"But your education," said his mother. She thought of the rows of law-books of whose contents she fondly believed her son a master.

"Oh, that is mine still," said Randolph, "but other people don't want it. There is no use, mother, in evading the question. We live in an age of market values. We must consider them. Butter and cheese have a sure market value, and the knowledge of the law in my head has not. Nobody wants it enough to pay anything for it, to give us a moneyed equivalent wherewith we may buy the things we need. Therefore, if nobody wants that, we must offer them something else. When it comes to the rights of our fellow-men to spend their own money as they choose, that is inalienable. It is about the most firmly established right in the country. No; people cannot be coerced into buying my little store of knowledge, therefore I will try them with my little store of butter and cheese and eggs and molasses."

Randolph Anderson laughed. Aside from regard for his mother's feelings, he had not the slightest scruple against his business venture. On the contrary, it rather amused him. He must have had a latent taste for business, for he quite enjoyed studying the markets and purchasing his stock in trade. He purchased wisely, too. He offered a choice stock of goods, or, rather, his two salesmen did. He himself did not sell much over his own counters, except in the case of a great rush of business. But it was not from the least sensation of superiority. It was merely because of a distrust of his own ability to acquit himself well in such a totally different branch of industry. Anderson was cast on unusually simple and ingenuous lines. Nobody would have believed it, but he was actually somewhat modest and shy before his own clerks, and realized sensitively his own lack of experience. So he had a way of subsiding when customers appeared, and retreating to his office in the rear of the building. He spent most of his time in this office. It was a very pleasant one, overlooking the river, on which steamboats and canal-boats travelled to the city. From Anderson's office the bank of red clay soil sloped to the water's edge. He could see the gleam of the current through the shag of young trees which found root in the unpromising soil. Now and then the tall mast of a sailing-vessel glided by, now the smoke-stack of a steamer. Often the quiet was broken by the panting breath of a tug. Often into his field of vision flapped the wet clothes from the line strung along the deck of a canal-boat. The canal ran along beside the regular current of the river, separated from it by a narrow tow-path. Farther down, the great railroad bridge crossed the stream, and at all hours he could catch the swift glisten of the train-windows as they shot past.

Anderson's office was about twelve by fourteen, and lined with shelves on two sides. On these he had books, not law-books. Those he had relegated to the library at home. He had probably in the depths of his consciousness a sensation of melancholy at the contemplation of those reminders of his balked career. No man, no matter how gracefully he may yield to it, cares to contemplate failures. He had filled these shelves with books of which he was fond, for daily reading. They were most of them old. He had little money with which to purchase new ones. He had been forced to rely upon those which his father and grandfather had accumulated. There were, however, a few recent and quite valuable books which he had acquired since his venture in trade, upon entomology, especially books upon butterflies. Since his retreat from the law he had developed suddenly, perhaps by the force of contrast, or the opposite swing of the pendulum, an overwhelming taste for those airy flowers of animated life. The two walls of the office not occupied with books were hung with framed specimens. He had also under the riverward window a little table equipped with the necessary paraphernalia for mounting them. Many a sunny day in the season he spent in the fields on this gentle hunt. There was a broad sill to the window, and upon it stood a box filled with green plants. When the season was enough advanced and the window always open, the trailing vines rooted in the box hung far down outside, and the women on the passing canal-boats looked up at them. The window-ledge was wide enough, moreover, for an old red cushion upon which slept in the sun when he was not afield for love or war or prey, a great cat striped like a tiger, with fierce green eyes, and a mighty purr of comfort, and a rounding back of affection for Anderson's legs when he talked to him.

Anderson had two comfortable old chairs in his office, and a goodly assortment of pipes, for he was a great smoker. He made tobacco a part of his grocery business, and had a strong sense of comfort in reflecting upon the unlimited supply. He had been forced, in the last days of his law-practice, to stint himself even in this creature comfort. On the whole, he was much happier when fairly established in trade than he had ever been before. He was so absorbed in his business (all the details of which he mastered), in his books, and his butterflies, that he saw very little of the people, and knew very little of what was going on in Banbridge, except through his mother. Mrs. Anderson, in spite of her years, and a certain lack of strength which had always hampered her, was quite prominent in Banbridge society. She was one of the old women whom young girls adore, even when the adoration is not increased by the existence of a marriageable son. Sometimes the old lady would regard an unmarried female-caller with a soft suspicion of ulterior motives, but she never whispered them to her son. Sylvia Anderson had a lovely, fine delicacy where the foibles of her own sex were concerned. She was so essentially feminine herself that she was never quite rid of her maiden sense of alienation even with her son. She would have been much happier with a daughter, although she was very fond of her son.

One afternoon in May, a short time after Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Lee had made their circuit of calls which had included her, some other ladies were making the rounds in the calling-coach, which drew up before her door. There were three ladies, two of them unmarried. They were an elder aunt, her young unmarried niece, and a married lady who had been the girl friend of the aunt. They made a long call, and Mrs. Anderson entertained them with tea in her pink-and-gold china cups, with cream in the little family silver cream-jug, and with slices of pound-cake. It was an old custom of Mrs. Anderson's which she had copied all through her married life from Madam Anderson, Randolph's grandmother, the widow of old Dr. Anderson, the clergyman.

"I always make it a custom, my dear, to keep pound-cake on hand, and have some of the best green tea in the caddy, and then when callers come of an afternoon I can offer them some refreshment," she had said when her son's wife first came to live with her. So Mrs. Anderson had antedated the modern fashion in Banbridge, but she did not keep a little, ornate tea-table in her parlor. The cake and tea were brought in by the one maid on a tray covered with a polka-dotted damask.

This afternoon the callers had their cake and tea, and lingered long afterwards. Now and then Mrs. Anderson glanced imperceptibly at the window, thinking her son might pass. She regarded the unmarried aunt and the young niece with asides of reflection even while she talked to them. The niece was not pretty, but her bloom of youth under the roses of her spring hat was ravishing. The aunt had never been pretty; and, moreover, her bloom had gone, but she was well dressed, and her thin figure was full of grace. She sat in her chair with delicate erectness, the folds of her gray gown was disposed over her supple length of limb with charming effect. She also had a sort of eager, almost appealing amiability. It was as if she said:

"Yes, I know I am no longer young. I am not fair to see, but indeed I mean well by you. I would do much for you. I even love you. Cannot you love me for that?" and that was softly compelling.

Mrs. Anderson reflected that a man might easily admire either of these women. Her manner, in spite of herself, cooled towards them. She did not think of the third woman, who was married, except to ply her with cake and tea and inquire for her husband and children. The woman, after she had finished her cake and tea, sat sunken in her corsets, under her loosely fitting black silk, and looked stupidly amiable. She rose with a slight sigh of relief when at last the others made a motion to go. She thought of her supper at home, and the children long out of school. It was past supper-time for Banbridge. The sun was quite low. An hour ago a little herd of cows had pelted by in a cloud of dust, with great udders swinging perilously, going home to be milked.

"That Flannigan boy always runs those cows home," said the aunt, disapprovingly, as she passed the window.

"I have always heard it was bad for the milk," assented Mrs. Anderson.

Now that her callers were on the move, Mrs. Anderson was exceedingly cordial. She said something further about the quality of the cream obtained from the cows, and the aunt said yes, it was very good, although so dear. The old lady kissed both the aunt and the niece when they at last went out of the door, and said she was so glad that she was at home, and begged them to come again. She stood in the door watching them get into the coach. The young girl's face in the window, with her beflowered hat, a rose crowned with roses, in the dark setting of the window, was beautiful. Even the aunt's face, older and more colorless, except for an unlovely flush of excitement, was pathetically compelling and charmed. Mrs. Anderson, filling up the doorway with her stately bulk, swept around by her soft black draperies, her fair old face rising from a foam of lace, and delicately capped with lace, on which was a knot of palest lavender, stood in a frame of luxuriant Virginia-creeper, and smiled and nodded graciously to her departing guests, while wondering if they would meet her son coming home. After that followed a reflection as to the undesirability of either of them as a possible daughter-in-law.

Just as she was turning to enter the house, after the coach had rolled out of sight, she saw her son coming down the street under the green shade of the maples which bordered it. The mother went toddling on her tiny feet down the steps to the gate to meet her son. The house stood quite close to the road; indeed, only a little bricked-path separated it from the sidewalk. All the ground was at the sides and back. The house was a square old affair with a row of half-windows in the third-story, or attic, and considerable good old panel-work and ornamentation about it. On the right side of the house was a large old flower-garden, now just beginning to assert itself anew; on the left were the stable and some out-buildings, with a grassy oval of lawn in the centre of a sweep of drive; in the rear was a kitchen-garden and a field rising to the railroad, for railroads circled all Banbridge in their vises of iron arms. A station was only a short distance farther up this same street. As Mrs. Anderson stood waiting and her son was advancing down the street a train from the city rumbled past. When Randolph had come up, and they had both entered the house, a carriage passed swiftly and both saw it from the parlor window.

"Do you know who's carriage that is?" asked Mrs. Anderson. "It is something new in Banbridge, isn't it?"

"It belongs to those new people who have moved into the Ranger place," replied Randolph. He wore a light business-suit which suited him, and he looked like a gentleman, as much so as when he had come from a law-office instead of a grocery-store. Indeed, he had been much shabbier in the law-office and had not held his head so high. In the law-office he had constantly been confronted with the possibility of debt. Here he was free from it. He had been smoking, as usual, and there was about his garments an odor of mingled coffee and tobacco. He had been selling coffee, and grinding some. One of his two salesmen was ill, and that was why he was so late. The new carriage rolled silently on its rubber tires along the macadamized road; the high black polish and plate-glass flashed in the sunlight, the coachman in livery sat proudly erect and held his whip stylishly, the sleek horses pranced, seeming scarcely to touch the road with their dainty hoofs.

"Those are fine horses," said Randolph.

"Yes," assented his mother. "They must be very wealthy people, I suppose."

"It looks so," replied Randolph.

His mother, still staring out of the window, started. "Why," she said, "the coachman is turning around!"

"Perhaps he has forgotten something at the station," said Randolph.

"Why, it is stopping here!" cried Mrs. Anderson, wonderingly. The carriage indeed stopped just before the Anderson gate, and remained there perfectly still. The coachman gazed intently at the house, but made no motion to get down. At a window was seen a gentleman's face; past him the fresh face of a girl, also gazing. Randolph looked out, and the gentleman in the carriage made an imperious beckoning motion.

"Why, he is beckoning you!" said Mrs. Anderson, amazedly and indignantly.

Anderson moved towards the door.

"You are not going out when you are beckoned to in that way?" cried his mother.

Anderson laughed. "You forget, mother," he said, "that a grocer is at the beck and call of his patrons."

"I am ashamed of you!" she said, hotly, her fair old face flushing, "to have no more pride—"

Anderson laughed again. "I am too proud to have pride," he said, and went out of the room. He went leisurely down the steps, and crossed the little brick walk to the gate, and then approached the carriage. The gentleman inside, with what seemed an unpremeditated movement, raised his hat. Randolph bowed. Carroll smiled in the gentle, admiring way which he had.

"Perhaps I have made a mistake," he said, "but I was directed here. I was told that Anderson, who keeps the grocery, lives here."

"I am Anderson," replied Randolph, with dignity and a certain high scorn, and purposely leaving off the Mr. from his name.

Arthur Carroll no longer smiled, but his voice had a certain urbanity, although it rang imperiously. "Now, see here," he said. "I want to know why you did not do as I left instructions at your shop?"

"To what do you refer?" inquired Anderson, quietly.

"I want to know why you did not send in your bill last Saturday night, as I ordered." Carroll's voice was so loud that Mrs. Anderson, in the house, heard him distinctly through the open windows.

"I did not know that you had so ordered," replied Anderson, still quietly, with a slight emphasis on the ordered. He looked slightly amused.

"Well, I did. I told your clerk to be sure to send in my bills promptly every Saturday morning. I wish to settle weekly."

"The mistake was doubtless due to the fact that my clerk has been at home ill for the last three days," said Anderson. "This is the first time I have heard of your order."

"Well," said Carroll, "send it in at once now, and don't let it happen again."

Although the tone was harsh and the words were imperious, still they were not insolent. There was even an effect of camaraderie about them. At the last he flashed a quick smile at Anderson, which Anderson returned. He was dimly conscious all the time of Charlotte's very pretty face past her father's, peeping around his gray shoulder with a large-eyed, rather puzzled expression. Carroll nodded slightly after the smile, and told the coachman to go on, and the horses sprang forward after a delicate toss of their curving forelegs.

Randolph re-entered the house, and his mother, who was waiting, faced him with soft indignation.

"I must say, my son, that I am surprised that you submit to being addressed in such a fashion as that," she said, her blue eyes darkening at him.

Randolph laughed again. "There was no real insolence about it, after all, mother," he replied.

"It sounded so," said she.

"That was because you could not see his face," said Randolph. "He looked very amiable."

"He was angry because he did not get his bill Saturday?" said Mrs. Anderson, interrogatively.

"Yes. He must have given the order to Sam Riggs the day before he went home ill, I suppose."

"He must be a very wealthy man," said Mrs. Anderson. "It is rather good of him to be so anxious to pay his bill every week."

"Yes, it is a very laudable desire," said Randolph. "I only hope his ability may equal it."

His mother looked at him with quick surprise. "Why, you surely don't think—" she said.

"I think nothing. The man is all right, so far as I know. He seems a gentleman, and if he is well off he is a very desirable acquisition to Banbridge."

"Who was that with him in the coach?" asked Mrs. Anderson.

"One of his daughters, I should judge. I hear he has two."

"Pretty?"

"Well, I hardly know. Have you had any callers?"

"Yes. I suppose you met them. They made a very long call."

"You mean the Egglestons?"

"Yes, Miss Josie and little Agnes Eggleston and Mrs. Monroe. They stayed here over an hour. I thought you would meet them."

"Yes, I met them just as I turned from Main Street," replied Randolph, soberly, but he was inwardly amused. He understood his mother. But there was something which he did not tell her concerning his experience with the new-comers, the Carrolls. Shortly, she went out to give some directions about tea, and Randolph, sitting beside a window in the parlor with an evening paper, drew from his pocket a letter just received in the mail, and examined it again. It was from a city bank, and it contained a repudiated check for ten dollars, made out by Captain Arthur Carroll, and which Anderson had cashed a few days previous at the request of the pretty young girl in the carriage, who to-night had sat there looking at him and did not speak, either because she had forgotten his face as he did her the little favor, or because he was so far away from her social scale that she was innocently unaware of any necessity for it.



Chapter V

Randolph Anderson had a large contempt for money used otherwise than for its material ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at his tame submission. One thing was certain, although it seemed paradoxical; if he had not had suspicions as to Arthur Carroll's perfect trustworthiness, he would at once have gone to him with the check.

"I dare say he overdrew his account without knowing it, as many an honest man does," he reasoned, when trying to apologize to himself for his unbusiness-like conduct, but always he knew subconsciously that if he had been perfectly sure of that view of it he would not have hesitated to put it to the proof. For some reason, probably unconfessed rather than actually hidden from himself, he shrank from a possible discovery to Arthur Carroll's discredit. When a man of Randolph Anderson's kind replies to a question concerning the beauty of a young girl that he does not know, the assumption is warranted that he has given the matter consideration. A man usually leaps to a decision of that kind, and if he has no ulterior motive for concealment, he would as lief proclaim it to the house-tops.

Usually Randolph Anderson would no more have hesitated about giving his opinion as to a girl's looks than he would have hesitated about giving his candid opinion of the weather. For the most part a woman's face had about as much effect upon his emotional nature as the face of a day. He saw that it was rosy or gray, smiling and sunny, or frowning or rainy, then he looked unmovedly at the retreating backs of both. It was all the same thing. Anderson was a man who dealt mostly with actualities where his emotions were concerned. With some, love-dreams grow and develop with their growth and development; with some not. The latter had been true with Randolph Anderson. Then, too, he was scarcely self-centred and egotistical enough for genuine air-castles of any kind. To build an air-castle, one's own personality must be the central prop and pillar, for even anything as unsubstantial as an air-castle has its building law. One must rear around something, or the structure can never rise above the horizon of the future.

Anderson had stored his mind with the poetic facts of the world rather than projected his poetic fancies into the facts of the world. He saw things largely as they were, with no inflorescence of rainbows where there was none; but there are actual rainbows, and even auroras, so that the man who does not dream has compensations and a less chance of disillusion. Of course Anderson had thought of marriage; he could scarcely have done otherwise; but he had thought of it as an abstract condition pertaining to himself only in a general way as it pertains to all mankind. He had never seen himself plainly enough in his fancy as a lover and husband to have a pang of regret or longing. He had been really contented as he was. He had a powerful mind, and the exercising of that held in restraint the purely physical which might have precipitated matters. Some men advance, the soul pushing the body with more or less effort; some with the soul first, trailing the body; some in unison, and these are they who make the best progress as to the real advancement. Anderson moved, on the whole, in the last way. He was a very healthy man, mind and body, and with rather unusual advantages in point of looks. This last he realized in one way but not in another. He knew it on general principles; he recognized the fact as he recognized the fact of his hands and feet; but what he actually saw in the looking-glass was not so much the physical fact of himself as the spiritual problem with its two known quantities of need and circumstance, and its great unknown third which took hold of eternity. Anderson, although not in a sense religious, had a religious trend of thought. He went every Sunday with his mother to the Presbyterian church where his grandfather had preached to an earlier generation.

On the Sunday after his encounter with Arthur Carroll with reference to the bill, he went to church as usual with his mother.

Mrs. Anderson was a picture of a Sunday, in a rich lavender silk and a magnificent though old-fashioned lace shawl which floated from her shoulder in a fairy net-work of black roses. She would never wear plain black like most women of her age. She was one of the blue-eyed women who looks well in lavender. Her blue eyes, now looking at her son from under the rich purples and lavenders of the velvet pansies on her bonnet, got an indeterminate color like myrtle blossoms. A deeper pink also showed on her cheeks because of the color of her gown.

"Mother, you are just such a mixture of color as that lilac-bush," said her son, irrelevantly, looking from her to a great lilac-bush in the corner of the yard they were passing. It was tipped with rose on the delicate ends of its blooming racemes, which shaded to blue at the bases.

"Did you see those new people in church to-day?" said she.

"Yes, I think I did," replied Randolph. "They sat just in front of the Egglestons, didn't they?"

"Yes," said his mother, "they did sit there. There is quite a large family. The ladies are all very nice-looking, too, and they all look alike. If they are going to church, such a family as that, and so well off, they will be quite an acquisition to Banbridge."

"Yes," said Randolph. He spoke absently, and he looked absently at a great wistaria which draped with pendulous purple blooms the veranda of a house which they were just passing. It arrested his eyes as with a loud chord of color, but his mind did not grasp it at all. Afterwards he could not have said he had seen it. As is often the case, while his eyes actually saw one thing, his consciousness saw another. Great, purple, pendulous flowers filled his bodily vision, and the head and shoulders of a young girl above a church pew his mental outlook. Had he seen the Carrolls in church—had he, indeed? Had he seen anything besides them, or rather besides one of them? Had he not, the moment she came up the aisle and entered the pew, seen her with a very clutch of vision? He could not have described one article of her dress, and yet it was complete in his thought. She had worn a soft silk of a dull-red shade, with a frill of cream lace about the shoulders, and there were pink roses under the brim of her dull-red hat, and under the roses was her face, shaded softly with a great puff of her dark hair. And her dark eyes under the dark hair had in them the very light of morning dew, which sparkled back both this world and heaven itself into the eyes of the looker, all reflected in tiny crystal spheres. Suddenly the man gazing across the church had seen in this girl's face all there was of earth and the overhang of heaven; he had seen the present and the future. It is through the face of another human being that one gets the furthest reach of human vision, and that furthest reach had now come for the first time to Randolph Anderson. All at once a quiver ran through his entire consciousness from this elongated vision, and he realized sight to its uttermost. Yet it did not dawn on him that he was in love with this girl. He would have laughed at the idea. He had seen her only twice; he had spoken to her only once. He knew nothing of her except that she had given him a worthless check to cash. Love could not come to him in this wise, and it had not, in fact. He had only attained to the comprehension of love. He had gotten faith, he had seen the present world and the world to come in the light of it, but not as yet his own soul. Yet always he saw the girl's head under the pink roses under the brim of the dark-red hat. It was evidently a favorite headgear of hers. She had worn it with a white dress when she had come to the store to get the check cashed. But he had not seen her so fully then. His little doubt and bewilderment over the check had clouded his vision. Now, since he had seen her in the church-pew, his last thrifty scruple as to ignoring the matter of the check left him. He felt that he could not put his doubt of her father to the proof. Suppose that the account had not been carelessly overdrawn— Suppose— He never for one instant suspected the girl. As soon suspect a rosebud of foregoing its own sweet personality, and of being in reality something else, say a stinging nettle. The girl carried her patent royal of youth and innocence on her face. He made up his mind to say nothing about the check, to lose the ten dollars, and, since dollars were so far from plenty with him, to sacrifice some luxury for the luxury of the loss. He made up his mind that he could very well do without the book with colored plates of South American butterflies which he had thought of purchasing. Much better live without that than rub the bloom off a better than butterfly's wing. Better anything than disturb that look of innocent ignorance on that girl's little face.



Chapter VI

It was the next day that Randolph Anderson, on his way home at noon, saw ahead of him, just as he turned the corner from Main to Elm street, where his own house was, a knot of boys engaged in what he at first thought was a fight or its preliminaries. There was a great clamor, too. In the boughs of a maple in the near-by yard were two robins wrangling; underneath were the boys. The air was full of the sweet jangle of birds and boyish trebles, for all the boys were young. Anderson, as he came up, glanced indifferently at the turbulent group and saw one boy who seemed to be the centre of contention. He was backed up against the fence, an ornate iron affair backed by a thick hedge, the green leaves of which pricked through the slender iron uprights. In front of this green, iron-grated wall, which was higher than his head, for he was a little fellow, stood a boy, who Anderson saw at a glance was the same one whom he had seen with the Carrolls in church the day before. His hair was rather long and a toss of dark curls. His face was as tenderly pretty as his sister's, whom he strongly resembled, although he was somewhat fairer of complexion. But it was full of the utmost bravado of rage and defiance, and his two small hands were clinched, until the knuckles whitened, in the faces of the little crowd who confronted him. The color had not left his face, for his cheeks burned like roses, but his pretty mouth was hard set and his black eyes blazed. The boys danced and made threatening feints at him. They called out confused taunts and demands whose purport Anderson at first did not comprehend, but the boy never swerved. When one of his tormentors came nearer, out swung the little white fist at him, and the other invariably dodged.

Anderson's curiosity grew. He went closer. Amidon and Ray, the postmaster, on his way home to his dinner, also joined him, and the little barber, smelling strongly of scented soap and witch-hazel. They stood listening interestedly.

"Most too many against one," remarked the postmaster.

"He don't look scared," said Amidon. "He's Southern, and he's got grit. He's backed up there like the whole Confederacy."

A kindly look overspread the sleek, conceited face of the man. His forebears were from Alabama. His father had been a small white slave-owner who had drifted North, in a state of petty ruin after the war, and there Amidon, who had been a child at the time, had grown up and married the thrifty woman who supported him. The wrangle increased, the boys danced more energetically, the small fists of the boy at bay were on closer guard.

"Hi, there!" sung out Amidon. "Look at here; there's too many of ye. Look out ye don't git into no mischief, now."

"Hullo, boys! what's the trouble?" shouted the postmaster, in a voice of authority. He was used to running these same boys out of his office when they became too boisterous during the distribution of the mails, making precipitate dashes from the inner sanctum of the United States government. They were accustomed to the sound of his important shout, and a few eyes rolled over shoulder at him. But they soon plunged again into their little whirlpool of excitement, for they were quick-witted and not slow to reason that they were now on the king's highway where they had as much right as the postmaster, and could not be coerced under his authority.

"What is it all about?" the postmaster called, loudly, above the hubbub, to Anderson.

Anderson shook his head. He was listening to the fusillade of taunting, threatening yells, with his forehead knitted. Then all at once he understood. Over and over, with every pitch possible to the boyish threats, the cry intermingling and crossing until all the vowels and consonants overlapped, the boys repeated: "Yerlie—yerlie—yerlie—" They clipped the reproach short; they elongated it into a sliding thrill. From one boy, larger than the others, and whose voice was changing, came at intervals the demand, in a hoarse, cracking treble, with sudden descents into gulfs of bass: "Take it ba-ck! Take it ba-ck!"

Always in response to that demand of the large boy, who was always the one who danced closest to the boy at bay, came the reply, in a voice like a bird's, "Die first—die first."

After a most energetic dash of this large boy, Anderson stepped up and caught him by the shoulder on his retreat from the determined little fist. He knew the large boy; he was a nephew of Henry Lee, whose wife had invaded the Carroll house in the absence of the family.

"See here, Harry," said Anderson, "what is this about, eh?"

The large boy, who, in spite of his size, was a youngster, looked at once terrifiedly and pugnaciously into his face, and beginning with a whimper of excuse to Anderson, ended with a snarl of wrath for the other boy. "He tells lies, he does. He tells lies. Ya-h!" The boy danced at the other even under Anderson's restraining hand on his shoulder. "Yerlie—yerlie! Ya-h!" he yelled, and all the others joined in. The chorus was deafening. Anderson's hand on the boy's shoulder tightened. He shook him violently. The boy's cap fell off, and his shock of fair hair waved. He rolled eyes of terrified wonder at his captor. "What, wha-at?—" he stammered. "You lemme be. You— Wha-at?"

"I'll tell you what, you big bully, you," said Anderson, sternly. "That boy there is one to a dozen, and he's the smallest of the lot—he's half your size. Now, what in thunder are you all about, badgering that little chap so?"

A sudden silence prevailed. They all stood looking from under lowered eyebrows at the group of watching men; their small shoulders under their little school-jackets were seen to droop; scarcely a boy but shuffled his right leg, while their hands, which had been gyrating fists, unclinched and twitched at their sides. But the boy did not relax for a second his expression of leaping, bounding rage, of a savage young soul in a feeble body. Now he included Anderson and the other men. He held his head with the haughtiness of a prince. He seemed to question them with silent wrath.

"Who are you who dare to come here and interfere in my quarrel?" he seemed to say. "I was sufficient unto myself. I needed none of your protection. What if I was one to a dozen? Look at me!" His little hands did not for a second unclinch. He was really very young, probably no more than ten. He was scarcely past his babyhood, but he was fairly impressive, not the slightest maturity of mind, but of spirit. He could never take a fiercer stand against odds than now if he lived to be a hundred.

Anderson approached him, in spite of himself, with a certain respect. "What is the matter, young man?" he inquired, gravely.

The boy regarded him with silent resentment and scorn; he did not deign an answer. But the big boy replied for him promptly:

"He—he said his father kept a tame elephant when they lived in New York State, and he—he used to ride him—"

He spoke in a tone of aggrieved virtue, and regarded the other with a scowl. The men guffawed, and after a second the boys also. Then a little fellow behind the ringleader offered additional testimony.

"He said he used to get up a private circus once a week, every Saturday, and charge ten cents a head, and made ten dollars a week," he said. Then his voice of angry accusation ended in a chuckle.

Anderson kept his face quite grave, but all the others joined in the chorus of merriment. The little fellow backed against the iron fence gave an incredulous start at the sound of the laughter, then the red roses faded out on his smooth cheeks and he went quite white. The laughter stung his very soul as no recrimination could have done. He suffered tortures of mortified pride. His fists were still clinched, but his proud lip quivered a little. He looked very young—a baby.

Anderson stepped to his aid. He raised his voice. "Now, look here, boys," he said. But he made no headway against the hilarity, which swelled higher and higher. The crowd increased. Several more men and boys were on the outskirts. An ally pressed through the crowd to Anderson's side.

"Now, boys," he proclaimed, and for a moment his thin squeak weighted with importance gained a hearing—"now, boys," said the barber, "this little feller's father is an extinguished new denizen of Banbridge, and you ain't treatin' of him with proper disrespect. Now—" But then his voice was drowned in a wilder outburst than ever. The little crowd of men and boys went fairly mad with hysterical joy of mirth, as an American crowd will when once overcome by the humor of the situation in the midst of their stress of life. They now laughed at the little barber and the boy. The old familiar butt had joined forces with the new ones.

"They have formed a trust," said Amidon, deserting his partisanship, now that it had assumed this phase of harmless jocularity.

But the boy at bay, as the laughter at his expense increased, was fairly frantic. He lost what he had hitherto retained, his self-possession. "I tell you I did!" he suddenly screamed out, in a sweet screech, like an angry bird, which commanded the ears of the crowd from its strangeness. "I tell you I did have an elephant, I did ride him, and I did have a circus every Saturday afternoon, so there!"

The "so there" was tremendous. The words vanished in the sound. The boyish expression denoting triumphant climax became individual, the language of one soul. He fired the words at them all like a charge of shot. There was a pause of a second, then the laughter and mocking were recommencing. But Anderson took advantage of the lull.

"See here, boys," he shouted, "there's been enough of this. What is it to you whether he had a dozen elephants and rode them all at once, and had a circus every day in the week with a dozen tame bears thrown in? Clear out and go home and get your dinners. Clear out! Vamoose! Scatter!" His tone was at once angry and appealing. It implied authority and comradeship.

Anderson had given great promise as a speaker during his college course. He was a man who, if he exerted himself, could gauge the temper of a mob. The men on the outskirts began moving away easily; the boys followed their example. The little barber took the boy familiarly by the arm.

"Now, you look at here," said he. "Don't you hev them chaps a-pesterin' of you no more, an' ef they do, you jest streak right into my parlor an' I'll take care of ye. See?"

The boy twitched his arm away and eyed the barber witheringly. "I don't want anything to do with you nor your old barber-shop," said he.

"You had better run along, John," said Anderson to the barber, who was staring amazedly, although the complacent smirk upon his face was undiminished.

"I guess he's a child kinder given to speakin' at tandem," he said, as he complied with Anderson's advice.

The boy turned at once to the man. "What business had that barber telling me to go into his old barber-shop?" demanded he. "I ain't afraid of all the boys in this one-horse town."

"Of course not," said Anderson.

"I did have an elephant when I lived in Hillfield, and I did ride him, and I did have circuses every Saturday," said the boy, with challenge.

Anderson said nothing.

"At least—" said the child, in a modified tone. Anderson looked at him with an air of polite waiting. The boy's roses bloomed again. "At least—" he faltered, "at least—" A maid rang a dinner-bell frantically in the doorway of the house near which they were standing. Anderson glanced at her, then back at the boy. "At least—" said the boy, with a blurt of confidence which yielded nothing, but implied the recognition of a friend and understander in the man—"at—least I used to make believe I had an elephant when I lived in Hillfield."

"Yes?" said Anderson. He made a movement to go, and the boy still kept at his side.

"And—" he added, but still with no tone of apology or confession, "I might have had an elephant."

"Yes," said Anderson, "you might have."

"And they did not know but what I might," said the boy, angrily.

Anderson nodded judicially. "That's so, I suppose; only elephants are not very common as setter dogs for a boy to have around these parts."

"It was a setter dog," said the boy, with a burst of innocence and admiration. "How did you know?"

"Oh, I guessed."

"You must be real smart," said the boy. "My father said he thought you were, and somehow had got stranded in a grocery store. Did you?"

"Yes, I did," replied Anderson.

Anderson was now walking quite briskly towards home and dinner, and the boy was trotting by his side, with seemingly no thought of parting. They proceeded in silence for a few steps; then the boy spoke again.

"I began with the setter dog," said he. "His name was Archie, and he used to jump over the roof of a part of our house as high as"—he looked about and pointed conclusively at the ell of a house across the street—"as high as that," he said, with one small pink finger indicating unwaveringly.

"That must have been quite a jump," remarked Anderson, and his voice betrayed nothing.

"That setter was an awful jumper," said the little boy. "He died last winter. My sisters cried, but I didn't." His voice trembled a little.

"He must have been a fine dog," said Anderson.

"Yes, sir, he could jump. I think that piece of our house he used to jump over was higher than that," said the boy, reflectively, with the loving tone of a panegyrist who would heap more and more honors and flowers upon a dear departed.

"A big jump," said Anderson.

"Yes, sir, he was an awful jumper. Those boys they said I lied. First they said he couldn't do it, then they said I didn't have any dog, and then I—"

"And then you said you had the elephant?"

"Yes, sir. Say, you ain't going to tell 'em what I've told you?"

"You better believe I'm not. But I tell you one thing—next time, if you'll take my advice, you had better stick to the setter dog and let elephants alone."

"Maybe it would be better," said the boy. Then he added, with a curious sort of naive slyness, "But I haven't said I didn't have any elephant."

"That's so," said Anderson.

Suddenly, as the two walked along, the man felt a hard, hot little hand slide into his. "I guess you must be an awful smart man," said the boy.

"What is your name?" said Anderson, in lieu of a disclaimer, which somehow he felt would seem to savor of mock modesty in the face of this youthful enthusiasm.

"Why, don't you know?" asked the boy, in some wonder. "I thought everybody knew who we were. I am Captain Carroll's son. My name is Eddy Carroll."

"I knew you were Captain Carroll's son, but I did not know your first name."

"I knew you," said the boy. "I saw you out in the field catching butterflies."

"Where were you?"

"Oh, I was fishing. I was under those willows by the brook. I kept pretty still, and you didn't see me. Have to lay low while you're fishing, you know."

"Of course," said Anderson.

"I didn't catch anything. I don't believe fish are very thick in the brooks around here. I used to catch great big fellers when I lived in Hillfield. One day—"

"When do you have your dinner at home?" broke in Anderson.

"'Most any time. Say, Mr. Anderson, what are you going to have for dinner?"

Anderson happened to know quite well what he was going to have for dinner, because he had himself ordered it on the way to the store that morning. He answered at once:

"Roast lamb and green pease and new potatoes," said he.

"Oh!" said the boy, with unmistakable emphasis.

"And I am quite sure there is going to be a cherry-dumpling for dessert," said Anderson, reflectively.

"I like all those things," stated the boy, with emphasis that was pathetic.

The man stopped and looked down at the boy. "Now, see here, my friend," said he. "Honest, now, no dodging. Never mind if you do like things. Honest—you can't cheat me, you know—"

The boy looked back at him with eyes of profound simplicity and faith. "I know it," he replied.

"Well, then, now you tell me, honest, if you do stay and have dinner with me won't your folks, your mother and your sisters, worry?"

The boy's face, which had been rather anxious, cleared at once. "Oh no, sir!" he replied. "Amy never worries, and Ina and Charlotte won't."

"Who is Amy?"

"Amy? Why, Amy is my mother, of course."

"And you are sure she won't worry?"

"Oh no, sir." The boy fairly laughed at the idea. His honesty in this at least seemed unmistakable.

"Well, then," said Anderson, "come along and have dinner with me."

The boy fairly leaped with delight as, still clinging to the man's hand, he passed up the little walk to the Anderson house. He could smell the roast lamb and the green pease.



Chapter VII

Arthur Carroll went on business to the City every morning. He brought up to the station in the smart trap, the liveried coachman, with the mute majesty of his kind, throned upon the front seat. Sometimes one of Carroll's daughters, as delicately gay as a flower in her light daintiness of summer attire, was with him. Often the boy, with his outlook of innocent impudence, sat beside the coachman. Carroll himself was always irreproachably clad in the very latest of the prevailing style. Had he not been such a masterly figure of a man, he would have been open to the charge of dandyism. He was always gloved; he even wore a flower in the lapel of his gray coat. He carried always, whatever the state of the weather, an eminent umbrella with a carved-ivory handle. He equipped himself with as many newspapers from the stand as would an editor of a daily paper. The other men drew conclusions that it was highly necessary for him to study the state of the market and glean the truth from the various reports.

One morning Henry Lee was also journeying to the City on the eight-o'clock train. He held a $2500 position in a publisher's office, and felt himself as good as any man in Banbridge, with the possible exception of this new-comer, and he accosted him with regard to his sheaf of newspapers.

"Going to have all the news there is?" he inquired, jocularly.

Carroll looked up and smiled and nodded. "Well, yes," he replied. "I find this my only way—read them all and strike an average. There is generally a kernel of truth in each."

"That's so," said Lee.

Carroll glanced speculatively at the ostentatiously squared shoulders of the other man as he passed through the car.

When the train reached Jersey City, Carroll, leaving his newspapers fluttering about the seat he had occupied, passed off the train and walked with his air of careless purpose along the platform.

"This road is a pretty poorly conducted concern," said a voice behind him, and Lee came up hurriedly and joined him.

"Yes," replied Carroll, tentatively. His was not the order of mind which could realize its own aggrandizement by wholesale criticism of a great railroad system for the sake of criticism, and, moreover, he had a certain pride and self-respect about maintaining the majesty of that which he must continue to patronize for his own ends.

"Yes," said Lee, moving, as he spoke, with a sort of accelerated motion like a strut. He was a much shorter man than Carroll, and he made futile hops to get into step with him as they proceeded. "Yes, sir, every train through the twenty-four hours is late on this road."

Carroll laughed. "I confess that rather suits me, on the whole. I am usually late myself."

They walked together to the ferry-slip, and the boat was just going out.

"Always lose this boat," grumbled Lee, importantly.

Carroll looked at his watch, then replaced it silently.

"Going to miss an appointment?" questioned Lee.

"No, think not. These boats sail pretty often."

"I wish the train-service was as good," said Lee.

The two men stood together until the next boat came in, then boarded it, and took seats outside, as it was a fine day. They separated a couple of blocks from the pier. Lee was obliged to take an up-town Elevated.

"I suppose you don't go my way?" he said to Carroll, wistfully.

"No," said Carroll, smiling and shaking the ashes from his cigar. Both men had smoked all the way across—Carroll's cigars.

"And I tell you they were the real thing," Lee told his admiring wife that night. "Cost fifteen cents apiece, if they cost a penny; no cheap cigars for him, I can tell you."

Carroll said good-morning out of his atmosphere of fragrant smoke, and Lee, with a parting wave of the hand, began his climb of the Elevated stairs. He cast a backward look at Carroll's broad, gray shoulders swinging up the street. Even a momentary glimpse was enough to get a strong impression of the superiority of the man among the crowd of ordinary men hastening to their offices.

"I wonder where he is going? I wonder where his office is?" Lee said to himself, accelerating his pace a little as the station began to quiver with an approaching train.

What Lee asked himself many another man in Banbridge asked, but no one knew. No one dared to put the question directly to Carroll himself.

Arthur Carroll had never been a man who opened wide all the doors of his secrets of life to all his friends and acquaintances. Some had one entrance, some another, and it is probable that he always reserved ways of entrance and egress unknown to any except himself. At the very time that he evaded the solicitude of Banbridge with regard to his haunts in the City he was more than open, even ostentatious concerning them to some parties in the City itself, but he was silent regarding Banbridge. It may have been for the reason that he did not for the present wish to mix the City and Banbridge, that he wished to preserve mysteries concerning himself in the regard of both. It is certain that nobody in his office, where he roused considerable speculation even among a more engrossed and less inquisitive class, knew where he lived. The office had not heard of Banbridge; Banbridge had heard of the office, but knew nothing about it. The office, in a way, was not nearly as wise as Banbridge, for it knew nothing whatever of his family affairs. There was therein much speculation and, more than that, heart-burning as to whether Captain Carroll was or was not married. In the inner office, whence issued a mad tick of type-writers all through business hours, were two girls, one quite young and very pretty, the other also young, but not so pretty, both working for very small returns. There was also a book-keeper, a middle-aged man, and vibrating from the inner to the outer office was a young fellow with an innocent, high forehead and an eager, anxious outlook of brown eyes and a fashion of seeming to hang suspended on springs of readiness for motion when an order should come.

This young fellow, who sped in and out with that alacrity at the word of command, who hastened on errands with such impetus that he inspired alarm among the imaginative, had acquired a curious springiness about his hips that almost gave the effect of dislocation. He winked very fast, having gotten a nervous trick. He hurried ceaselessly. He had upon him the profound conviction of not time enough and the need of haste. He was in love with the prettier of the stenographers, and his heart was torn when he heard the surmises as to his employer's married or single estate. He used to watch Carroll when he left the office at night, and satisfied himself that he turned towards Sixth Avenue, and then he satisfied himself no more. Carroll plunged into mystery at night as he did for Banbridge in the morning. It was borne in upon the clerk who had an opulent imagination that Carroll was a great swell and went every night to one of the swellest of the up-town clubs, where he resided in luxury and the most genteel and lordly dissipation. He had, at the same time, a jealousy of and a profound pride in Carroll. Carroll himself had a sort of kindly scorn of him, and treated him very well. He was not of the description of weak character who antagonized him.

As for the girls in the inner office, Carroll only recognized them there. Seen on the street, away from the environment, he would simply not have dreamed he had ever seen them. He knew them only in their frames. As for the middle-aged man at the book-keeper's desk, he disturbed him in a way that he would not admit to himself. He spoke to him rather curtly. If he could avoid speaking to him he did so. He had a way of sending directions to the book-keeper by the young man. The book-keeper, if he also surmised Carroll's private life, gave no sign, although he had ample time. He sat at his desk faithfully from eight o'clock until half-past four, but the work which he had to do was somewhat amazing to a mind which stopped to reason. Sometimes even this man, who understood the world in general as a place to be painfully clambered and tramped and even crawled over, to the accomplishment of the ulterior end of remaining upon it at all, and who paid very little attention to other people's affairs, except as they directly concerned the tragic pettiness of his own, wondered a little at the nature of the accounts which he faithfully kept.

This book-keeper, whose name was William Allbright, lived in Harlem, so far up that it seemed fairly in the country, and on the second floor of a small, ancient building which, indeed, belonged to the period when Harlem was country and which remained between two modern apartment houses. The book-keeper had a half-right in a little green backyard, wherein flourished with considerable energy an aged cherry-tree, from which the tenants always fondly hoped for cherries. The cherries never materialized, but the hope was something. The book-keeper's elder sister, who kept house for him, was fond of gazing at the cherry-tree, with its scanty spread of white blossoms, and dreaming of cherries. She was the fonder because she had almost no dreams left. It is rather sad that even dreams go, as well as actualities. However, the sister seemed not to mind so very much. Very little, except the pleasure which she took in watching the cherry-tree, gave evidence that she lamented anything that she had lost or merely missed in life. In general she had an air of such utter placidity and acquiescence that it almost amounted to numbness. The book-keeper at this time of year scratched away every evening with a hoe and trowel in his half of the backyard, where he was making a tiny garden-patch.

The garden represented to him, as the tree did to his sister, his one ladder by which his earthly dreams might climb higher. One night he came home and there were three green spears of corn piercing the mould, and he fairly chuckled.

"The corn has come up," said he.

"So it has," said his sister.

A widow woman and her son, who worked in one of the great retail stores, lived down-stairs in the building. The young man, rather consequential but interested, strolled out in the backyard and surveyed the corn. The widow, who was consumptive, thrust her head and shoulders, muffled in a white shawl, out of her kitchen window into the soft spring air.

"So the corn has come up," said the son, throwing himself back on his heels with a lordly air. The mother smiled dimly at the green spears from between the woolly swaths of her shawl. She coughed, and pulled the white fleece closely over her mouth and nose. Then only her eyes were visible, which looked young as they gazed at the green spears of corn. The book-keeper nodded his elderly, distinctly commonplace, and unimportant head with the motion of a conqueror who marshals armies.

After all, it is something for a man to be able to call into life, even if under the force which includes him also, the new life of the spring. It is a power like that of a child in leading-strings, but still power. After the mother and son had gone away and he and his sister were still out in the cool, and the great evening star had come out and it was too dark to work any longer, for the first time he said something about the queer accounts in his books in Captain Carroll's office.

"I suppose it is all right," he said, leaning a second on his hoe and staring up at the star, "but sometimes my books and the accounts I keep look rather—strange to me."

"He pays you regularly, doesn't he?" inquired the sister. The question of pay could sting her from her numbness. Once there had been a period, years ago, before Carroll's advent, of no pay.

"Oh yes," replied the brother. "He pays me. He has never been more than a week behind. Captain Carroll seems like a very smart man. I wonder where he lives. I don't believe anybody in the office knows. He went away very early this afternoon. I don't know whether he lives in the City or in the country. I thought maybe if he did live in the country he wanted to get home and go driving or something."

It had been as the book-keeper surmised. Carroll had gone early to his home in the country with the idea of a drive. But when he reached home he found a state of affairs which precluded the drive. It seemed that young Eddy Carroll was given to romancing in more respects than one, and had not told the truth to Anderson when he had been asked if his family would feel anxious at his non-return to dinner. Eddy knew quite well that they would be anxious. In spite of a certain temperamental aversion to worry, the boy's mother and sisters were wont to become quite actively agitated if he failed to appear at expected times and seasons. Eddy Carroll, in the course of a short life, had contrived to find the hard side of many little difficulties. He had gotten into divers forms of mischief; he had met with many accidents. He had been almost drowned; he had broken an arm; he had been hit in the forehead by a stone thrown by another boy.

When Arthur Carroll reached home that afternoon he found his wife in hysterical tears, his sister trying to comfort her, and the two daughters and the maid were scouring the town in search of the boy. School was out, and he had still not come home. Carroll heard the news before he reached home, from the coachman who met him at the station.

"Mr. Eddy did not come home this noon," said the man, with much deference. He was full of awe at his employer, being a simple sort, and this was his second place, his first having been with the salt of the earth who made no such show as Carroll. He reasoned that virtue and appearances must increase according to the same ratio. "Mrs. Carroll sent me to the school this noon," said the man, further, "and the ladies are very much worried. The young ladies and Marie are out trying to find him." Marie was the maid, a Hungarian girl.

"Well, drive home as fast as you can," said Carroll, with a sigh. He reflected that his drive was spoiled; he also reflected that when the boy was found he should be punished. Yet he did not look out of temper, and, in fact, was not. It was in reality almost an impossibility for Arthur Carroll to be out of temper with one of his own family.

When Carroll reached home his wife came running down the stairs in a long, white tea-gown, and flung her arms around his neck. "Oh, Arthur!" she sobbed out. "What do you think has happened? What do you think?"

Carroll raised his wife's lovely face, all flushed and panting with grief and terror like a child's, and kissed it softly. "Nothing, Amy; nothing, dear," he said. "Don't, my darling. You will make yourself ill. Nothing has happened."

His sister Anna's voice, clear and strained, came from the top of the stairs. She stood there, holding an unbuttoned dressing-sack tightly across her bosom. The day was warm and neither of the ladies had dressed. "But, Arthur, he has not been home since morning," said Anna Carroll, "and Martin has been to the school-house, and the master says that Eddy did not return at all after the noon intermission, and he did not come home to dinner, after all."

"Yes, he did not come home to dinner," said Mrs. Carroll; "and the butcher did send the roast of veal, after all. I was afraid he would not, because he had not been paid for so long, and I thought Eddy would come home so hungry. But the butcher did send it, but Eddy did not come. He cannot have had a thing to eat since morning, and all he had for breakfast were rolls and coffee. Thee egg-woman would not leave any more eggs, she said, until she was paid for the last two lots, and—"

Carroll pulled out a wallet and handed a roll of notes, not to his wife, but to his sister Anna, who came half-way down the stairs and reached down a long, slender white arm for it.

"There," said he, "pay up the butcher and the egg-woman to-morrow. At least—"

"I understand," said Anna, nodding.

"What do you care whether the butcher or the egg-woman are paid or not, when all the boy we've got is lost?" asked Mrs. Carroll, looking up into her husband's face with the tears rolling over her cheeks.

"That's so," said Anna, and she gave the roll of notes a toss away from her with a passionate gesture. "Arthur, where do you suppose he is?"

The notes fell over the banisters into the hall below.

Carroll watched them touch the floor as he answered, "My dear sister, I don't know, but boys have played truant before, and survived it; and I have strong hopes of our dear boy." Carroll's voice, though droll, was exceedingly soft and soothing. He put an arm again around his wife, drew her close to him, and pressed her head against his shoulder. "Dear, you will be ill," he said. "The boy is all right."

"I am sure this time he is shot," moaned Mrs. Carroll.

"My dear Amy!"

"Now, Arthur, you can laugh," said his sister, coming down the stairs, the embroidered ruffles of her white cambric skirt fluttering around her slender ankles in pink silk stockings, and her little feet thrust into French-heeled slippers, one of which had an enormous bow and buckle, the other nothing at all. "You may laugh," said Anna Carroll, in a sweet, challenging voice, "but why is it so unlikely? Eddy Carroll has had everything but shooting happen to him."

"Yes, he has been everything except shot," moaned Mrs. Carroll.

"My dearest dear, don't worry over such a thing as that!"

"But, Arthur," pleaded Mrs. Carroll, "what else is there left for us to worry about?"

Carroll's mouth twitched a little, but he looked and spoke quite gravely. "Well," he said, "I am going now, and I shall find the boy and bring him home safe and sound, and— Amy, darling, have you eaten anything?"

"Oh, Arthur," cried his wife, reproachfully, "do you think I could eat when Eddy did not come home to dinner, and always something dreadful has happened other times when he has not come? Eddy has never stayed away just for mischief, and then come home as good as ever. Something has always happened which has been the reason."

"Well, perhaps he has stayed away for mischief alone, and that is what has happened now instead of the shooting," said Carroll.

"Arthur, if—if he has, you surely will not—"

"Arthur, you will not punish that boy if he does come home again safe and sound?" cried his sister.

Carroll laughed. "Have either of you eaten anything?" he asked.

"Of course not," replied his sister, indignantly.

"How could we, dear?" said his wife. "I had thought I was quite hungry, and when the butcher sent the roast, after all—"

"Perhaps I had better wait and not pay him until he does not send anything," murmured Anna Carroll, as if to herself. "And when the roast did come, I was glad, but, after all, I could not touch it."

"Well, you must both eat to-night to make up for it," said Carroll.

"I had thought you would as soon have it cold for dinner to-night," said Mrs. Carroll, in her soft, complaining voice. "We would not have planned it for our noon lunch, but we were afraid to ask the butcher for chops, too, and as long as there were no eggs for breakfast, we felt the need of something substantial; but, of course, when that darling boy did not come, and we had reason to think he was shot, we could not—" Mrs. Carroll leaned weepingly against her husband, but he put her from him gently.

"Now, Amy, dearest," said he, "I am going to find Eddy and bring him home, and—you say Marie has gone to hunt for him?"

"Yes, she went in one direction, and Ina and Charlotte in others," said Anna Carroll.

"Well," said Carroll, "I will send Marie home at once, and I wish you would see that she prepares an early dinner, and then we can go for a drive afterwards."

"Eddy can go, too," said Mrs. Carroll, quite joyously.

"No, Amy," said Carroll, "he will most certainly not go to drive with us. There are times when you girls must leave the boy to me, and this is one of them." He stopped and kissed his wife's appealing face, and went out. Then the carriage rolled swiftly round the curve of drive.

"He will whip him," said Anna to Mrs. Carroll, who looked at her with a certain defiance.

"Well," said she, "if he does, I suppose it will be for his good. A man, of course, knows how to manage a boy better than a woman, because he has been a boy himself. You know you and I never were boys, Anna."

"I know that, Amy," said Anna, quite seriously, "and I am willing to admit that a man may know better how to deal with a boy than a woman does, but I must confess that when I think of Arthur punishing Eddy for the faults he may have—"

"May have what?" demanded Mrs. Carroll, quite sharply for her.

"May have inherited from Arthur," declared Anna, boldly, with soft eyes of challenge upon her sister-in-law.

"Eddy has no faults worth mentioning," responded Mrs. Carroll, seeming to enlarge with a sort of fluffy fury like an angry bird; "and the idea of your saying he inherits them from his father. You know as well as I do, Anna, what Arthur is."

"I knew Arthur before you ever did," said Anna, apologetically. "Don't get excited, dear."

"I am not excited, but I do wonder at your speaking after such a fashion when we don't know what may have happened to the dear boy. Of course Arthur will not punish him if he is shot or anything."

"Of course not."

"And if he is not shot, and Arthur should punish him, of course it will be all right."

"Yes, I suppose it will, Amy," said Anna Carroll.

"Arthur feels so sure that nothing has happened to him that I begin to think so myself," said Mrs. Carroll, beginning to ascend the stairs with a languid grace.

"Yes, he has encouraged me," assented Anna. "I suppose we had better dress now."

"Yes, if we are going to drive directly after dinner. I'll put on my cream foulard, it is so warm. I suppose we have, perhaps, worried a little more than was necessary."

"I dare say," said Anna, trailing her white frills and laces before her sister the length of the upper hall. "I think I'll wear my blue embroidered linen."

"You said the bill for that came yesterday?"

"No, six weeks ago; certainly six weeks ago. You know I had it made very early. Oh yes, the second or third bill did come yesterday. I have had so many, I get mixed over those bills."

"Well, it is a right pretty gown, and I would wear it if I were you," said Mrs. Carroll.



Chapter VIII

Shortly after Captain Carroll started upon his search for his missing son, Randolph Anderson, sitting peacefully in his back office, by the riverward window, was rudely interrupted. He was mounting some new specimens. Before him the great tiger cat lay blissfully on his red cushion. He was not asleep, but was purring loudly in what resembled a human day-dream. His claws luxuriously pricked through the velvet of his paws, which were extended in such a way that he might have served as a model for a bas-relief of a cat running a race. Now and then the tip of his tail curled and uncurled with an indescribable effect of sensuousness. The green things in the window-box had grown luxuriantly, and now and then trailing vines tossed up past the window in the infrequent puffs of wind. The afternoon was very warm. The temperature had risen rapidly since noon. Down below the wide window ran the river, unseen except for a subtle, scarcely perceptible glow of the brilliant sunlight upon the water. It was a rather muddy stream, but at certain times it caught the sunlight and tossed it back as from the facets of brown jewels.

The murmur of the river was plainly audible in the room. It was very loud, for the stream's current was still high with the spring rains. The rustle of the trees which grew on the river-bank was also discernible, and might have been the rustle of the garments of nymphs tossed about their supple limbs by the warm breeze. In fact, a like fancy occurred to Anderson as he sat there mounting his butterflies.

"I don't wonder those old Greeks had their tales about nymphs closeted in trees," he thought, for the rustle of the green boughs had suggested the rustle of women's draperies.

Then he remembered how Charlotte Carroll's skirts had rustled as she went out of the store that last afternoon when he had spoken to her. There was a soft crispness of ruffling lawns and laces, a most delicate sound, a maidenly sound which had not been unlike the sound of the young leaves of the willows overfolding and interlacing with one another when the soft breeze swelled high. Now and then all the afternoon came a slow, soft wave of warm wind out of the west, and all sounds deepened before it, even the purring song of the cat seemed to increase, and possibly did, from the unconscious assertion of his own voice in the peaceful and somnolent chorus of nature. It was only spring as yet, but the effect was as of a long summer afternoon. Anderson, who was always keenly sensitive to all phases of nature and all atmospheric conditions, was affected by it. He realized himself sunken in drowsy, unspeculative contentment. Even the strange, emotional unrest and effervescence, which had been more or less over him since he had seen Charlotte Carroll, was in abeyance. After all, he was not a passionate man, and he was not very young. The young girl seemed to become merely a part of the gracious harmony which was lulling his soul and his senses to content and peace. He was conscious of wondering what a man could want more than he had, as if he had suspected himself of guilt in that direction.

Then, suddenly, pell-mell into the office, starling the great cat to that extent that he sprang from his red cushion on the window-ledge, and slunk, flattening his long body against the floor, under the table, came the boy Eddy Carroll. The boy stood staring at him rather shamefacedly, though every muscle in his small body seemed on a twitch with the restrained impulse of flight.

"Well," said Anderson, finally, "what's the trouble, sir?"

Then the boy found his tongue. He came close to the man.

"Say," he said, in a hoarse whisper, "jest let a feller stay in here a minute, will you?"

Anderson nodded readily. He understood, or thought he did. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the teasing boys were at work again. He felt a little astonished at this headlong flight to cover of the boy who had so manfully stood at bay a few hours before. However, he was a little fellow, and there had been a good many of his opponents. He felt a pleasant thrill of fatherliness and protection. He looked kindly into the little, pink-flushed face. "Very well, my son," said he. "Stay as long as you like. Take a seat." The boy sat down. His legs were too short for his feet to touch the floor, so he swung them. He gazed ingratiatingly at Anderson, and now and then cast an apprehensive glance towards the door of the office. Anderson continued mounting his butterflies, and paid no attention to him, and the boy seemed to respect his silence. Presently the great cat emerged quite boldly from his refuge under the table, crouched, calculated the distance, and leaped softly back to his red cushion. The boy hitched his chair nearer, and began stroking the cat gently and lovingly with his little boy-hand, hardened with climbing and playing. The cat stretched himself luxuriously, pricked his claws in and out, shut his eyes, and purred again quite loudly. Again the little room sang with the song of the river, the wind in the trees, and the cat's somnolent note. The afternoon light rippled full of green reflections through the room. The boy's small head appeared in it like a flower. He smiled tenderly at the cat. Anderson, glancing at him over his butterflies, thought what an angelic aspect he had. He looked a darling of a boy.

The boy, stroking the cat, met the man's kindly approving eyes, and he smiled a smile of utter confidence and trust, which conveyed delicious flattery. Then suddenly the hand stroking the cat desisted and made a dive into a small jacket-pocket and emerged with a treasure. It was a great butterfly, much dilapidated as to its gorgeous wings, but the boy looked gloatingly from it to the man.

"I got it for you," he whispered, with another glance at the office door. Anderson recognized, with the dismay of a collector, a fine specimen, which he had sought in vain, made utterly worthless by ruthless handling, but he controlled himself. "Thank you," he said, and took the poor, despoiled beauty and laid it carefully on the table.

"It got broke a little, somehow," remarked the boy; "it's wings are awful brittle."

"Yes, they are," assented Anderson.

"I had to chase it quite a spell," said the boy, with an evident desire not to have his efforts underestimated.

"Yes, I don't doubt it," replied Anderson, with gratitude well simulated.

"It seemed rather a pity to kill such a pretty butterfly as that," remarked the boy, unexpectedly, "but I thought you'd like it."

"Yes, I like to have a nice collection of butterflies," replied Anderson, with a faint inflection of apology. In reality, the butterflies' side of it had failed to occur to him before, and he felt that an appeal to science in such a case was rather feeble. Then the boy helped him out.

"Well," said he, "I do suppose that a butterfly don't live very long, anyhow; he has to die pretty soon, and it's better for human beings to have him stuck on a pin and put where they can see how handsome he is, rather than have him stay out in the fields, where the rain would soak him into the ground, and that would be the end of him. I suppose it is better to save anything that's pretty, somehow, even if the thing don't like it himself."

"Perhaps you are right," replied Anderson, regarding the boy with some wonder.

"Maybe he didn't mind dying 'cause I caught him any more than just dying himself," said Eddy.

"Maybe not."

"Anyhow, he's dead," said the boy.

He watched Anderson carefully as he manipulated the insect.

"I'm sorry his wing got broken," he said. "I wonder why God makes butterflies' wings so awful brittle that they can't be caught without spoiling 'em. The other wing ain't hurt much, anyhow."

A sudden thought struck Anderson. "Why, when did you get this butterfly?" he asked.

The boy flushed vividly. He gave a sorrowful, obstinate glance at the man, as much as to say, "I am sad that you should force me into such a course, but I must be firm." Then he looked away, staring out of the window at the tree-tops tossing against the brilliant blue of the sky, and made no reply.

Anderson made a swift calculation. He glanced at a clock on the wall. "Where did you get this butterfly?" he inquired, harmlessly, and the boy fell into the net.

"In that field just beyond the oak grove on the road to New Sanderson," he replied, with entire innocence.

Anderson surveyed him sharply.

"When is afternoon school out?" asked Anderson.

"At four o'clock," replied the boy, with such unsuspicion that the man's conscience smote him. It was too easy.

"Well," said Anderson, slowly. He did not look at the boy, but went on straightening the mangled wing of the butterfly which he had offered on his shrine. "Well," he said, "how did you get time to go to that field and catch this butterfly? You say it took a long time, and that field is a good twenty minutes' run from here, and it is a quarter of five now." The boy kicked his feet against the rounds of his chair and made no reply. His forehead was scowling, his mouth set. "How?" repeated Anderson.

Then the boy turned on the man. He slid out of his chair; he spoke loudly. He forgot to glance at the door. "Ain't you smart?" he cried, with scorn, and still with an air of slighted affection which appealed. "Ain't you smart to catch a feller that way? You're mean, if you are a man, after I've got you that big butterfly, too, to turn on a feller that way."

Anderson actually felt ashamed of himself. "Now, see here, my boy," he said, "I'm grateful to you so far as that goes."

"I didn't run away from school," declared Eddy Carroll, looking straight at Anderson, who fairly gasped.

He had seen people lie before, but somehow this was actually dazzling. He was conscious of fairly blinking before the direct gaze of innocence of this lying little boy. And then his elderly and reliable clerk appeared in the office door, glanced at Eddy, whom he did not know, and informed Anderson, in a slightly impressed tone, that Captain Carroll was in the store and would like to speak to him. Anderson glanced again at his young visitor, who had got, in a second, a look of pale consternation. He went out into the store at once, and was greeted by Carroll with the inquiry as to whether or not he had seen his son.

"My boy has not been seen since he started for school this morning," said Carroll. "I came here because another little boy, one of my son's small school-fellows, who has succeeded in treading the paths of virtue and obedience, volunteered the information, without the slightest imputation of any guilty conspiracy on your part, that you had been seen leading my son home to your residence to dinner," said Carroll.

"Your son made friends with me on his way from school this noon," said Anderson, simply, "and upon his evident desire to dine with me I invited him, being assured by him that his so doing would not occasion the slightest uneasiness at home as to his whereabouts."

Anderson was indignant at something in the other man's tone, and was careful not to introduce in his tone the slightest inflection of apology.

He made the statement, and was about to add that the boy was at that moment in his office, when Carroll interrupted. "I regret to say that my son has not the slightest idea of what is meant by telling the truth. He never had," he stated, smilingly, "especially when his own desires lead him to falsehood. In those cases he lies to himself so successfully that he tells in effect the truth to other people. He, in that sense, told the truth to you, but the truth was not as he stated, for the ladies have been in a really pitiable state of anxiety."

"He is in my office now," said Anderson, coldly, pointing to the door and beginning to move towards it.

"I suspected the boy was in there," said Carroll, and his tones changed, as did his face. All the urbanity and the smile vanished. He followed Anderson with a nervous stride. Both men entered the little office, but the boy was gone. Both stood gazing about the little space. It was absolutely impossible for anybody to be concealed there. There was no available hiding-place except under the table, and the cat occupied that, and his eyes shone out of the gloom like green jewels.

"I don't see him," said Carroll.

Then Anderson turned upon him.

"Sir," he said, with a kind of slow heat, "I am at a loss as to what to attribute your tone and manner. If you doubt—"

"Not at all, my dear sir," replied Carroll, with a wave of the hand. "But I am told that my son is in here, and when, on entering, I do not see him, I am naturally somewhat surprised."

"Your son was certainly in this room when I left it a moment ago, and that is all I know about it," said Anderson. "And I will add that your son's visit was entirely unsolicited—"

"My dear sir," interrupted Carroll again, "I assure you that I do not for a moment conceive the possibility of anything else. But the fact remains that I am told he is here—"

"He was here," said Anderson, looking about with an impatient and bewildered scowl.

"He could not have gone out through the store while we were there," said Carroll, in a puzzled tone.

"I do not see how he could have done so unobserved, certainly."

"The window," said Carroll, taking a step towards it.

"Thirty feet from the ground; sheer wall and rocks below. He could not have gone out there without wings."

"He has no wings, and I very much fear he never will have any at this rate," said Carroll, moving out. "Well, Mr. Anderson, I regret that my son should have annoyed you."

"He has not annoyed me in the least," Anderson replied, shortly. "I only regret that his peculiar method of telling the truth should have led me unwittingly to occasion your wife and daughters so much anxiety, and I trust that you will soon trace him."

"Oh yes, he will turn up all right," said Carroll, easily. "If he was in your office a moment ago, he cannot be far off."

There was the faintest suggestion of emphasis upon the "if."

Anderson spoke to the elderly clerk, who had been leaning against the shelves ranged with packages of cereal, surmounted by a flaming row of picture advertisements, regarding them and listening with a curious abstraction, which almost gave the impression of stupidity. This man had lived boy and man in one groove of the grocer business, until he needed prodding to shift him momentarily into any other.

In reality he managed most of the details of the selling. He heard what the two men said, and at the same time was considering that he was to send the wagon round the first thing in the morning with pease to the postmaster's, and a new barrel of sugar to the Amidons, and he was calculating the price of sugar at the slight recent rise.

"Mr. Price," said Anderson to him, "may I ask that you will tell this gentleman if a little boy went into my office a short time ago?"

The clerk looked blankly at Anderson, who patiently repeated his question.

"A little boy," repeated the clerk.

"Yes," said Anderson.

Price gazed reflectively and in something of a troubled fashion at Anderson, then at Carroll. His mind was in the throes of displacing a barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy. Then his face brightened. He spoke quickly and decidedly.

"Yes," said he, "just before this gentleman came in, a little boy, running, yes."

"You did not see him come out while we were talking?" asked Anderson.

"No, oh no."

Carroll asked no further and left, with a good-day to Anderson, who scarcely returned it. He jumped into his carriage, and the swift tap of the horse's feet died away on the macadam.

"Sugar ought to bring about two cents on a pound more," said the clerk to Anderson, returning to the office, and then he stopped short as Anderson started staring at an enormous advertisement picture which was stationed, partly for business reasons, partly for ornament, in a corner near the office door. It was a figure of a gayly dressed damsel, nearly life-size, and was supposed by its blooming appearance to settle finally the merit of a new health food. The other clerk, who was a young fellow, hardly more than a boy, had placed it there. He had reached the first fever-stage of admiration of the other sex, and this gaudy beauty had resembled in his eyes a fair damsel of Banbridge whom he secretly adored.

Therefore he had ensconced it carefully in the corner near the office door, and often glanced at it with reverent and sheepish eyes of delight. Anderson never paid any attention to the thing, but now for some reason he glanced at it in passing, and to his astonishment it moved. He made one stride towards it, and thrust it aside, and behind it stood the boy, with a face of impudent innocence.

Anderson stood looking at him for a second. The boy's eyes did not fall, but his expression changed.

"So you ran away from your father and hid from him?" Anderson observed, with a subtle emphasis of scorn. "So you are afraid?"