* * * * *

In her own room she sat down to think. Mechanically she unbound the coils of red-brown hair that crowned her head, and holding the quaintly carved silver pins which seemed a part of her identity in her hand, she began a march to and fro across the room. There was no smile on her face, rather a pained, unnatural look that her dearest friend would not have recognized. Presently she stopped.

Raising her hands, the shining hair rippling over her shoulders like a garment, she lifted her face heavenward.

"My Father!" she whispered, brokenly, "he is asleep. Touch his eyes with kindly fingers that the scales may drop away. Put the hollow of thy hand around his heart and kindle there the love that means the brotherhood of man, for I love him—I love him!"

Even as she stood, with her face upturned from the wealth of flowing hair, the man of her prayer was in the toils of fate, seeing a "face" and hearing a voice that touched his ear and clung to his heart, "like the wail of a lost soul."



CHAPTER VIII.

"WHAT FOR."

Had Jean Thorn been less interested in the family of Damon Crowley she might have thought it impossible to keep track of them as they moved about. Mr. Crowley reformed every time he got drunk, and got drunk every time he reformed. At such times he made the living place he called home, whether in the filthy garret or rickety shanty, a bedlam. At the present period of their existence the Crowleys were living in a forlorn hovel on the outskirts of the city.

Mr. Crowley thought himself lucky if he chanced to be about when one of Miss Thorn's visits took place, for she paid well for the plain work Mrs. Crowley did, and he always came in for a share. The time had been when this man would have blushed at the thought of asking his wife, or, indeed, any one, for help, but that time had gradually gone by as his manhood dissolved itself in drink. Now he could whine and beg and, not being successful that way, curse and beat to gain his end. He wanted money for whisky worse than ever now, and had less, but the burning in his stomach grew no less to suit the impoverished condition of his purse.

The disease caused by the legalized drink traffic was eating his life away little by little, and as the fire burned it called for more fuel.

One night when every little gland and fibre in his whole being and all the great ulcers in his diseased stomach seemed like fierce flames cutting and licking and torturing him, half-drunk, he staggered from one grog shop to another, begging for something to drink.

He had hung around the shanty home until he was almost sure that Miss Thorn would not come, then had started out to try his chances. He had begged a little, had pawned a garment belonging to another for a little more, and yet the maddening thirst was not quenched.

It was growing late. He made a circuit of his old haunts, but it was useless—no money, no drink. For his pleading he was mocked. For his curses he was struck and put out. He staggered toward home, the stinging fire within him quickening his pace. One hope remained. Perhaps Miss Thorn had been there after he had gone. Perhaps, hidden away in the little box, he might find a few pennies—enough for this time.

The houses that he passed were for the most part dark, except where some low place cast its straggling light into the night. He hurried on, stumbling now and then. No time could be more suitable for him. He would find the family, what there was left of it, asleep. He would sneak in like a cat and find the box—perhaps the pennies. He rubbed his hot hands nervously together in anticipation.

It was not difficult to get into the house, and he found it still and dark. Cautiously he tiptoed to the window and ran his fingers over the casing above it. Nothing but dust. Next he tried the hole in the chimney. Here his unsteady fingers grasped something he thought to be the box, but it proved to be only a loose brick. Growing impatient, he went to the cupboard and fumbled in the corner. No box. He was getting reckless now. Taking a match from his pocket he drew it across the wall. It sputtered and cast a ray long enough for him to find the lamp, which he lit.

The little boy Johnnie, in a bed close by, stirred slightly, rolled over a couple of times, and sat up in bed and opened his eyes. Mr. Crowley, having lost all control of himself, was noisily peering into every nook and cranny. As the father moved nearer, the boy crept closer to his mother, and, huddling by her side, began to cry. It was when he heard the boy's cry that the fire within him licked up the last of his manhood and the Devil had full sway. He set the lamp down with a bang and sprang toward the bed. The boy threw his arms around his mother and gave a cry of terror.

"Mamma! O mamma! Hold me tight! Don't let him get me! O mamma! mamma! mamma!" The mother held the child close, but the man had seized him.

They struggled for a minute—a madman's strength and a devil's cunning against a mother's love—unequal struggle!

The man—a demon now—had the child.

He cast his eye around the room and picked up a knotty piece of wood. The boy pulled frantically back toward his mother, trembling and screaming, but the die was cast.

A volley of oaths burst from the drunken fiend's lips.

"Not much this time! No help now, till I'm done with you. Damn you! Stand up," and he gave the boy a blow that caused him to twist with pain, but he steadied his voice to ask:

"What for, papa? What for?" But the words were lost in screams, for the blows kept falling.

Mrs. Crowley rushed up and caught his uplifted arm.

"You will kill the child! You are mad. Help! Somebody help!" she cried; but no help came. Drunken rows are a part of our civilization.

The boy had succeeded in getting away, but the unequal struggle was soon at an end, and Mrs. Crowley was struck to the floor by a heavy blow.

The father dragged the terror-stricken little fellow from behind the bed.

"Come! Damn you! I'm not done yet! I'll teach you to be scared of your dad and to yell like an idiot when I come into my own house," and the blows fell rapidly.

On the little hands when they were raised to protect the head, on the head when the hands dropped down in pain, on the legs when the body twisted in agony, on the back when the body bent to shield the legs, and the childish voice broke through the screams at intervals:

"What for? Oh, what for?"

Mrs. Crowley looked around the room for something with which to fight the man. She seized an iron frying-pan and struck him with all the force she could summon, but the blow was insufficient.

He loosed the child only long enough to push his wife violently to the wall and choke her until she gasped and grew dizzy, adding a couple of blows as a finishing touch, and after tossing her weapon from the window again turned his attention to the child.

"Not done yet! No! Not done! Take this—and this—and this," and heavy blows sounded.

"Oh, papa! tell me what for, and I'll never, never do it any more. Please, papa, what for?" and the child raised his terror-stricken face to his father's, but the brute struck the little upturned face.

"No—you won't do it again when I get done. I'm not done yet. Not done."

Mrs. Crowley again sprang upon the madman, and, drawing her fingers tightly around his neck, threw her whole force into the grasp, but he loosened it. Then he kicked her out the door and bolted it fast.

The child had fallen to the floor, but partly arose as the father returned.

"Not done yet—no—not done," and he struck the poor, bleeding body many blows.

The boy sank back on the floor. His screams were ended; but as he lay there he still moaned, "What for?"

Then the moaning ceased, the eyelids quivered and the breath grew faint.

But even then his father had not exercised enough of his "personal liberty." The imps of hell hissed him on. The torturing fire within him leaped higher and higher, searing his soul. He bent low over the body and beat it still, till the tender bones crushed under the blows. Then throwing the knotty stick, quivering with his own child's blood, into a corner, with a fearful scream the murderer dashed out into the night.

Then the mother crept back, but it was too late. The little life had gone. From somewhere out of the mysterious, breezy night, perhaps, the spirit of Maggie had come, and had taken the soul of her poor brother to a city where pain and tears are unknown.

But another voice had been added to the chorus of suffering children as by the million they cry out in their pain till the appeal of outraged childhood goes thundering and reverberating into the ear of the Almighty Father, while he writes the "What for" of their wailing protest in the book of his remembrance as the record unto the day of Christian America's reckoning, in letters that burn brighter as the curse waxes worse and worse.

Against the name of the church, too, as she wraps her righteous robes around herself and will not, in her dignity and purity, set her mighty foot on the neck of the curse, while drunkards by unnumbered thousands stagger under her colored glass windows to Hell, he writes WHAT FOR? and the letters burn on.

Against the name of the Christian whose vote makes strong the party that legalizes the saloon and the drunkard he writes "WHAT FOR?"

What man shall stand in the presence of the Holy One, when the books are opened, and tell WHAT FOR?



CHAPTER IX.

GILBERT ALLISON HEARS A VOICE.

It was this night that two travelers were journeying across a bit of suburban country toward their city homes. They were out later than they had expected to be, perhaps. At any rate, it was somewhere close to the hour of midnight and they were approaching an old graveyard.

As they neared the ancient burying ground Mr. Allison, for he was one of the riders, became less talkative, and rode closer to his friend, a young man of about his own age.

"Hist, Sammy! Didn't you hear something? Ah! Now it has gone again. You were not quick enough. Keep your ear open. At the turning of the wind it may come again."

"Well, by grabs! Gillie, where will you end?" laughed the other. "First love, now ghosts. Listening for spooks because we happen to be passing the burying spot of some of our ancestors. Allow me to alight and pick a switch for the poor boy to defend himself with when the ghosts set upon him."

"Sammie! Sammie! I hear it again! It's coming on the breeze. Listen now!"

Gilbert Allison stopped his horse and leaned eagerly forward. Sammie listened, but was again too late. The dead leaves rustled close by over the sunken graves; the tall, bare trees waved their skeleton arms, while the breeze died away to a long, weary sigh and was gone.

"It does not come from the cemetery, Sammie, but from beyond. Perhaps it will come again. Listen!"

The breeze was coming to them again, and they drew their horses to a halt.

"There, Sammie! You did not miss that, did you?"

They listened a moment longer, but the breeze was dying away and with it the cry, whatever it was.

"The Dickens! Allison, let us hurry on. This is too ghostly a night to tarry. That cry gives me an uneasy feeling to the marrow of my bones."

They quickened their pace, and rode some distance in silence. The sky seemed growing darker and the wind was rising. A thick clump of trees hard by cast a gloomy shadow across the road, and just as they passed into this the floating clouds covered the face of the moon, and they were in pitchy darkness.

Suddenly there burst into the black night from somewhere in front of them a most unearthly yell.

Allison's horse quivered and Sammie's gave a violent lurch.

"Heavens, Sammie! What was that?"

"Blast the moon!" ejaculated Sammie. "Ride close to the side of the road. It was near here."

They had passed the clump of trees, but were still in the dark. All was still save the tiresome moaning of the trees. Then they heard the rapid approach of some man or beast, and the next instant, directly at their sides, there went out onto the night air a succession of blood-curdling yells and barks.

The horses sprang and danced.

The moon came out, and in its pale yellow light they saw the creature disappearing down the road. It was the figure of a man, crouching and springing, rather than walking. As he neared the clump of trees he made the night shudder with still wilder and fiercer screams. Then he disappeared down the shadowy road.

"A madman!" said Allison. "Heavens! What couldn't he do to a fellow if he had him to himself?"

Sammie laughed nervously.

"His boots are full of snakes, if I am not mistaken—but truly a bad fellow. He must have been what we heard back by the cemetery."

"No. Not such a noise as that. That was a wailing cry. Perhaps—he surely cannot have had his hand on any human being. Let us hurry on. The devil must be hereabouts to-night."

The suburbs seemed again to be asleep. The wind came and went over the rickety homes, sparsely scattered, and its moaning was made more dismal by the long-drawn out howl of some sleepless cur.

At rare intervals a light gleamed from a window.

One window from which a light shone Gilbert Allison and his friend looked into that night, and somehow that window remained always open in the memory of each, with a bright light burning behind it.

It was a dreary little structure that stood close to the roadside, quite alone. The window was only a square hole, and the feeble light inside flickered as the wind blew through. There had been glass there once, no doubt, but that glass and many other cheap glass windows had gone into a better, richer piece of glass, and that hung in a respectable saloon.

Reflecting the decanters and red noses—and broken hearts? No! Ah, no! Their reflection would have injured the trade. They remained where the cheap glass had once been, and it was one of these hearts that Gilbert Allison, late of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, caught a glimpse of as he paused at the open window.

A woman sat on the floor in the middle of the room.

A woman of petrified misery. She gazed beyond the surrounding walls into the happy past, the mournful future—into Heaven and Hell, or somewhere.

Close by her side lay the still warm body of the boy. She placed her hands over his face, and, feeling the warmth, opened the tattered, bloody little night-dress and pressed her ear over the heart—pressed it closer and closer, but the heart was still.

She did not cry, this woman. Why should she? She knew the child was better off. She lifted a corner of her garment and wiped the thick blood from the face, then she pressed her lips to the lips, the cheeks, the forehead, in long, loving, mother kisses. She drooped her head close over the childish body, and drawing the soft arms around her neck held them there. She stroked back the hair, and her hands were bloodstained.

Resting the child's body tenderly on the hard floor, she raised her face of misery and her bloodstained hands toward Heaven.

"God!" she cried. "Look at my hands! See God! Here it is—my baby's blood. Come, God, and see my boy. He's getting stiff—but come, God—come! See the bruises and the blood! See the face—the little face, all full of pain and fear—and feel the crushed bones, God! He is getting cold—cold—cold! The boy's dead!"

She caught up one of the child's hands and pressed it convulsively. After a moment's silence she began again, suddenly, fiercely:

"Is there any God? Where is he? Where does he stay? Not with Christians. They have the power, if God were with them, to stop the curse. No, not with them. They do not stop it. No. They license it, they do. 'Woe, woe to him that puts the bottle to his neighbor's lips.' They do! They do! But God must be somewhere. God come out of somewhere!"

The wind blew and the light flickered. Allison and Sammie, looking in, seemed riveted to the spot. It was not a pleasant picture, yet they gazed.

"My husband a murderer!" wailed the woman. "The boy's blood on his hands? Lord God! I never want to see his face again! Have mercy on his soul! Perhaps he cannot help it now—he is a madman. Love him if you can—I loved him once."

Something like a sob sounded in the woman's voice, but she choked it back. After a moment of silence she moved a short distance from the little corpse, and, raising herself upright on her knees, with her hands clasped at arm's length over her head, she prayed.

It was not a Christlike prayer—rather the helpless cry of a soul tortured, in the grasp of a Christianized sin.

"Lord God! Down deep in Hell—away down—down where the fire is hottest, and the black blackest, and the smoke thickest, there let the man be bound forever who covers the business of Hell with a respectable covering. There forever let him see my boy's piteous, quivering face; let him hear the dying moan and see the red blood! I know them, God! You know them, God—you know them! Hear my prayer!"

Another gust of wind came, nearer and stronger, and the lamp flickered out. It was quiet. Very quiet. So quiet that Allison and Sammie heard the sigh that escaped the woman's lips. It was a heavy sigh, filled with tears and utter despair.

A sigh that went farther than all the sighing winds had ever gone. A sigh that was wafted far above to the great God who keeps record of the sighs that come up from the hearts of a million drunkards' wives, and who writes on the balance-sheet: "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."

Some people, one of them an officer, entered the house from the opposite side, and the two travelers, seeing no need for their services, turned away and mounted their horses.

Mr. Allison was somewhat excited.

"Hanging is too good for that brute!" he said, loudly. "I believe I could stand by and see him roast. Heavens, what a devil! Poor woman, I wish I had not stopped there to-night."

Sammie grunted. "Thinking of the place she referred to as the respectable dealer's future headquarters?" he questioned.

"Shut up, will you! This is no time for joking!"

The young man complied with the request of his polite friend, and thought to himself, but Mr. Allison was no better pleased. He knew that if he had not seen it, it would have been. It really was. He was deeply stirred. And as he rode on through the night he was thinking new and strange thoughts.



CHAPTER X.

"THE SIN BURDEN."

After Gilbert Allison arrived home from that ride, the ghostly night on which he saw the fruits of a sinful traffic in all its horror, he hastily disrobed and turned into bed, hoping to sleep away the unpleasant thoughts and pictures that had possession of his mind; but no sooner had sleep overtaken him than a face, framed in a halo of red-brown hair, looked down upon him from an eminence; a white hand with a phosphorescent glow pointed at him, while a voice kept repeating, to the accompaniment of a childish wail, "Man—atom of the great iniquity, man—atom of the great iniquity."

In his dream he did not recognize the face nor voice, and yet both seemed strangely familiar to him.

When daylight came, the face and the white hand and the moaning child went away and the face of the woman whose misery he had looked upon haunted him, and her bitter prayer came to him in snatches.

The experience was distressing in no small degree to the ease-loving man. He could not analyze his feelings and was not aware that what one strange little woman called a "sin burden" had fallen with its weight upon him. He was in the act of rubbing his eyes before his moral resurrection.

* * * * *

Damon Crowley was behind the bars for the last time. Perhaps he did not know, at any rate he did not care. He had reached the beginning of the end.

From the corners of his cell dark faces leered at him; cruel, sharp claws closed around his limbs and icy fingers grasped his throat—yet he was not dead. Outlines of things he saw became to him living creatures of destruction and crouched over him, grinning in his face and tearing him to bits—yet he was not dead. Snarling beasts sank their fangs into his flesh, a thousand poison insects rushed and swarmed upon him, and he felt the virus of their sting bounding through his body—yet he lived.

Slimy serpents wriggled over him, thrusting their forked tongues into his nose and ears, and when he grabbed frantically to tear them away they had gone.

A fire burned within him and he tore his flesh and hair, while death like a dark shadow hovered nearer and nearer, closing in slowly but surely. The end of Damon Crowley was not as a child falls to sleep nor as a Christian steps into the great beyond.

It was a time of screams and groans; of frantic clutchings and hard grapplings. Those in neighboring cells were glad for once that the walls were thick and the bolts secure.

* * * * *

Gilbert Allison imagined he would feel better when he knew that Damon Crowley was securely lodged under lock and key; but such was not the case. The knowledge of this only seemed to press some real or imaginary burden closer to him. Then he imagined that he would perhaps feel at peace with the world and himself when white-robed justice had had her perfect course, and the victim of a nation's sin had been hung by the neck until dead. But even the news of the tragic death of the murderer did not prove a cure for his nameless and indefinable ill-feeling.

Then it occurred to him that perhaps his name had not been taken from over the doors of the establishment of which he had so long been a part. Being fully resolved to completely sever his connection with the business, he looked upon this as a necessary step, and not without some small hope that it might help a little toward restoring his upset conscience.

Turning a corner, he raised his eyes. There, in the glow of the full sunlight, blazed the richly-wrought words, "Allison, Russell & Joy." They looked positively ugly to him and he felt that he had been injured by the other members of the firm. Entering the establishment to request that the sign be altered he came upon a trio discussing trade items, and the old familiar phraseology fell upon his ears like jangling voices.

As he passed out an old customer slapped him familiarly on the back and asked after business. Hardly had he escaped this one before another grasped his hand and inquired in jovial manner how times were. Then a drummer approached him, and, on being informed that he was no longer connected with the trade interests, assured him that the trade had suffered a loss. As he halted a moment in front of a hotel, a half-intoxicated man with a tale of woe, because of having been ordered out of the palatial sample room of the late liquor dealer, drew some attention to him and increased his feeling of disquiet and irritability.

Each time he informed his assailant that he had severed his connection with the business, but it was not until the red-headed proprietor of a groggery drew nigh with a grievance, that the last straw had been put upon his already overtaxed nerves and conscience.

With more than the necessary amount of vigor he declared himself innocent of the business and dropped remarks relative to groggeries that would have delighted the ear of a temperance lecturer.

After this series of unpleasant encounters Gilbert Allison betook himself to the office of his friend, Dr. Samuel Thomas, the companion of his memorable ride, for advisement.

Entering the room without previous announcement, he dropped his hat onto a promiscuous pile of books and papers and spread himself on the couch. Here, with his hands clasped under his head, he studied the pattern of the ceiling paper a few seconds before venturing a remark.

Dr. Sammie, used to moods and fancies, waited.

"Would you do anything for a friend in need, Sammie?" asked the visitor at length, with a strong emphasis upon the "anything."

"To be sure. Speak out."

"Then laugh."

"Laugh?"

"Yes, laugh."

"Laugh? What about?"

"Anything or nothing—but laugh. I have not heard a suspicion of a laugh in weeks. I have been prowling around in a valley of dry bones, and to save my soul I cannot find my way out. I thought I had just begun the ascent of a slope where smiles are occasionally seen, when the hope was shattered by the vulgar familiarity of a mob belonging to the trade."

Dr. Sammie listened to the rather unusual remarks of his friend, and as he recounted the day's experiences in his own original way the amused look on his face drew itself into definite shape around his mouth, and, when Allison had delivered himself of something unusual in the way of a tirade on dive-keepers, the climax had been reached, and the listener rested his head against the back of his chair and laughed in a manner sufficiently hearty to have satisfied the request of his friend.

"Soured on the fraternity, have you?" he asked.

Gilbert Allison slowly raised himself to a sitting posture and, with an elbow resting on either knee, transferred his study from the ceiling pattern to that of the carpet. He did not answer the question.

"Crowley died," he at length observed.

"Yes—and I should think you would be the man to be glad. I imagine the after feeling must be anything but pleasant when one has for years helped fit a fellow creature for the gallows."

Gilbert Allison frowned between his hands and spoke sharply.

"It is a legal business," he said.

"Legal? Yes, legal—but you have sense enough to know that if it is legal for you to sell, it must be legal for some other fellow to buy; and if some other fellow spends his money for liquor he had the right to drink it, and you can hardly be unreasonable enough to hold a man responsible for what he does when the lining has been eaten out of his stomach and his brain soaked with alcohol. Such a man is a legal murderer, and the custom that breeds him should take care of the finished production.

"Mind you, I am not giving a temperance lecture; that is out of my line. But it has always seemed to me to be a rotten sort of justice that hangs a man for doing what the government gives him a license to do."

Mr. Allison looked up suddenly.

"Do you suppose, Sammie, that Deacon Brown knows the Traffic as it is—as we have seen it?"

"His church machinery grinds out resolutions annually of such a warlike nature that I am inclined to believe he does," said the doctor grimly.

"He has been in every political caucus that I have, for the last five years and has voted as I have from constable to President. I have voted for the interests of the Trade. What has he been voting for?" demanded Allison.

"I'll give it up," said Sammie, dusting the ashes from the end of his cigar; "but the Lord have mercy on his brains if he thinks it has been for 'temperance and morality.'"

Gilbert Allison arose and began a measured tread up and down the room.

"Laugh some more, Sammie! I have not yet recovered my normal condition. I had as soon be dead as morbid. Laugh. Perhaps it will prove infectious."

"I prefer to diagnose my case before applying a remedy," said the doctor. "Tell me your symptoms. What ails you?"

"I am in a dilemma, Sammie—a dilemma. Tell me—will it be necessary for me to wear a staring placard on my back the rest of my mortal days in order that people may know I have everlastingly severed my connection with the liquor business?"

Dr. Sammie was obliging enough to favor his guest with another hearty laugh. Then he blew two clouds of smoke over his head and watched it curl itself away around the chandelier, for notwithstanding the fact that he knew, or should have known, the effects of nicotine on the human system, this aspiring young member of the medical profession wasted money and nerve force in his slavery to a habit.

"I tell you, my friend," he said, with an air of confidence, "there are a set of people in the world—mind you, I do not say that they are wise—who would tell you that by casting a single vote in a certain way you would stamp yourself as the vile opponent of the Trade's interests 'forevermore, amen!'"

Gilbert Allison paused in his walk and looked into his friend's face a second. A sigh of relief escaped his lips, and immediately he found himself in the midst of a ringing laugh peculiar to one who has broken through the meshes of a dilemma and finds himself free.

"The best speech of your life, Sammie! Thank you!" and hastily donning his hat he left the room without further comment.

Dr. Sammie smiled when the door closed behind his friend. He had an idea whither his way tended.



CHAPTER XI.

AN AWAKENING.

Judge Thorn sat looking over the evening paper.

Lost in her own thoughts, Jean sat in the shadow of a palm idly thrumming a guitar, the soft pliant strains corresponding well with the expression of her face.

A sudden exclamation from her father caused her to look up.

His profile alone was visible to her, but there is an expression in outlines when one understands the subject, and she knew that something of an unusually puzzling or distressing nature engaged him.

Eagerly watching, she played on softly.

Presently the judge crushed the paper into a ball and with another exclamation of disgust threw it across the room where it rolled behind a scrap basket under a desk. At sight of so uncommon a procedure Jean went to her father's side.

"What news, father mine? What news?" she asked.

Judge Thorn pointed in the direction of the wadded paper.

"Jean," said he, solemnly, "you remember how proudly I boasted to you when Congress prohibited that blackest disgrace of our army, the liquor-selling canteen. You know how deeply I felt the shame and disgrace upon the whole legal profession when an officer of the cabinet perpetrated the outrage that thwarted the will of the sovereign people. Jean, girl, in a long life of close contact with the nation's politics I have never met anything that has so deeply tried my loyalty to the party in which I have helped to work out the political problems of almost half a century as did that act that, as a life-long student of law, I recognized as a fraud.

"But I have bolstered my shattered faith in the party with my absolute confidence in the President. I have refused to believe—to this very hour I have refused to believe that the man whose magnificent career I have watched with such interest and of whose stainless honor I have been so proud, would consent to be a party to such an act of anarchy. I have insisted, as you well know, stoutly holding my position though the long delay has made me sick at heart, that when the long routine of official red tape had at length unrolled itself and the case should finally come to the President, justice would be done and the nation's honor vindicated.

"Now, look there!"

And with hands that trembled with suppressed anger the old jurist unfolded the crumpled paper, which Jean had recovered, and pointed out the telegraphic report that told how another high official of the President's official family had disgraced himself, his profession and the administration by the formal declaration that he accepted the historic Griggs infamy as a correct interpretation of law.

"Jean, my child, spare me. Say nothing now, child. I can not bear it. The faith of a lifetime is shattered. On that page I read, plainly as if it were printed there, that the President is a party to the infamy. The party of my lifelong loyalty stands committed by the act of its chosen leaders to the foulest anarchy that ever disgraced a civilized people. Had I no thought for temperance, as a citizen and as a lawyer, I could not otherwise than see in this the forerunner of the gravest national disaster."

The young woman listened with an expression in which deepest scorn for the treason done was mingled with tender pity for the stricken man at her side. Sharp, cutting words crowded to her lips for a final argument, but her love for her father checked them.

Just then, in the silence, a step was heard approaching the house. In a twinkling the canteen outrage slipped from the mind of the girl, for the step was one whose echo had made indelible prints on her heart and whose owner she had been many times heartsick to see.

She had hardly time to wonder what brought him at an hour long past the usual time for making calls before he was with them.

When he had been informed by the judge of the latest chapter in the history of the canteen outrage, Mr. Allison laughed heartily.

"What have you been voting for the last ten years, Judge," he asked.

"Not for the canteen," the older man answered warmly.

"I have, and for every other measure conducive to the best interests of the trade—and we have voted the same ticket to a dot."

Finding the judge rather indisposed to talk just then the young man turned to his hostess.

"I am on a quest," he said. "Tell me of some one possessed of enough knowledge of human nature to recommend a course that will square me with an unruly conscience and—a woman."

"My father is a legal light, ask him. He needs diversion now, I think," and Jean smiled at sight of his perplexed face.

"His specialty has not been 'man atoms of a great iniquity,'" said Allison with a smile that hardly concealed his anxiety. "Tell me, what would you do if you had been a 'man-atom,' had grown disgusted with the mother mass and wished to completely sever your connection with it before God and man?"

"You mean if I were a man? Well, first I would ask the Lord to forgive me for ever having been a 'man-atom.'"

"I have been duly penitent," assented the questioner.

"Then I would buy some paper—a quantity of it—and I would write yards and yards of resolutions stating that 'it can never be legalized without sin.'"

"And then?"

"Then I should pray a whole lot—and pursue the even tenor of my way; and if my conscience should assert itself in the face of all this, I should think it too cranky a conscience to be humored."

"What about the woman?"

Jean smiled.

"Woman? Women," she said, "have notions. To save their lives they cannot see the use in wasting paper and prayers. They would DO something. Women—some women—believe in standing right with God and conscience though the heavens fall."

"So do some men," said Allison, gravely.

Jean started slightly. The tone of his voice, the look of his eye, conveyed to her the knowledge that somewhere, somehow, since she had seen him last he had been awakened.

Involuntarily she clasped her hands and in the passing glance she gave him Gilbert Allison caught a glimpse of the heaven that orthodox people say follows the resurrection of the just.

Judge Thorn roused himself from the spell that had been cast over him by the news in the crumpled paper.

A second time he took it in his hands and slowly, solemnly crushed it.

"The rank and file, the men whose honesty and virtue have made the party great," he said, "have been defrauded, outraged. My support of the administration and of the party of my political life is forever ended unless it reclaim the right to a decent man's support."

While her father talked, Jean, lest in the first moments of her delightful discovery she should clap her hands or cry or dance or in some other unconventional way outrage grave decorum, returned to her seat and her guitar.

The fringed palm threw long jagged shadows over her dress and stretched away to meet the firelight dancing on the hearth-rug.

The mingled tones of the two voices reached her ear, but she heard them indistinctly. To the soft strains that answered the strokes of her fingers, she kept repeating over and over to herself, "He is awake, he is awake."

Presently she heard her father leave the room.

Then her heart began to whirl and beat in a way unknown to her before. She caught the faint chime of a distant steeple bell and the notes of the low music died away to a plaintive breathing as she counted the strokes, for she knew the fateful hour of her life was at hand.

Just as the last stroke quivered out onto the new hour, he came. He sat down beside her and putting aside the guitar, drew her close to him.

"You are awake," she said softly, as if half afraid of breaking some magic spell. "Tell me about it."

He dropped his hand over one of hers and described the tragedy of the victims of the "great iniquity" that he had seen on that eventful night.

When he spoke of the murdered child he felt her hand clinch in his and when he told of the prayer consigning the "respectable" dealer to the place prepared for Satan and his earthly henchmen, involuntarily she would have drawn away from him, but his arm bound her like a band of steel.

"A tortured face—a bitter prayer—a bloody tragedy—ugly instruments; but in the hands of the Divinity that smooths out man's rough hewing they have cut away the last outline of a 'man-atom.' Are you glad? Has fate fashioned me to the satisfaction of one peerless, priceless woman?"

For one moment Jean hesitated. Then——

But what business is that of ours? Our story has been of the daughter of a Republican, and the young woman whose face is hidden upon the shoulder of Gilbert Allison, once rum-seller, now by God's grace Prohibitionist, is no longer the daughter of a Republican; for Judge Thorn's resolution, slow formed, is as unbreakable as nature's laws.



THE END.



Section 17 of the Army Act, passed by Congress March 2, 1899, reads:

"That no officer or private soldier shall be detailed to sell intoxicating drinks as a bartender or otherwise, in any post exchange or canteen, nor shall any other person be required or allowed to sell such liquor in any encampment or fort, or on any premises used for military purposes by the United States; and the Secretary of War is hereby directed to issue such general order as may be necessary to carry the provisions of this section into full force and effect."

After vainly trying to find some other method of evading the law, Secretary Alger, then the head of the War Department, obtained from Attorney-General Griggs the opinion that the army saloon, known as the canteen, could run as usual if only the bartenders were not soldiers. Griggs said:

"The designation of one class of individuals as forbidden to do a certain thing raises a just inference that all other classes not mentioned are not forbidden. A declaration that soldiers shall not be detailed to sell intoxicating drinks in post exchanges necessarily implies that such sale is not unlawful when conducted by others than soldiers.... The act having forbidden the employment of soldiers as bartenders or salesmen of intoxicating drinks, it would be lawful and appropriate for the managers of the post exchanges to employ civilians for that purpose. Of course, employment is a matter of contract, and not of requirement or permission."

This opinion, pronounced anarchy by every judge and every lawyer, outside of the President's Cabinet, that has spoken upon it, is upheld by Secretary Root, the new head of the War Department; and by President McKinley.

THE END