"I saw little of him after that. I was busy establishing new barrio-schools, which were to give me excuses for long horseback rides of inspection. I felt his presence down there in that vague way by which you are aware of a person behind your back without turning around. Rumors of his doings reached me. He was having a horrible time. On the night of his arrival he had been invited to dinner by the Presidente, a kind old primitive soul, but when he found that he was expected to sit at the table with the family, he had stamped off, indignant, saying that he didn't eat with no niggers. As I've said before, the town was hostile, and this attitude did not help matters much. He couldn't get the school moneys out of the Tesorero—an unmitigated rascal—but that did not make much difference, for he had no pupils anyhow. He couldn't speak a word of Spanish; no one in the town, of course, knew any English—he must have been horribly lonely. He began to wear camisas, like the natives. That's always a bad sign. It shows that the man has discovered that there is no one to care how he dresses—that is, that there is no longer any public opinion. It indicates something subtly worse—that the man has ceased looking at himself, that the I has ceased criticising, judging, stiffening up the me,—in other words, that there is no longer any conscience. That white suit, I tell you, is a wonderful moral force; the white suit, put on fresh every morning, heavily starched, buttoned up to the chin, is like an armor, ironcladding you against the germ of decay buzzing about you, ceaselessly vigilant for the little vulnerable spot. Miller wore camisas, and then he began to go without shoes. I saw that myself. I was riding through his pueblo on my way to Dent's, and I passed his school. I looked into the open door as my head bobbed by at the height of the stilt-raised floor. He was in his camisa and barefooted; his long neck stretched out of the collarless garment with a mournful, stork-like expression. Squatting on the floor were three trouserless, dirt-incrusted boys; he was pointing at a chart standing before their eyes, and all together they were shouting some word that exploded away down in their throats in tremendous effort and never seemed to reach their lips. I called out and waved my hand as I went by, and when I looked back, a hundred yards farther, I saw that he had come out upon the bamboo platform outside of the door, gaping after me with his chin thrown forward in that mournful, stork-like way—I should have gone back.

"With him, I must say, the camisa did not mean all that I have suggested, not the sort of degradation of which it is the symbol in other men. The most extravagant imagination could not have linked him with anything that smacked of romance, romance however sordid. His vices, I had sized it, would come rather from an excess of calculation than from a lack of it. No, that camisa was just a sign of his meanness, his prodigious meanness. And of that I was soon given an extraordinary example.

"I had with me a young fellow named Ledesma, whom I was training to be assistant maestro. He was very bright, thirsty to learn, and extremely curious of us white men. I don't believe that the actions of one of them, for fifty miles around, ever escaped him, and every day he came to me with some talk, some rumor, some gossip about my fellow-exiles which he would relate to me with those strange interrogative inflections that he had brought from his native dialect into English—as if perpetually he were seeking explanation, confirmation. One morning he said to me: 'The maestro Miller, he does not eat.'

"'No?' I answered, absent-mindedly.

"'No, he never eats,' he reiterated authoritatively, although that peculiar Visayan inflection of which I have spoken gave him the air of asking a question.

"'Oh, I suppose he does,' I said, carelessly.

"'He does not eat,' he repeated. 'Every one in Binalbagan say so. Since he there, he has not bought anything at the store.'

"'His muchachos bring him chicken,' I suggested.

"No, senor; he very funny; he has no muchachos; not one muchacho has he.'

"'Well, he probably has canned provisions sent him.'

"'No, senor; the cargadores they say that never never have they carried anything for him. He does not eat.'

"'Very well,' I concluded, somewhat amused; 'he does not eat.'

"The boy was silent for a minute, then, 'Senor Maestro,' he asked with suspicious ingenuousness 'can Americans live without eating?'

"So that I was not able to drop the subject as easily as I wished. And coming to a forced consideration of it, I found that my anxiety to do so was not very beautiful after all. A picture came to me—that of Miller on his bamboo platform before his door, gazing mournfully after me, his chin thrown forward. It did not leave me the day long, and at sundown I saddled up and trotted off toward Binalbagan.

"I didn't reach the pueblo that night, however. Only a mile from it I plunged out of the moonlight into the pitch darkness of a hollow lane cutting through Don Jaime's hacienda. Banana palms were growing thick to right and left; the way was narrow and deep—it was a fine place for cutthroats, but that avocation had lost much of its romantic charm from the fact that, not three weeks before, an actual cutthroating had taken place, a Chinese merchant having been boloed by tusilanes. Well, I was trotting through, my right hand somewhat close to my holster, when from the right, close, there came a soft, reiterated chopping noise. I pulled up my pony. The sound kept up—a discreet, persistent chopping; then I saw, up above, the moonlit top of a palm shuddering, though all about it the others remained motionless, petrified as if of solid silver. It was a very simple thing after all: some one in there was cutting down a palm to get bananas, an occupation very common in the Philippines, and very pacific, in spite of the ominous air given to it by the gigantic bolo used. However, something prompted me to draw the midnight harvester out.

"'Heh, ladron, what are you doing there?' I shouted in dialect.

"'There was a most sudden silence. The chopping ceased, the palm stopped vibrating. A vague form bounded down the lane, right up against my horse's nose, rolled over, straightened up again, and vanished into the darkness ahead. Unconsciously I spurred on after it. For a hundred yards I galloped with nothing in sight. Then I caught a rapid view of the thing as it burst through a shaft of moonlight piercing the glade, and it showed as a man, a grotesque figure of a man in loose white pantaloons. He was frightened, horribly frightened, all hunched up with the frenzy to escape. An indistinct bundle was on his right shoulder. Like a curtain the dark snapped shut behind him again, but I urged on with a wild hallo, my blood all a-tingle with the exultation of the chase. I gained—he must have been a lamentable runner, for my poor little pony was staggering under my tumultuous weight. I could hear him pant and sob a few yards in advance; then he came into sight, a dim, loping whiteness ahead. Suddenly the bundle left his shoulder; something rolled along the ground under my horse's hoofs—and I was standing on my head in a soft, oozy place. I was mad, furiously mad. I picked myself up, went back a few yards, and taking my pony by the nose picked him up. A touch of his throbbing flanks, however, warned me as I was putting my foot into the stirrup. I left him there and thundered on foot down the lane. I have said I was mad. 'Yip-yip-yah-ah, yip-yip-yah-ah!' I yelled as I dashed on—a yell I had heard among California cattlemen. It must have paralyzed that flying personage, for I gained upon him shockingly. I could hear him pant, a queer, patient panting, a sigh rather, a gentle, lamenting sighing, and the white camisa flapped ghostily in the darkness. Suddenly he burst out of obscurity, past the plantation, into the glaring moonlight. And I—I stopped short, went down on my hands and knees, and crouched back into the shadow. For the man running was Miller; Miller, wild, sobbing, disheveled, his shoulders drawn up to his ears in terrible weariness, his whole body taut with fear, and scudding, scudding away, low along the ground, his chin forward, mournful as a stork. Soon he was across the luminous space, and then he disappeared into the darkness on the other side, flopped head first into it as if hiding his face in a pillow.

"I returned slowly to my horse. He was standing where I had left him, his four legs far apart in a wide base. Between them was the thing cast off by Miller which had thrown us. I examined it by the light of a box of matches. It was a bunch of bananas, one of those gigantic clusters which can be cut from the palms. I got on my horse and rode back home.

"I didn't go to see him any more. A man who will steal bananas in a country where they can be bought a dozen for one cent is too mean to be worth visiting. I had another reason, too. It had dawned on me that Miller probably did not care to see any of us, that he had come down to a mode of life which would not leave him appreciative of confrontations with past standards. It was almost charity to leave him to himself.

"So I left him to himself, and he lived on in his pestilential little hole, alone—lived a life more squalid every day. It wasn't at all a healthy life, you can understand, no healthier physically than morally. After a while I heard that he was looking bad, yellow as a lemon, and the dengue cracking at his bones. I began to think of going to him after all, of jerking him out of his rut by force, if necessary, making him respect the traditions of his race. But just then came that Nichols affair, and flaring, his other bad side—his abject cowardice—reappeared to me. You remember the Nichols thing—boloed in the dark between my town and Himamaylan. His muchacho had jumped into the ditch. Afterward he got out and ran back the whole way, fifteen miles, to my place. I started down there. My idea was to pick up Miller as I passed, then Dent a little further down, find the body, and perhaps indications for White of the constabulary, to whom I had sent a messenger and who could not reach the place till morning. Well, Miller refused to go. He had caught hold of some rumor of the happening; he was barricaded in his hut and was sitting on his bed, a big Colt's revolver across his knees. He would not go, he said it plainly. 'No, seh; Ah cain't take chances; Ah cain't affawd it.' He said this without much fire, almost tranquilly, exactly as he had, you remember, at the time of our shipwreck. It was not so amusing now, however. Here, on land, amid this swarming, mysterious hostility, at this crisis, it seemed a shocking betrayal of the solidarity that bound all us white men. A red rage took possession of me. I stood there above him and poured out vituperation for five good minutes. I found the most extraordinary epithets; I lowered my voice and pierced him with venomous thrusts. He took it all. He remained seated on his bed, his revolver across his knees, looking straight at some spot on the floor; whenever I'd become particularly effective he'd merely look harder at the spot, as if for him it contained something of higher significance—a command, a rule, a precept—I don't know what, and then he'd say, 'No, Ah cain't; Ah cain't affawd it.'

"I burst out of there, a-roar like a bombshell. I rode down to Dent; we rode down to the place and did—what there was to be done. Miller I never wanted to see again.

"But I did. Some three weeks later a carrier came to me with a note—a penciled scrawl upon a torn piece of paper. It read:

"'I think I am dying. Can you come see me? 'MILLER.'

"I went down right away. He was dead. He had died there, alone, in his filthy little hut, in that God-forsaken pueblo, ten miles from the nearest white man, ten thousand miles from his home.

"I'll always remember our coming in. It was night. It had been raining for thirty-six hours, and as we stepped into the unlighted hut, my muchacho and I, right away the floor grew sticky and slimy with the mud on our feet, and as we groped about blindly, we seemed ankle-deep in something greasy and abominable like gore. After a while the boy got a torch outside, and as he flared it I caught sight of Miller on his cot, backed up into one corner. He was sitting upright, staring straight ahead and a little down, as if in careful consideration. As I stepped toward him the pliable bamboo floor undulated; the movement was carried to him and he began to nod, very gently and gravely. He seemed to be saying: 'No, Ah cain't affawd it.' It was atrocious. Finally I was by his side and he was again motionless, staring thoughtfully. Then I saw he was considering. In his hands, which lay twined on his knees, were a lot of little metallic oblongs. I disengaged them. The muchacho drew nearer, and with the torch over my shoulder I examined them. They were photographs, cheap tintypes. The first was of a woman, a poor being, sagging with overwork, a lamentable baby in her arms. The other pictures were of children—six of them, boys and girls, of all ages from twelve to three, and under each, in painful chirography, a name was written—Lee Miller, Amy Miller, Geraldine Miller, and so on.

"You don't understand, do you? For a moment I didn't. I stared stupidly at those tintypes, shuffled and reshuffled them; the torch roared in my ear. Then, suddenly, understanding came to me, sharp as a pang. He had a wife and seven children.

"A simple fact, wasn't it, a commonplace one, almost vulgar, you might say. And yet what a change of view produced by it, what a dislocation of judgment! I was like a man riding through a strange country, in a storm, at night. It is dark, he cannot see, he has never seen the country, yet as he rides on he begins to picture to himself the surroundings, his imagination builds for him a landscape—a mountain there, a river here, wind-streaming trees over there—and right away it exists, it is, it has solidity, mass, life. Then suddenly comes a flash of lightning, a second of light, and he is astounded, absolutely astounded to see the real landscape different from that indestructible thing that his mind had built. Thus it was with me. I had judged, oh, I had judged him thoroughly, sized him up to a certainty, and bang, came the flare of this new fact, this extremely commonplace fact, and I was all off. I must begin to judge again, only it would never do that man any good.

"A hundred memories came back to me, glared at me in the illumination of that new fact. I remember the camisa, the bare feet. I saw him running down the lane with his bunch of stolen bananas. I recalled that absurd scene on the waters; I heard him say: 'No, seh; Ah cain't affawd to take chances; Ah cain't affawd it.'

"Of course he couldn't afford it. Think—a wife and seven children!

"That night I went through his papers, putting things in order, and from every leaf, every scrap, came corroboration of the new fact. He was one of those pitiful pedagogues of the rural South, shiftless, half-educated, inefficient. He had never been able to earn much, and his family had always gently starved. Then had come the chance—the golden chance—the Philippines and a thousand a year. He had taken the bait, had come ten thousand miles to the spot of his maximum value. Only, things had not gone quite right. Thanks to the beautiful red-tape of the department, three months had gone before he had received his first month's pay. Then it had come in Mex., and when he had succeeded in changing it into gold it had dwindled to sixty dollars. Of course, he had sent it all back, for even then it would take it six more weeks to reach its destination, and sixty dollars is hardly too much to tide over five months for a family of eight. These five months had to be caught up in some way, so every month his salary, depreciated ten per cent by the change, had gone across the waters. He wore camisas and no shoes, he stole bananas. And his value, shoeless, camisa-clothed, was sixty dollars a month. He was just so much capital. He had to be careful of that capital.

"'Ah cain't affawd to take chances; Ah cain't affawd it.' Of course he couldn't.

"And so he had fought on blindly, stubbornly, and, at last, with that pitiful faculty we have, all of us, of defeating our own plans, he had killed himself, he had killed the capital, the golden goose.

"Yes, I found confirmation, but, after all, I did not need it. I had learned it all; understanding had come to me, swift, sharp, vital as a pang, when in the roaring light of the torch I had looked upon the pale little tintypes, the tintypes of Lee and Amy and Jackson and Geraldine."



THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN

BY

JACK LONDON

Copyright, 1902, by the Macmillan Company Reprinted from CHILDREN OF THE FROST by permission

AT THE Barracks a man was being tried for his life. He was an old man, a native from the Whitefish River, which empties into the Yukon below Lake Le Barge. All Dawson was wrought up over the affair, and likewise the Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and down. It has been the custom of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give the law to conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the case of Imber the law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the mathematical nature of things, equity did not reside in the punishment to be accorded him. The punishment was a foregone conclusion, there could be no doubt of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but one life, while the tale against him was one of scores.

In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings attributed to him did not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a pipe by the trail-side or lounging around the stove, men made rough estimates of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had been whites, all of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been slain singly, in pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton had been these killings, that they had long been a mystery to the mounted police, even in the time of the captains, and later, when the creeks realized, and a governor came from the Dominion to make the land pay for its prosperity.

But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and writhing under its ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the bank from the river trail and stood blinking on the main street. Men who had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak and tottery, and that he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat there a full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of white men that flooded past. Many a head jerked curiously to the side to meet his stare, and more than one remark was dropped anent the old Siwash with so strange a look upon his face. No end of men remembered afterward that they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and forever afterward prided themselves upon their swift discernment of the unusual.

But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of the occasion. Little Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams and a pocketful of cash; but with the cash the dreams vanished, and to earn his passage back to the States he had accepted a clerical position with the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across the street from the office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of cabin-logs upon which Imber sat. Dickensen looked out of the window at him before he went to lunch; and when he came back from lunch he looked out of the window, and the old Siwash was still there.

Dickensen continued to look out of the window, and he, too, forever afterward prided himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen the genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his posture, did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen remembered the man who once sat upright on a sled in the main street where men passed to and fro. They thought the man was resting, but later, when they touched him, they found him stiff and cold, frozen to death in the midst of the busy street. To undouble him, that he might fit into a coffin, they had been forced to lug him to a fire and thaw him out a bit. Dickensen shivered at the recollection.

Later on, Dickensen went out on the sidewalk to smoke a cigar and cool off; and a little later Emily Travis happened along. Emily Travis was dainty and delicate and rare, and whether in London or Klondike, she gowned herself as befitted the daughter of a millionaire mining engineer. Little Dickensen deposited his cigar on an outside window ledge where he could find it again, and lifted his hat.

They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past Dickensen's shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned about to see, and was startled, too. Imber had crossed the street and was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking shadow, his gaze riveted upon the girl.

"What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.

Imber grunted and stalked up to Emily Travis. He looked her over, keenly and carefully, every square inch of her. Especially did he appear interested in her silky brown hair, and in the color of her cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of a man who studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded. In the course of his circuit the pink shell of her ear came between his eye and the westering sun, and he stopped to contemplate its rosy transparency. Then he returned to her face and looked long and intently into her blue eyes. He grunted and laid a hand on her arm midway between the shoulder and elbow. With his other hand he lifted her forearm and doubled it back. Disgust and wonder showed in his face, and he dropped her arm with a contemptuous grunt. Then he muttered a few guttural syllables, turned his back upon her, and addressed himself to Dickensen.

Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed. Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their heads. He was about to go away, when she called out:

"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"

Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's sombrero on his head. He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing knowledge of the interior dialects.

"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no very much. Him want to look see chief white man."

"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.

Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave and puzzled.

"I t'ink um want Cap'n Alexander," he explained. "Him say um kill white man, white woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people. Him want to die."

"'Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.

"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.

Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a rotary motion thereto.

"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still demanded the chief man of the white men.

A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the group and heard Imber's wish repeated. He was a stalwart young fellow, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, legs cleanly built and stretched wide apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above him by half a head. His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and tradition. His splendid masculinity was emphasized by his excessive boyishness,—he was a mere lad,—and his smooth cheek promised a blush as willingly as the cheek of a maid.

Imber was drawn to him at once. The fire leaped into his eyes at sight of a sabre slash that scarred his cheek. He ran a withered hand down the young fellow's leg and caressed the swelling thew. He smote the broad chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the thick muscle-pads that covered the shoulders like a cuirass. The group had been added to by curious passers-by—husky miners, mountaineers, and frontiersmen, sons of the long-legged and broad-shouldered generations. Imber glanced from one to another, then he spoke aloud in the Whitefish tongue.

"What did he say?" asked Dickensen.

"Him say um all the same one man, dat p'liceman," Jimmy interpreted.

Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry for having asked the question.

The policeman was sorry for him and stepped into the breach. "I fancy there may be something in his story. I'll take him up to the captain for examination. Tell him to come along with me, Jimmy."

Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked satisfied.

"But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took hold of my arm."

So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the answer.

"Him say you no afraid," said Jimmy.

Emily Travis looked pleased.

"Him say you no skookum, no strong, all the same very soft like little baby. Him break you, in um two hands, to little pieces. Him t'ink much funny, very strange, how you can be mother of men so big, so strong, like dat p'liceman."

Emily Travers kept her eyes up and unfaltering, but her cheeks were sprayed with scarlet. Little Dickensen blushed and was quite embarrassed. The policeman's face blazed with his boy's blood.

"Come along, you," he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the crowd and forcing a way.

Thus it was that Imber found his way to the Barracks, where he made full and voluntary confession, and from the precincts of which he never emerged.

* * * * *

Imber looked very tired. The fatigue of hopelessness and age was in his face. His shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were lack-luster. His mop of hair should have been white, but sun—and weather-beat had burned and bitten it so that it hung limp and lifeless and colorless. He took no interest in what went on around him. The court-room was jammed with the men of the creeks and trails, and there was an ominous note in the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched voices, which came to his ears like the growl of the sea from deep caverns.

He sat close by a window, and his apathetic eyes rested now and again on the dreary scene without. The sky was overcast, and a gray drizzle was falling. It was flood-time on the Yukon. The ice was gone, and the river was up in the town. Back and forth on the main street, in canoes and poling-boats, passed the people that never rested. Often he saw these boats turn aside from the street and enter the flooded square that marked the Barracks' parade-ground. Sometimes they disappeared beneath him, and he heard them jar against the house-logs and their occupants scramble in through the window. After that came the slush of water against men's legs as they waded across the lower room and mounted the stairs. Then they appeared in the doorway, with doffed hats and dripping sea-boots, and added themselves to the waiting crowd.

And while they centered their looks on him, and in grim anticipation enjoyed the penalty he was to pay, Imber looked at them, and mused on their ways, and on their Law that never slept, but went on unceasing, in good times and bad, in flood and famine, through trouble and terror and death, and which would go on unceasing, it seemed to him, to the end of time.

A man rapped sharply on a table, and the conversation droned away into silence. Imber looked at the man. He seemed one in authority, yet Imber divined the square-browed man who sat by a desk farther back to be the one chief over them all and over the man who had rapped. Another man by the same table uprose and began to read aloud from many fine sheets of paper. At the top of each sheet he cleared his throat, at the bottom moistened his fingers. Imber did not understand his speech, but the others did, and he knew that it made them angry. Sometimes it made them very angry, and once a man cursed him, in single syllables, stinging and tense, till a man at the table rapped him to silence.

For an interminable period the man read. His monotonous, sing-song utterance lured Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the man ceased. A voice spoke to him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he roused up, without surprise, to look upon the face of his sister's son, a young man who had wandered away years agone to make his dwelling with the whites.

"Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.

"Nay," Imber answered. "Thou art Howkan who went away. Thy mother be dead."

"She was an old woman," said Howkan.

But Imber did not hear, and Howkan, with hand upon his shoulder, roused him again.

"I shall speak to thee what the man has spoken, which is the tale of the troubles thou hast done and which thou hast told, O fool, to the Captain Alexander. And thou shalt understand and say if it be true talk or talk not true. It is so commanded."

Howkan had fallen among the mission folk and been taught by them to read and write. In his hands he held the many fine sheets from which the man had read aloud and which had been taken down by a clerk when Imber first made confession, through the mouth of Jimmy, to Captain Alexander. Howkan began to read. Imber listened for a space, when a wonderment rose up in his face and he broke in abruptly.

"That be my talk, Howkan. Yet from thy lips it comes when thy ears have not heard."

Howkan smirked with self-appreciation. His hair was parted in the middle. "Nay, from the paper it comes, O Imber. Never have my ears heard. From the paper it comes, through my eyes, into my head, and out of my mouth to thee. Thus it comes."

"Thus it comes? It be there in the paper?" Imber's voice sank in whisperful awe as he crackled the sheets 'twixt thumb and finger and stared at the charactery scrawled thereon. "It be a great medicine, Howkan, and thou art a worker of wonders."

"It be nothing, it be nothing," the young man responded carelessly and pridefully. He read at hazard from the document: "In that year, before the break of the ice, came an old man, and a boy who was lame of one foot. These also did I kill, and the old man made much noise——"

"It be true," Imber interrupted breathlessly, "He made much noise and would not die for a long time. But how dost thou know, Howkan? The chief man of the white men told thee, mayhap? No one beheld me, and him alone have I told."

Howkan shook his head with impatience. "Have I not told thee it be there in the paper, O fool?"

Imber stared hard at the ink-scrawled surface. "As the hunter looks upon the snow and says, Here but yesterday there passed a rabbit; and here by the willow scrub it stood and listened, and heard, and was afraid; and here it turned upon its trail; and here it went with great swiftness, leaping wide; and here, with greater swiftness and wider leapings, came a lynx; and here, where the claws cut deep into the snow, the lynx made a very great leap; and here it struck, with the rabbit under and rolling belly up; and here leads off the trail of the lynx alone, and there is no more rabbit,—as the hunter looks upon the markings of the snow and says thus and so and here, dost thou, too, look upon the paper and say thus and so and here be the things old Imber hath done?"

"Even so," said Howkan. "And now do thou listen, and keep thy woman's tongue between thy teeth till thou art called upon for speech."

Thereafter, and for a long time, Howkan read to him the confession, and Imber remained musing and silent. At the end, he said:

"It be my talk, and true talk, but I am grown old, Howkan, and forgotten things come back to me which were well for the head man there to know. First, there was the man who came over the Ice Mountains, with cunning traps made of iron, who sought the beaver of the Whitefish. Him I slew. And there were three men seeking gold on the Whitefish long ago. Them also I slew, and left them to the wolverines. And at the Five Fingers there was a man with a raft and much meat."

At the moments when Imber paused to remember, Howkan translated and a clerk reduced to writing. The court-room listened stolidly to each unadorned little tragedy, till Imber told of a red-haired man whose eyes were crossed and whom he had killed with a remarkably long shot.

"Hell," said a man in the forefront of the onlookers. He said it soulfully and sorrowfully. He was red-haired. "Hell," he repeated. "That was my brother Bill." And at regular intervals throughout the session, his solemn "Hell" was heard in the court-room; nor did his comrades check him, nor did the man at the table rap him to order.

Imber's head drooped once more, and his eyes went dull, as though a film rose up and covered them from the world. And he dreamed as only age can dream upon the colossal futility of youth.

Later, Howkan roused him again, saying: "Stand up, O Imber. It be commanded that thou tellest why you did these troubles, and slew these people, and at the end journeyed here seeking the Law."

Imber rose feebly to his feet and swayed back and forth. He began to speak in a low and faintly rumbling voice, but Howkan interrupted him.

"This old man, he is damn crazy," he said in English to the square-browed man. "His talk is foolish and like that of a child."

"We will hear his talk which is like that of a child," said the square-browed man. "And we will hear it, word for word, as he speaks it. Do you understand?"

Howkan understood, and Imber's eyes flashed for he had witnessed the play between his sister's son and the man in authority. And then began the story, the epic of a bronze patriot which might well itself be wrought into bronze for the generations unborn. The crowd fell strangely silent, and the square-browed judge leaned head on hand and pondered his soul and the soul of his race. Only was heard the deep tones of Imber, rhythmically alternating with the shrill voice of the interpreter, and now and again, like the bell of the Lord, the wondering and meditative "Hell" of the red-haired man.

"I am Imber of the Whitefish people." So ran the interpretation of Howkan, whose inherent barbarism gripped hold of him, and who lost his mission culture and veneered civilization as he caught the savage ring and rhythm of old Imber's tale. "My father was Otsbaok, a strong man. The land was warm with sunshine and gladness when I was a boy. The people did not hunger after strange things, nor hearken to new voices, and the ways of their fathers were their ways. The women found favor in the eyes of the young men, and the young men looked upon them with content. Babes hung at the breasts of the women, and they were heavy-hipped with increase of the tribe. Men were men in those days. In peace and plenty, and in war and famine, they were men.

"At that time there was more fish in the water than now, and more meat in the forest. Our dogs were wolves, warm with thick hides and hard to the frost and storm. And as with our dogs, so with us, for we were likewise hard to the frost and storm. And when the Pellys came into our land we slew them and were slain. For we were men, we Whitefish, and our fathers and our fathers' fathers had fought against the Pellys and determined the bounds of the land.

"As I say, with our dogs, so with us. And one day came the first white man. He dragged himself, so, on hand and knee, in the snow. And his skin was stretched tight, and his bones were sharp beneath. Never was such a man, we thought, and we wondered of what strange tribe he was, and of its land. And he was weak, most weak, like a little child, so that we gave him a place by the fire, and warm furs to lie upon, and we gave him food as little children are given food.

"And with him was a dog, large as three of our dogs, and very weak. The hair of this dog was short, and not warm, and the tail was frozen so that the end fell off. And this strange dog we fed, and bedded by the fire, and fought from it our dogs, which else would have killed him. And what of the moose meat and the sun-dried salmon, the man and dog took strength to themselves; and what of the strength, they became big and unafraid. And the man spoke loud words and laughed at the old men and young men, and looked boldly upon the maidens. And the dog fought with our dogs, and for all of his short hair and softness slew three of them in one day.

"When we asked the man concerning his people he said, 'I have many brothers,' and laughed in a way that was not good. And when he was in his full strength he went away, and with him went Noda, daughter to the chief. First, after that, was one of our bitches brought to pup. And never was there such a breed of dogs,—big-headed, thick-jawed, and short-haired, and helpless. Well do I remember my father, Otsbaok, a strong man. His face was black with anger at such helplessness, and he took a stone, so, and so, and there was no more helplessness. And two summers after that came Noda back to us with a man-child in the hollow of her arm.

"And that was the beginning. Came a second white man, with short-haired dogs, which he left behind him when he went. And with him went six of our strongest dogs, for which, in trade, he had given Koo-So-Tee, my mother's brother, a wonderful pistol that fired with great swiftness six times. And Koo-So-Tee was very big, what of the pistol, and laughed at our bows and arrows. 'Woman's things,' he called them, and went forth against the bald-face grizzly, with the pistol in his hand. Now it be known that it is not good to hunt the bald-face with a pistol, but how were we to know? and how was Koo-So-Tee to know? So he went against the bald-face, very brave, and fired the pistol with great swiftness six times; and the bald-face but grunted and broke in his breast like it were an egg and like honey from a bee's nest dripped the brains of Koo-So-Tee upon the ground. He was a good hunter, and there was no one to bring meat to his squaw and children. And we were bitter, and we said 'That which for the white men is well, is for us not well.' And this be true. There be many white men and fat, but their ways have made us few and lean.

"Came the third white man, with great wealth of all manner of wonderful foods and things. And twenty of our strongest dogs he took from us in trade. Also, what of presents and great promises, ten of our young hunters did he take with him on a journey which fared no man knew where. It is said they died in the snow of the Ice Mountains where man has never been, or in the Hills of Silence which are beyond the edge of the earth. Be that as it may, dogs and young hunters were seen never again by the Whitefish people.

"And more white men came with the years, and ever, with pay and presents, they led the young men away with them. And sometimes the young men came back with strange tales of dangers and toils in the lands beyond the Pellys, and sometimes they did not come back. And we said: 'If they be unafraid of life, these white men, it is because they have many lives; but we be few by the Whitefish, and the young men shall go away no more.' But the young men did go away; and the young women went also; and we were very wroth.

"It be true, we ate flour, and salt pork, and drank tea which was a great delight; only, when we could not get tea, it was very bad and we became short of speech and quick of anger. So we grew to hunger for the things the white men brought in trade. Trade! trade! all the time was it trade! One winter we sold our meat for clocks that would not go, and watches with broken guts, and files worn smooth, and pistols without cartridges and worthless. And then came famine, and we were without meat, and two-score died ere the break of spring.

"'Now are we grown weak,' we said; 'and the Pellys will fall upon us, and our bounds be overthrown.' But as it fared with us, so had it fared with the Pellys, and they were too weak to come against us.

"My father, Otsbaok, a strong man, was now old and very wise. And he spoke to the chief, saying: 'Behold, our dogs be worthless. No longer are they thick-furred and strong, and they die in the frost and harness. Let us go into the village and kill them, saving only the wolf ones, and these let us tie out in the night that they may mate with the wild wolves of the forest. Thus shall we have dogs warm and strong again.'

"And his word was harkened to, and we Whitefish became known for our dogs, which were the best in the land. But known we were not for ourselves. The best of our young men and women had gone away with the white men to wander on trail and river to far places. And the young women came back old and broken, as Noda had come, or they came not at all. And the young men came back to sit by our fires for a time, full of ill speech and rough ways, drinking evil drinks and gambling through long nights and days, with a great unrest always in their hearts, till the call of the white men came to them and they went away again to the unknown places. And they were without honor and respect, jeering the old-time customs and laughing in the faces of chief and shamans.

"As I say, we were become a weak breed, we Whitefish. We sold our warm skins and furs for tobacco and whiskey and thin cotton things that left us shivering in the cold. And the coughing sickness came upon us, and men and women coughed and sweated through the long nights, and the hunters on trail spat blood upon the snow. And now one, and now another, bled swiftly from the mouth and died. And the women bore few children, and those they bore were weak and given to sickness. And other sicknesses came to us from the white men, the like of which we had never known and could not understand. Smallpox, likewise measles, have I heard these sicknesses named, and we died of them as die the salmon in the still eddies when in the fall their eggs are spawned and there is no longer need for them to live.

"And yet, and here be the strangeness of it, the white men come as the breath of death; all their ways lead to death, their nostrils are filled with it; and yet they do not die. Theirs the whiskey, and tobacco, and short-haired dogs; theirs the many sicknesses, the smallpox and measles, the coughing and mouth-bleeding; theirs the white skin, and softness to the frost and storm; and theirs the pistols that shoot six times very swift and are worthless. And yet they grow fat on their many ills, and prosper, and lay a heavy hand over all the world and tread mightily upon its peoples. And their women, too, are soft as little babes, most breakable and never broken, the mothers of men. And out of all this softness, and sickness, and weakness, come strength, and power, and authority. They be gods, or devils, as the case may be. I do not know. What do I know, I, old Imber of the Whitefish? Only do I know that they are past understanding, these white men, far-wanderers and fighters over the earth that they be.

"As I say, the meat in the forest became less and less. It be true, the white man's gun is most excellent and kills a long way off; but of what worth the gun, when there is no meat to kill? When I was a boy on the Whitefish there was moose on every hill, and each year came the caribou uncountable. But now the hunter may take the trail ten days and not one moose gladden his eyes, while the caribou uncountable come no more at all. Small worth the gun, I say, killing a long way off, when there be nothing to kill.



"And I, Imber, pondered upon these things, watching the while the Whitefish, and the Pellys, and all the tribes of the land, perishing as perished the meat of the forest. Long I pondered. I talked with the shamans and the old men who were wise. I went apart that the sounds of the village might not disturb me, and I ate no meat, so that my belly should not press upon me and make me slow of eye and ear. I sat long and sleepless in the forest, wide-eyed for the sign, my ears patient and keen for the word that was to come. And I wandered alone in the blackness of night to the river bank, where was wind-moaning and sobbing of water, and where I sought wisdom from the ghosts of old shamans in the trees and dead and gone.

"And in the end, as in a vision, came to me the short-haired and detestable dogs, and the way seemed plain. By the wisdom of Otsbaok, my father and a strong man, had the blood of our own wolf-dogs been kept clean, wherefore had they remained warm of hide and strong in the harness. So I returned to my village and made oration to the men. 'This be a tribe, these white men,' I said. 'A very large tribe, and doubtless there is no longer meat in their land, and they are come among us to make a new land for themselves. But they weaken us, and we die. They are a very hungry folk. Already has our meat gone from us, and it were well, if we would live, that we deal by them as we have dealt by their dogs.'

"And further oration I made, counseling fight. And the men of the Whitefish listened, and some said one thing, and some another, and some spoke of other and worthless things, and no man made brave talk of deeds and war. But while the young men were weak as water and afraid, I watched that the old men sat silent, and that in their eyes fires came and went. And later, when the village slept and no one knew, I drew the old men away into the forest and made more talk. And now we were agreed, and we remembered the good young days, and the free land, and the times of plenty, and the gladness and sunshine; and we called ourselves brothers, and swore great secrecy, and a mighty oath to cleanse the land of the evil breed that had come upon it. It be plain we were fools, but how were we to know, we old men of the Whitefish?

"And to hearten the others, I did the first deed. I kept guard upon the Yukon till the first canoe came down. In it were two white men, and when I stood upright upon the bank and raised my hand they changed their course and drove in to me. And as the man in the bow lifted his head, so, that he might know wherefore I wanted him, my arrow sang through the air straight to his throat, and he knew. The second man, who held paddle in the stern, had his rifle half to his shoulder when the first of my three spear-casts smote him.

"'These be the first,' I said, when the old men had gathered to me. 'Later we will bind together all the old men of all the tribes, and after that the young men who remain strong, and the work will become easy.'

"And then the two dead white men we cast into the river. And of the canoe, which was a very good canoe, we made a fire, and a fire, also, of the things within the canoe. But first we looked at the things, and they were pouches of leather which we cut open with our knives. And inside these pouches were many papers, like that from which thou hast read, O Howkan, with markings on them which we marveled at and could not understand. Now, I am become wise, and I know them for the speech of men as thou hast told me."

A whisper and buzz went around the court-room when Howkan finished interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up: "That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it in and last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk scratched steadily away, and another paragraph was added to the history of the North.

"There be little more," Imber went on slowly. "It be there on the paper, the things we did. We were old men, and we did not understand. Even I, Imber, do not now understand. Secretly we slew, and continued to slay, for with our years we were crafty and we had learned the swiftness of going without haste. When white men came among us with black looks and rough words, and took away six of the young men with irons binding them helpless, we knew we must slay wider and farther. And one by one we old men departed up river and down to the unknown lands. It was a brave thing. Old we were, and unafraid, but the fear of far places is a terrible fear to men who are old.

"So we slew, without haste, and craftily. On the Chilkoot and in the Delta we slew, from the passes to the sea, wherever the white men camped or broke their trails. It be true, they died, but it was without worth. Ever did they come over the mountains, ever did they grow and grow, while we, being old, became less and less. I remember, by the Caribou Crossing, the camp of a white man. He was a very little white man, and three of the old men came upon him in his sleep. And the next day I came upon the four of them. The white man alone still breathed, and there was breath in him to curse me once and well before he died.

"And so it went, now one old man, and now another. Sometimes the word reached us long after of how they died, and sometimes it did not reach us. And the old men of the other tribes were weak and afraid, and would not join with us. As I say, one by one, till I alone was left. I am Imber, of the Whitefish people. My father was Otsbaok, a strong man. There are no Whitefish now. Of the old men I am the last. The young men and young women are gone away, some to live with the Pellys, some with the Salmons, and more with the white men. I am very old, and very tired, and it being vain fighting the Law, as thou sayest, Howkan, I am come seeking the Law."

"O Imber, thou art indeed a fool," said Howkan.

But Imber was dreaming. The square-browed judge likewise dreamed, and all his race rose up before him in a mighty phantasmagoria—his steel-shod, mail-clad race, the law-giver and world-maker among the families of men. He saw it dawn red-flickering across the dark forests and sullen seas; he saw it blaze, bloody and red, to full and triumphant noon; and down the shaded slope he saw the blood-red sands dropping into night. And through it all he observed the Law, pitiless and potent, ever unswerving and ever ordaining, greater than the motes of men who fulfilled it or were crushed by it, even as it was greater than he, his heart speaking for softness.



DOWN THE FLUME WITH THE SNEATH PIANO

BY

BAILEY MILLARD

Reprinted from The Century Magazine by permission

I HAD halted at Camp Five to catch my breath. This flying down a Sierran lumber-flume, scurrying through the heady air like another Phaeton, was too full of thrills to be taken all in one gasp. I dropped limply into the rawhide-bottomed chair under the awning in front of the big board shanty which was on stilts beside the airy flume, and gazed on down the long, gleaming, tragic, watery way to the next steep slide. Then I looked at the frail little flume-boat which had borne Oram Sheets and me thus far on our hazardous journey to the valley. Perhaps I shivered a bit at the prospect of more of this hair-raising adventure. At any rate, Oram, the intrepid flume-herder, laughed, dug his picaroon into a log, and asked:

"Sorry yeh come? Wal, it does git onto a man's nerve the first trip. Strange so many brash ones like you wanter try, but few on 'em ever dast git in ag'in. But I've be'n down so often." Then he peered about the cabin. "Looks like none o' the boys was to home. Wish they was; they might git us up a little dinner. It's jest twelve."

He went inside the open door, and I heard him foraging about, the shanty echoing hollowly to the clumping of his big boots. By and by his nasal note was resumed:

"Come in, pardner! Here's a great find: a big can o' green gages an' a hunk o' jerk an' a lot o' cold biscuits."

Inside, with my legs under the greasy, coverless table, I chewed the jerk like one who was determined to give his jaws the benefit of strenuous physical culture, and listened while Oram rattled on, with his mouth full of the sodden, half-baked biscuits.

"You mightn't think it," said he, "but three years ago this here was the most scrumptious camp on the hull flume. Ol' man Hemenway lived here then with his daughter Jess. She kep' house fer him. Jess was a great gal. Every man along the flume, from Skyland to Mill Flat, was in love with her. Shape? You couldn't beat that there gal for figger if yeh was to round up every actress in the country. She had a pair o' big round baby-blue eyes, an' was as pretty as any o' them there cigarette picters. A little on the strawbary-blonde, but not too much red in her hair, an' yet spunky as a badger when yeh teased her.

"The boys down this way didn't have much show. It looked like Jess had hit it off with Jud Brusie, a big, husky, clean-lookin' chap up to the h'ist. Jud used ter send her down notes stuck in sticks wedged inter the clamps, an' he used ter sneak down this way on Sundays when he'd git a chanst. She'd meet him up to the Riffles there by that big bunch o' yaller pines we passed. He didn't dast come down here nary time till ol' man Hemenway he got laid up with a busted laig from slippin' off the trestle in the snow. That there was Jud's show ter git in his fine work. Used ter bring down deer-meat for the ol' man, an' sody-water from that there spoutin' spring up ter Crazy Canon; an' it begun to look like Hemenway'd give in an' let him have her. But he seemed to hold off.

"The boys used ter nearly josh the life out o' Jud. One fellow—his name was Phil Pettis—was skunkin' mean enough to read a note Jud sent down oncet an' tell about it roun' Skyland; but that was the only time any of 'em ever done anything like that, fer Jud jest laid fer Phil an' went through him like a buzz-saw an' chucked him inter the flume.

"No, it didn't kill Phil, but he got tol'able well used up. His clothes was nearly all tore off, an' his hands got some bruised where he caught on to the aidges before he got a holt an' lifted himself out in a still place. He'd be'n all right only he got mixed up with a string o' lumber that was a-comin' down, an' so he had to go to the hospital.

"One thing about Jess—she was a singer all right. I ain't never heer'd ary one o' them there the-ay-ter gals that could beat her singin'. She warbled like a lark with his belly full o' grubworms. It was wuth ridin' a clamp from here to Mill Flat to hear her sing. She had a couple o' hymn-books an' a stack o' them coon songs the newspapers gives away, an' I tell yeh, she'd sing them there songs like she'd knowed 'em all her life. Picked out the tunes some ways on a little string-thing like a sawed-off guitar. Sounds like muskeeters hummin' aroun'. Yes, a mandy-linn—that's it. But that there mandy-linn didn't soot her a little bit. She was crazy ter have a pianner. I heer'd her tell her paw, who was aroun' ag'in workin' after his busted laig got well, she'd give ten years o' her life for any ol' cheap pianner he could skeer up fer her.

"'Wal,' says he, 'how in tunket am I a-goin' ter git anything like that—thirty miles off'n the road, an' nary way o' freightin' it up or down the canon to this camp?'

"'Couldn't yeh have it brung up to Skyland by the stage road,' asts she, 'an' then have it rafted down the flume? Jest a little one?' she asts very earnest-like.

"'Gee whittaker!' says he, laughin' all over. 'You'll be a-wantin' 'em to send yeh down a parlor-keer nex'.'

"Then she gits hot in the collar an' cries an' takes on, an' Jud, who was a-hangin' aroun', has to walk her up to the Riffles; an' he must 'a' comforted her a heap, fer she comes back alone, singin,' 'Nearer, my God, to Thee,' like a angel.

"The' was a big spill up to the Devil's Gate,—one o' them places back there where the flume hangs onto the side o' the cliff, about half a mile above the bottom o' the gulch,—an' Jud Brusie an' all hands has to work there three days an' nights ter git things straightened out. Jud worked so derned hard, up all night an' hangin' on ter the ropes he was let up an' down by till yeh'd think he was ready to drop, that the soop'rintendent said he'd make Jud flume boss when he got back from Noo York, where he was a-goin' fer a few months. The soop'rintendent—that's Mr. Sneath—went over the hull flume with Jud a little while before he lit out for the East, p'intin' things out ter him that he wanted did when he got back. I was down here flume-herdin' at Five when him an' Jud come along in a dude-lookin' flume-boat, rigged out in great style. I stopped 'em back there a ways with my picaroon, when they sung out, an' they walked down here on the side planks. Jest as they got near the camp the soop'rintendent he stopped like he'd struck a rotten plank an' stared at the house.

"'Who's that singin'?' says he.

"'Miss. Hemenway,' says Jud, proud-like.

"'She's got an awful sweet voice,' says the ol' man. 'It oughter be trained. She ought to go to a hot-house'—or something like that. 'Conservatory?' Yes, that's it.

"'She's mighty anxious to l'arn,' says Jud. 'She wants a pianner awful bad.'

"'Does she?' says the soop'rintendent. 'She oughter have one.'

"When he come along to the house he says to Jess, who stuck her head outer the door an' looked kinder skeer'd-like, says he, 'I wish yeh'd sing a few songs fer me.'

"Wal, yeh could see wal enough that Jess's knees was a-knockin' together, but she tunes up her mandy-linn, scratches at the strings with a little chip, an' gits started all right on 'Rock o' Ages,' an' gits to goin' along kinder quavery-like fer a while, an' then she busts right inter, 'He'r dem Bells,' so strong an' high an' wild that it takes the ol' man right out o' his boots.

"He claps his hands an' yells, 'Hooray! Give us another!'

"Then she saws along on, 'Gather at the River,' an' chops inter, 'All Coons Looks Alike ter Me,' in a way to stop the mill.

"Her paw stan's aroun' all the while, tickled t' death an' smilin' all over.

"'Wal,' says the soop'rintendent, when Jess she stops ter git her wind, 'yer all right, Miss. Hemenway. Yer as full o' music as a wind-harp in a tornado.' Then he says to her paw on the Q. T., 'If yeh was ter let that gal go ter the city an' l'arn some o' them high-toned op'ry songs, yeh wouldn't have to be picaroonin' lumber strings much longer.'

"'Yes,' says Hemenway, bloated up like a gobbler an' lookin' at Jess where she stan's with her face red an' still a-puffin' for breath; 'an' she thinks she could l'arn right here if she only had a pianner.'

"'She'd oughter have one,' says Mr. Sneath. 'I wish——' he says, an' then he breaks off like a busted log-chain. 'But we couldn't git it down here.'

'"What's that?' asts Hemenway.

"'We got a pianner up to our place, an' Mrs. Sneath won't be a-fingerin' on it fer five months. She's a-goin' East with me. If we could only git it down here an' back all right. If the' 's only a road from Skyland down here or from Mill Flat up, but the' ain't, so the' 's no use talkin'. Couldn't ship it down to the Flat an' up on mule-back, or nothin', either; so I guess it can't be did.'

"'Why not send it down the flume?' asts Jess, timid-like. I could see she was jest crazy about gittin' it.

"'Oh, the flume is old, an' it's rotten in places, an' such a heavy load might go through.'

"'Why, it holds up the grub-boat all right,' says Jess 'Oh, if I could only have that pianner down here! I can play a little already, an' I'd l'arn a lot. I'd practise eight hours a day.'

"'How about gittin' the meals?' asts Hemenway.

"'Wal, I'd set up, then, an' practise all night,' says she.

"'I'm afeard that 'u'd be pretty hard on yer paw,' says Mr. Sneath, smilin'. 'Wal, Jud, we got ter be goin'.'

"So they gits inter their dude boat, an' Jess she skips along after 'em, an' jest as they's about to ontie she yells out to the soop'rintendent:

"'Cain't I have it? Cain't I have it? Cain't yeh send it down the flume? Please say yeh will. I'll take the best kind o' keer of it. It sha'n't git a single scratch.'

"Mr. Sneath he looks at her a minute kinder tender-like, an' I knowed them big eyes o' hern was a-doin' their work. Them big soft baby eyes would 'a' drawed sap outer a dead log.

"'Wal,' says he, 'we'll see. If Mrs. Sneath's willin' I guess it'll be all right.'

"'Thank you, thank you, thank you!' she yells as the boat flies down the flume.

"I seed Jud blow a kiss to her, an' I knowed she was happy as a bird. She was a-singin' aroun' the shanty all day, an' at supper she done nothin' but talk, talk, talk about that there pianner.

"'Don't be so awful gay, Miss. Hemenway,' says I, for I was afeard she might be disapp'inted. 'Yeh ain't got it yet. Yeh know, Mr. Sneath's a' awful busy man, an' he may fergit it.'

"'Oh, he won't fergit! Jud'll poke him up on it,' says she. 'An' I think I'll have it put right over there in that corner. No, that's on the flume side, an' it might draw dampness there. Over there by the winder's the place, an' plenty o' light, too. Wonder if they'll think to send down a stool.'

"I had to skin up to Skyland nex' day. Jud says the soop'rintendent has to light out quicker'n he'd thought, but he didn't fergit about the pianner. Mis' Sneath was as easy as greased skids, but Mr. Sneath he didn't know exactly. He sends the pianner over to the warehouse there 'longside the flume an' has the men slap together a stout boat to run her down in; but at the las' minute he backs out. He was a-lookin' at the pianner standin' there in the warehouse, an' he says to Jud, says he:

"'That there pianner has be'n in our family ever sence we was married. Marthy allus sot a heap o' store by that pianner. It was my first present to her, an' I know she thinks a hull lot of it, even if she don't seem ter keer. Trouble is, she don't know what sendin' it down the flume means. Yeh see, it ain't like a long string o' lumber—weight's all in one place, an' she might break through. This flume ain't what it was thirteen years ago, yeh know.'

"Jud he argies with him, 'cos he knows Jess's heart'll be broke if she don't git the pianner; an' after a while he thinks he's got it all fixed; but jest afore Sneath an' his wife takes the stage he telaphones down to the warehouse to let the pianner stay there till he comes back. Then he goes away, an' Jud is as down in the mouth as if he'd run his fist ag'in' a band-saw. He mopes aroun' all day, an' he's afeard to tell Jess; but as I was a-goin' back to Five that night, he tells me to break it to her gentle-like an' say he'd done his best. Which I did. Wal, that gal jest howls when I tells her, an' sobs an' sobs an' takes on like a baby coyote with the croup. But her dad he quiets her at last.

"Jud he hardly dasts to show up on Sunday, but when he does, she won't look at him fer quite a while. Then some o' that strawbary-blonde in her comes out in some o' the dernedest scoldin' yeh ever heer'd.

"'It's too bad, Jessie,' says he, 'but it ain't my fault. I done my best. He backed out at the las' minute; he backed out, an' I couldn't do no more than if a tree dropped on me. He backed out.'

"After a while he takes her off up the flume a piece, an' they stays there a long time, but she don't seem satisfied much when she comes back. There is hell a-poppin' there for about three days over that there pianner, an' the ol' man he gits so sick of it he gives her warnin' he'll light out if she don't quit. Wal, she quiets down some after that, but she makes Jud as mis'able as a treed coon fer over a week. She keeps a-tryin' an' a-tryin' to git him to send the pianner down anyway. She tells him she'll send it back afore the Sneaths gits home.

"'He told me I could have it; he promised me,' says she, 'he promised me, an' I'll never marry you unless you send it down. You can do it; you're goin' to be boss, an' you know it will be all right. I'll see that they ain't a scratch on it; an' you can put it in the warehouse, an' they'll never know it's be'n away.'

"An' so she keeps a-teasin' an' a-teasin', till finally Jud he gits desperate.

"'Oram,' says he to me one day, 'Oram, you're an ol' flume man. What do you think o' runnin' that pianner down to Five?'

"I shakes my head. I likes the boy, an' I don't want ter see him take sech big chances o' gittin' inter trouble. Somebody might tell Sneath, an' then it might be all off about his bein' flume boss. Besides, nobody had never run no pianner down no flume before, an' yeh couldn't tell what might happen.

"'D' yeh think, honest, Oram,' says he, 'the ol' flume's likely ter give way anywheres?'

"'No,' says I; 'she's strong as a railroad-track.'

"'Wal, then,' says he, 'I'm a-goin' to do it. You come down Sunday an' we'll take her out afore anybody's out o' the bunk-house.'

"I tries to argy him out of it, but he won't listen. So Sunday, about five in the mornin', I goes up to Skyland, an' we slides the big boat inter the flume an' gits the pianner onto the rollers, an' 't ain't much trouble to load her all right; fer, yer know, them big boats has flat tops like decks, an' things sets up on top of 'em. But while we was a-doin' that an' the boat is hitched tight to a stanchion 'longside o' the flume, the water backs up behind so high that it looks as though the pianner is a-goin' ter git wet. This skeers Jud, an' he seems to lose his head someways.

"'Hustle up, Oram!' says he, very nervous-like. 'The boat's crowdin' down so it won't let any water past. Ontie that rope.'

"I takes a good notice o' the pianner, an' I don't like her looks, sittin' up there so high on that little deck.

"'We oughter tie her on good an' tight,' says I.

"She's a upright, yeh see, an' she's as top-heavy as a pile-driver. I was afeard she'd strike a low limb or somethin' an' git smashed. So I goes to settle her a bit an' lay her down on her back an' tie her on; but he says he don't know about that layin'-down business, an' declares she'll ride all right. He speaks pretty sharp, too. So I gits a little huffy an' onties the rope, an' we starts.

"Wal, she don't go very fast at first, 'cos she's heavy an' they ain't none too much water in front; but after a while we comes to the Devil's Slide,—you remember the place,—an' we scoots down there like the mill-tails o' hell.

"'Gee-whiz!' says Jud. 'She's a-rockin' like a teeter. I hope she'll stay on all right.' He was settin' back with me, behind the pianner, an' we both tries to holt on to her an' keep her stiddy, but we cain't do much more'n set down an' cuss haff the time, we're so afeard we'll git throwed out. Wal, after we come to the foot of the slide, we breathes easy-like, an' Jud he says it's all right, for that there was the wust place. For about three miles the pianner set on that boat as stiddy as a church, an' from there on down to Four it was pretty good sailin'. Of course we went a good deal faster in the steep places than any other boat ever sent down the flume, because the heft o' the thing, when she got started, was bound to make her fly, water or no water. In a good many places we run ahead o' the stream, an' then in the quiet spots the water would catch up to us an' back up behind us an' shove us along.

"Between Four an' Five there's a place we used ter call Cape Horn. The flume is bracketed onto a cliff, yeh know, fer about a mile, an' it's a skeery place any way yeh shoot it; yeh scoot aroun' them there sharp curves so lively, an' yeh look down there four or five hundred feet inter the bottom o' the canon. That's where yeh shut yer eyes. Yeh remember? Wal, when I sees Cape Horn ahead I gits a little skeer'd when I thinks how she might rock. We run onto a place where I could look away ahead, an' there, wavin' her apron or somethin', is a gal, an' I knows it's Jess, out from Five to see the pianner come down. Jud he knows, too, an' waves back.

"We runs out onto the brackets, turns a sharp curve, an' she begins to wabble an' stagger like a drunken man, floppin' back an' forth, an' the strings an' things inside is a-hummin' an' a-drummin'.

"'Slow her down!' yells Jud. 'Slow her down, or we'll never git past the Horn!'

"I claps on the brake, but she's so heavy she don't pay no 'tention to it, though I makes smoke 'long them planks, I tell yer. She scoots ahead faster'n ever, an' bows to the scenery, this way an' that, like she was crazy, an' a-hummin' harder than ever.

"'Slow her down! Ease her down!' hollers Jud, grittin' his teeth an' holdin' onto her with all his hundred an' eighty pounds weight. But 't ain't no good. I gits a holt oncet, but the water backs up behind us an' we goes a-scootin' down on a big wave that sloshes out o' the flume on both sides an' sends us flyin' toward that Horn fer further orders.

"When we gits to the sharpest curve we knows we're there all right. She wabbles on one side an' then on the other, so I can see chunks o' sky ahead right under her. An' then, all of a sudden, she gives a whoopin' big jump right off the top o' the boat, an' over the side o' the flume she goes, her strings all a-singin' like mad, an' sailin' down four hundred feet. Jud had a holt of her before she dropped, an' if I hadn't 'a' grabbed him he'd 'a' gone over, too.

"You might not believe it, pardner, but we run a quarter of a mile down that there flume before we hears her strike. Jeroosalem! What a crash! I ever heer'd one o' them big redwoods that made half so much noise when she dropped. How she did roar! An' I tell yeh what was strange about that there noise: it seemed like all the music that everybody had ever expected to play on that pianner for the nex' hundred years come a-boomin' out all to oncet in one great big whoop-hurray that echered up an' down that canon fer half an hour.

"'We've lost somethin',' says I, cheerful-like, fer I thinks the' 's no use cryin' over spilt pianners.

"But Jud he never says nothin',—jest sets there like he was froze plumb stiff an' couldn't stir a eyelid—sets there, starin' straight ahead down the flume. Looks like his face is caught in the air and held that way.

"Of course, now our load's gone, the brake works all right, an' I hooks a-holt onto the side about a hundred feet from where Jess stands like a marble statute, lookin' down inter the gulch.

"'Come on, Jud,' says I, layin' my hand onto his arm soft-like; 'we gits out here.'

"He don't say nothin', but tries to shake me off. I gits him out at last, an' we goes over to where poor Jess stands, stiff an' starin' down inter the gulch. When she hears our feet on the side planks, she starts up an' begins to beller like a week-old calf; an' that fetches Jud outer his trance for a while, an' he puts his arm aroun' her an' he helps her back along the walk till we comes to a place where we gits down an' goes over to view the wreck.

"Great snakes, pardner, but it was a sight! The pianner had flew down an' lit onto a big, flat rock, an' the' wasn't a piece of her left as big as that there plate. There was all kinds o' wires a-wrigglin' aroun' on the ground an' a-shinin' in the sun, an' the' was white keys an' black keys an' the greatest lot o' them little woolly things that strikes the strings all mixed up with little bits o' mahogany an' nuts an' bolts an' little scraps o' red flannel an' leather, an' pegs an' bits o' iron that didn't look as if it had ever been any part o' the machine. It was the dernedest mess! I picked up somethin' Jess said was a pedal,—a little piece o' shiny iron about as long as that,—'n' that was the only thing that seemed to have any shape left to it. The litter didn't make any pile at all—jest a lot o' siftin' sawdust-stuff scattered aroun' on the rocks.

"'She struck tol'able hard,' says I, lookin' at Jud. But he don't say nothin'; jest stan's over there on the side o' the rock an' looks as if he'd like to jump off another fifty feet the' was there.

"'Don't take it like that, Jud,' says Jess, grabbin' holt o' him an' not payin' any 'tention to my bein' there. 'Cry, cuss, swear—anything, but don't be so solemn-like. It's my fault, Juddie dear—all my fault. Can yeh ever, ever fergive me? Yeh said yeh didn't think it was safe, an' I kep' a-goadin' yeh to it; an' now——' She broke out a-blubberin' an' a-bellerin' again, an' he puts his arm aroun' her an' smiles, an' says soft-like:

"'It don't matter much. I can raise the money an' buy a new one fer Mis' Sneath. How much do they cost?' says he.

"'Oh, I dunno! Five hundred dollars, I think. It's an awful lot o' money!'

"'Wal, I got three-fifty saved up,—you know what fer,—an' I can raise the rest an' put a new pianner in the place o' that one,' says he.

"He looks at the wreck, an' fer the first time I sees his eyes is jest a little damp.

"They didn't either of 'em seem to take any notice o' me, an' I didn't feel that I counted, nohow.

"'An' we cain't git married,' says Jud, sorrowful-like, 'fer ever so long. There'll be nothin' to house-keep on till I can save up some more.'

"'Yes, we can, too,' says she. 'I don't keer if yeh ain't got so much as a piece o' bale-rope.'

"'But yer paw?'

"'I don't keer,' says she, very hard-like, a-stampin' her foot. 'He can like it or lump it.'

"Wal, I sneaks away an' leaves 'em there, an' by an' by they comes up to where I sets on top o' the boat, an' Jud isn't so plumb gloomy as I thinks he'd be.

"Him an' her goes down ter Fresno nex' day an' buys one o' that same identical make o' pianners an' has it shipped up on the first freight-wagon to Skyland. An' they puts it inter the warehouse, an' there she stands till Mr. Sneath comes home with his wife.

"When Mis' Sneath she sees the pianner brung inter her house she don't notice any difference fer a while; but one day she sets down ter play, an' she pounds out a few music, an' then she gives a jump an' looks all over the machine an' she says, 'Good Lord!' An' Sneath he comes in, an' they has a great time over how the' 's be'n sech a change in that pianner. She finally makes up her mind it's a bran'-new one, an' sends fer Jud an' asts him what he knows about it. An' he cain't lie a little bit, so he up an' tells her that her pianner is all inter sawdust an' scrap-iron down on the rocks, an' that this is a new one that he owes a hundred an' fifty dollars on down ter Fresno.

"Then she busts out a-laughin', an' says:

"'Why, that old tin-pan! I'm glad it flew the flume. It wasn't wuth twenty dollars. I got a noo grand pianner on the way here that I ordered in Noo York. I'll make this here one a weddin' present to you an' Jess.'

"And the soop'rintendent he writes out his check an' sends it down to Fresno to pay off the hundred an' fifty, an' when the weddin' it comes off he gives 'em a set o' chiny dishes besides.

"Jud's flume boss now, an' Jess she plays that pianner an' sings like a bird. When we gits down ter Mill Flat I'll show yeh their house. It's a white one up on the side o' the hill, jest across the gulch from the mill.

"Wal, yeh had all the grub yeh want, pardner? Say, ain't them green gages sour? They sets yer teeth on aidge all right. An' I couldn't find the boys' sugar-can. If yer full up, I guess we'd better git inter the boat."

I took my seat behind Oram and a particularly offensive pipe he had just lighted. Looking down the long, swift-running, threatening flume, I shuddered; for since Oram's recital the native hue of my resolution had been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." I remarked that if he saw any of those Cape Horn curves ahead to let me know and I would get out and walk.

"Don't yeh be skeer'd by what I told yeh," said he. "Yeh got a pretty fair-sized head, but yeh ain't quite so top-heavy as Mis' Sneath's big upright. An', besides, the' ain't no more Cape Horn on this flume; they calls that place Pianner P'int now."



THE CONTUMACY OF SARAH L. WALKER

BY

MIRIAM MICHELSON

Reprinted from Munsey's Magazine of April, 1904 by permission

"THE BOARD will now pass to consideration of the case of Mrs.—Mrs. Walker."

The president looked from the report in front of her to the superintendent sitting opposite.

The Rev. Alexander McCaleb rose slowly to his feet.

"I regret exceedingly," he said, "to have to report this case to the board. I need not say that if it had been possible to convince Mrs. Walker of the error of her ways, no pains or time would have been spared. But I have done all that I could. Mrs. Walker persists. She—ah!—she flouts all authority, and—ah!—sets such an example of rebellious conduct that I fear the discipline of the home may be gravely compromised."

The president knitted her pretty, dark brows. Her hair was white, with a soft, youthful whiteness that haloed her head as if it was a joke of old Time's. She was new to her office, and was conscious of a critical atmosphere that subtly underlined the formality of the proceedings—an official formality that made the meeting of the lady managers of this Old People's Home a formidable affair.

"I see no record of any case of disciplining heretofore," she said, troubled. "There is no precedent by which the chair can be——"

"But there are the by-laws," suggested the superintendent. He reached over to his own desk, and read from a pamphlet that had lain open there: "If any inmate of the home shall persistently and willfully disobey the rules, the superintendent shall report such case to the board of managers. If, after full and complete investigation, and a notice to that effect having been duly served, said inmate shall continue to persist in contumacy, the board is by a majority vote empowered to expel."

A little hush fell upon the assemblage at this invocation of its dread powers.

"It seems rather hard on the old bodies, doesn't it?" the president was encouraged to remark.

"But it is plainly stated in the by-laws," said the recording secretary, a bright-eyed, business-like matron.

"And dear Mr. McCaleb is so patient and tactful that it is seldom necessary," remarked the single member of this week's visiting committee.

"I thank you, Mrs. Davis." The superintendent bowed in his stateliest manner. "I do my best—I try always to do my best. Old people are trying, we all know."

The president looked up from her perusal of the by-laws.

"Suppose we have the old lady in," she said. "Mr. McCaleb, will you send for Mrs. Walker?"

The old lady held her head haughtily as she walked into the handsomely furnished office. The president, mindful of her official capacity, looked severely upon Mrs. Walker—Sarah Lucinda Walker, according to the cramped signature of the home's register, widow, native of Maine, aged sixty-seven on her entrance into the home five years ago. And Mrs. Walker—a miracle of aged neatness, trim, straight, little, in her somber black and immaculate cap—looked severely back.

"Be seated, Mrs. Walker," said the president.

"Thank you." Mrs. Walker crossed with a formal "Good morning, ladies," and took the chair indicated.

"Now, Mr. McCaleb, if you please——" said the president.

The superintendent rose.

"Ladies," he began with a solemnity that made the offender quake within, though outwardly she was calm as the president herself, "it is with positive pain that I have to report to you the case of Mrs. Sarah Lucinda Walker. It is now fully three months since I began to labor with her—three months since I warned her of this very thing that has come to pass, an investigation by your honorable board. On the 9th of January"—he glanced methodically at a note-book—"I sent her a copy of the by-laws, with the section referring to insubordination underscored in red ink. On the 23d I made a personal call upon her, and sought to convince her how impossible it was that such conduct could be tolerated. On February 7th I publicly reprimanded her. On the 13th—five days ago—I informed her that, after considering it prayerfully, I had laid the matter before your honorable body, and that she should hold herself in readiness to be summoned before you to meet the following charges:

"First, insubordination; second, breaking Rule VIII of the house regulations; third, taking food from the table; fourth, disturbing neighbors in early morning; and fifth, defacing the building."

Mr. McCaleb took his seat. The shocked gaze of the board bent itself upon the criminal. The bad little old lady's far-sighted eyes swept insolently past them all and met the president's—twenty years younger than her own.

"Do you like birds, ma'am?" she asked, herself in an eager, bird-like way. And then, without waiting for an answer, she went on: "I love 'em—anything that's got wings. Old Cap'n Walker used to say, 'Sary Lucindy, they was a moughty fine ornithologist spiled when God A'mighty made you a woman 'stead of a man.' He was a free-spoken man, Cap'n Walker, not so pious-mouthed as some, but he had charity in his soul, which is more than some others has."

She swept a superbly disdainful look toward the Rev. McCaleb. The recording secretary tapped reprovingly with her pencil, but the president only listened.

"Now, ma'am, we ain't paupers, we old folks. Every one of us, as you know, has paid our thousand dollars in. An' we ain't bad children as needs disciplinin'; an' they's no use treatin' grandmothers an' great-grandmothers as though they was. It's in me to love birds, an' no 'mount of rules and regulations is goin' to change me. My canary bird died the same year Cap'n Walker saved every other soul on board his ship and went down alone to the bottom with her. Since then I've sort o' adopted the sparrers. Why, haven't I spent every afternoon through the summer out in the park a-feedin' them my lunch? An' now that winter's come, d'ye think I'd have the face to desert them?

"'Not one of them is forgotten before God'—do you remember, ma'am? One of 'em seemed to be in the early winter. It was before my rheumatism got so bad. I was out in the park the afternoon the first snow fell, an' this poor little crittur with a wing broke kep' a trailin' an' chirpin' an' scuttlin' in front o' me. It'd fell out o' the nest; hardly covered with feathers, it was. I picked it up an' carried it to my room in my apron. Poor little mite—how it fluttered an' struggled! I kep' it overnight in my spool-box. In the mornin' I fed it; by noon the sun come out, an' I let it out on the window-sill, where I keep my house plants; just a bit o' musk—the cap'n liked musk—an' a pot o' bergamot. Do you know, ma'am, that little thing was that contented by the end of the week that I could leave the windows open an' nary a wing's stroke away would it go? That was in December, 'fore it got to be known that I kep' a bird in my room. That mild spell we had 'fore Christmas it did fly away one morning, but at sundown there it was back again; an' when it came on to snow that night I felt same's I used to 'tween voyages, when I could hear how the ocean'd get lashed to a fury, an' Cap'n Walker'd be fast asleep safe beside me.

"Of course it was a pity that when the bird came back it showed others the way—but wasn't it cute of it, ma'am? An' wasn't it just like a lot o' children hangin' 'round at maple-syrup time? They did make a clatter an' a racket in the early mornin' when I wouldn't be up an' they'd be ready for breakfast. But wasn't it for all the world like children with empty little stummicks an' chatterin' tongues? When Mis' Pearson complained of me an' the noise, I didn't take it kind of her. Take food from the table? Course I did. But it was my own lunch, that I'd a right to go hungry for ef I wanted to, an' nobody's affair.

"But I tell you, ma'am, one day—it was that day Mr. McCaleb sent me that printed notice, an' everybody on my floor see it comin' an' knew it was something shameful an' legal—that evening I tried honestly to keep 'em out. I pulled down the shade—it was a bitter cold day, a regular blizzard blowing—an' I sat with my back to the window an' tried to read my Bible while them birds jest shrieked themselves hoarse outside. Well, guess where that Bible opened to! 'Yea, the sparrow hath found a house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young.' That was a message, ma'am, a straight, sure message. I opened the window an' scattered their bread-crumbs out on the sill, which I had made jest the least bit wider for them—that's what he calls 'defacin' the buildin'.' After that, I told Mr. McCaleb flat-footed that if he had the heart to starve them innocent critturs in the dead o' winter, it was more than I had. I told him if he'd wait till spring, I'd promise never to open the window that faces south after that; but till they could shift for themselves, I'd shift for them. That's all. Thank you, ma'am, for letting me have my say."

She smiled into the president's soft eyes, and rose, looking like a trim, saucy, gray-haired sparrow about to take flight. The president's smile started back to her, but on the way it had to pass the recording secretary, the visiting committee, and the Rev. Alexander McCaleb. By the time it had made the journey it was shorn of half its sympathetic understanding.

"You admit then, Mrs. Walker, that you have broken the rule against having pets in the room?" the president asked with gravity. "It is a necessary rule. Fancy what would be the condition of the place if a lady in No. 117 had a tame sparrow, a gentleman in No. 120 a monkey, his neighbor a spaniel, the lady across the way a cat, and so on! I appreciate—we all do, and Mr. McCaleb more than all of us—how tender and charitable a nature yours is, but"—she looked at the recording secretary to gain courage—"but we simply must enforce the rules. I know so good a housekeeper as you must have been will understand this, and agree with me when I say that such a disciplinarian as Captain Walker no doubt was—unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of his acquaintance—would have been the first to counsel you to obey the rules. Won't you think it over from our point of view, Mrs. Walker, when you go back to your room? Do! Good afternoon."

It was a very dejected Sarah Lucinda Walker that returned to her room. Her depression was noted and audibly commented upon by Mrs. Pearson, her next-door neighbor and arch-enemy. In fact, the whole corridor was alive with the news of her defeat. At the lunch-table it was the sole topic of conversation, and in the library old Colonel Rockwell—in the pauses of a quavering rendition of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"—bet Mr. Patterson three of the cigars his nephew always sent him on Fridays that Mrs. Walker, being a woman of spirit, would not yield even though the ultimatum were expulsion.

Mrs. Walker heard of the wager, of course, that afternoon. They were a hundred or more antiquated and unseaworthy vessels, all anchored in a semi-genteel haven; and from morning till night, till sun should cease for them to shine and water to flow they had nothing to do but to listen to the whispering tide that told of the great ocean of life beyond, or to gossip among themselves of their own voyages dead and done.

The incorrigible Mrs. Walker's spotless little room, with its bag of dried crusts on the window-sill, saved for her pet, became the storm center that afternoon. Every old lady who could possibly claim acquaintance called to inquire her intentions; every old gentleman leaned hard upon his cane as he lifted his hat to her in the halls with the deference due a gallant rebel. They loved a rebel, these old children, at the end of their lives fallen again into the domain of "you must" and "you must not."

Sarah Lucinda Walker's world rocked beneath her. She intended, she believed, to obey the rules, to cast off the one creature on earth to which she could still play Lady Bountiful; to shut her hospitable window and her loving old heart on all these fluttering, visiting strangers who had heard of her generosity, and with every hour carried the news of it further.

She intended all this, but when the time came she did simply as old Colonel Rockwell had wagered she would. She opened wide her windows and fed the hungry throng that whirred about her, scattering crumbs and floating feathers over the immaculate marble of Mr. McCaleb's front door-step.

A knock at the door brought her to her senses. She put a withered little old hand, very like a sparrow's claw, upon the window-sash to shut it hastily, and then, too proud to deceive, turned boldly to meet her fate.

Mrs. Pearson, on the lookout at her half-open door saw the official-looking document handed to her.

"It's her notice to leave," she said in an awed whisper to herself.

In the face of so great a calamity she felt, not triumph, but a shocked sense of loss, of self-reproach. Five minutes after she was in her enemy's room.

"You mustn't—you mustn't cry, dear Mrs. Walker," she sobbed, putting her arms about the slender old shoulders.

"Am I crying?" the little old lady answered. "I can't help it—I'm so happy!"

"Happy!" Mrs. Pearson's dazed old eyes turned bewildered from the envelope with the home's letterhead on it to the bird-like creature in her arms. "And you've got your notice to leave?"

"Did you think it was that? So did I for a minute, an' it 'most killed me. But I opened it, an' found a note from the president—that dear, dear president! She wants to know if I'll take care of her summer cottage till the spring comes. An', Marthy Pearson, they's chickens up there—fancy breeds—a whole yard of 'em—an' I'm to have the feedin' of 'em. Ain't it enough to make a body cry for joy? Say, Marthy, would you—would you mind feedin' the sparrers?—only on the very stormiest days—McCaleb would never suspect you, an' spring's near!"



BREAKING THROUGH

BY

W. C. MORROW

Reprinted from Success Magazine of September, 1906 by permission

"RAY," SAID his mother, whom he shyly and secretly worshipped, without her ever suspecting the least of it beneath his cautious reserve and occasional outbursts of temper, "my son, I hope you will remember, tonight. You are nearly a man."

She was a wise woman, and said it kindly and meant it well; but his face flamed, his eyes hardened, and he sullenly walked away. Mrs. Gilbert sighed, and went about the preparations for the young people's party which her daughters, aged sixteen and eighteen, were to give that evening. She could not foresee what her son would do. Would her gentle warning, filled with the tender pride of a mother's love for her one man-child, drive him with his dog to the woods, whither many a time before this day a word less pointed had sent him, there to live for a week or longer at a time, in a manner that he had never disclosed?—or would the disjointed thing within him which harried his somber, lonely life force him in a blind moment to make a disgraceful scene at the gathering? She prayed that neither would happen, and that the sunshine fighting for egress through his darkness would come forth soft and genial and very fine and sweet, as it did sometimes, and always unaccountably....

The worst had happened at the party. No doubt it was intolerable,—but not so bad as when (he was then only four) he had tried to kill a boy for lying about him and was whipped mercilessly by his father,—for here, in the library, he was sitting before Mr. Gilbert, who was pale and whose eyes had a deep, inscrutable look. He was a large and powerful man, and had a genial nature, with force and sternness. The lad had never seen him looking thus, and so evidently guarding a prisoner, and the boy felt a strange weight within.

Whatever had happened must have left a shadow on the assemblage, for, though faint sounds came through the closed doors, they were somewhat lacking in the robustness of youth. Ray did not deign an effort to remember. More than that, he hoped that it never would come back, for it might be disturbing to his solitudes. Of his attempts to remember the attack on the boy ten years ago, there had never come any result but the recollection of a wholly disconnected event,—when he was enveloped in a swirl of flame and smoke from a fierce grass fire, and had to fight his way through to life. He did not try to think what his father's purpose was in holding him a prisoner tonight. Was it to give him a lecture? Pshaw! The beautiful, peaceful woods would make him forget that child's-play, and he would steal away to them with Cap this very night, as soon as all were asleep.

Thus, motionless and in silence, sat he and his father, seemingly through an endless, aching time. After a while the guests quietly left. His sisters omitted their customary good night to their father. All sounds from the servants ended. Then entered his mother, uncommonly pale, and in silence looked from her son to her husband. She was small and dainty, and very, very pretty, the boy reflected. It was a pity that her bright eyes should be dim tonight and her sweet mouth drawn. She looked worn and as though she dreaded something.

"Are you ready?" Mr. Gilbert asked, regarding her fixedly.

Her lip trembled, but there came a flash from her eyes. "Do you really mean it?" she asked.

"Certainly. It must be done."

"My dear, dear, he's too large for——"

"He'll never be too large for it so long as he is a boor and coward, insults our guests, scandalizes us all, shames his sisters, and treats his parents with open scorn. He won't try to be like other people and accept his world as he finds it. His inordinate conceit is a disease. It is eating up his own life and making our lives miserable. We will cure it."

He had spoken calmly, but with a low vibration of tone; and as he came to his feet he looked very tall and terrible. Ray's blood began to rise, and as he looked about for something undefined he felt the heat and smelled the smoke of the grass fire of ten years ago.

He knew he was a coward. That was the shame and the curse of his life. He did not think it had always been so, but believed it had come about gradually. At first he had not minded the whippings that other boys gave him because of his temper and his physical inadequacy, for he had invited the punishment; but when they all learned that his fighting spirit had weakened, that they could whip him easily, that they need not wait for provocation, and that he would never tell, they bullied and hounded and beat him until he had come to know a craven, sordid fear, which spread from the boys to the whole terrible world in which the masculine entity must fight for a place.

"I am ready," said Mrs. Gilbert, trying to hide a sigh.

"Come," Mr. Gilbert ordered the boy, looking at him for the first time in two hours.

The boy quailed before that look, the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. It made him numb and sick, and when he rose he staggered; for, though tall, he was slender and had little strength. The weight on his chest became a pain and fixed on his throat, to choke and torment him.

His mother had gone out. He followed his father, and the three went out into the back yard, the boy bare-headed. The night was sharp and the moon very bright. All the boy's power of thought was suspended.

In silence they walked down the terraces of the park-like yard in the rear. Cap, Ray's dog, his only intimate, came bounding forward for his young master's unfailing good night, but Mr. Gilbert angrily ordered him away. The animal, astonished and hurt, slunk away, keeping a watchful view of the group, and sat down at a distance and gazed in wonder. They passed through a gate into an orchard, and shut the dog out.

Mr. Gilbert selected an apple tree, because the wood was tougher than that of a peach. From it he cut two switches a yard long, and carefully pared the knots, his wife observing without a word or a movement, and the boy looking away into the distance. When Mr. Gilbert had done, he ordered his son to prepare.

The lad numbly, dumbly removed his coat and waistcoat, slipped his suspenders down, tightened the strap at the back of his trousers, clasped his hands in front, and bowed his head. The dog, which had crept to the fence and was peering through the pickets, whined anxiously and was quivering. When roughly ordered away by Mr. Gilbert, he went upon a terrace that overlooked the fence, and trembled as he watched. The boy did not once look toward him. He was struggling with the pain in his throat.

Mr. Gilbert offered one of the switches to his wife.

"Oh, how can you!" she pleaded.

"You must," he firmly said. "I'll relieve you when you are tired."

The boy's mind suddenly cleared, and he comprehended. A whipping from his father would be frightful enough,—not for the blows; they were nothing. The plan was not alone to humiliate him beyond all measure, but to scourge his soul, ravage the sanctuary of his mother there, rend him asunder, and cast him into an unthinkable hell of isolation; for she was the bond that held him to the world, she was the human comfort and sweetness of his life.

Since his tenth year his discipline had been solely in her hands, his father having given him up as worthless, hopeless. She had whipped him many a time, but not for two years; and he had felt no pain, no shame, no outrage, no resentment. The case of the teacher was different. Ray had solemnly sworn, renewing the oath every day, that when he came to manhood he would beat his teacher to death for whipping him so often and severely because of his dulness, his apathy, or his rebellion; the whippings from his mother had only increased his tenderness for her, and, in some way that he could not understand, his pity also. Perhaps it was because he vaguely felt that she was impairing something in herself that was precious to him. Never had she conquered him; never had he cried out in pain, never pleaded for mercy, never confessed penitence nor promised reform.