A thickset, powerful figure paced to and fro on the quarter-deck, occasionally bellowing an order in a tremendous voice like the roar of a bull. He was getting canvas set for the fresh breeze of the open seas that was catching him astern, and the sailors were jumping to obey his orders. The pounding sails and the singing cordage, the rattling blocks and the whipping ropes, would have told Jeff they were scudding along fast, even if the heeling of the schooner and its swift forward leaps had not made it plain.

"By God, Jones, she's walking," he heard the captain boom across to the mate.

Just then a figure cut past him and made straight for the captain. Farnum recognized in it the sailor whom he had left asleep in the forecastle and even in that fleeting glance was aware of the man's livid fury. Up the steps he went like a wild beast.

"What kind of a boat is this?" he panted hoarsely.

The captain turned toward him. His eyes were shining wickedly, but his voice was ominously suave and honeyed. "This boat, son, is a threemasted schooner, name of Nancy Hanks, Master Joshua Green, bound for the Solomon Islands with a cargo of Oregon fir."

"I've been shanghaied. This is a nest of crimps," the man screamed.

Joshua Green's salient jaw came forward. "Been shanghaied, have you? And we're a nest of crimps, are we? Son, the less I hear of that line of talk the better. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

The man turned loose a flood of profanity and swore he would rot in hell before he would touch a rope on that ship.

Out went Green's great gnarled fist. The seaman shot back from the quarterdeck and struck a pile of rope below. He was up again and down again almost quicker than it takes to tell. Three times he hit the planks before he lay still.

The captain stood over him, his eyes blazing. He looked the savage, barbaric slavedriver he was.

"Me, I'm Bully Green, and don't you forget it. Been shanghaied, have you? Not going to touch a rope? Then, by thunder, you white-livered beachcomber, a rope will touch you till you're flayed. Get this in your coconut. You'll walk chalk, you lazy son of a sea cook, or I'll haze you till you wish you'd never been born." He punctuated his remarks with vigorous kicks. "Bully Green runs this tub, strike me dead if he don't. Now you hump for'ard and clap a hand to them sheets. Walk, you shanghaied Dutchman!"

The sailor crawled away, completely cowed. For one day he had had more than enough. The captain watched him for a moment, his great jaw thrust grimly out. Then, as on a pivot, he whirled toward Jeff.

"Come here, you! Step lively, Sport!"

Farnum wondered whether he was about to undergo an experience similar to that of the sailor. "Do you want to know what kind of a ship this is?"

"No, sir. I'm perfectly satisfied about that," smiled his victim.

"Got no opinions you want to hand out free, son?"

"Think I'll keep them bottled."

"Say 'sir,' Sport!"

"Yes, sir," answered Farnum, his quiet eyes steady and unafraid.

"When I give an order you expect to jump?"

"Jump isn't the word."

"Sir!" thundered Green, and "Sir" the newspaper man corrected himself.

"Got no story to spiel about being shanghaied, son?"

"Would it do any good, sir?"

"Not unless you're aching to get what that son of a Dutchman got. See here, sport! You walk the chalk line, and Bully Green and you'll get along fine. I'm a lamb, I am, when I'm not riled. But get gay—and you'll have a hectic time. I'll rough you till you're shark-food. Get that through your teeth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now you trot down to the fo'c'sle and dive into them slops you find there. You got just three minutes to do the dress-suit act."

Jeff, as he passed below, could hear the great bull voice roaring orders to the men. "Set y'r topsails! Jam 'er down hard, Johnnie Dago! Stand by, you lubbers!... Now then, easy does it... easy!"

Within the allotted three minutes Farnum had climbed into the foul oilskin coat and tarry breeches he found below and was ready for orders.

"Clap on to that windlass, sport! No loafing here.... Hump y'rself. D'ye hear me? Hump?"

Jeff threw his one hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle against the crank of the windlass. Some men would have fought first as long as they could stand and see. Others would have begged, argued, or threatened. But Jeff had schooled himself to master impulses of rage. He knew when to fight and when to yield. Nor did he give way sullenly or passionately. It was an outrage—highhanded tyranny—but at the worst it was a magnificent adventure. As he flung his weight into the crank he smiled.

Part 2

Before the trade winds the Nancy Hanks foamed along day after day, all sails set, making excellent time. But for his anxiety as to the effect his disappearance would have upon the political situation, Jeff would have enjoyed immensely the wild rough life aboard the schooner. But he could not conceal from himself the interpretation of his absence the machine agents would scatter broadcast. He foresaw a reaction against his bill and its probable defeat.

The issue was on the knees of chance. The fact that could not be obliterated was that he had been wiped from the slate until after the legislature would adjourn. For every hour was carrying him farther from the scene of action.

His only hope was that the Nancy Hanks might put in at the Hawaiian Islands, from which place he might get a chance to write, or, better still, to cable the reason of his absence. Captain Green himself wiped out this expectation. He jocosely intimated to Farnum one afternoon that he had no intention of calling the Islands.

"When we get through this six months' cruise you'll be a first-rate sailorman, son, and you'll get a sailorman's wages," he added genially.

The shanghaied man met his eye squarely. "I think I could arrange to draw on Verden for a thousand dollars if you would drop me at the Islands."

"Not for twenty thousand. You're going to stay with us till we get to the Solomon Islands, and don't you forget it."

Bully Green had taken rather a fancy to this amiable young man who had taken so sensible a view of the little misadventure that had befallen him, but of course business was business. He had been paid to keep him out of the way and he intended to fulfil the contract.

"Here I'm educatin' you, makin' an able-bodied seaman out of you, son. You had ought to be grateful," he grinned.

"Oh, I am," Jeff agreed with a twinkle.

But Captain Green had reckoned without the weather. The Nancy Hanks drifted into three days of calm and sultry heat. At the end of the third day she began to rock gently beneath a murky sky.

"Dirty weather," predicted the mate, the same who had assisted at the shanghaing. "When you see a satin sea turn indigo and that peculiar shade in the sky you want to look out for squalls," he explained to Jeff.

It came on them in a rush. The sun went out of a black sky like a blown candle and the sea began to whip itself to a froth. The wind quickened, boomed to a roar, and sent the schooner heeling to a squall across the leaden waters. The open sea closed in on them. Before they could get in sail and make secure the sheets ripped with a scream, braces parted and the topmasts snapped off. The Nancy went pitching forward into the yawning deeps with drunken plunges from which it seemed she would never emerge. Great combing seas toppled down and pounded the decks, while the sailors clung to stays or whatever would give them a hold.

The squall lasted scarce an hour, but it left the schooner dismantled. Her sheets were in ribbons, her topmasts and bowsprit gone. There was nothing for it but a crippled beat toward the Islands.

Four days later she made an offing in the harbor at Honolulu just as a liner was nosing her way out.

Bully Green ranged up beside Farnum and cast a speculative eye on him.

"Sport, I had ought to iron you and keep you in the fo'c'sle until we leave here. It's the only square thing to do."

Jeff's gaze was on the advancing steamer. She was scarce two hundred yards away now and he could plainly read the name painted on her side. She was the Bellingham of Verden.

"I don't see the necessity, sir," he answered.

"I reckon you do, son. Samuel Green stands by his word to a finish. Now I've promised to keep you safe, and you can bet your last dollar I'm a-going to do it."

His prisoner turned from the rail against which he was leaning to the captain. Pinpoints of light were gleaming in the big eyes.

"How much safer do you want me than this?"

Green expectorated at a chip in the water and shifted his quid. "You've got brains, son. No telling what you might try to do. But see here. You're no drunken beachcomber. I know a gentleman when I see one. Gimme your word you'll not try to skip out or send a message back to the States and I'll go easy on you. I'm so dashed kindhearted, I am, that—"

Jeff leaped to the rail, stood poised an instant, and dived into the blue Pacific.

"Well, I'll be," Bully Green interrupted himself to roar an order to lower a boat.



CHAPTER 16

A young man left his father's house to see the world. Everywhere he found busy human beings. Cities were rising toward the skies, seas and plains were being lined with traffic, school, mill and office hummed with life. He wondered why men were so busy and what they were trying to do.

He went to a railroad director and asked: "Why are you building railroads?" "For profits," was the answer. But a laborer beckoned him aside and whispered: "No—we are making the World one neighborhood. East is now next door to West, and all peoples dwell in one continuing city."

The young man went to the boss of a labor union. "Why," he asked, "do you spend your days breeding discontent and leading strikes?" "Why?" repeated the leader fiercely, "that the workers receive more pay for shorter hours." "No," whispered a laborer, "we are teaching the World the sacred value of human beings. We are learning how to be brotherly— how to stand up for each other.—James Oppenheim.

UNDER STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES THE REBEL MAKES HIS BOW TO POLITE SOCIETY. TAKING AN APPLE AS A TEXT, HE PREACHES ON THE RISE OF ADAM

Part 1

"Man overboard!"

Somebody on the liner sang it out. Instantly there was a rush of passengers to the side. From the schooner a boat was being lowered and manned.

"I see him. He's swimming this way. I believe he's trying to escape," one slender young woman cried.

"Nonsense, Alice! He fell overboard and he's probably so frightened he doesn't know which way he is swimming." This suggestion was from the beautiful blonde with bronze hair who stood beside her under a tan parasol held by a fresh-faced globetrotter.

"Don't you believe it, Val. Look how he's cutting through the water. He's trying to reach us. Oh, I hope they won't get him. Somebody get a rope to throw out."

"By Jove, you're right, Miss Alice," cried the Englishman. "It's a race, and it's going to be a near thing." He disappeared and was presently back with a rope.

"Come on! Come on!" screamed the passengers to the swimmer.

"He's ripping strong with that overhead stroke. Ye gods, it's close!" exclaimed the Britisher.

It was. The swimmer reached the side of the ship not four yards in front of the pursuing boat. He caught at the trailing rope and began to clamber up hand over hand, while the Englishman, a man standing near, and Alice Frome dragged him up.

The mate of the Nancy Hanks, standing up in the boat, caught at his foot and pulled. The man's hold loosened on the rope. He slid down a foot, steadied himself. Suddenly the left leg shot out and caught the grinning mate in the mouth. He went over backward into the bottom of the boat. Before he could extricate himself from the tangle his fall had precipitated, the dripping figure of the swimmer stood safely on the deck of the Bellingham.

In his wet foul slops the man was a sight to draw stares. The cabin passengers moved back to give him a wide circle, as men do with a wet retriever.

"What does this mean, my man?" demanded the captain of the Bellingham, pushing forward. He was a big red-faced figure with a heavy roll of fat over his collar.

"I have been shanghaied, sir. From Verden. I'm the editor of the World of that city."

"That's a lie," proclaimed the mate of the Nancy Hanks, who by this time had reached the deck. "He's a nutty deckswabber we picked up at 'Frisco."

"Why, it's Mr. Farnum," cried a fresh young voice from the circle.

The rescued man turned. His eyes joined those of a slim golden girl and he was struck dumb.

"You know this man, Miss Frome?" the captain asked.

"I know him by sight." She stepped to the front. "There can't be any doubt about it. He's Mr. Farnum of Verden, the editor of the World."

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite sure, Captain Barclay. My cousin knows him, too."

The captain turned to Mrs. Van Tyle. She nodded languidly.

Barclay swung back to the mate of the Nancy Hanks. "I know your kind, my man, and I can tell you that I think the penitentiary would be the proper place for you and your captain, with my compliments to him."

"Better come and pay 'em yourself, sir," sneered the mate.

"Get off my deck, you dirty crimp," roared the captain. "Slide now, or I'll have you thrown off."

Mr. Jones made a hurried departure. Once in the boat, he shook his fist at Barclay and cursed him fluently.

The captain turned away promptly. "Mr. Farwell, if you'll step this way the steward will outfit you with some clothes. If they don't fit they'll do better than those togs you're wearing."

The English youth came forward with a suggestion. "Really, I think I can do better than that for Mr. Far—" He hesitated for the name.

"Farnum," supplied the owner of it.

"Ah! You're about my size, Mr. Farnum. If you don't mind, you know, you're quite welcome to anything I have."

"Thank you very much."

"Very well. Mr. Farwell—Farnum, I mean—shake hands with Lieutenant Beauchamp," and with the sense of duty done the worthy captain dismissed the new arrival from his mind.

Jeff bowed to Miss Frome and followed his broad-shouldered guide to a cabin. He was conscious of an odd elation that had not entirely to do with a brave adventure happily ended. The impelling cause of it was rather the hope of a braver adventure happily begun.

Part 2

"By Jove, I envy you, Mr. Farnum. Didn't know people bucked into adventures like that these tame days. Think of actually being shanghaied. It's like a novel. My word, the ladies will make a lion of you!"

The Englishman was dragging a steamer trunk from under his bed. It needed no second glance at his frank boyish face to divine him a friend worth having. Fresh-colored and blue-eyed, he looked very much the country gentleman Jeff had read about but never seen. It was perhaps by the gift of race that he carried himself with distinction, though the flat straight back and the good shoulders of the cricketer contributed somewhat, too. Jeff sized him up as a resolute, clean-cut fellow, happily endowed with many gifts of fortune to make him the likable chap he was.

Beauchamp threw out some clothes from a steamer trunk and left the rescued man alone to dress. Ten minutes later he returned.

"Expect you'd like an interview with the barber. I'll take you round. By the way, you'll let me be your banker till you reach Verden?"

"Thank you. Since I must."

From the barber shop the Englishman took him to the dining saloon. "Awfully sorry you can't sit at our table, Mr. Farnum. It's full up. You're to be at the purser's."

Jeff let a smile escape into his eyes. "Suits me. I've been at the bos'n's for several weeks."

"Beastly outrage. We'll want to hear all about it. Miss Frome's tremendously excited. Odd you and she hadn't met before. Didn't know Verden was such a big town."

"I'm not a society man," explained Jeff. "And it happens I've been fighting her father politically for years. Miss Frome and Mrs. Van Tyle are about the last people I would be likely to meet."

From his seat Jeff could see the cousins at the other end of the room. They were seated near the head of the captain's table, and that officer was paying particular attention to them, perhaps because the Bellingham happened to be one of a line of boats owned by Joe Powers, perhaps because both of them were very attractive young women. They were types entirely outside Farnum's very limited experience. The indolence, the sheathed perfection, the soft sensuous allure of the young widow seemed to Jeff a product largely of her father's wealth. But the charm of her cousin, with its sweet and mocking smile, its note of youthful austerity, was born of the fine and gallant spirit in her.

Beauchamp sat beside Miss Frome and the editor observed that they were having a delightful time. He wondered what they could be talking about. What did a man say to bring such a glow and sparkle of life into a girl's face? It came to him with a wistful regret for his stolen youth that never yet had he sat beside a young woman at dinner and entertained her in the gay adequate manner of Lieutenant Beauchamp. James could do it, had done it a hundred times. But he had been sold too long to an urgent world of battle ever to know such delights.

Part 3

After dinner Jeff lost no time in waiting upon Miss Frome to thank her for her assistance. It was already dark. When he found her it was not in one of the saloons, but on deck. She was leaning against the deck railing in animated talk with Beauchamp, the while Mrs. Van Tyle listened lazily from a deck chair.

"I like the way that red head of his came bobbing through the water," Beauchamp was saying. "Looks to me as if he would take a lot of beating. He's no quitter. Since I haven't the pleasure of knowing Mr. Powers or Senator Frome, I think I'll back Farnum to win."

"It's very plain you don't know Joe Powers. He always wins," contributed his daughter blandly.

"But Mr. Farnum is a remarkable man just the same," Alice added. Then, with a little cry to cover her flushed embarrassment: "Here he is. We do hope you're a little deaf, Mr. Farnum. We've been talking about you."

"You may say anything you like about me, Miss Frome, except that I'm not grateful for the lift aboard you gave me this afternoon," Jeff answered.

He found himself presently giving the story of his adventure. He did not look at Alice, but he told the tale to her alone and was aware of the eagerness with which she listened.

"But why should they want to kidnap you? I don't see any reason for it," Alice protested.

A shadowy smile lay in the eyes of Mrs. Van Tyle. "Mr. Farnum is in politics, my dear."

A fat pork packer from Chicago joined the group. "I've been thinking about the sharks, Mr. Farnum. You played in great luck to escape them."

"Sharks!" Jeff heard the young woman beside him give a gasp. In the moonlight her face showed white.

"These waters are fairly infested with them," the Chicagoan explained. "We saw two this morning in the harbor. It was when the stewards threw out the scraps. They turned over on their—"

"Don't!" cried Alice Frome sharply.

The petrified horror on the vivid mobile face remained long as a sweet memory to Jeff. It had been for him that she had known the swift heart clutch of terror.

Part 4

Farnum, pacing the deck as he munched at an apple, heard himself hailed from the bridge above. He looked up, to see Alice Frome, caught gloriously in the wind like a winged Victory. Her hair was parted in the middle with a touch of Greek simplicity and fell in wavy ripples over her temples beneath the jaunty cap. She put her arms on the railing and leaned forward, her chin tilted to an oddly taking boyish piquancy.

"I say, give a fellow a bite."

By no catalogue of summarized details could this young woman have laid claim to beauty, but in the flashing play of her expression, the exquisite golden coloring, one could not evade the charm of a certain warm witchery, of the passionate beat of innocent life. The wonder of her lay in the sparkle of her inner self. Every gleam of the deep true eyes, every impulsive motion of the slight supple body, expressed some phase of her infinite variety. Her flying moods swept her from demure to daring, from warm to cool. And for all her sweet derision her friends knew a heart full of pure, brave enthusiasms that would endure.

"I don't believe in indiscriminate charity," Jeff explained, and he took another bite.

"Have you no sympathy for the deserving poor?" she pleaded. "Besides, since you're a socialist, it isn't your apple any more than it is mine. Bring my half up to me, sir."

"Your half is the half I've already eaten. And if you knew as much as you pretend to about socialism you'd know it isn't yours until you've earned it."

Her eyes danced. He noticed that beneath each of them was a sprinkle of tiny powdered freckles. "But haven't I earned it? Didn't I blister my hands pulling you aboard?"

He promptly shifted ground. "We're living under the capitalistic system. You earn it and I eat it," he argued. "The rest of this apple is my reward for having appropriated what didn't belong to me."

"But that's not fair. It's no better than stealing."

"Sh—h! It's high finance. Don't use that other word," he whispered. "And what's fair hasn't a thing to do with it. It's my apple because I've got it."

"But—"

He waved her protest aside blandly. "Now try to be content with the lot a wise Providence has awarded you. I eat the apple. You see me eat it. That's the usual division of profits. Don't be an agitator, or an anarchist."

"Don't I get even the core?" she begged.

"I'd like to give it to you, but it wouldn't be best. You see I don't want to make you discontented with your position in life." He flung what was left of the apple into the sea and came up the steps to join her.

Laughter was in the eyes of both, but it died out of hers first.

"Mr. Farnum, is it really as bad as that?" Before he could find an answer she spoke again. "I've wanted for a long time to talk with some one who didn't look at things as we do. I mean as my father does and my uncle does and most of my friends. Tell me what you think of it—you and your friends."

"That's a large order, Miss Frome. I hardly know where to begin."

"Wait! Here comes Lieutenant Beauchamp to take me away. I promised to play ring toss with him, but I don't want to go now." She led a swift retreat to a spot on the upper deck shielded from the wind and warmed by the two huge smokestacks. Dropping breathless into a chair, she invited him with a gesture to take another. Little imps of mischief flashed out at him from her eyes. In the adventure of the escape she had made him partner. A rush of warm blood danced through his veins.

"Now, sir, we're safe. Begin the propaganda. Isn't that the word you use? Tell me all about everything. You're the first real live socialist I ever caught, and I mean to make the most of you."

"But I'm unfortunately not exactly a socialist."

"An anarchist will do just as well."

"Nor an anarchist. Sorry."

"Oh, well, you're something that's dreadful. You haven't the proper bump of respect for father and for Uncle Joe. Now why haven't you?"

And before he knew it this young woman had drawn from him glimpses of what life meant to him. He talked to her of the pressure of the struggle for existence, of the poverty that lies like a blight over whole sections of cities, spreading disease and cruelty and disorder, crushing the souls of its victims, poisoning their hearts and bodies. He showed her a world at odds and ends, in which it was accepted as the natural thing that some should starve while others were waited upon by servants.

He made her see how the tendency of environment is to reduce all things to a question of selfinterest, and how the great triumphant fact of life is that love and kindness persist. Her interest was insatiable. She poured questions upon him, made him tell her stories of the things he had seen in that strange underworld that was farther from her than Asia. So she learned of Oscar Marchant, coughing all day over the shoes he half-soled and going out at night to give his waning life to the service of those who needed him. He told her—without giving names—the story of Sam Miller and his wife, of shop girls forced by grinding poverty to that easier way which leads to death, of little children driven by want into factories which crushed the youth out of them.

Her eyes with the star flash in them never left his face. She was absorbed, filled with a strange emotion that made her lashes moist. She saw not only the tragedy and waste of life, but a glorious glimpse of the way out. This man and his friends set the common good above their private gain. For them a new heart was being born into the world. They were no longer consumed with blind greed, with love of their petty selves. They were no longer full of cowardice and distrust and enmity. Life was a thing beautiful to them. It was flushed with the color of hope, of fine enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated. But nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like gods, immortals, these brothers to the spent and the maimed. For they had found spiritual values in it that made any material profit of small importance. Alice got a vision of the great truth that is back of all true reforms, all improvement, all progress.

"Love," she said almost in a whisper, "is forgetting self."

Jeff lost his stride and pulled up. He thought he could not have heard aright. "I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Go on please."

But she had broken the thread of his talk. He attempted to take it up again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs. Van Tyle and Beauchamp coming toward them.

She rose. Her eyes were the brightest Jeff had ever seen. They were filled with an ardent tenderness. It was as if she were wrapped in a spiritual exaltation.

"Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you what you've done for me."

She turned and walked quickly away. To be dragged back to the commonplace at once was more than she could bear. First she must get alone with herself, must take stock of this new emotion that ran like wine through her blood. A pulse throbbed in her throat, for she was in a passionate glow of altruism.

"I'm glad of life—glad of it—glad of it!" she murmured through the veil she had lowered to screen her face from observation.

It had come to her as a revelation straight from Heaven that there can be no salvation without service. And the motive back of service must be love. Love! That was what Jesus had come to teach the world, and all these years it had warped and mystified his message.

She felt that life could never again be gray or colorless. For there was work waiting that she could do, service that she could give. And surely there could be no greater happiness than to find her work and do it gladly.



CHAPTER 17

All sorts of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed and non-debatable standards. We might be free, and we tie ourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid of ideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is the result of clear and pellucid thinking.

We must get rid of our bonds, but only in order to take on new ones. For our convictions will shackle us. The difference is that then we shall be servants of Truth and not of dead Tradition.—From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE CHAPERONE EXPLAINS THAT THE REBEL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE CHAPERONED BEGS LEAVE TO DIFFER

Part 1

"And why mustn't I?" Alice demanded vigorously.

Her cousin regarded her with indolent amusement. "My dear, you are positively the most energetic person I know. It is refreshing to see with what interest you enter into a discussion."

Miss Frome, very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their joint sitting room. "Well?"

"I didn't say you mustn't, my dear. I know better than to deal in imperatives with Miss Alice. What I did was mildly to suggest that you are going rather far. It's all very well to be civil, but—" Mrs. Van Tyle shrugged her shoulders and let it go at that. She was leaning back in an easychair and across its arm her wrist hung. Between the fingers, polished like old ivory to the tapering pink nails, was a lighted cigarette.

"Why shouldn't I be—pleasant to him? I like him." Her color deepened, but the eyes of the girl did not give way. There was in them a little flare of defiance.

"Be pleasant to him if you like, and if it amuses you. But—" Again Valencia stopped, but after a puff or two at her cigarette she added presently: "Don't get too interested in him."

"I'm not likely to," Alice returned with a touch of scorn. "Can't I like a man and admire him without wanting to marry him? I think that's a hateful way to look at it."

"It's your interpretation, not mine," Mrs. Van Tyle answered with perfect good humor. "Of course you couldn't want to marry him under any circumstances. His station in life—his anarchistic ideas—his reputation as a confirmed libertine—all of them make the thought of such a thing impossible."

Miss Frome's mind seized on only one of the charges. "I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it. Anybody can throw mud—and some of it is bound to stick. He's a good man. You can see that in his face."

"You can perhaps. I can't." Valencia studied her beneath a droop of eyelids behind which she was very alert. "Those things aren't said about a man unless they are true. Moreover, it happens we don't have to depend on hearsay."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember that night we saw the Russian dancers?"

"Yes."

"On the way home our car passed him. He was helping a woman out of a cab in front of the building where he rooms. She was intoxicated, and—his arm was round her waist."

"I don't believe it. It was somebody else," the young woman flamed.

"His cousin recognized him. So did I."

"There must be some explanation. I'll ask him."

"Ask him!" Valencia's level eyebrows lifted "Really, I don't think that will do. Better quietly eliminate him."

"You mean treat him as if he were guilty when, I am sure he is not."

Mrs. Van Tyle's little laugh rippled out. "You're quite dramatic about it, my dear. The man's of no importance. He's a poseur, a demagogue, and one with a vicious streak in him. I understand, of course, that you're interested only because he different from the other men you know. That merely a part of his pose."

"I'm sure it isn't."

"You're romantic, my dear. I'll admit his arrival on this ship was dramatic. No doubt you're imagining him a knight going back to save gallantly a day that is lost. He's only a politician, and so far as I can understand they are almost all a bad lot."

"Including Father and Uncle Joe and Ned Merrill?" Alice asked acidly.

"They are not politicians, but business men. They are in politics merely to protect their interests. But I didn't intend to start a discussion about Mr. Farnum. I ask you to remember that as your chaperone I'm here to represent your father. Would he wish you to be friendly with this man?"

Alice was silent. What her father would think was not a matter of doubt.

"The man's impossible," Mrs. Van Tyle went on pleasantly. "And it's just as well to be careful. Not that I'm very prudish myself. But if you're going to marry Ned Merrill—"

She had struck the wrong note. Like a flash Alice answered.

"I'm not. That's definitely decided."

"Really! I thought it was rather arranged," Valencia smiled blandly.

It was all very well for Alice to protest, but in the end she would be a good girl and do as she was told. Not that her cousin objected to her having a little fling before the fatal day. But why couldn't the girl do her flirting with Beauchamp instead of with this wild socialist?

Valencia reflected that at any rate she had done her duty.

Part 2

Jeff was tramping the deck, his hands in his coat pockets, waiting for the trumpeter to fling out the two bars of music that would summon him to breakfast. He walked vigorously? drawing in deep breaths of the salt sea air. His thoughts were of Alice Frome. He was a lover, and in his imagination she embodied all things beautiful. Her charm flowed through him, pierced him with delight. When he heard music his mind flew to her. It voiced the rhythm of her motions and the sound of her warm laughter. The sunshine but reflected the golden gleams of light in her wavy hair.

As he swung round the smoking saloon Jeff came face to face with Alice. He turned and caught step with her. The coat she wore came to her ankles, but it could not conceal her light, strong tread nor the long lines of the figure that gave her the grace of a captured wood nymph.

"Only five hundred miles from Verden. By night we ought to be in wireless communication," he suggested.

Her glance flashed at him. "You'll be glad to get home."

"I will and I won't. There's work for me to do there. But it's the first real vacation I ever had in my life that lasted over a week. You can't think how I've enjoyed it."

"So have I. More than anything I can remember." They stopped to look at a steamer which lay low on the distant horizon line. After they had fallen into step again she continued at the point where they had been interrupted: "And after we reach home? Are you going to come and see me? Are you going to let me meet your friends, those dear people who are giving themselves to make life less hideous and harsh for the weak? Shall I meet Mr. Mifflin... and Mr. Miller and your little Socialist poet? Or are you going to desert me?"

He smiled a little at her way of putting it, but he was troubled none the less. "Are you sure that your way is our way? One can give service on the Hill just as much as down in the bottoms. There's no moral grandeur in rags or in dirt. Isn't your place with your friends?"

"Haven't I a right to take hold of life for myself at first hand? Haven't I a right to know the truth? What have I done that I should be walled off from all these people who earn the bread I eat?"

"But your friends... your father..."

Her ironic smile derided him. "So after all you haven't the courage of your convictions. Because I'm Peter C. Frome's daughter I'm not to have the right to live."

"No, it's your right to take hold of life with both hands. But surely you must live it among your own people."

"I've got to learn how to live it first, haven't I? Most of my friends are not even aware there a problem of poverty. They thrust the thought of it from them. Our wealthy class has no social consciousness. Take my father. He thinks the submerged are lost because they are thriftless and that all would be right if they wouldn't drink. To him they are just a waste product of civilization.

"But can you study the life of the people without growing discontented with the life you must lead?"

"There is a divine discontent, you know. I've got to see things for myself. Why should all my opinions, my faith, be given to me ready-made. Why must I live by a formula I have never examined? If it isn't true I want to know it. And if it is true I want to know it." She had been looking straight before them toward the rising sun but now her gaze swept round on him. "Don't blame yourself for giving me new thoughts. I suppose all new ideas are likely to make trouble. But I've been working in this direction for years. Ever since I've been a little girl my heresies have puzzled my father. Meeting you has shown me a short cut. That's all."

Something she had said recalled to him a fugitive memory.

"Do you know, I think I saw you once when you were a little bit of a thing?"

"Where?"

"On the doorstep of your old place. I was rather busy at the time fighting Edward Merrill."

She stopped, looking at him in surprise. "Were you that boy?"

"I was that boy."

"You fought him to help a little ragged girl. She was a foreigner."

"I've forgotten why I fought him. The reason I remember the occasion is that I met then for the first time two of my friends."

She claimed a place immediately. "Who was the other one?"

"Captain Chunn."

Presently she bubbled into a little laugh. "How did the fight come out? My nurse dragged me into the house."

"Don't remember. I know the school principal licked me next day. I had been playing hookey."

They made another turn of the deck before she spoke again.

"So we're old acquaintances, and I didn't know it. That was nearly eighteen years ago. Isn't it strange that after so long we should meet again only last week?"

Jeff felt the blood creep into his face. "We met once before, Miss Frome."

"Oh, on the street. I meant to speak."

"So did I."

"When?"

With his eyes meeting hers steadily Jeff told her of the time she had found him in the bushes and mistaken him for a sick man. He could see that he had struck her dumb. She looked at him and looked away again.

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked at last in a low voice.

"It's only fair you should know the truth about me."

They tramped the circuit once more. Neither of them spoke. The trumpeter's bugle call to breakfast rang out.

At the bow she stopped and looked down at the waters they were furrowing. It was a long time before she raised her head and met his eyes. The color had whipped into her cheeks, but she put her question steadily.

"Are you telling me... that I must lose my friend?"

"Isn't that for you to say?"

"I don't know." She faltered for words, but not the least in her intention. "Are you—what I have always heard you are?"

"Can you be a little more definite?" he asked gently.

"Well—dissipated! You're not that?"

"No. I've trodden down the appetite. I'm a total abstainer."

"And you're not... those worse things that the papers say?"

"No."

"I knew it." Triumph rang in her voice. She breathed a generous trust. To know him for a true man it was necessary only to look into his fearless eyes set deep in the thin tanned face. It was impossible for anything unclean to survive with his humorous humility and his pervading sympathy and his love of truth. "I didn't care what they said. I knew it all the time."

Her sweet faith was a thing to see with emotion. He felt tears scorch the back of his eyes.

"The thing you know is bad enough."

"Oh, that! That is nothing... now. It doesn't matter."

Lieutenant Beauchamp emerged from a saloon and bore down upon them.

"Mrs. Van Tyle has sent me to bring you to breakfast, Miss Frome. Mornin', Mr. Farnum."

"And I'm ready for it, We've been round the deck ever so many times. Haven't we, Mr. Farnum?"

She nodded lightly to Jeff and walked away with the Englishman. The sunshine of her warm vitality was like quicksilver in Farnum's veins. What a gallant spirit, at once delicate and daring, dwelt in that vivid slender form! A snatch of Chesterton came to his mind:

Her face was like an open word When brave men speak and choose, The very colors of her coat Were better than good news.

"It is the hour of man: new purposes, Broad shouldered, press against the world's slow gate; And voices from the vast eternities Publish the soul's austere apostolate.

Man bursts the chains that his own hands have made; Hurls down the blind, fierce gods that in blind years He fashioned, and a power upon them laid To bruise his heart and shake his soul with fears." —Edwin Markham.



CHAPTER 18

THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY ARE GIVEN AN ILLUSTRATION OF A ROORBACK

Part 1

Rawson sat in the rotunda of the Pacific Hotel in desultory conversation with Captain Chunn, Hardy and Rogers. He brought his clenched hand down on the padded leather arm of the big chair.

"They'll jam it through to-morrow. That's what they'll do. James K. Farnum's been playing mighty pretty politics and he has got the votes to deliver the goods."

Hardy nodded as he knocked the ash from his cigar. "Now that it's all over we can see James K.'s trail easily enough. He meant to defeat the initiative and referendum amendment, and he meant to do it without losing his popularity. He's done it too. Jeff's disappearance made it certain our bill wouldn't go through. James jumps in with a hurrah and passes one that isn't worth the powder to blow it up. But he's going to claim it as a great victory for the people—and if I know that young man he'll get away with his bluff. Yet it's certain as taxes that he's been working for Joe Powers all the time."

"I wouldn't put it past him to have engineered some deal to get rid of his cousin," Chunn suggested.

Rawson shook his head. "No. Not respectable enough for James. And he's not fool enough to run his head into a trap. But I'd bet my head Big Tim gave him a tip it was to be pulled off. J. K. had to know. Otherwise he wouldn't have been in a position to play the game for them. But he didn't know any details—just a suggestion. Enough to wise him without making him responsible."

"And the play he's been making in the papers. Offering a reward for information about Jeff, insisting publicly that he has absolute confidence in his cousin's integrity while he shakes his head in private. If you want my opinion, that young man is a whited sepulchre. I never did believe in him."

Rogers turned to Captain Chunn with an incredulous smile. "But you still believe in Jeff. Frankly, it looks to me like a double sell out."

The old Confederate's eyes gleamed. "Sir, I've known that boy since he was a little tad. He's never told me a lie. He's square as they make them."

"I used to believe in his cousin James, too," Rogers commented.

"Oh, James! He's another proposition." Rawson's voice was sour with disgust. "He just naturally looked to see where his bread was buttered. He's as selfish as the devil for all that suave, cordial way of his. Right from the first his idea has been to make a big personal hit. And he figured out he could do it easier with Joe Powers back of him than against him. James K. is the smoothest fraud on the Pacific Coast. But Jeff—why, every hair of his head is straight. He's one out of a million, believe me."

"You've said it," Chunn agreed.

Rogers smiled across at them. "He's left a lot of good friends behind him anyhow. But it's strange he could drop off the earth without a soul knowing about it."

"The men who murdered him know about it," Rawson answered significantly.

Captain Chunn shook his head. "No, that boy will turn up yet."

"But not in time to save us. We're licked. There's not one chance in a million for us. That's the discouraging feature of it, to be sold out after we had won our fight."

Rawson agreed with Hardy. "Yes, we're licked. Even if Jeff were to show up, with all these stories against him, we wouldn't be able to stem the tide now."

"Mister Raw-w-son—Mister Raw-w-son." The singsong voice of a bellhop echoed through the rotunda.

Captain Chunn's walking stick flagged the lad and brought him sliding across the polished floor.

"Telegram for Mr. Rawson."

The big politician ripped it open and ran his eyes rapidly over the yellow slip. From his lips burst a sudden oath of surprise.

"By Jupiter, the miracle's happened. Jeff is alive and on his way here. He's sent me a wireless from out at sea somewhere."

"What!" Captain Chunn let out a whoop of joy.

"Listen here." Rawson read aloud his message. "'Shanghaied on schooner Nancy Hanks. Escaped at Honolulu. Back in Verden to-night. Keep up the fight.'"

"Didn't I say Jeff was alive? Didn't I say he would come back and beat those robbers yet?" the owner of the World demanded.

"Don't get excited. It may be a fake." This from Hardy, who was almost as much moved himself.

"Fake nothing! We'll go down to the telegraph office and make sure it's 0. K. Won't this make a bully story for the World 'Shanghaied' in big letters across the top, and underneath a red hot roast of the old city hall gang's methods of trying to defeat the will of the people." Rawson laughed aloud as his imagination pictured the story.

The old soldier's eyes gleamed. "I'll run twice as many copies as usual. We'll plaster the state with them, calling for mass meetings everywhere to insist on the legislature passing our bill."

"Go easy, gentlemen," advised Rogers. "If it's true we hold a trump card, but we want to play it mighty carefully so as to make it carry as much dynamite as possible."

The company could give no information more definite than that the message had come from the Bellingham, which was still a couple of hundred miles out at sea.

In view of the value of the news from a strategic slant his friends succeeded in keeping the lid on Captain Chunn's enthusiasm until the party was safe aboard a fast yacht steaming out of the harbor to meet the Bellingham. The old Confederate's first impulse had been to run an extra immediately, but he was argued out of it.

"We don't want to go off half cocked. We've got a beautiful comeback if we play it right. That is, if Jeff's got any proof. But we better wait and let Jeff run the newspaper end of it, Captain."

This was Hardy's view, and it was indorsed by the others.

"Another thing. This story has got to come just like an explosion on James K. Farnum's supporters. We've got to sweep them right back to our bill. Now if we break the force of it by giving them warning that swarm of lobbyists will get busy and stay busy all night," Rawson added.

Jim Dunn, the star reporter of the World, was hurriedly summoned by telephone. Chunn explained to the city editor that Dunn and the staff photographer were needed to cover a big story, but of what the story was no mention was made to the office. As soon as Dunn and Quillen reached the wharf the Fly by Night shot out of the dock.

Part 2

In the wintry afternoon sunlight Beauchamp and Alice were playing a match of shuffleboard against Jeff and the daughter of a Honolulu missionary. The game had reached an exciting and critical stage when they noticed that the ship was no longer quivering from the throb of the engines.

"A steam yacht, probably from Verden," the ship purser remarked to the first mate as they passed.

The players gave up their game to watch the boat that was being lowered from the deck of a yacht close at hand. Into it stepped five men in addition to the crew. Presently Jeff, leaning against the rail, borrowed the glasses of a man near. After Alice had looked she handed them to Farnum.

He gave a little exclamation of surprise.

"I beg your pardon?" the girl beside him murmured.

"They are my friends, Miss Frome. Come to meet me, I expect. The little man in gray with one arm is Captain Chunn."

She was all excitement at once. "Then they must have received your message?"

"Probably."

Jeff was the first man to meet Captain Chunn as he walked up the steps. The gray little man gave a whoop of joy.

"David!"

Their hands gripped.

Rawson fell on Farnum from behind and pounded him jubilantly. Instantly the editor was the center of a group of eager, urgent wellwishers.

Alice explained to Captain Barclay what it was all about and stood back smiling while questions and answers flew back and forth.

"What about our bill?" Jeff inquired as soon as the first hubbub had quieted.

"Dead as a door nail. Your cousin has substituted H. B. I7. They will pass it to-morrow or the next day."

A swift sickness ran through Farnum. "James gone back on us?"

"That's what. He's double-crossed us." Rawson snapped the words out bitterly.

"Why—why—surely not James." Jeff's mind groped for some possible

explanation.

"Says our bill was lost anyhow and it was a question of getting through Garman's bill or none."

"But Garman's bill was framed by Ned Merrill. It doesn't give us anything."

Rawson nodded grimly. "That's the idea. We're to get nothing, but it's to be wrapped up like a Christmas present so as to fool us."

"And isn't there any chance at all for our bill?"

"Just this one chance." Rawson leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, driving his hand down on the deck railing. "That you've got a charge of dynamite up your sleeve to throw into their camp. If you can't stampede them we're down and out."

Jeff and his allies presently moved away together to hold a conference of ways and means. The boat crew pulled back to the yacht. The engines began to throb once more. The Bellingham gathered momentum and was soon plunging forward at full speed.

Part 3

With a queer little surge of pride in him Alice watched Jeff and his friends move away. They depended on him. Unless he could save it their fight was lost. To her he was a prophet of the better civilization that would some day rise on the ruins of an Individualism grown topheavy. But he was neither a dreamer nor a weakling. His idealism was sane and practical, and he would fight to the last ditch when he must.

And this was another strange thing about him, that though his democracy was a faith, vital and ardent, it was tempered with the liberal spirit. He could make allowances; held no grudges, would laugh away insults at which another man would have raged. Out of her very limited experience Alice decided that he was a great man. That he was so warm and human with it all was one of his seizing charms. No boy could have been more interested in winning the shuffleboard game than he.

The fat pork packer from Chicago came wheezing toward her. He took the steamer chair beside Alice and jerked his head toward the spot where Jeff had disappeared.

"Now if you want my notion, Miss Frome, that's the kind of a man that breeds anarchy. I've seen his paper. He fills it full of stuff that makes the workingman discontented with his lot. A trouble maker, that's what he is. Stops the wheels of industry. Gets in the road of the boosters to croak hard times."

Alice observed the thick rolls of purple fat that bulged over his collar.

"Progress now," he went on. "I'm for progress. Develop the country. That gives work to the laborers and keeps them contented. But men like Farnum are always hampering development by annoying capital. Now that's foolish because capital employs labor."

The young woman suggested another possibility. "Or else labor employs capital."

"What!" The fat little man sat bolt upright in surprise. "I guess you never heard your Uncle Joe Powers talk any such foolishness." He snorted indignantly. "Hmp! The best friend labor has got is capital. If I had the say so I'd crush every labor union—for the good of the working people themselves."

Alice decided that the mental indigestion of the rich sat heavily upon him. She felt her temper rising and took advantage of the approach of Beauchamp to leave quickly.

"Oh, Lieutenant! Have you seen Valencia?"

The Englishman showed surprise. It happened that Alice had at that moment a view of Mrs. Van Tyle stretched on a deck chair some thirty feet away.

Miss Frome hurried him along. Presently, with a low laugh, she explained. "I wanted to get away from him. Carelessly, I dropped a new idea there. It's likely to go off. You know how dangerous they are."

"To people who haven't many. Had it anything to do with making money?"

"Not directly."

"Then you needn't be alarmed on our stout friend's account. He's immune to all ideas not connected with that subject."

The double blast of a trumpet invited them to dinner down stairs.

Part 4

Dunn was sitting in the smoking room writing his story of the kidnapping when a ruddy young Englishman stopped opposite him.

"You're Mr. Dunn, are you not? Reporter for the World?"

"Yes." The newspaper man looked him over with a swift, trained attention.

"A young lady would like to see you for a few minutes. She is interested in this shanghaing of Mr. Farnum."

Dunn's black gimlet eyes searched Beauchamp's face.

"All right. Glad to see her." Dunn's story was being transferred to his pocket as he rose.

He followed his guide to the ladies' writing room. A slender young woman was standing in front of the bookcase. She turned as they entered. Beauchamp introduced the reporter to her, but Dunn failed to catch the name of this rather remarkable looking young lady.

"You are to write the story of Mr. Farnum's adventure?" she asked.

The reporter's eyes narrowed very slightly. "What story?"

"The account of the shanghaing. Oh, I know all about it. Have you all the facts?"

"I'll be glad to hear what you know, Miss—"

She answered his hesitation by mentioning her name.

Dunn grew more wary. "Miss Alice Frome, daughter of Senator Frome?"

"Yes."

"Anything you have to say I'll be pleased to hear, Miss Frome."

To his surprise she broke through the hedge of reserve he had withdrawn behind.

"You distrust me. You think because I'm Senator Frome's daughter that I must be against Mr. Farnum. Is that it?"

"I didn't say that," he sparred.

"I'm not against him. It's because I'm anxious to see him win that I want to be sure he has given you the whole story."

"Why shouldn't he give me the whole story?"

"Because he isn't the kind to boast. Did he tell you about the sharks?"

"Or how Miss Frome helped pull him aboard just in time to save him from the crimps?"

The reporter's eyes gleamed. "What's that?" he snapped quickly.

"And all about the race from the schooner to the Bellingham, It was the most exciting thing I ever saw."

"Great guns! What's the matter with Jeff Farnum? He didn't say a word about that—missed the cream of the story."

Alice smiled. "I thought perhaps he might have."

"He said he saw a chance to swim across to the Bellingham. That made a pretty good story. But sharks—and the shanghaiers chasing him—and a young lady helping to haul him aboard to safety—and that young lady Miss Alice Frome! Say, this is the biggest story that ever broke in Verden. If I fall down on it I'm a dead one sure enough."

"You think it will help Mr. Farnum's fight for his bill?"

"Help it. Say, I'd give fifty dollars to see James K. Farnum's face when he reads the World tomorrow morning. The town will go right up in the air. Hundreds of telegrams are going to pour in to members of the assembly from their constituents. We'll make a Yale finish of this yet."

"It's lucky Miss Frome recognized Mr. Farnum. Otherwise I suppose he would have been sent back to the Nancy Hanks."

"Oh, Miss Frome recognized him? Jeff said one of the passengers did. He couldn't remember who."

"I don't suppose my name is necessary to the story. Just say a young woman on board," Alice suggested.

Dunn's black eyes questioned her. "Are you for us, Miss Frome?"

She smiled. "I'm for you."

"Against Senator Frome and Mr. Powers?"

"I think the bill ought to be passed. I'm not against anybody."

"Well, I'll tell you this. It will help the story a lot to have you in it. Some people might say we framed the whole thing up. But with Senator Frome's daughter starring in it."

"Oh, no, Mr. Farnum's the star."

"Well, you're the leading lady. Don't you see how it helps? Clinches the whole thing as genuine. It's as good as putting the Senator himself on the stand as a witness for us. We've just got to have you."

"It will really help, you think?"

"No question."

"Very well."

"And photographs. You'll stand for one, of course."

"Now really I don't see."

"They can't get back of a photograph. It carries conviction. Of course we've got pictures of you at the office, Miss Frome. But I want to play fair with you. Besides, I want them to show the ship setting."

She laughed. "Don't worry. Your enterprising photographer caught me twice before I knew it. And he got one of my cousin, Mrs. Van Tyle. She doesn't know it, though."

"Good boy, Quillen. Now, if you'll begin at the beginning, Miss Frome, I'll listen to your story."

When she had finished his eyes were gleaming. "It's the biggest scoop I ever got in on. Sounds too good to be true."

Part 5

At Gillam's Point Jeff and his friends, with Dunn and Quillen, left the Bellingham on the launch which brought the pilot. They caught the fast express a half hour later and reached Verden shortly after midnight. His hat drawn down over his eyes and muffled to the ears in an ulster so that he might not be recognized, Farnum took a cab with Captain Chunn, Dunn and Quillen for the office of the World. He slipped into the building and his private room unnoticed by any member of the staff.

Dunn presently brought to him Jenkins, the make-up man.

"Rip your front page to pieces. We've got the story of a life time," Captain Chunn exploded.

Jenkins opened his eyes and grinned at Jeff. "That's what Jim tells me. Have you got the proof to hang the thing on Big Tim?"

"I've got a letter he wrote to Captain Green of the Nancy Hanks. It's on city hall stationery of the last administration."

"Funny he used that paper."

"Someone usually makes a slip in putting a deal of this kind through."

"And the letter?"

"Just a line, signed with O'Brien's initials. 'The terms agreed on are satisfactory.' I found the letter in Green's cabin. As I thought I might make use of it I helped myself."

"Bully! We'll run a fac-simile of it on the front page."

"Dunn's story covers the whole affair. I don't like some features of it, but our friends say it ought to be run as it stands. I've written three columns of editorial stuff dealing with the situation. And here's a story calling for a mass meeting in front of the State House to-morrow morning."

"You'll speak to the people?"

"I'll say a few words. Hardy and Rawson will be the speakers."

"Pity we've lost your cousin. He'd stir them up."

The muscles stood out on Jeff's lean jaw. James was a subject he could not yet discuss. "We're nailing the No Compromise flag to our masthead, Jenkins. We've got to prevent them from forcing through Garman's bill to-morrow. After that every day will be in our favor. Unless I'm mistaken the state will waken up as it never has before. The people will see how nearly they've been euchred out of what they want."

Jenkins came bluntly to another point. "This story would carry a lot more weight if those charges made against your character by the other papers had been answered."

"Then we'll answer them."

The night editor looked at him dubiously. "They've got four affidavits to back their story."

"Only four?" A gay smile was dancing in Jeff's eyes.

"Both the Herald and the Advocate have been playing it strong. Every day they rehash the story and challenge a denial."

"It will all be free advertising for us if we can make them eat crow."

"If we can!" Jenkins did not see how any effective answer was possible and he knew that in the present state of public opinion an unsupported bluff would be fatal.

"How would this do for a starter?"

Jeff handed him two typewritten sheets. The night editor read them through. He looked straight at Jeff.

"Can you back this up?"

"I can."

"But—what about those affidavits?"

Farnum grinned. "We'll take care of them when we come to them."

"It's your funeral," Jenkins admitted.

The whole front page of the World next morning was filled with the Farnum story. As part of it there were interviews with Alice Frome, with Captain Barclay, and with other passengers. The deadly note from O'Brien to Green of the Nancy Hanks occupied the place usually held by the cartoon. Beneath it, exactly in the center of the page, was a leaded box with the caption "A Challenge." It ran as follows:

The editor of the World does not think his reputation important enough to protect it at the expense of a woman. Yet he denies absolutely the import of the charges made by the Herald and the Advocate. That the matter may be forever set at rest the World challenges the papers named to a searching investigation. It proposes:

(1) That the names of five representative citizens of Verden be submitted to Governor Hawley by each of the three papers, and that from this number be select a committee of five to sift thoroughly the allegations;

(2) That the meetings of the committee be held in secret, no members of the press being admitted, and that those composing it pledge themselves never to divulge the names of any witnesses who may appear to give evidence;

(3) That the Herald, the Advocate, and the World severally agree to print on the front page for a week the findings of the committee as soon as received and exactly as received, without any editorial or other comment whatsoever.

By the decision of this committee Jefferson Farnum pledges himself to abide. If found guilty, he will at once resign from the editorial charge of the World and will leave Verden forever.



CHAPTER 19

The practical man is the man who knows what can't be done. When he begins to let hope take the place of information in this regard, he becomes a conservative. When prejudice takes the place of hope, the mere conservative graduates into a tory, or a justice of the supreme court. It's all a matter of the chemistry of substitution.—Dr. G.L. Knapp.

THE SAFE MAN FURNISHES DIVERSION

Part 1

For once the machine had overplayed its hand. Caught unexpectedly by Jeff's return, no effective counter attack was possible. Dunn's story in the World swept the city and the state like wildfire. It was a crouched dramatic narrative and its effect was telling. From it only one inference could be drawn. The big corporations, driven to the wall, had attempted a desperate coup to save the day. It was all very well for Big Tim to file a libel suit. The mind of the public was made up.

The mass meeting at the State House drew an enormous crowd, one so great that overflow meetings had to be held. Every corridor in the building was full of excited jostling people. They poured into the gallery of the Senate room and packed the rear of the floor itself. Against such a demonstration the upper house did not dare pass the Garman bill immediately. It was held over for a few days to give the public emotion a chance to die. Instead, the resentment against machine and corporate domination grew more bitter. Stinging resolutions from the back counties were wired to members who had backslidden. Committees of prominent citizens from up state and across the mountains arrived at Verden for heart-to-heart talks with the assemblymen from their districts.

At a hurried meeting of the managers of the public utilities companies it was decided that the challenge of the World must be accepted. For many who had believed in the total depravity of Jefferson Farnum were beginning to doubt. Unless the man's character could be impeached successfully the day was lost. And with four witnesses against him how could the trouble maker escape?

The committee of investigation consisted of Senator Frome; Clinton Rogers, the shipbuilder; Thomas Elliott, a law partner of Hardy; James Moran, a wholesale wheat shipper, and the leading clergyman of Verden. It sat behind locked doors, adjourning from one office to another to obtain secrecy.

For the defense appeared as witnesses Marchant, Miller, Mrs. Anderson and Nellie. To doubt the truth of the young wife's story was impossible. The agony of shyness and shame that flushed her, the simple broken words of her little tragedy, bore the stamp of minted gold. It was plain to see that she was a victim of betrayal, being slowly won back to love of life by her husband and her child.

The committee in its report told the facts briefly without giving names. Even P. C. Frome could find no excuse for not signing it.

The effect was instantaneous. On this one throw the machine had staked everything. That it had lost was now plain. In a day Jeff was the hero of Verden, of the state at large. His long fight for reform, the dramatic features of the shanghaing and his return, the collapse of the charges against his character, all contributed to lift him to dizzy popularity. He was the very much embarrassed man of the hour.

All the power of the Transcontinental, of the old city hall gang, of the money that had been spent to corrupt the legislature, was unable to roll back the tide of public determination. White-faced assemblymen sneaked into offices at midnight to return the bribe money for which they dared not deliver the goods. Two days after the report of the investigating committee Jeff's bill passed the Senate. Within three hours it was signed by Governor Hawley. That it would be ratified by a vote of the people and so become a part of the state constitution was a foregone conclusion.

Jeff and his friends had forged the first of the tools they needed to rescue the government of the state from the control of the allied plunderers.

Part 2

In the days following her return to Verden Alice Frome devoured the newspapers as she never had before. They were full of the dramatic struggle between Jeff Farnum and the forces which hitherto had controlled the city and state. To her the battle was personal. It centered on the attacks made upon the character of her friend and his pledge to refute them.

When she read in the Advocate the report of the committee Alice wept. It was like her friend, she thought, to risk his reputation for some poor lost wanderer of the streets. Another man might have done it for the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers and sisters to Jeff Farnum.

Ever since her return Alice had known herself in disgrace with her father and that small set in which she moved. Her part in the big World story had been "most regrettable." It was felt that in letting her name be mentioned beside that of one who was a thoroughly disreputable vagabond she had compromised her exclusiveness and betrayed the cause of her class. Her friends recalled that Alice had always been a queer girl.

Her father and Ned Merrill agreed over a little luncheon at the Verden Club that girls were likely to lose themselves in sentimental foolishness and that the best way to stop such nonsense was for one to get married to a safe man. Pending this desirable issue she ought to be diverted by pleasant amusements.

The safe man offered to supply these.

Part 3

The farthest thing from Merrill's thoughts had been to discuss with her the confounded notions she had somehow absorbed. The thing to do, of course, was to ignore them and assume everything was all right. After all, of what importance were the opinions of a girl about practical things?

How the thing cropped up he did not afterward remember, but at the thirteenth green he found himself mentioning that all reformers were out of touch with facts. They were not practical.

The smug finality of his verdict nettled her. This may or may not have been the reason she sliced her ball, quite unnecessarily. But it was probably due to her exasperation at the wasted stroke that she let him have it.

"I'm tired of that word. It means to be suicidally selfish. There's not another word in the language so abused."

"Didn't catch the word that annoys you," the young man smiled.

"Practical! You used it yourself. It means to tear down and not build up, to be so near-sighted you can't see beyond your reach. Your practical man is the least hopeful member of the community. He stands only for material progress. His own, of course!"

"You sound like a Farnum editorial, Alice."

"Do I?" she flashed. "Then I'll give you the rest of it. He—your practical man—is rutted to class traditions. This would not be good form or respectable. That would disturb the existing order. So let's all do nothing and agree that all's well with the world."

Merrill greeted this outburst with a complacent smile. "It's a pretty good world. I haven't any fault to find with it—not this afternoon anyhow."

But Alice, serious with young care and weighted with the problems of a universe, would have none of his compliments.

"Can't you see that there's a—a—" She groped and found a fugitive phrase Jeff had once used—"a want of adjustment that is appalling?"

"It doesn't appall me. I believe in the survival of the fittest."

Her eyes looked at him with scornful penetration. They went through the well-dressed, broad-shouldered exterior of him, to see a suave, gracious Pharisee of the modern world. He believed in the God-of-things-as-they-are because he was the man on horseback. He was a formalist because it paid him to be one. That was why he and his class looked on any questioning of conditions as almost atheistic. They were born to the good things of life. Why should they doubt the ethics of a system that had dealt so kindly with them?

She gave him up. What was the use of talking about such things to him? He had the sense of property ingrained in him. The last thing he would be likely to do was to let any altruistic ideas into his head. He would play safe. Wasn't he a practical man?

She devoted herself to the game. To see her play was a pleasure to the eye. The long lines and graceful curves of her supple young body never appeared to better advantage than at golf. Her motions showed the sylvan freedom of the woods. Ned Merrill appreciated the long, light tread of her, the harmony of movement as of a perfect young animal, together with the fine spiritual quality that escaped her personality so unconsciously.

At the fifteenth hole he continued her education. "This country is founded upon individualism. It stands for the best chance of development possible to all its citizens. When you hamper enterprise you stop that development."

She took him up dryly. "I see. So you and father and Uncle Joe have developed your individualism at the expense of a million other people's. You have gobbled up franchises, forests, ore lands, coal mines, and every other opportunity worth having. As a result you're making them your slaves and crushing out all individuality."

"Not at all. We're really custodians for the people. We administer these things for their benefit because we are more fit to do it."

"How do you know you are?"

"The very fact that we have succeeded in getting what we have is evidence of it."

"All I can see is that our getting it and keeping it—you and I and Uncle Joe and a thousand like us—is responsible for all the poverty in the world. We're helping to make it every time we eat a dinner we didn't work to get."

Alice made a beautiful approach that landed her ball within four feet of the hole. Presently Merrill joined her.

"That was a dandy shot," he told her, and watched Alice hole out. "I don't agree with you. For instance, I work as hard as other men."

"But you're not working for the common good."

His impatience reached words. "That sort of talk is nonsense, Alice. I don't know what has come over you of late."

She smiled provokingly and changed the subject. Why argue with him? The slant with which they got at things was different. Like her father, he had the mental rigidity that is death to open-mindedness.

Briskly she returned to small talk. "You're only three up."

Part 4

On their way back to the club house the safe man recurred to one phase of their talk.

"You ought not to need any telling as to why I work, Alice."

She shot one swift annoyed glance at him. When Ned Merrill tried the sentimental she liked him least.

"Oh, all men like to work, I suppose. Uncle Joe says it's half the fun of life."

"Most men work for some woman. I'm working for you," he told her solemnly.

A little giggle of laughter floated across to him.

"What are you laughing about?" he demanded.

"Oh, the things I notice. Just now it's you, Ned."

"If you'll explain the joke."

"You wouldn't understand it. Dear me, what are you so stiff about?"

Merrill brought things to an issue. "Look here, Alice! What's the use of playing fast and loose? I'd like to know where we're at."

"Would you?"

"Yes, I would. You know all about the arrangement just as well as I do. I haven't pushed you. I've stood back and let you have your good times. Don't you think it's about time for us to talk business?"

"Just as soon as you like, Ned."

"Well, then, let's announce it."

"That we're not engaged to be married and never will be! Is that what you want to announce?"

He flushed angrily. "What's the use of talking that way? You know it has been arranged for years."

"I'm not going through with it. I told Father so. The thing is outrageous," she flamed.

"I don't see why. Our people want it. We are fond of each other. I never cared for any girl but you."

"Let's stick to the business reasons, Ned."

"Hang it, you're so acid about it! I do care for you."

Her dry anger spurted out. "That's unfortunate, since I don't care for you."

"I know you do. Just now you're vexed at me."

"Yes, I am," she admitted, nodding her head swiftly. "But it doesn't make any difference whether I am or not. I've made up my mind. I'm not going through with it."

"You promised."

"I didn't, not in so many words. And I was pushed into it. None of you gave me a fair chance. But I'll not go on with it."

"But, why?"

"Because I'm an American girl, and here we don't have to marry to amalgamate business interests. I won't do it. I'd rather be—" She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. The passion died out of her voice. "Oh, well! No need getting melodramatic about it. Just the same, I won't do it. My mind's made up."

"A pretty figure I'll cut, after all these years," he complained sulkily. "Everyone will know you jilted me."

Alice turned to him, mischief sparkling in her eyes. "I wouldn't stand it if I were you. Show your spunk."

He stared. "What do you mean?"

"Why don't you jilt ME?"

"Jilt you?"

Her head went up and down in a dozen little nods of affirmation. "Yes. Marry Pauline Gillam. You know you'd like to, but you haven't had the courage to give me up. Now that you've got to give me up anyhow—"

"I'm very much obliged, Miss Frome. But I don't think it will be necessary for you to select another wife for me."

"Have you been married once. I didn't know it."

"You know what I mean?" He was stiff as a poker.

"I believe I do." She was in a perfectly good humor again now. "But you better take my advice, Ned. Think what a joke it will be on me. Everybody will say you could have had me."

"We'll not discuss the subject if you please."

Nevertheless Alice knew that she had dropped a seed on good ground.



CHAPTER 20

Now poor Tom Dunstan's cold, Our shop is duller; Scarce a tale is told, And our talk has lost the old Red-republican color!

.............

'She's coming, she's coming!' said he; 'Courage, boys I wait and see! 'FREEDOM'S AHEAD!' —Robert Buchanan.

THE HERO IS LURED TO AN ADVENTURE INTO THE UNCONVENTIONAL AND HEARS MUCH THAT IS PAINFUL TO A WELL-REGULATED MIND

Near the close of a fine spring afternoon James Farnum and Alice Frome were walking at the lower end of Powers Avenue. In the conventional garb he affected since he had become a man of substance the lawyer might have served as a model of fashion to any aspiring youth. His silk hat, his light trousers, the double-breasted coat which enfolded his manly form, were all of the latest design. The weather, for a change, was behaving itself so as not to soil the chaste glory of Solomon thus displayed. There had been rain and would be more, but just now they passed through a dripping world shot full of sunlight.

"Of course I'm no end flattered at being allowed to go with you. But I'm dying of curiosity to know where we are going."

The young woman gave James her beguiling smile. "We're going to call on a sick man. I'm taking you along as chaperon. You needn't be flattered at all. You're merely a convenience, like a hat pin or an umbrella."

"But I'm not sure this is proper. Now as your chaperone—"

"You're not that kind of a chaperon, Mr. Farnum. You haven't any privileges. Nothing but duties. Unless it's a privilege to be chosen. That gives you a chance to say something pretty."

They crossed Yarnell Way. James, looking around upon the wrecks of humanity they began to meet, was very sure that he did not enjoy this excursion. An adventure with Miss Frome outside of the conventions was the very thing he did not want. What in the world did the girl mean anyhow? Her vagaries were beginning to disturb her relatives. So much he had gathered from Valencia.

Before he had got as far as a protest Alice turned in to the entrance of a building and climbed a flight of stairs. She pushed a button. A woman of rather slatternly appearance came to the door.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Maloney. I've come to see how Mr. Marchant is."

The landlady brushed into place some flying strands of hair. "Well, now, Miss Frome, he's better to-day. The nurse is with him. If you'll jist knock at the door 'twill be all right."

While they were in the passage James interposed an objection. "My dear Miss Frome, I really don't think—"

She interrupted brightly. "I'm glad you don't. You're not expected to, you know. I'm commanding this expedition. Yours not to answer why. Yours but to do and die." And she knocked on the door of the room at which they had stopped.

It was opened by a nurse in uniform. James observed that she, too, like Mrs. Maloney, brightened at sight of the visitor.

"Mr. Marchant will be pleased to see you, Miss Frome."

He was. His gladness illuminated the white face through the skin of which the cheek bones appeared about to emerge. A thin blue-veined hand shot forward to meet hers.

"Oh, comrade, but I'm glad to meet you."

"I think you know Mr. Farnum."

The man propped up in bed nodded a little grin at the lawyer. "We've met. It was years ago in Jeff's rooms."

"Oh—er—yes. Yes, I remember."

Presently Jeff and Sam Miller dropped in to see the invalid. From chance remarks the lawyer gathered that the little cobbler had brought himself so low by giving his overcoat one bitter night to a poor girl he had found shivering in the streets.

The frankness with which they discussed before Alice Frome things never referred to in good society shocked James.

It appeared that the story of this little factory girl who had been led astray was still urgent in Marchant's mind. At the time of their arrival he had just finished scribbling some verses hot from his heart. Jeff read them aloud, in spite of the poet's modest insistence that they were only a first draft.

"This is a story that two may tell, I am the one, the other's in hell; A story of passionate amorous fire, With the glamor of love to attune the lyre.

She traveled the road at breakneck speed, I opened the gates and saddled the steed; "Ride free!" I cried as we dashed along. Her sweet voice echoed a mocking song."

"'Fraid it doesn't always scan. They seldom do," apologized the author of the verses.

Jeff rapped for order. "The sense of the meeting is that the blushing poet will please not interrupt."

"Nights of the wildest revel and mirth, Days of sorrow, remorse, and dearth, A heaven of love and a hell of regret— But there's always the woman to pay my debt.

'Sin,' says the preacher, 'shall be washed free, The blood of the Lamb was shed for thee.' Smugly I pass the sacred wine, The woman in hell pays toll for mine.

'I am a pillar of Church and State, She but the broken sport of Fate; This is a story that two may tell, I am the one, the other's in hell.'"

There was a moment's silence after Jeff had finished.

"What are you going to call your verses?" the nurse asked.

"I'll call them, 'She Pays.' That's the idea of it."

James was distinctly uneasy. There was positively something indecent about this. He had an aversion to thinking about unpleasant things. Every well-regulated mind ought to have. He would like to make a protest, but he could not very well do that here. He promised himself to let Alice Frome know as soon as they were alone what he thought about her escapades into this world below the dead line.

He moved uncomfortably in his chair, and in doing so his gaze fell full into the eyes of Sam Miller. The fat librarian was staring at him out of a very white face. Before James could break the spell an unvoiced question had been asked and answered.

Marchant was already riding the hobby that was religion to him. "Four dollars a week. That's what she was getting. And her employer is worth two millions. Think of it. All her youth to be sold for four dollars a week. Just enough to keep body and soul together. And when she went to the head of her department to ask for a raise he leered at her and said a good looking girl like her could always find someone to take care of her. Eight months she stuck it out, getting more ragged every day. Then enter the man, offering her some comfort and pleasure and love. Do you blame her?"

"You must give me her address," Alice said softly.

Oscar nodded. "Good enough, comrade. Jeff has looked out for her, but she needs a woman friend." With a sweep of the hand he went back to the impersonal. "Her trouble was economic, just as ours is. Look at it. We've got a perfect self-regulating system that adjusts itself automatically to bring hard times when we're most prosperous. Give us big crops and boom times, and we head straight for a depression. Why?" He interrupted himself with a fit of coughing, but presently began again, talking also with his swift supple hands. "Because then the foreign market will be glutted. Surplus goods won't sell abroad. The manufacturer, unable to dispose of his produce, will cut down his force or close his plant. Labor, out of work, cannot buy. So every branch of industry suffers because we're too well off. It's a vicious absurd circle born of the system under which we live. Under socialism the remedy would be merely to work less for a time until the surplus was used. It would affect nobody injuriously. The whole thing's as simple as A B C."

It had been plain to the first casual glance of James that the little Socialist was far gone. The amazing thing was the eagerness with which his spirit dominated the body in such ill case. He was alive to the fingertips, though he was already in the Valley of the Shadow. To the lawyer there was something eerie about it all. Marchant was done with the business of living. Why didn't he lie down and accept the verdict?

But to Alice it was God-like, a thing to stand uncovered before. His remedies might be all wrong. Probably they were. None the less his vital courage for life took her by the throat.

Jeff nodded at the invalid cheerfully. "We're going to change all that, Oscar. Into this little old world a new soul is being born. Or perhaps the old soul is being born again."

The Socialist caught at this swiftly. "Yes, we're going to change this terrible waste of human lives. I see a new world, where men will live like brothers and not like wolves rending each other. There poverty will be blotted out... and disease and all mean and cruel things that hamper and destroy life. Law and justice will walk hand in hand through a land of peace and plenty. Our cities, the expression of our social life, will be clean and sunny and beautiful because the lives of the common people are so. There strong men and deep-breasted women will work for the joy of working, since all is for the common good. Their children will be free and happy and well fed... yes, and equal to each other. From that highly socialized state, because it is tied together by love, will come that restrained freedom which is the most perfect individualism."

The nurse forced him gently back upon the pillows. "There! You've talked enough to-day."

He lay coughing, a hectic flush above the high cheek bones. Presently, at a look from the nurse, his guests departed.

Outside the building Miller left the rest abruptly. Flanked by the two cousins, Alice crossed Yarnell Way back to that world to which she had always belonged.

James laid down the law to her concerning the folly of such excursions into the unconventional. Alice listened. She discovered that his viewpoint was exactly like that of Ned Merrill. Any deviation from the conventional was a mistake. Any attempt to escape from existing conditions was a form of treason. Trade, property, business, respectability, good form; these were the shibboleth they worshipped. It was just because she did not want to believe this of James Farnum that she had taken him with her to call on Marchant. It was in a sense a test, and he was answering it by showing himself complacently callous and hidebound.

Surely he had not always been like this, a smug and well-clad Pharisee, afraid to look at the truth. In those early days, when they had been friends, with the possibility of being a good deal more, there had been an impetuous touch of ardor she could no longer find. Her cool glance ran down his figure. The man was taking on flesh, the plump well-fed look of one who has escaped moral conduct by giving up the fight. Fat cushioned the square jaw and detracted from its strength. For the first time she observed a hardening of the eye. The visible deterioration of an inner collapse was being writ on him.

Alice sighed. After all she might have spared herself the trouble. He had chosen his path and he must follow it.

At the corner of Powers Avenue and Van Ault Street James left them. It was natural that the talk should revert to Marchant.

"Oscar finds your visits a very great pleasure," Jeff told her.

"The dear madman!" Her eyes were shining softly. "Isn't he brave and optimistic?"

"Yes."

Both of them were thinking how soon the arm of that unseen God of love and law he worshipped would enfold him.

Alice smiled tenderly, and for the moment the street in front of her danced in a mist. "And his perfect state! Shall we ever realize it?"

"We must hope so. Perhaps not in the form he sees it, but in the way we work it out through a species of evolution. Think of the progress we have made in the last five years. How many dark corners in the long disused houses of our minds have been flooded with light!"

"Yes. Why have we made more progress in the past few years?"

Jeff's eyes held a gleam of humor. "This is a big country with enormous resources. There used to be room for all the most active plunderers to grab something. But lately the grabbing hasn't been so good. We have discovered that the most powerful robbers are doing their snatching from us. So we've suffered a moral awakening."

"You don't believe that," she said quickly.

"There's a good deal in the bread and butter interpretation of history. The push of life, its pressure, drives us to think. Out of thought grow new hopes and a broader vision."

"And then?"

"Pretty soon the thought will flood the world that we make our own poverty, that God and nature have nothing to do with it. After that we'll proceed to eliminate it."

"By means of Mr. Marchant's perfect state?"

"Not by any revolution of an hour probably. Society cannot change its nature in a day. We'll pass gradually from our present state to a better one, the new growing out of the old by generations of progress. But I think we will pass into a form of socialism. It will be necessary to repress the predatory instinct in us that has grown strong under the present system. I don't much care whether you call it democracy or socialism. We must recognize how interdependent we are and work together for the common good."