their crimes through the unwholesome dexterities and the shifty manipulations and technicalities of a certain criminal lawyer, the time will come when an outraged citizenry may take the enforcement of the law in its own hands. Let us call a spade a spade. If Canaan's streets ever echo with the tread of a mob, the fault lies upon the head of Joseph Louden, who has once more brought about a miscarriage of justice...."

Joe did not move into a larger office; he remained in the little room with its one window and its fine view of the jail; his clients were nearly all poor, and many of his fees quite literally nominal. Tatters and rags came up the narrow stairway to his door—tatters and rags and pitiful fineries: the bleared, the sodden, the flaunting and rouged, the furtive and wary, some in rags, some in tags, and some—the sorriest—in velvet gowns. With these, the distressed, the wrong-doers, the drunken, the dirty, and the very poor, his work lay and his days and nights were spent.

Ariel had told Roger Tabor that in time Joe might come to be what the town thought him, if it gave him no other chance. Only its dinginess and evil surrounded him; no respectable house was open to him; the barrooms—except that of the "National House"—welcomed him gratefully and admiringly. Once he went to church, on a pleasant morning when nice girls wear pretty spring dresses; it gave him a thrill of delight to see them, to be near clean, good people once more. Inadvertently, he took a seat by his step-mother, who rose with a slight rustle of silk and moved to another pew; and it happened, additionally, that this was the morning that the minister, fired by the Tocsin's warnings, had chosen to preach on the subject of Joe himself.

The outcast returned to his own kind. No lady spoke to him upon the street. Mamie Pike had passed him with averted eyes since her first meeting with him, but the shunning and snubbing of a young man by a pretty girl have never yet, if done in a certain way, prevented him from continuing to be in love with her. Mamie did it in the certain way. Joe did not wince, therefore it hurt all the more, for blows from which one cringes lose much of their force.

The town dog had been given a bad name, painted solid black from head to heel. He was a storm centre of scandal; the entrance to his dingy stairway was in square view of the "National House," and the result is imaginable. How many of Joe's clients, especially those sorriest of the velvet gowns, were conjectured to ascend his stairs for reasons more convivial than legal! Yes, he lived with his own kind, and, so far as the rest of Canaan was concerned, might as well have worn the scarlet letter on his breast or branded on his forehead.

When he went about the streets he was made to feel his condition by the elaborate avoidance, yet furtive attention, of every respectable person he met; and when he came home to his small rooms and shut the door behind him, he was as one who has been hissed and shamed in public and runs to bury his hot face in his pillow. He petted his mongrel extravagantly (well he might!), and would sit with him in his rooms at night, holding long converse with him, the two alone together. The dog was not his only confidant. There came to be another, a more and more frequent partner to their conversations, at last a familiar spirit. This third came from a brown jug which Joe kept on a shelf in his bedroom, a vessel too frequently replenished. When the day's work was done he shut himself up, drank alone and drank hard. Sometimes when the jug ran low and the night was late he would go out for a walk with his dog, and would awake in his room the next morning not remembering where he had gone or how he had come home. Once, after such a lapse of memory, he woke amazed to find himself at Beaver Beach, whither, he learned from the red-bearded man, Happy Fear had brought him, having found him wandering dazedly in a field near by. These lapses grew more frequent, until there occurred that which was one of the strange things of his life.

It was a June night, a little more than two years after his return to Canaan, and the Tocsin had that day announced the approaching marriage of Eugene Bantry and his employer's daughter. Joe ate nothing during the day, and went through his work clumsily, visiting the bedroom shelf at intervals. At ten in the evening he went out to have the jug refilled, but from the moment he left his door and the fresh air struck his face, he had no clear knowledge of what he did or of what went on about him until he woke in his bed the next morning.

And yet, whatever little part of the soul of him remained, that night, still undulled, not numbed, but alive, was in some strange manner lifted out of its pain towards a strange delight. His body was an automaton, his mind in bondage, yet there was a still, small consciousness in him which knew that in his wandering something incredible and unexpected was happening. What this was he did not know, could not see, though his eyes were open, could not have told himself any more than a baby could tell why it laughs, but it seemed something so beautiful and wonderful that the night became a night of perfume, its breezes bearing the music of harps and violins, while nightingales sang from the maples that bordered the streets of Canaan.



X

THE TRYST

He woke to the light of morning amazed and full of a strange wonder because he did not know what had amazed him. For a little while after his eyes opened, he lay quite motionless; then he lifted his head slightly and shook it with some caution. This had come to be custom. The operation assured him of the worst; the room swam round him, and, with a faint groan, he let his head fall back upon the pillow. But he could not sleep again; pain stung its way through his heart as memory began to come back to him, not of the preceding night—that was all blank,—but realization that the girl of whom he had dreamed so long was to be married. That his dreams had been quite hopeless was no balm to his hurt.

A chime of bells sounded from a church steeple across the Square, ringing out in assured righteousness, summoning the good people who maintained them to come and sit beneath them or be taken to task; and they fell so dismally upon Joe's ear that he bestirred himself and rose, to the delight of his mongrel, who leaped upon him joyfully. An hour later, or thereabout, the pair emerged from the narrow stairway and stood for a moment, blinking in the fair sunshine, apparently undecided which way to go. The church bells were silent; there was no breeze; the air trembled a little with the deep pipings of the organ across the Square, and, save for that, the town was very quiet. The paths which crossed the Court-house yard were flecked with steady shadow, the strong young foliage of the maples not moving, having the air of observing the Sabbath with propriety. There were benches here and there along the walks, and to one of these Joe crossed, and sat down. The mongrel, at his master's feet, rolled on his back in morning ecstasy, ceased abruptly to roll and began to scratch his ear with a hind foot intently. A tiny hand stretched to pat his head, and the dog licked it appreciatively. It belonged to a hard-washed young lady of six (in starchy, white frills and new, pink ribbons), who had run ahead of her mother, a belated church-goer; and the mongrel charmed her.

"Will you give me this dog?" she asked, without any tedious formalities.

Involuntarily, she departed before receiving a reply. The mother, a red-faced matron whom Joe recognized as a sister of Mrs. Louden's, consequently his step-aunt, swooped at the child with a rush and rustle of silk, and bore her on violently to her duty. When they had gone a little way the matron's voice was heard in sharp reproof; the child, held by one wrist and hurried along on tiptoe, staring back over one shoulder at Joe, her eyes wide, and her mouth the shape of the "O" she was ejaculating.

The dog looked up with wistful inquiry at his master, who cocked an eyebrow at him in return, wearing much the same expression. The mother and child disappeared within the church doors and left the Square to the two. Even the hotel showed no signs of life, for the wise men were not allowed to foregather on Sundays. The organ had ceased to stir the air and all was in quiet, yet a quiet which, for Louden, was not peace. He looked at his watch and, without intending it, spoke the hour aloud: "A quarter past eleven." The sound of his own voice gave him a little shock; he rose without knowing why, and, as he did so, it seemed to him that he heard close to his ear another voice, a woman's, troubled and insistent, but clear and sweet, saying:

"REMEMBER! ACROSS MAIN STREET BRIDGE AT NOON!"

It was so distinct that he started and looked round. Then he laughed. "I'll be seeing circus parades next!" His laughter fled, for, louder than the ringing in his ears, unmistakably came the strains of a far-away brass band which had no existence on land or sea or in the waters under the earth.

"Here!" he said to the mongrel. "We need a walk, I think. Let's you and me move on before the camels turn the corner!"

The music followed him to the street, where he turned westward toward the river, and presently, as he walked on, fanning himself with his straw hat, it faded and was gone. But the voice he had heard returned.

"REMEMBER! ACROSS MAIN STREET BRIDGE AT NOON!" it said again, close to his ear.

This time he did not start. "All right," he answered, wiping his forehead; "if you'll let me alone, I'll be there."

At a dingy saloon corner, near the river, a shabby little man greeted him heartily and petted the mongrel. "I'm mighty glad you didn't go, after all, Joe," he added, with a brightening face.

"Go where, Happy?"

Mr. Fear looked grave. "Don't you rec'lect meetin' me last night?"

Louden shook his head. "No. Did I?"

The other's jaw fell and his brow corrugated with self-reproach. "Well, if that don't show what a thick-head I am! I thought ye was all right er I'd gone on with ye. Nobody c'd 'a' walked straighter ner talked straighter. Said ye was goin' to leave Canaan fer good and didn't want nobody to know it. Said ye was goin' to take the 'leven-o'clock through train fer the West, and told me I couldn't come to the deepo with ye. Said ye'd had enough o' Canaan, and of everything! I follered ye part way to the deepo, but ye turned and made a motion fer me to go back, and I done it, because ye seemed to be kind of in trouble, and I thought ye'd ruther be by yerself. Well, sir, it's one on me!"

"Not at all," said Joe. "I was all right."

"Was ye?" returned the other. "DO remember, do ye?"

"Almost," Joe smiled, faintly.

"ALMOST," echoed Happy, shaking his head seriously. "I tell ye, Joe, ef I was YOU—" he began slowly, then paused and shook his head again. He seemed on the point of delivering some advice, but evidently perceiving the snobbishness of such a proceeding, or else convinced by his own experience of the futility of it, he swerved to cheerfulness:

"I hear the boys is all goin' to work hard fer the primaries. Mike says ye got some chances ye don't know about; HE swears ye'll be the next Mayor of Canaan."

"Nonsense! Folly and nonsense, Happy! That's the kind of thing I used to think when I was a boy. But now—pshaw!" Joe broke off with a tired laugh. "Tell them not to waste their time. Are you going out to the Beach this afternoon?"

The little man lowered his eyes moodily. "I'll be near there," he said, scraping his patched shoe up and down the curbstone. "That feller's in town agin."

"What fellow?"

"'Nashville' they call him; Ed's the name he give the hospital: Cory—him that I soaked the night you come back to Canaan. He's after Claudine to git his evens with me. He's made a raise somewheres, and plays the spender. And her—well, I reckon she's tired waitin' table at the National House; tired o' me, too. I got a hint that they're goin' out to the Beach together this afternoon."

Joe passed his hand wearily over his aching forehead. "I understand," he said, "and you'd better try to. Cory's laying for you, of course. You say he's after your wife? He must have set about it pretty openly if they're going to the Beach to-day, for there is always a crowd there on Sundays. Is it hard for you to see why he's doing it? It's because he wants to make you jealous. What for? So that you'll tackle him again. And why does he want that? Because he's ready for you!"

The other's eyes suddenly became bloodshot, his nostrils expanding incredibly. "READY, is he? He BETTER be ready. I—"

"That's enough!" Joe interrupted, swiftly. "We'll have no talk like that. I'll settle this for you, myself. You send word to Claudine that I want to see her at my office to-morrow morning, and you—you stay away from the Beach to-day. Give me your word."

Mr. Fear's expression softened. "All right, Joe," he said. "I'll do whatever you tell me to. Any of us 'll do that; we sure know who's our friend."

"Keep out of trouble, Happy." Joe turned to go and they shook hands. "Good day, and—keep out of trouble!"

When he had gone, Mr. Fear's countenance again gloomed ominously, and, shaking his head, he ruminatively entered an adjacent bar through the alley door.

The Main Street bridge was an old-fashioned, wooden, covered one, dust-colored and very narrow, squarely framing the fair, open country beyond; for the town had never crossed the river. Joe found the cool shadow in the bridge gracious to his hot brow, and through the slender chinks of the worn flooring he caught bright glimpses of running water. When he came out of the other end he felt enough refreshed to light a cigar.

"Well, here I am," he said. "Across Main Street bridge—and it must be getting on toward noon!" He spoke almost with the aspect of daring, and immediately stood still, listening. "'REMEMBER,"' he ventured to repeat, again daring, "'REMEMBER! ACROSS MAIN STREET BRIDGE AT NOON!'" And again he listened. Then he chuckled faintly with relief, for the voice did not return. "Thank God, I've got rid of that!" he whispered. "And of the circus band too!"

A dust road turned to the right, following the river and shaded by big sycamores on the bank; the mongrel, intensely preoccupied with this road, scampered away, his nose to the ground. "Good enough," said the master. "Lead on and I'll come after you."

But he had not far to follow. The chase led him to a half-hollow log which lay on a low, grass-grown levee above the stream, where the dog's interest in the pursuit became vivid; temporarily, however, for after a few minutes of agitated investigation, he was seized with indifference to the whole world; panted briefly; slept. Joe sat upon the log, which was in the shade, and smoked.