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Title:      Selected Short StoriesAuthor:     Sinclair Lewis* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.:  0301161h.htmlEdition:    1Language:   EnglishCharacter set encoding:     HTML (Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit)Date first posted:          August 2003Date most recently updated: August 2003This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.caProject Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online atgutenberg.net.au/licence.htmlTo contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au--------------------------------------------------------------------------

In front of the Y Wurry Gas & Fixit Station, atMechanicville, New York, the proprietor, Mr. Rabbit Tait, satelegantly upon a kitchen chair. He was a figure, that RabbitTait--christened Thomas. His trousers might be spotty, and theirhem resembled the jagged edges of magnified razor blades shown inthe advertisements, but his shirt was purple, with narrow redstripes, his sleeve garters were of silvered metal, and on onesausage-like forefinger was a ring with a ruby which would havebeen worth two hundred thousand dollars had it not been made ofglass.

Mr. Tait was not tall, but he was comfortably round; his facewas flushed; his red mustache was so beautifully curled that heresembled a detective; and his sandy hair was roached down overhis forehead in one of the most elegant locks ever seen on thewrong side of a mahogany bar.

Out from the neat white cottage behind the filling station, aresidence with all modern conveniences except bathrooms, gas andelectricity, charged his spouse, Mrs. Bessie Tait, herding theirson Terry.

Now Bessie was not beautiful. She had a hard-boiled-eggforehead and a flatiron jaw, which harmonized with her milk-canvoice to compose a domestic symphony. Nor was Rabbit Tait, forall his dashing air, an Apollo. But Terry, aged six, was a freakof beauty.

He was too good to be true. He had, surely, come off amagazine cover. He had golden hair, like blown thistledown in asunset, his skin was white silk, his big eyes violet, his nosestraight, and his mouth had twisting little smiles which causedthe most loyal drunkards to go home and reform.

How he had ever happened to Rabbit and Bessie Tait, how theangels (or the stork, or Doc McQueech) had ever happened to leaveTerry in the cottage behind the Y Wurry Filling Station insteadof in the baronial clapboard castle of the Mechanicville banker,is a mystery which is left to the eugenists.

Bessie was speaking in a manner not befitting the mother of aChristmas-card cherub:

"For the love of Mike, Rabbit, are you going to sit there onyour chair all afternoon? Why don't you get busy?"

"Yeah?" contributed the cherub's father. "Sure! Whajjuh wammedo? Go out and grab some bozo's bus by the radiator cap and makehim come in and buy some gas?"

"Well, you kin fix the screen door, can't you?"

"The screen door?"

"Yes, the screen door, you poor glue!"

"The screen door? Is it busted?"

"Oh, heck, no; it ain't busted! I just want you to come andscratch its back where the mosquitoes been biting it, you poorsap! And then you can take care of this brat. Under my feet thewhole dog-gone day!"

She slapped Terry, generously and skilfully, and as Terryhowled, Rabbit rose uneasily, pale behind the bronze splendor ofhis curled mustache. Bessie was obviously in one of her morepowerful moods, and it is to be feared that we should have hadthe distressing spectacle of Mr. Tait going to work, driven byhis good lady's iron jaw and granite will, had not, that second,a limousine stopped at the filling station.

In the limousine was a lady so rich, so rich and old, that shehad to be virtuous. She had white hair and a complexion like anold china cup. Glancing out while Rabbit Tait cheerily turned thehandle of the gas pump, she saw Terry.

"Oh!" she squealed. "What an angelic child! Is it yours?"

"Yes, ma'am," chuckled Rabbit, while Bessie ranged forward,beaming on the treasure she had so recently slapped.

"He ought to be a choir boy," said the refined old lady. "Hewould be simply darling, at St. Juke's, in Albany. You must takehim there, and introduce him to Doctor Wimple, the curate--he'sso fond of the little ones! I'm sure your dear little boy couldbe sent to some church school free, andthink--thesedreadful modern days--otherwise, with his beauty, he might getdrawn into the movies as a child star, or some frightful thinglike that, and be ruined! Good morning!"

"Jiminy, that's a swell old dame!" observed the dear littleboy as the limousine swam away.

Bessie absently slapped him, and mused, "Say, Rabbit, the oldlettuce gimme a good idea. The kid might do good in themovies."

"Say, he might, at that. Gee, maybe he could make a hundredbucks a week. I've heard some of these kids do. Golly, I'd liketo have a cane with a silver dog's-head top!"

"Tom Tait, you get on your coat, and as soon as I scrub thekid's mug and change his clothes, you take him right straightdown to the Main Street Foto Shoppe--I'll mind the pump--and youget some pictures of him and we'll shoot 'em out toHollywood."

"Oh, you gimme a big fat pain--hot day like this," sighed Mr.Tait and, gloomily, "Besides, I might miss a job changing aninner tube. Just like you--throw away fifty cents on a foolchance that we might be able to farm the brat out at maybe fiftybucks a week some day,maybe!"

"I don't play no maybes, never," said Bessie Tait.

Mr. Abraham Hamilton Granville, president and G. M. of theJupiter-Triumph-Tait Film Corporation, had adorned his Spanishmansion at Poppy Peaks, California, with the largest private fishbowl in the known world. Other movie satraps might have Pompeianswimming pools, cathedral organs and ballrooms floored withplatinum, but it was Mr. Granville's genius--so had it been,indeed, ever since he had introduced the Holdfast Patent Button,which had put over the renowned Abe Grossburg Little Gents' PantsCo., back in 1903--I say it was Mr. Granville's peculiar geniusthat he always thought up something a little different.

He had caused cunning craftsmen to erect a fish bowl--novulgar aquarium but a real, classy, round, glass, parlor fishbowl--twenty feet high and sixty in circumference, on thered-and-green marble terrace of his mansion, Casa Scarlatta.

Poppy Peaks is an addition to Hollywood, built by the morerefined and sensitive and otherwise rich members of the moviecolony when Hollywood itself became too common for theiraristocratic tradition. And of all the county families andnobility of Poppy Peaks, none were more select than theintellectual powers gathered about Mr. Granville this hazyCalifornia August afternoon.

Besides Mr. Granville and the production manager, Mr. Eisbein,there was Wiggins, the press agent--formerly the most celebratedred-dog player and mint-julep specialist on the coast, a man whowas questionable only in his belief that mange cure will causethinning mouse-colored hair to turn into raven richness. Was alsoMiss Lilac Lavery Lugg, writer of the scenarios for suchmasterpieces of cinematographic passion as "Mad Maids," "MidnightMadness," and "Maids o' the Midnight." She was thirty-eight andhad never been kissed.

But even more important than these mad magnates o' midnightwas a quiet and genteel family sitting together inscarlet-painted basket chairs.

The father of the family was a gentleman named Mr. T.Benescoten Tait. He had a handsome ruddy mustache, curled, and agold cigarette case; he wore a lavender suit, white spats,patent-leather shoes, eyeglasses with a broad silk ribbon, and awalking stick whose top was a dog's-head of gold with rubyeyes.

His lady was less cheering in appearance, but more notable;she wore a white-striped black suit with python-skin slippers.She sat rigid, with eyes like headlights.

And the third of the family was Terry Tait, billed throughoutthe entire world as "The King of Boy Comedians."

He was in English shorts, with a Byronesque silk shirt open atthe throat. But on the back of one manicured hand was a grievoussmear of dirt, which more suggested raising Cain inMechanicville, New York, than being sweet in Poppy Peaks; andcrouched behind him was a disreputable specimen of thatcelebrated breed of canines, a Boy's Dog, who would never beexhibited in any dog show except a strictly private one behind anill-favored barn.

Terry was ten, this summer of 1930.

"Well, Miss Lugg," Granville said briskly, "what's your ideafor the new Terrytait?"

"Oh, I've got a perfectly priceless idea this time. Terryplays a poor little Ytalian bootblack--he's really the son of acount, but he got kidnaped--"

Terry crossed over center stage and yammered, "I won't do it!I've been the newsboy that squealed on the gang, and I've beenthe son of the truck driver that got adopted by the banker, andI've been Oliver Twist and--I hate these dog-gone poor-city-boyrôles! I want to be a boy cowboy, or an Apache!"

Miss Lugg squealed, "I've got it! How about his playing thedrummer boy of the regiment--Civil War stuff--saves the Generalwhen he's wounded, and Lincoln invites him to the WhiteHouse?"

Miss Lugg was soaring into genius before their awed eyes. Butshe was interrupted by the circular-saw voice of Mrs. T.Benescoten Tait:

"Not on your life! Not a chance! Terry in them awful battlescenes with all them tough mob extras falling over him? That'salways the trouble with wars--they make good scenes but somebodyis likely to get hurt. No, sir!"

"Was ist das denn fur ein Hutzpah!" growled Mr. AbrahamHamilton Granville. "Der Terry should take a chance, what we payhim!"

Mrs. Tait sprang up, a fury on ice. "Yeah! A miserable twothousand a week! Believe me, on the next contract it's going tobe four thousand, and if it don't come from Jupiter, there'sothers that'll pay it. Why, we don't hardly make expenses on twogrand, having to keep up a swell social position so none of thesebozos like Franchot can high-hat us, and Terry's French tutor andhis dancing teacher and his trainer and his chauffeurand--and--And thank heaven I'm not ambitious like a lot of thesebums that want to show off how swell they are.

"Hones' sometimes I wish we'd stayed back in Mechanicville!Mr. Tait had a large garage there--we saved more money than whatwe can here, the way you hogs want to grab off all the coin anddon't never think about the Artist and his folks and how they gotto live."

"Yes, yes, yes, maybe that's so. Well, what's your idea of hisnext rôle, Bessie?" soothed Mr. Granville.

Mr. Tait suggested, "I got an idea that--"

"You have not! You never did have!" said Bessie. "Now, I thinkit would be nice if--I'd just love to see my Terrykins as thishere Lost Dophing--this son of Napoleon or Looey or whoever hewas--you know, Leglong. Miss Lugg can look up all thehistorical dope on him. I think Terry'd look lovely in satintights with a ruff!"

"Oh, gee!" wailed Terry.

"I don't," continued Mrs. Tait, with severe virtue, "like tosee my little boy playing these newsboy and hard-up rôlesall the time. I don't think it's a good influence on all hisFollowing. It ain't progress. And him with his wardrobe!"

While Mrs. Tait sermonized, the butler had brought out thefour-o'clock cocktail tray and the afternoon papers, and Wiggins,the rusty press agent, had escaped from the sound of Bessie'svoice into a nice wholesome Chicago murder story.

He piped, now:

"Say, talking about your Lost Dauphin dope, Bess, here's onein real life. Seems in the paper, King Udo of Slovaria died lastnight of heart failure and his heir is his son, Maximilian--KingMaximilian III, he'll be--and the poor kid is only ten. Youngestking in the world. But where the heck is Slovaria?"

"You tellum, Terry," said Bessie Tait. "Terry is a wonder atjography, same as I always was."

"I don't want to!" protested the wonder.

"You do what I tell you to, or I won't let you play baseballwith the butler's kids! I'll--I'll make you go to tea at PrincessMarachecella's!"

"Oh, darn!" sighed Terry.

Then he recited, with the greatest speed and lack ofexpression, "Slovaria is a Balkan kingdom bounded on the north byRoumania, on the east by Zenda, on the south by Bulgaria, and onthe west by Graustark. The capital is Tzetokoskavar. Theprincipal rivers are the Rjekl and the Zgosca. The exports arecattle, hides, cheese and wool. The reigning monarch is Udo VII,who is descended from the renowned warrior King Hieronymus, andwho is united in wedlock to the famous beauty Sidonie, a cousinof the former German Kaiser . . . Say, Mamma, what's a Balkankingdom? Is it in China?"

"Now listen to him, will you? I bet there ain't a kid inHollywood that's got as swell a tutor or 's educated as good ashe is!" purred Mrs. Tait. "I was always like that, too--justcrazy about books and education."

"Wait! Wait! I've got it!" shrieked Miss Lilac Lavery Lugg."Here's our scenario, and the publicity about this new kid kingwill help to put it over. Listen! Terry is the boy king ofa--"

"I don't want to be a king! I want to be an Apache!" wailedTerry, but no one heeded.

Everyone (excepting Terry, Terry's mongrel pup and the butler)listened with hot eyes, as they were caught up by the whirlwindof Lilac's genius:

"Terry is the boy king of a Near-Eastern country. Scenes inthe palace--poor kid, awful' lonely, sitting on throne, end of abig throne room--the Diplomatic Hotel might let us shoot theirlobby again, like we did in 'Long Live the Czar!' Big gang ofguards in these fur hats. Saluting. Show how he's a grandkid--scene of him being nice to a poor little orphan in the yardat the castle and his kitty had busted her leg, but he's so sickand tired of all this royal grandeur that he turns democratic onhis guard and the court and all them, and he's meaner than atoothache to his guards and the prime minister--the primeminister'll be a grand comedy character, with long whiskers. Andthe sub-plot is an American reporter, a tall, handsome birdthat's doing the Balkans, and say, he's the spitting image of theking's uncle--the uncle is the heavy; he's trying to grab thethrone off the poor li'l' tike. Well, one day the king--thekid--is out in the castle grounds taking his exercise, ridinghorseback. He's followed by a coupla hundred cavalry troops, andhe treats 'em something fierce, hits 'em and so on.

"Well, this American reporter, he's there in the grounds, andthe king sees him and thinks it's his uncle, and he says to histroops, 'Go on, beat it; there's my uncle,' he says; 'he wants tograb the throne, but I'm not scared of him; I'll meet him alone.'And so he rides up to this fellow and draws his sword."

"Would he have a sword, li'l' kid like that?" hinted T.Benescoten.

"Of course he would, you fathead!" snapped Bessie. "Haven'tyou seen any pictures of the Prince of Wales? Kings and all likethat always wear uniforms and swords--except maybe when they'replaying golf. Or swimming."

"Certainly!" Lilac looked icily at T. Benescoten.

Everybody, save his son Terry, usually looked icily at T.Benescoten.

"Ziz saying," Lilac continued, "he draws his sword and rushesat what he thinks is his uncle, but the fellow speaks and herealizes it ain't his uncle. Then they get to talking. I thinkthere ought to be a flashback showing the reporter's--thehero's--happy life in Oklahoma as a boy; how he played baseballand all that. And then the reporter--he's seen how mean the boyking is to his men, and he gives the poor li'l' kid his firstlesson in acting nice and democratic, like all American kids do,and the king is awful' sorry he was so mean, and he thinks thisreporter is the nicest bird he ever met, and they're walkingthrough the grounds and they meet the king's sister--she's thefemale lead--I can see Katinka Kettleson playing therôle--and the reporter and the princess fall in love atfirst sight--of course later the reporter rescues the princessand the king from the uncle--big ball at the palace, with aballet, and the uncle plans to kidnap the king, and the reporter,he's learned all about the extensive secret passages, or maybethey might even be catacombs, under the palace, and he leads themaway and there's a slick fight in the woods, the reporter used tobe a fencing champion and he engages the uncle in battle--swords,you know--while the poor little king and the unfortunate princesscrouch timorously amid the leaves on the ground and the reportercroaks the uncle and--say,say, I got it, this'll besomething ab-so-tively new in these royal plot pictures, theymake their getaway, after the fight, by airplane--probably theymight cross the ocean to America, and the pilot drops dead, andthe reporter has a secret wound that he has gallantly beenconcealing from the princess and he faints but the pilot hastaught the king how to fly and he grabs the controls--"

"Can I fly, really?" gloated Terry.

"You can not!" snapped his mother. "That part's doubled. Goon, Lilac!"

And Terry listened gloomily while Lilac led the boy king on toa climax in which he was kidnaped by New York gun men and finallyrescued by the reporter and the prime minister--whiskered, comic,but heroic.

"It's swell!" said Abraham Hamilton Granville.

"It'll be all right, I guess," said Mrs. T. BenescotenTait.

"Oh, Lord!" said Wiggins the press agent.

And as for Terry Tait and the Tait mongrel, they said nothingat all, and said it vigorously.

While Castello Marino, the residence of the Benescoten Taits,was not so extensive as the mansion of Mr. Abraham Granville, itwas a very tasty residence, with a campanile that was an exactcopy of the celebrated Mangia tower at Siena, except that it wasonly one fifth as tall, and composed of yellow tiles instead ofrusty old-fashioned brick.

In this select abode, the loving but unfortunate parents,trying so hard to give their little boy a chance to get on in theworld, were having a good deal of trouble.

This morning Terry simply would not let his nice valet dresshim. He said he did not like his nice valet. He said he wanted tobe let alone.

"I think, Polacci," Mrs. Tait remarked to the valet, "thatMaster Tait ought to wear his polo suit to Mr. Granville'soffice."

"Oh, no, please, Mother!" Terry begged. "It looks so foolish!No other boy wears polo costume."

"Of course not! That's why I got it for you!"

"I won't wear it! Not outside the house. Everybody laughs atme. If I wear it, I won't act."

"Oh, dear me, why I should be cursed by a son that--"

"Now put on your polo rags and mind your mother," said T.Benescoten Tait.

"Rabbit!"

"Yes, my dear?"

"Shut up! . . . Now, Terry, I'll let you wear your sailorsuit. The English one. Imported. But I want you to realize thatyour disobedience just almost breaks your mother's heart! Nowhurry and let Polacci dress you. The limousine is waiting."

"Oh, Mother, please, have I got to go in the limousine? Itisn't any fun to ride in a limousine. You can't see anything. Iwant to go on the trolley. You can see all kinds of differentpeople on the trolley."

"Why, Terence McGee Tait! I neverheard of such athing! Who in the world has been talking to you about trolleys?They're common! There's just common vulgar folks, on trolleys!Besides! Give people a chance to look at you without paying forit? What an idea! Oh, dear, that's what comes from mixing withthese extra people on the lot, picking up these common ideas! Ifyou don't come with me in the limousine, I won't give you one bitof caviar for dinner!"

"I hate caviar!"

"Oh, I just don't know what I've done to deserve this!"

T. Benescoten spoke tentatively: "How about me and Terry goingon the trolley and meeting you at Abe's? I'd kind of like to rideon the street car myself, for a change."

"And pick up one of those Hollywood cuties? Not a chance!"

They took the limousine.

In Mr. Granville's office were gathered the higher nobility ofthe Jupiter-Triumph-Tait organization, to listen to the completedscenario of "His Majesty, Junior," the film suggested three weeksago by Lilac Lavery Lugg. But before Miss Lugg had a chance toread it, Wiggins, the press agent, prowling up and down in theecstasy of an idea as he talked, announced that the eveningnewspapers said young Maximilian III of Slovaria, with hismother, Queen Sidonie, was about to visit London.

It was hinted in the papers that the astute Sidonie wanted tosecure the sympathy and alliance of the British people byexhibiting the boy king.

"And here," squealed Wiggins, "is the grandest piece ofpublicity that's ever been pulled. Bessie, you and Tom and Terrygo to London. I'll stay out of it, so they won't smell a mice.Clapham, our London agent, is a smart publicity grabber, anyway.You fix it, somehow, so Terry and this King Maximilian getacquainted. The two boy kings, see? They get photographedtogether, see? Besides, Terry's public know him as a commonnewsboy, and they won't hardly be loyal to him as a king unlessthey see him really mixing up with the élite, see?"

Mrs. Tait looked doubtful. Poppy Peaks she knew, and Hollywoodwas her oyster, but neither she nor T. Benescoten nor Terry hadever tackled the dread unknown lands beyond the Atlantic. But shebrightened and looked resolute as Wiggins cunningly added:

"And this will give you a chance, if you rig it right and thetwo kids hit it off together, to get chummy with Queen Sidonie,Bessie, and maybe you can get her to come to the Peaks as yourguest, and then, believe me, you'll make Garbo and Kate Hepburnlook like deuces wild, very wild!"

"That's not abad idea," mused Mrs. Tait.

In the sacred recesses of the Benescoten Tait home, in theEtruscan breakfast room, where love birds and Himalayan canariesbilled and cooed and caroled in red enameled cages, and thesolid-marble dining table glowed prettily with nineteen dollars'worth of orchids, the Tait family discussed the invasion ofEurope. They had just returned from Mr. Granville's office, wherethey had accepted Lilac's scenario of "His Majesty, Junior."

"I think," said T. Benescoten, "that if we get held up inLondon very long, I'll run over to Paris, if you don't mind,Bessie."

"What do you want to do in Paris?"

"Huh? Why, I just want to see the city. You know, getacquainted with French customs. Nothing so broadening astravel."

"Then I guess you're going to stay narrow. Fat chance, yougoing to Paris by yourself and drinking a lot of hootch andchasing around after a lot of wild women. In fact, come to thinkof it, Rabbit, I guess Terry and I can pull this off better if weleave you home."

"Mother!" Terry was imploring. "Please! I want Father to goalong!"

Bessie faced her two men with her hands on her hips, her jawout, and when she stood thus, no one who knew her opposed her,unless he was looking for death.

T. Benescoten grumbled, Terry wailed, but Bessie glared themdown. Then she stalked to the telephone and ordered the immediateattendance of a dressmaker, a women's tailor, a shoemaker, amilliner, a hairdresser, a masseuse, an osteopath, a French tutorand a Higher Thought lecturer.

"I'm going to Europe and I'm going right," she said.

When, two weeks later, she took the train, she had fourteennew evening frocks, eight new ensembles, thirty-seven new hats,eight new pairs of snake-skin shoes, a thumb ring of opals, agold-mounted dressing bag, and a lovely new calm manner purchasedfrom the Higher Thought lecturer.

All the way from Poppy Peaks to New York, Terry and hissmiling, his tender mother were hailed by the millions to whomTerry had become the symbol of joyous yet wistful boyhood.

Wiggins had generously let the press of each city and townthrough which they would pass know just when the King of BoyComedians would arrive, and at every stop Terry was dragged,wailing, to bow and smile his famous Little Lord Fauntleroy smileat the cheering gangs.

The horror of facing the staring eyes, the horror of trying tolook superhuman for the benefit of these gloating worshipers,while he felt within like a lonely and scared little boy, so grewon Terry that it was only his mother's raging, only the fury ofMr. Abraham Hamilton Granville and the coaxing of Wiggins, thatwould draw Terry out of his safe drawing room to theplatform.

Despite a certain apprehension about the perils of the deep,despite a slight worry as to how he would talk to KingMaximilian--who was, said the papers, to arrive in London one daybefore the Taits were due--Terry was delighted when Wiggins andGranville had left them, when the steamer had snarled its way outto sea, and he could hide in a corner of the S. S.Megalomaniac's royal suite.

He slept for sixteen hours, then, and even the indomitableBessie Tait slept, while the S. S.Megalomaniac thrust outto sea, and expectant Europe awaited them as it awaited the otherroyal family from Slovaria.

Aside from gently persuading Terry to be the star in theship's concert, at which he recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew"and "Gunga Din," and gave imitations of Napoleon and a sittinghen; aside from permitting him to be photographed by everypassenger aboard, and lovingly insisting that he wear a newcostume every afternoon--including the polo costume, the baseballsuit, the Eton suit with top hat, and the Fauntleroy black velvetwith lace collar--aside from these lighter diversions, Bessiegave Terry a rest on the crossing. He must be saved to overwhelmLondon, Britain, and Queen Sidonie.

Bessie was disappointed in landing at Southampton when she sawno crowd hysterical with desire to worship the King of BoyComedians.

In fact, no one was awaiting them save Mr. Percival S. F.Clapham, press agent and secretary to the chairman of theAnglo-Jupiter Film Distributing Corporation, which acted asmissionary in introducing the Terrytaits to Britain.

Mr. Clapham greeted Bessie and Terry in what he consideredAmerican: "Pleased to meet you! At your service, folks, as longas you're here."

"Where's the crowd?" demanded Bessie.

"They, uh--Southampton is a bit indifferent to Americans, youmight say."

Bessie and Clapham looked at each other with no greataffection. The international brotherhood was not working out; thehands across the sea were growing cold; and when the three ofthem were settled in a railway compartment, Bessie demandedcrisply:

"Terry and I can't waste a lot of time. I don't want to hustleyou, but have you fixed it up yet for Terry to meet this kid kingand the quince?"

"Thequince?"

"Good heavens! The queen! Sidonie!"

"But--thequince! Really! Oh, I see! The queen! Ofcourse. I see. No, I'm sorry; not quite arranged yet."

"They've arrived?"

"Oh, yes, quite. Splendid reception. The young king thedarling of London."

"Well, all right; then Terry and I can go right up and call on'em. I expect they've seen a lot of his pictures. If you haven'tmade a date for us, I guess we'd better just send in our cards.Or had we better phone? Where they staying?"

"They're at the Picardie Hotel, because of being in mourning.This is an unofficial visit. And really, my dear lady, it wouldbe quite impossible for you even to try to call on His YoungMajesty and Queen Sidonie! It simply isn't done, d'you see? Itisn'tdone! You must make application to your ambassador,who will present the request to the British foreign office, whowill communicate with the Slovarian foreign office, who willdetermine whether or not they care to submit the request to QueenSidonie's secretary, who may care to bring the matter to HerMajesty's attention, at which time--"

"At which time," remarked Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait, "hell willhave frozen over a second time. Now listen! I'm not much up onmeeting queens, but I guess I'm about as chummy with the royaltyas you are! Now listen--"

Mr. Clapham's native ruddiness paled as he heard thesubversive, the almost sacrilegious plans of Bessie Tait.

"My dear madame, we are all of us eager to help you," heimplored, "but really, you know, a king is a king!"

She looked at Terry. "You bet," she observed. "And a king'smother is a queen. You bet!"

Which profound and mysterious statement puzzled Mr. Claphamuntil the train drew in at Waterloo.

There were five reporters and a group of thirty or fortyadmirers, very juvenile, to greet them. The most respectable Mr.Turner, chairman of the Anglo-Jupiter Corporation and boss of Mr.Clapham, met them with his car.

"Shall we go right to the Picardie, or kind of parade throughLondon first?" demanded Bessie.

"Oh! The Picardie!"

"Why, sure! That's where King Maximilian and his ma arestaying, isn't it? It's the swellest hotel in town, isn'tit?"

"Oh, yes, quite!" Mr. Turner looked agitated, as he fretted:"But I say! A lady traveling alone, with a boy, couldn't go tothe Picardie! People might think it a bit fast! I've taken asuite for you at Garborough's Hotel--most respectable familyhotel."

"When was it built?"

"Built? Built? When was it built? Good heavens, I don't know,madame. I should suppose about 1840."

"Well, that's all I want to know. But go ahead."

Mr. Turner's car left the station to a slight rustle ofcheering from Terry's youthful admirers and to earnest questionsfrom the reporters as to how many cocktails American boys of tenusually consume before dinner. But after that, there was no signthat London knew it was entertaining another king.

Fog packed in about them. The sooty house fronts disappearedin saffron-gray. The roar of Trafalgar Square seemed louder, moremenacing, than Los Angeles or even New York. Bessie thrust outher hand with a gesture of timid affection which she rarely usedtoward that rare and golden goose, Terry.

The living room of their suite at Garborough's Hotel was brownand dingy. To Bessie, accustomed to hotel rooms the size of arailroad terminal, the room was shockingly small. It was butlittle bigger than the entire cottage she had occupied four yearsbefore.

She sniffed. And quite rightly.

And the bedrooms had wardrobes instead of proper closets.

She sniffed again. She rang for the room waiter.

"Dry Martini," said Bessie.

"Eek?" gasped the room waiter.

"Dry Martini! Cocktail! Licker!" snarled Bessie.

"I beg pardon, madame, but we do not serve cocktails."

"You don't--" In the hurt astonishment of it Bessie sat down,hard. "Say, what kind of a dump is this? What kind of a bunch doyou get here?"

"His Grace, the Duke of Ightham, has been coming here forsixty years."

"Ever since you were a boy of forty! All right, bring me ahighball."

"A high ball, madame?"

"A highball! A whisky and soda! A lightning andcloudburst!"

"Very well, madame."

After the waiter's stately exit, Bessie whimpered, "And theysaid I'd like these old ruins!"

For the moment she looked beaten. "Maybe it ain't going to beas easy to be buddies with Maximilian and Sidonie as I thought. Iwish I'd brought old Rabbit!" Her depression vanished; she sprangup like a war horse. "How I'd bawl him out! Come on, Bess! Here'swhere we show this old run-down Europe what an honest-to-goodnessAmerican lady can do!"

They had arrived at Garborough's at three of the afternoon. Atfive, in a black velvet costume which made her look like avamp--as far up as her chin--Bessie was stalking into the lobbyof the Hotel Picardie.

The reception clerk at Garborough's had been a stringy youngwoman in black alpaca and a state of disapproval, but at thePicardie he was a young Spanish count in a morning coat.

"I want," she said, "the best suite you have."

"Certainly, madame; at once."

The clerk leaped into action and brought out from aglass-enclosed holy of holies an assistant manager who was moredapperly mustached, more sleekly frock-coated, more soapilyattentive than himself.

"May I inquire how large a suite Madame would desire?And--uh--is Madame's husband with Madame?"

"No. I'm the mother of Terry Tait, the movie, I mean cinema,star. I'm here with him; just us two. I'd like a parlor andcoupla of bedrooms and a few private dining rooms. I guess youneed references here." For a second Bessie again sounded a littlehopeless. "Probably if you called up the American ambassador hewould know about us."

"Oh, no, madame; of course we are familiar with the picturesof Master Tait. May I show you some suites?"

The first suite that he showed was almost as large, it hadalmost as much gilt, paneling, omelet-marble table tops,telephone extensions, water taps and Persian rugs as a hotel inSpokane, Schenectady, or St. Petersburg, Florida.

"This is more like it. But look here, I heard somewhere thatQueen Sidonie and her boy are staying here."

"Yes, quite so, madame."

"Well, look: I'd like to be on their floor."

"Sorry, madame, but that is impossible. We have reserved theentire floor for Their Majesties and their suite."

"But there must be some rooms empty on it."

"Sorry, madame, but that is quite impossible. The police wouldbe very nasty if we even attempted such a thing."

Bessie unhappily recalled the days when she had first gone toHollywood with Terry and tried to persuade a castiron-faced guardto let them through to the casting director. Not since then hadanyone spoken to her so firmly. It was a dejected Bessie Taitfrom Mechanicville who besought, "Well, then, I'd like to be onthe floor right above them or below them. I'll make it worth yourwhile, manager. Oh, I know I can't bribe you, but I don't like tobother anybody without I pay for their trouble, and it would beworth ten of your pounds, or whatever you callum, to have a nicesuite just above Their Majesties." The assistant managerhesitated. From her gold-link purse Bessie drew out the edge of aten-pound note. At that beautiful sight the assistant managersighed, and murmured respectfully, "I'll see what can be done,madame."

Ten minutes later Bessie had a voluptuous suite guaranteed tobe just above that of Queen Sidonie.

Someone had informed Bessie Tait that English people dined aslate as eight in the evening. It scarcely seemed possible. But,"I'll try anything once," said Bessie.

At eight, she sat in a corner of the Renaissance Salon of theHotel Picardie, in a striking white tulle frock with goldsequins, and with her was Master Tait, in full eveningclothes.

She noticed that the other guests stared at himconsiderably.

"They know who we are!" she rejoiced, as she picked up themenu. It was in French, but if the supercilious captain ofwaiters expected the American lady not to understand French, hewas mistaken, for in eighteen lessons at Poppy Peaks she hadlearned not only the vocabulary of food but also the French for"I should like to take a horseback ride on a horse tomorrow,""How much costs a hat of this fashion?" and "Where obtains onethe tickets of the first class for Holland?"

She said rapidly to the captain, "Donnyma deh pottageGerman one order crevettes and one wheats, deh rosbifs, pom deterres, and some poissons--no, pois--and deh fois ice cream andhustle it will you, please?"

"Perfaitment!" said the French captain and, continuingin his delightful native tongue, he commanded a waiter,"Jetzmach' schnell, du, Otto!"

At nine, Bessie commanded again the presence of the assistantmanager who had found her suite.

"I want you," she suggested, "to get me some good Englishservants. First I want a valet for my son. I want Terry shouldhave a high-class English valet--and I don't want none that talksbad English, neither."

"Certainly, madame."

"And I want a maid that can fix my hair."

"Certainly, madame."

"And then I want a refined lady secretary."

"Refined?"

"Yes, she's gotta be refined. I never could stand dames thataren't refined."

"I know a young lady, madame, Miss Tingle, the daughter of amost worthy Low Church clergyman, and formerly secretary to LadyFrisbie."

"Lady Frisbie? Oh, in the nobility?"

"Why--uh--practically. Her husband, Sir Edward Frisbie, was alinen draper, and mayor of Bournemouth. Oh, yes, you'll find MissTingle most refined."

"Grand! That's what I'm always telling these roughnecks inHollywood--like when they wanted Terry to play a comic part, bellboy in a harem--'No, sir,' I said, 'Terry's got a refined fatherand mother, and he'll be refined himself or I'll bust his head!'Well, shoot in your valet and maid and Miss Tingle--have 'em hereby noon."

The assistant manager promised. After his going, Bessiereceived Mr. Turner and Mr. Clapham of the Anglo-JupiterCorporation.

"We have decided--" said Mr. Clapham gently.

"Yes, we have quite decided," said Mr. Turner withfirmness.

"--that it would be indiscreet for you to seek an audiencewith King Maximilian at all."

"Oh, you have!" murmured Bessie. "It's nice to have thingsdecided for you."

"Yes, we hoped you would be pleased. We have, in fact, goneinto the matter most thoroughly. I rang up a gentleman connectedwith the press, and he assured me that the proper way would befor you to apply to your ambassador, and that doubtless thematter could be arranged in a year or two--doubtless you wouldhave to go to Slovaria."

"Well, that's splendid. Just a year or two! That's fine!Mighty kind of you."

"So pleased to do any little thing that I can. Now Mr. Turnerand I have talked it over, and it seems to both of us that itwould be better to have a little subtler publicity. So if youcare to have him do so, your son will address the Lads' Brigadeof St. Crispin's, Golder's Green, next Thursday evening--thepapers will give several paragraphs to this interesting occasion.And then--I do a bit in the literary way, you know--I haveventured to write an interview with you which I hope to have usedby one of the papers. It goes as follows:

"'Well, I swow! Say, dod gast my cats, this yere is by goshall whillikens one big burg,' was the first remark of Mrs. Tait,mother of the well-known juvenile cinema star, Terry Tait, uponarrival in London yesterday. 'Yes-sir-ree-bob,' she continued,'out thar in the broad bosom of the Golden West, out where thehandclasp grows a little warmer, we get some mighty cute burgs,but nothing like this yere ant heap.'"

"Isn't that nice?" sighed Bessie. "And that's the Americanlanguage you've written it in, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm often taken for an American when I wish."

"I'm sure you must be."

Left alone by Turner and Clapham, with the promise that withina few days they would arrange other feats of publicity at leastequal to the chance to address the Lads' Brigade of Golder'sGreen, Bessie sat down and sighed. But the next morning sheresolutely marched into Terry's modest 24 x 42 bedroom, where hewas readingTreasure Island, and she ordered, "Come on,son; we're going out and buy the town. Toys."

"I don't want any toys. I hate toys!"

"You heard what I said! Think I'm going to have a lot of kingsdropping into your room and seeing you without a lot of swelltoys?"

"But Mother, I'd rather have books."

"Say, if you keep on like this, you'll turn out nothing but anauthor working for one-fifty a week. Books never did nobody nogood. Come on!"

By suggestion of the concierge, they took a taxi for anenormous Toy Bazaar on Oxford Street. Bessie firmly bought forTerry an electric train, an electric Derby game, a portablechemical laboratory, a set of boxing gloves, and a choice articlein the way of a model of the Colosseum in which electric lionsdevoured electric Early Christians.

"There! I bet none of these boy kings has got a better set oftoys than that!" remarked Bessie.

As they emerged from the Toy Bazaar, Terry saw, next to it, ananimal shop.

Ever since they had left Poppy Peaks, Terry had mourned forthe disgraceful mongrel which the English quarantine regulationshad compelled him to leave at home, and he cried now, "Oh,Mother, I want a dog!"

"If I get you one, will you play nicely with the electrictoys?"

"I'll try; honestly I will."

"And will you address these Lad Brigands or whatever it is inthis Golden Green or wherever it is? I'll have this bird Claphamwrite your speech."

"Yes. But a jolly dog!"

"I wish," said Bessie, in her most refined way, as theyentered the animal shop, "to look at a line of dogs. What haveyou got good today?"

"This, madame, is a very superior animal." And the clerkbrought out an object as thin as paper, as long as Saturdaymorning, as gloomy as a cameraman. "This is an Imperial Russianwolfhound, a genuine borzoi--you will recognize the typicalborzoi touch, madame--it's brother of a hound which we sold justyesterday to the Earl of Tweepers for his daughter, Lady Ann--nodoubt you know her ladyship, madame."

"H-how much?" faltered Bessie.

"To close out this line, madame, we should be willing to letyou have this animal for a hundred guineas."

The inner, the still Mechanicvillized Bessie Tait wascalculating, "Great grief--that's five hundred bucks for apooch!" but the outer, the newly refined Mrs. T. Benescoten Taitwas remarking evenly, "Rather a lot, but I might consider--Doesit please you, Terry?"

She could keep up the strain of refinement no longer; and mostbriskly, much more happily, she remarked to the clerk, "This ismy son, Terry Tait. You've probably seen him in the movies. Theycall him the King of Boy Comedians."

"Oh, Mother, please!" protested Terry, but the clerk wastrumpeting, "Oh, yes, madame. We are honored in being allowed toserve you."

And with that the canine blotter would have been sold, but forone accident. Terry sighed, "Mother, I don't like him."

"Butdarling, this is the kind of dog that all nobilityget their pictures taken with. But if you don't like him--"

While Bessie grew momently more impatient, Terry was offered,and declined, such delightful pets as a Pekingese that lookedlike a misanthropic bug and an Airedale like a rolled-up doormat.Then he stopped before a cage and, his hands clasped in ecstasy,exulted, "Oh, there's the dog I want!"

The clerk looked shocked; Bessie, seeing his expression,looked shockeder.

Terry's choice was a canine social error. He was, probably, across between a police dog and a collie, with a little Scotchterrier and a trace of cocker spaniel. He had bright eyes, a wideand foolish mouth, and paws so enormous that he resembled a pupon snowshoes. And he had none of the dignity and aloof toleranceof the pedigreed dogs whom Terry had rejected; he laughed at themand wagged at them and barked an ill-bred joyful bark.

"That," objected the clerk, "is a mongrel, I'm afraid. We areexhibiting him only out of deference to the widow of a countrycustomer. I really shouldn't care to recommend him."

"But he's a sweet dog!" wailed Terry. "He's the one Iwant!"

"Very well, then, my fine young gentleman, you get no dog atall, if you're going to be so dog-gonecommon!" ragedBessie, and she dragged the protesting Terry from the shop andhastened to the Hotel Picardie.

Bessie telephoned to those unseen powers that somewhere in themysterious heart of every hotel regulate all human destinies,"Will you please send up a bell boy at once?"

"A bell boy? Oh, a page!"

"Well, whatever you want to call him."

There appeared at her suite a small boy whom she immediatelylonged to put on the stage. He was red-headed, freckle-faced, andhe carried his snub nose high and cockily. He wore a skin-tightblue uniform with a row of brass buttons incredibly closetogether, and on the corner of his head rode an impudent pill-boxcap of soldierly scarlet.

"Yes, madame?" He was obviously trying not to grin, in puregood fellowship, and when Terry grinned, the page's cockney mugwas wreathed with smiling.

"What is your name?" demanded Bessie.

"Bundock, madame."

"Heavens, you can't call a person Bundock! What are you calledat home?"

"Ginger, madame."

"Well, Ginger, this is my son, Master Terry Tait, themovie--the cinema star."

"Oh, madame, we were told below that Master Tait was 'ere, butI didn't know I'd 'ave the pleasure of seeing him! I'm familiarwith Master Tait in the pictures, if I may say so, madame."

"All right. Play."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said play. Play! You are to play with Master Terry."

While Ginger looked dazed, she led the two boys into Terry'sbedroom, pointed an imperial forefinger at the new toys which shehad brought home in the taxicab, and loftily left them.

"Gosh, I think it's the limit that this playing business iswished onto you, too!" sighed Terry. "I guess she'll want us toplay with the electric train. Do you mind playing with anelectric train?"

"I've never before 'ad the opportunity, sir."

"Oh, golly, don't call me 'sir.'"

"Very well, sir."

"What did you play with at home?"

"Well, sir--"

"Terry! Not sir!"

"Well, Master Terry, sir, I 'ad a very nice cricket bat thatmy uncle 'Ennery made for me, and a wagon made out of a Bass' Alebox, sir, but it didn't go so very well, sir--permit me!"

Terry had begun to open the case containing the electrictrain. Ginger sprang to help him. As he lifted out an electriclocomotive, a dozen railroad carriages which represented theFlying Scotsman in miniature, a station on whose platform a tinystation master waved a flag when the set was connected with theelectric-light socket, a tunnel through a conveniently portablemountain, and an even more miraculously portable bridge across amighty tin river three feet long, Ginger muttered, "I'll bejiggered."

"Do you like them?" marveled Terry.

"Oh!Like them, sir!"

"Well, you wouldn't if they gave you one every birthday andChristmas, and you had to run 'em while a bunch of gin-houndsstood around and watched you and said, 'isn't he cute!'"

But Terry was impressed by the admiration of this obviouslycompetent Ginger, this fortunate young man who was allowed towear brass buttons and live in the joyous informality of kitchensand linen closets. Within fifteen minutes, unanimously electedpresident and general manager of the Hollywood & Pasadena R.R., Terry was excitedly giving orders to the vice president andtraffic manager; trains were darting through tunnels andintelligently stopping at stations; and once there was adelightful accident in which the train ran off the curve, to theanguish of sixteen unfortunate passengers.

"Gee, I do like it when I've got somebody to play with!"marveled Terry. "Say, I wish you could see my dog back home. He'sa dandy dog. His name is Corn Beef and Cabbage."

"Really, sir? What breed is 'e?"

"Well, he's kind of an Oklahoma wolfhound, my dad says."

"Oh, yes. Okaloma wolf'ound. I've 'eard of that breed, sir. Isay! Let's put one of the passengers on the track, and then thetrain runs into 'im and we could 'ave a funeral."

"Slick!"

Miss Tingle, the refined lady secretary recommended by thehotel, had arrived at noon, and had been engaged.

"Can you go to work right now?" demanded Bessie. "I'm going tograb off a king!"

"Grab off--a king, madame?"

"Oh, gosh, I don't know why it is! Back in Hollywood, Ithought I could sling the King's English all right, but inEngland, seems like every time I say anything they repeat what Isay and register astonishment! I guess I'm kind of a lady BuffaloBill. Well, let's get to it. Now listen."

She explained the scheme for the capture of publicity bymaking Terry and King Maximilian chums.

"And just between you and I, I wouldn't kick and holler muchif I got to be buddies with Queen Sidonie. Of course Terry'spublicity comes first. I just sacrifice everything to that boy.But same time I've seen pictures of Sidonie. Somehow I just feel(Do you believe in the Higher Thought?--you know there's a lot ofthese instincts and hunches and all like that that you just can'texplain by material explanations)--and somehow I feel that sheand I would be great pals, if we had the chance. Oh, dear!"

Bessie sighed the gentle sigh of a self-immolating mother.

"It's just fierce the way I've had to submerge my ownpersonality for my husband and son. But I guess unselfishnessnever goes unrewarded. So look. We'll just write her a littleletter and send it down by hand. Of course I want to enclose acard, so's she'll know whom I am. Which of these cards would dothe trick better, do you think?"

One of the two cards was a highly restrained document: merely"Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait," in engraved script. But the other cardwas baroque. It was impressive. It announced:

It was embossed in red, blue, silver, and canary-yellow, andwhile it was slightly smaller than a motor-license plate, it wasmuch more striking.

"Now maybe this colored one ain't as society as the other, butdon't you think Her Majesty would be more likely to notice it?"said Bessie anxiously.

Miss Tingle was terrified yet fascinated. "I've never," shegasped, "had the privilege of communicating with a queen, but ifI may say so, I fancy the plainer card would be more suitable,madame."

"Oh, I suppose so. But the big card cost a lot of money. Well,now, will you take dictation on a letter? I suppose the old galreads English?"

"Oh, I understand that Their Majesties write and speak sixlanguages."

"Well, I'd be satisfied with one. When I get back home I'mgoing to hire some Britisher to learn me to talk snooty. Well,here goes. Take this down:

"Her Majesty, the Queen of Slovaria.

"Dear Madame:

"I guess you will be surprised at receiving this letterfrom a total stranger, but I am a neighbor of yours, having thesuite right above yours here in the hotel. And probably you haveheard of my son, Mr. Terry Tait, the well-known boy actor in themovies--no, make that cinema,Miss Tingle--and I hope thatmaybe your boy, King Maximilian, has seen him in some of hiscelebrated films, such as 'Please Buy a Paper' or 'Give Me aPenny, Mister.'

"He is here with me in London, and every hour he says tome, 'Ma, I'm just crazy to meet this boy king, Maximilian, hebeing my own age, which is ten, etc.'

"As your boy is a king, and as folks in many lands havebeen kind enough to call Terry the King of Boy Actors, I thoughtmaybe it would be nice if the two could get together and comparenotes, etc. I would be very pleased to give him and you lunch ortea or dinner or a cocktail or whatever would be convenient foryou and though of course Terry has many dates, having to lectureto the Lads' Brigade, etc., we would try to keep any date thatyou might set.

"But I am afraid we'll have to make it in the next few days,as Terry's Public in Paris is begging for him.

"So if you could just ring me up here in Suite Five-B anytime that's handy for you, we can arrange details, etc.

"Hoping you are in the best of health, I am Yourssincerely.

"As soon as you get that typed--I've had 'em bring up amachine and stick it in my bedroom--get a bell boy to hustle itright down to Siddy's suite. We gotta get action. Shoot!"

And Bessie scampered happily out to the foyer to hire a maid,and to engage for Terry a lugubrious valet.

His name was Humberstone. He had, of course, never servedanyone of lesser degree than a duke, and he would require twopounds extra a week to associate with Americans. He got it. Hewas worth it. Even a boy king from Slovaria would be impressed byHumberstone's egg-shaped head.

Bessie proudly let this four-pounds-a-week worth of noblevalet into the bedroom. On the floor, extremely linty, sat twosmall boys whom Humberstone eyed with malevolence. Ginger quaked.Terry looked irritated.

"Sonny dear, this is your new valet," crooned Bessie, with amaternal sweetness alarming to her well-trained son.

Humberstone eyed the railwaymen with the eye of an ogre wholiked little boys nicely fried, with onion sauce. Under that smugglare, the first excited gayety that Terry had shown these manyweeks died out.

"Oh, I don't need a valet, Mother!"

"And who, Master Smarty, do you think is going to look out foryour clothes? You certainly don't expect me to, I hope!Humberstone, you can sleep here in this dressing room. Now getbusy and press Master Terry's clothes."

When Humberstone had gone out with an armful of clothes andwhen Bessie had left them, the two playmates sat on a couch, toodispirited to go on happily wrecking trains.

"Gee, that's fierce, that man-eating valet," confidedTerry.

"Right you are. 'E's 'orrible," said his friend Ginger.

"He's a big stiff!"

"'E is that! 'E's an old buffins."

"It's fierce, Ginger. We won't stand it!"

"It is that, Terry. We won't!"

"We'll run away. To Poppy Peaks!"

"Is that your ranch?"

Now when Terry comes to Heaven's gate and has to explain toSaint Peter the extreme untruth of what he said about bears andthe wild free life of the ranches, let us trust that the wise oldsaint will understand that Terry had long been overadmired forsilly things like having cherubic lips and silky hair, and neverbeen admired for the proper things, such as the ability to ridemustangs, lasso steers and shoot Indians, which, unquestionably,he would have demonstrated if only he had ever been nearer aranch than Main Street, Los Angeles.

"Yes, sure, it's our ranch. Gee, I'm going to get Mother toinvite you there. We live in a big log cabin, and every night,gee, you can hear the grizzly bears howling!"

"My word! I say, did you ever shoot a grizzly bear?"

"Oh, not awful many, but couple of times."

"Tell me about it. Were you with Will Rogers or HootGibson?"

"Both of them. There was Bill and Hoot and Doug Fairbanksand--uh--and there was Will Beebe, the nachalist, and we all wentup camping in the--uh--in the Little Bighorn Valley--that's onour ranch, Poppy Peaks--and one night I was sleeping out in thesagebrush, all rolled up in my blankets, and I woke up and Iheard something going snuffle-snuffle-snuffle, and I looked upand there was a great, big, tall, huge figger--"

"My 'at!"

"--just like a great, big, enormous man, only twict as big,and like he had an awful' thick fur coat, and gee, I was scared,but I reached out my hand and I grabbed my dad's rifle, and Iaimed--I just took a long careful aim--"

"My word!"

"--and I let her go,bang! and the bear he fell--no, atfirst he didn't fall right down dead, but he kind of staggeredlike he was making for me--"

"My aunt!"

"--but my shot'd woke up everybody, and Harold Lloyd, no,Richard Bart'lemess it was--he grabbed up his gun and he shot andthe bear fell down right beside me, with its awful hot breathstirring my hair, and then it just flopped a couple of times andbing! it was dead!"

"My!"

"But I bet you've had some adventures, Ginger. Don't allEnglish kids go to sea as cabin boys?"

"Well, me, I never 'ad time to, not exactly. But me uncle,Uncle 'Ennery Bundock, now there's a man, Terry, that's afteryour own 'eart. Adventures? Why, Uncle 'Ennery 'as 'ad moreadventures than the Prince of Wales! 'E was a cabin boy, 'e was!Why, one time 'e was out in the South Seas and the ship 'e was onwas wrecked, it was, it ran into a w'ale, a monstrous big w'ale,and it busted the forward keelson, and that wessel, it began tosink immejitly, oh, something shocking, and me uncle swam ashore,four miles it was, through them seas simply infected with sharks,and 'e come ashore, only me own age, twelve, 'e was then, butmany's the time 'e's told me, six foot 'e stood in 'is stockingfeet.

"And there on shore was a fee-rocious band of nekked savagesbut--well, 'e 'ad a burning glass in 'is clothes, and 'e 'eld itup, and them poor ignorant savages, they didn't know what it was,and then 'e acted like 'e didn't even see 'em, and 'e stuck thatburning glass over a pile of driftwood, and the wood caught fire,and them savages all gave one 'orrible shriek, and they all ranaway, and so that's 'ow 'e got to be their king."

"Is he still their king?"

"'Im? Uncle 'Ennery? No fear! 'E 'ad other things to do, 'e'ad, and when 'e got tired of being king, 'e up and made 'isselfa canoe out of a log and sailed away and--and 'e stood forParliament in the Sandwich Islands!"

"Tell me some more!" cried Terry.

But their ardor was interrupted by the return of theformidable Humberstone, and then Bessie whisked in with, "You cango now, Ginger. Terry! Wash your hands. Lunch."

"Mother! I want Ginger to come play with me every day!"

"Well, perhaps; we'll see. Now be snappy. This afternoon wemight--we might have some important visitors. Mostimportant!"

For two days Bessie awaited a reply to her note to QueenSidonie, but from the royal fastnesses she had no murmur.

London mildly discovered that the King of Boy Comedians was intown. A special writer from a newspaper which had beenAmericanized came to interview Terry on the contrasting spiritualvalues of baseball vs. cricket, his favorite poem, and thecooking of Brussels sprouts.

He addressed the Lads' Brigade, and that was nothing to writeabout. And he received six hundred and eighteen letters frompeople who were willing to let him pay for their mortgages andtheir surgical operations.

But for most of the two days he sneaked into corners and triedto look inconspicuous while, in the living room of the suite,Bessie stalked and glared, and in his bedroom Humberstone thevalet glared and stalked. Ginger was summoned to play, but Bessieso raged at their noise that the two infants made a pirates' denbehind Terry's bed, where Ginger chronicled his uncle 'EnneryBundock's adventures as steward and bartender to a celebratedarctic expedition--"'Bring me a whisky-soda, me man,' says SirJohn Peary, and Uncle 'Ennery brings it, and standing there SirJohn drinks a toast to the North Pole, and 'e says to me uncle,''Ennery, we'd never 've discovered it but for your splendidservice'"--and 'Ennery's astonishing experiences during the GreatWar when, as a British spy, he reached the Imperial Palace inBerlin and talked with the Kaiser, who, such was Uncle 'Ennery'scunning, took him for a Turkish ally.

If anything more than Ginger's freckled grin had been neededto make Terry adore him, it would have been the privilege ofmeeting the relative of so spirited a hero as Uncle 'EnneryBundock.

With Terry in Ginger's care, Bessie was able to give herselfup whole-heartedly to worrying about failure to receive an answerfrom Queen Sidonie, to worrying about what Rabbit might be doingby his lone wicked self in Hollywood, and to being manicured,massaged, dress-fitted, hat-fitted, and generally enjoyingherself. On the afternoon of the second day, she fretted only alittle when Terry, with Ginger, seemed to be missing. But whenthey had been missing for two hours, she realized with suddenhorror that Terry was lost in the wilds.

It was some comfort to think that there would be frontpagestories even in the London papers, which have their first pageson the third page, but she did hope he wouldn't be late fordinner. With all the devotion of a mother and the efficiency of atrue American, she telephoned first to the newspapers and secondto Scotland Yard.

Just as the happy reporters and cameramen arrived, she heard aslight squealing back in Terry's room and dashed out to find thatTerry had sheepishly sneaked in the back way, accompanied by ayet more sheepish Ginger and by a very sheep of sheeps--a largeirregular-shaped dog of a predominating hue of brown, streakedand striped and spotted with black, white, yellow, and plaindirt. He had a broad back, built for boys to ride upon, a tailthat wagged foolishly, and an eye that looked with fond ecstasyupon the two boys, but with alarm upon the ineffableHumberstone.

"Good heavens!" wailed Bessie. "That's that horrible animal Itold you you couldn't have!"

"Oh, no, Mother!That"--with vast scorn--"was just acollie-police-dog, with terrier blood, but this is a pure-bredMargate Wader. The mansaid so! And his name is Josephus.The dog's. And the man wanted to charge me ten shillings, butGinger got him for me for eighteen-pence and that autographedpicture of Fred Stone."

"Oh," groaned Bessie, "to think that I should have a sonthat's common! It's funny, but you're just like your father. ButI haven't got time to talk about that now. Listen! The reportersare here! You were lost! You gotta tell 'em--a man tried tokidnap you, but Ginger--he'd happened to see you once in thehotel, and of course he knew who you were, and he was comingalong, and he persuaded you not to go with this man--he lookedlike a Bolshevik. Get that? Snappy now!"

With maternal pride, she heard Terry admit to the reportershow reckless he had been in wandering through the foggy city.Ginger, called on for further details, loyally brought in hisuncle 'Ennery Bundock--it seemed that Uncle 'Ennery Bundock hadonce served in the Czar's Imperial Guard, and was an authority onBolsheviks; it was he who had recognized the Soviet spy andrescued Terry.

The reporters raised their eyebrows and went away, mostpolitely. Next morning, Bessie was up at seven, clamoring for allthe newspapers. Terry's awful escape was mentioned in only one ofthem, in the column of Mr. Swannen Haffer:

After, so it is asserted, frequently associating with gunmenand like underworld characters of San Francisco, Bangor, andother western cities of the United States, Terence Tate, theAmerican boy cinema actor, discovered that Brighter London isdelightfully beginning to realize the perils of his native land.Strolling from his hotel yesterday, Master Tate, whose mother hasinterestingly compared his art to that of Sir Henry Irving, SirJohnston Forbes-Robertson, and Eleonora Duse, contrived sothoroughly to lose himself in the trackless wilds of Pall Mallthat it was necessary to send out an expedition of hotelservants, equipped with wireless, ice axes, and tinned walrusmeat, to discover and rescue him.

Master Tate, with that shrewd perception which has so endearedall Yankee filmaturgy to the naïve British heart, discovereda band of red Indians encamped in front of the Carlton Club, anda band of Bolshevik spies, disguised as bishops but concealingbombs under their aprons, lurking on the roof of the Atheneum.Master Tate's horrendous discoveries have been conveyed toScotland Yard, and it is to be hoped that thanks to the younghero--who is only six years old; in fact, so young that hismother permits him to have only three motor cars--London willpresently be made almost as safe as his native Chicago.

Bessie spoke for half an hour without stopping. It did notsoothe her particularly to find, in every newspaper, a two-columnaccount of the children's party given by the little PrincessElizabeth, with King Maximilian of Slovaria as honor guest, andthe announcement that within a week Sidonie and Maximilian wereto accompany the British Royal Family to Sandringham Hall, inNorfolk.

The house party, said the announcement, would be informal, andlimited to intimate friends of the Family.

Somehow--she could not explain why--that seemed to BessieTait, of Poppy Peaks, to shut her out more than any account of agrand public entertainment.

A week! She was desperate.

And if the British press wasn't to be roused by Terry'sghastly kidnaping, what could a lady do? All day she galloped upand down her suite, raging at her maid, at Humberstone, even atMiss Tingle, the refined lady secretary. The cheerful sounds ofTerry, Ginger, and Josephus the Margate Wader, from Terry's room,the sound of yelps and giggles and tremendous chasings after atennis ball, irritated her the more; made her forget the smallvoice within her that whispered, "Now be careful, Bess--don'tmonkey with the buzz saw."

"Oh, shut up!" she said to the alarmed mentor and, sendingMiss Tingle to buy stationery which she didn't need, the maid tobuy hair nets which she never used, and Humberstone to go back tohis room and continue doing nothing save look impressive, shedashed to the telephone and snarled, "I want to speak to SuiteFour-B."

"I'm sorry, madame, but I can't connect you with thatapartment. It's taken by the Queen of Slovaria."

"Good Lord, don't you suppose I know that? The Queen and I aregreat friends."

"Very sorry, madame, but I have my orders. I can connect youwith the bureau of Count Elopatak, Her Majesty's equerry."

Bessie was puzzled as to why one should be connectedtelephonically with a bureau, an object which to her was firmlyassociated with Mr. Rabbit Tait's collars and pink silkundergarments, and equally puzzled as to what an equerry did fora living. "Sounds like a horse--and at that, I guess a horse isabout the only bird connected with Her Maj that I'm going to getto talk to," she reflected tragically, but she said meekly, "Verywell, I'll speak to his countship."

She then spoke in turn, so far as she could later make out,with an American who was breeches buyer for Eglantine, Katz andKominsky, of Cleveland, Ohio, and who seemed to have noconnection whatever with the Royal House of Slovaria; with anEnglishwoman who appeared to be the stenographer to the secretaryof the equerry; to the secretary of the equerry; to an indignantEnglishman who asserted that he was no Slovarian equerry but, onthe contrary, a coffee planter from British Guiana; to CountElopatak, and at last to a man with a swart and bearded voice whoadmitted to being the secretary of Queen Sidonie.

But he didn't seem to care for telephoning. He kept makingsounds as though he were about to hang up, and Bessie held himonly by a string of such ejaculations as, "Now you must get thisclear!" and "This is very important!"

Hadn't Her Majesty, Bessie demanded, received the letter fromMrs. T. Benescoten Tait, of California, mother of thecelebrated--

Yes, the secretary seemed to remember some such letter but ofcourse letters from strangers were never considered.

Well, then, she was willing to take the matter up over thephone.

Take upwhat matter? There were no matters, thankheaven, which had to be taken up!

But had they asked His Young Majesty whether he might not liketo meet the celebrated boy--

His Majesty cared to meet no one and really, if Madame wouldbe so kind, there were innumerable affairs of the most pressingnecessity and--click!

This time Bessie expressed her opinion in a subdued manner."But I'm not licked yet. I've got an Idea!"

When Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait had an Idea, Hollywood sat up andlooked nervous, but the gray welter of city beyond the windows ofthe Hotel Picardie looked strangely indifferent.

"Of course, none of her hired men--equerries or whatever fancynames they want to call themselves--would understand it, but I'llbet Sidonie herself would be tickled pink to get some high-classpublicity! It's just a matter of getting to her and explainingit," considered Bessie. "And we'd have such a nice time talkingabout our boys. Well, then, on the job--get past all these darnwatchdogs."

She marched into Terry's bedroom. She chased Ginger out of theroom, shut Josephus the Margate Wader in Humberstone's room, andremarked to Terry with a maternal sweetness which caused him tolook alarmed and suspicious, "Come, my little mannie, put on yourFauntleroy suit; we're going to see Queen Sidonie!"

Now deep and dark and terrible as was Terry's hatred for thepolo costume, it was as love and loyalty compared with hisdetestation of the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, with its velvetjacket, velvet breeches, buckled slippers and lace collar. Heprotested. He wailed, while from beyond the door Josephus wailedwith him--and furiously started to chew Humberstone's respectableslippers.

With a considerable drop in tenderness, Bessie snarled, "Now,we'll have no more out of you! Good Lord! I work myself to thebone trying to give you a chance in life! I work and slave tohave you meet the realbon ton, like kings and queens, andnot a lot of these Hollywood bums, and then you won't act nicelike I tell you to! Terry Tait, I haven't punished you for sometime, but unless you put on the nice Fauntleroy suit, and actnice and gentlemanly, why, I'll just nachly snatch youbald-headed, jhear me?" In the case of Mr. Rabbit BenescotenTait, Terry had seen his mother's rare ability to snatch peoplebald-headed and, sobbing slightly, he took off the honestboy-town tweed suit he was wearing and began to force himselfinto the abomination of lace and black velvet.

Out of the door, down the corridor, about to meet aqueen--about to meet the first woman who might prove to be herown equal--marched Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait.

Bessie had, in a week of London, learned that really culturedand cosmopolitan people called candy "sweets," called trolleycars "trams," called hotel clerks "reception clerks," called sixbits "three bob," and, most especially, called an elevator a"lift." Thus it was no common and uneducated elevator but anexotic lift that they took, and it was to a lift attendant thatBessie murmured charmingly, with just a touch of a MechanicvilleFrench accent, "We'll stop at thecatriemétage--oh, how fonny!--I mean the fourt' floor,please."

"Very sorry, madame, but that floor is reserved. I am notpermitted to stop there."

"Say, don't you suppose I know it's reserved for the Slovarianroyal party? It's them I'm going to see!"

The lift attendant had stopped the lift (or elevator orascenseur) just below the fourth floor. He was a brightlift boy of sixty-five. He said unhappily, "I'm sorry, madame,but I'm not permitted to let anyone off on the fourth floorunless they are recognized or are accompanied by someone from theroyal entourage."

"Rats! I tell you they're expecting me! Look at this!"

This was a pound note. The lift attendant looked on itregretfully, but he sighed. "Very sorry, madame--much as myposition is worth," and shot the lift down to the groundfloor.

"All right, then; you can take us back to the fifth floor,"said Bessie.

Terry turned toward their suite, but his mother snapped,"Where do you think you're going?" and marched him toward theonyx-and-crystal front staircase from their floor down to thefourth, the royal floor.

As they elegantly emerged on the sacred corridor, they wereconfronted by one of the largest, tallest, most ruddy-facedbobbies in the entire British police force. He too was sorry, andhe too explained that he could not let strangers approach TheirMajesties.

Bessie wasted no words on so rude a fellow. She marchedupstairs again. "If they think they can stopme! There'snothing I won't do for the sake of my poor little son!" shemoaned and, grabbing the poor little son, she marched him to theeast end of their corridor.

Now at the east end Bessie had noted a flight of slate-treadstairs, presumably intended for servants and as a fireescape.

At the foot of the stairs stood the same bobby whom she hadjust met.

"Now then! 'Ave I got to run you in?" he growled.

With one proud glance she marched back upstairs.

For half an hour she cried on her bed, raging at the tyrantswho insulted a mother who was trying to give her son a chance toget along in the world. Then she rose, powdered, and stalked intoTerry's room, where he had already changed from the niceFauntleroy suit into khaki shirt and shorts. He sat behind acouch, arguing with Josephus.

"Now look here, young man, I'm going out, and if you stir onefoot out of this suite, you and me will have a little talk thisevening, jhear me!"

She marched out, singularly like the Fifth Cavalry on thetrail of the Apaches.

Terry telephoned for Ginger. In blessed quiet and lack ofmaternal care, the two small boys and the one large dog becamehappy again. Liberally interpreting the boundaries of the suite,which Terry was not to leave, as including the corridor, theylaid out the electric railway from Edinburgh (opposite Room 597)to South Africa (overlooking the canyon of the back stairs).

And while they reveled, Bessie was at the American Embassy,successively failing to see the ambassador, the counselor, thefirst and second secretaries, and finally, with indignation atthis neglect of her Rights as an American Citizen, hearing thethird secretary murmur:

"I greatly sympathize with you, but I'm afraid it would behard to get the chief to feel that you have been insulted andthat the State Department ought to cable Slovaria. Suppose somecomplete stranger were to come to your studio in Hollywood whileTerry was making the most important scenes of a new picture, andshould want to go right in--would he be admitted?"

"But that's entirely different! Terry isn't a stranger!"

"But he might be to the Slovarians."

"Well, I've heard a lot about how ignorant these Europeansare, but you can't make me believe that even the Slovarianshaven't heard about Terry Tait, the King of Boy Comedians!"

The third secretary rose with a manner which was familiar toBessie from her first job-hunting days in Los Angeles. Heobserved silkily, "Dreadfully sorry, but I'm afraid we can't do athing in this matter. But if we can help you about passports . .."

As Bessie walked disconsolately away from the Embassy shegroaned, "I guess the game's up! We ain't going to meet anyqueen. My poor little boy! They won't raise him to four grand aweek, after all. And I won't be able to buy that steam yacht! . .. The dirty snobs, that care more for red tape than for amother's heart! Say, why wouldn't that make a swell title forTerry's next movie after 'His Majesty, Junior'? 'A Mother'sHeart'!"

Terry, Ginger, and Josephus, the managers of the Edinburgh,South Africa and Peking R. R., were repairing a wreck andgleefully counting the temporarily dead passengers beside theslaty African caverns of what would, to unenlightened adult eyes,have seemed the back stairs.

Up those crevasses crept a small boy, obviously English, a boywith black hair, a cheery nose of a cocky Irish tilt, and grayflannels. He was of Terry's age.

"Hello!" he said.

"'Ello yourself," observed Ginger grandly.

"I'm going up to the top floor and I'm going to slide down allthe banisters all the way down," confided the stranger.

"You better be careful on the floor below this. Some king'sgot it. There's a lot of cops there. How'd you ever get by 'em?"demanded Terry.

"I waited till they weren't looking, and slipped past 'em. Oh,I say, what a lovely train!"

He seemed a nice lad, and with much cordiality Terry urged,"Wouldn't you like to play train with us?"

"Oh, I'd love it!" cried the stranger. "I say, this isripping! I've run away from my family. They want me to go toparties and have my picture taken."

"Isn't it fierce!" sympathized Terry.

"If you must 'ave your picture taken," Ginger remarkedoracularly, "you just tell your old lady to take you toGumbridge's, on Great St. Jever Street, Whitechapel; 'e'll do you'andsome--six bob a dozen."

"Oh, thank you very much indeed. I'll tell my mother. MayI--would you mind if I started the train just once?"

The new boy was so enthusiastic about the signal system, he sofervently enjoyed the most sanguinary wrecks, that Ginger andTerry adopted him as a third musketeer, and Terry urged, "If youlike it, come into my room. I've got some other thingsthere."

The new boy gazed in awe at the electrical Derby race and theelectrical Colosseum with the lions charmingly devouring EarlyChristians.

"I've just neverseen such things," he sighed.

"What do you play with at home?" asked Terry.

"Why, we live in the country most of the year, and I ride andswim and play tennis and--and--that's about all. You see, I haveever such a stern tutor, and he keeps me at work so much.But--oh, I have a bicycle, too!"

Ginger and Terry exchanged glances of pity for theirunfortunate new friend, and Terry said comfortingly, "But still,it must be slick to ride horseback on these English roads--notget jounced all to pieces like I do when I ride on theranch."

"You ride on a ranch? Ithought you were American!"

"Yes. I'm in the movies."

The stranger startled them with his scream: "Now I know! Iknew you looked familiar! You're Terry Tait! I've seen you in thepictures. I loved 'em! Oh, I am so glad to meet you!"

The boys shook hands, while Ginger beamed and Josephus waggedwith appreciation, and Terry said generously, "But you Englishersdon't care for my stuff like they do at home. I guess I ain't somuch as--"

"But honestly, Terry--if I may call you that?"

"Sure, kid."

"But I'm not English--at least only an eighth English. I'mSlovarian."

"With that Slovarian bunch with King Maximiliandownstairs?"

"Yes. I'm Maximilian."

"Oh, go-wan! You don't look like a king! You look likea regular kid!"

"Blimey!" groaned Ginger, "I believe 'e is the king, Terry! Iseen 'is pictures!"

"Gee," wailed Terry, "and I thought kings always wore tightsand carried swords!"

"I'm frightfully sorry, Terry. Honestly, I hate being a king!It's just beastly! I have to learn six languages, and all abouttaxation and diplomacy and history and all those things--and Ijust want to play and be let alone! And they're always trying toassassinate me!"

"Jiminy! Honest?" breathed Terry.

"Yes; I've been shot at three times this year, and really, Idon't like it a bit."

"Say, gee, Your Majesty has got to excuse me if I got freshwith you."

"Oh, please, won't you call me 'Max'?"

"Thunder! You can't call a king 'Max.' You call him 'YourMajesty,' or 'Sire.'"

"No, you don't! Not in private life."

"Well, gosh, I ought to know! I've readA Gentleman ofFrance and a lot like that."

"Well, I ought to know. I'm a king!"

"But you haven't been a king long!"

"That's so. But anyway--oh, please call me 'Max.' Honestly,Terry, I'm so frightfully pleased to have met you. I've alwaysbeen eager to know you ever since I saw you as the cabin boy in'The Burning Deck.' I say! That was simply ripping where you hadthat idea about dropping one end of the hose in the ocean andputting out the fire whence all but you had fled. Jove, you musthave led the most perilous life!"

"Oh. That! That scene with the hose was taken in the studio.The fire wasn't nothing but some oily waste in pails. No. I neverdid anything dangerous. Dog-gone it! My mother won't let me!"

"Oh, Terry! Look! When we grow up, and I get to be areal king, and my mother and Sebenéco (he's theprime minister) and Professor Michelowsky (he's my tutor)--whenI'm of age and they can't govern me any longer, will you be myCommander in Chief?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind, Max." In a sudden consideration of hisown troubles, it is to be feared that Terry forgot he wasaddressing a king. "Anyway, I'd certainly like to get out of themovies. You talk about your troubles--say, you don't know howturble it is to be a movie star. Awful!

"I have to give interviews, and every time I go out of thehouse somebody is there horning in, trying to photograph me, andI have to wear trick clothes--oh, horrible clothes!--and oldladies come and stroke my hair, and I have to listen while theytell me what a dandy actor I am--and honest, Max, I'm fierce, andnow I've got to meet the king of--Oh, golly, I forgot! Youare the king!"

"Yes, hang it!"

"It's fierce!"

"It is, by Jove!" mourned Maximilian.

"I wish we could run away and find some nice farmhouse andjust be kids there, and feed the pigs!"

"Rather! Wouldn't I like to!"

So engrossed was Terry in Maximilian that he had not realizedthat Ginger was standing stiffly at attention.

"Oh, jiminy, I forgot to introduce Mr. Ginger Bundock,Max--Your Majesty."

Then Ginger was kneeling, kissing Maximilian's hand.

"Oh, I say, please don't do that!" begged Maximilian.

"An Englishman, sir, knows wot's befitting to a RoyalMajesty!" protested Ginger.

"Oh, chuck it, will you!"

"Right you are, sir!"

And the three small boys, actor and king and page, started toplay with the delightful assassinations of the Early Christiansin the model of the Colosseum and, aside from a profuse butteringof the conversation with "sirs," Ginger was not uncomfortablyobsequious to these great men. Indeed, apropos of Terry's furthercomplaint that it was awful to have to retake a scene twentytimes, Ginger complained darkly, "If I may say so, sir, an 'otelpage 'asn't too cheery a time, you know. There's old gentlementhat get very drunk, sir, and expects you to bounce out and buy'em clean shirts after all the shops is closed, and there's oldladies that gets you into their rooms and asks you, 'Are yousaved?' and--"

Maximilian interrupted, "Then we ought all three to run awayand--"

"And be pirates!"

"Splendid!" said Maximilian.

"Uncle 'Ennery Bundock used to be a pirate!" yearnedGinger.

From the next room flared a voice, "Good heavens, Marie, Itold you to send that dress down to be pressed."

Maximilian quaked, "Oh, it's my mother! She's looking forme."

"No," said Terry, looking pale. "It's mine."

"Erp!" said Josephus.

Bessie entered the room swiftly, glanced at Maximilian andcried, "Good heavens, can't I leave you for one moment withoutyour picking up a lot of ragtag and bobtail? Who's this brat?Send him home. We're going to pack and go to Paris."

"Mother! This is King Maximilian of Slovaria!"

Bessie's eyes darted like humming birds. From her flutteredexpression it might be judged that she was recalling therotogravure pictures of the boy king. She gasped at Maximilian,"Oh, I'm so sorry I spoke mean to you! Honestly, are you theking?"

"I'm afraid so!"

"I guess I ought to call you 'Your Majesty,' but I met you sosort of sudden and--uh--Did your mother know you were coming uphere, King?"

"I'm afraid not. I rather ran away."

"Oh, my gracious, then she'll be worried to death. I must takeyou right down to her. But we'd be real pleased to have you comeup here and play whenever you get the time. Come on, Terry; we'llgo down with His Majesty. And you, Ginger--you beat it!"

Hesitatingly, glancing at each other like conspirators butruled by Bessie's clanging voice, the two royalties sheepishlyfollowed her, not to the surreptitious back stairs but to thehaughty flight in front. At her former enemy, the bobby, on guardon the floor below, Bessie snarled, "I'm with His Majesty," andstalked past him.

"I guess I better take you right to your mother, King, so'sshe'll know you're all safe," beamed Bessie.

"Oh, I'm--Honestly, I'm afraid she might not like it. Motheralways has a massage and rests from tea time to dinner, and shedoesn't like to be disturbed. Thank you very much for coming withme, but I can take care of myself now."

"Well, I thought, seeing I'm right here--it won't be a bit oftrouble; I have a few minutes to spare, and maybe we won't go toParis tomorrow, after all--I thought it might be nice if I couldarrange for you to play with Terry again."

"Oh, I would like that! Perhaps we'd better see CountElopatak. He's in charge of most of my arrangements. He'll behere in Room 416."

Bessie saw that along the corridor doors were opening, curiousheads popping out. A tremendous functionary in plush breeches,yellow waistcoat and powdered wig was bearing down. SeizingTerry's hand, she followed Maximilian into 416. It was a bedroomconverted into an office. At a desk was a tall, black-mustachedman with a monocle.

He spoke to Maximilian in a strange tongue; the kinganswered.

Coming out from behind the desk, the monocled one bowed andobserved, "It is very kind of you, Madame Tait, to have broughtback His Majesty. And now if I may haf the pleasure of escortingyou upstairs--My name is Elopatak; I am a gentleman-in-waiting toTheir Majesties."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Count. I think I've talked to you onthe phone."

"I believe I do remember having that pleasure!" Verydryly.

Elopatak looked embarrassed as Bessie ardently shook his handand crowed, "I want you to meet my boy, Terry. You've probablyseen him in the cinema."

"Oh! Oh, yes. Quite."

"Terry and His Majesty got along just lovely, and I thought itwas nice, both of them being famous like they are, to gettogether like this. You had a good time, didn't you, King?"

"Oh, thank you very much."

"And I thought it would be just lovely--both boys would prizeit so much in after years--if we had a news photographer take afew nice pictures of 'em playing together. I guess both theirPublics would be tickled to see 'em."

Elopatak cried, all in one word,"Butmydearmadamethatwouldbequiteimpossibleohquite!"

"But look here! They like each other."

"My dear madame, I'm afraid you cannot possibly understandthat a royal personage has to consider many things besides hisown preferences, and while I am sure His Majesty found your sondelightful, as he is, you see he must represent Slovaria, and tobe paraded in the cinema would not be dignified. . . .

"Maximilian! I hope you have not forgotten that you are to betaken to a Workmen's Club this afternoon by Prince Henry. I'mvery sorry, but it's your mother's request, and I'm afraid youmust dash in and dress for it at once!"

The king looked patiently melancholy. He shook hands withBessie and with Terry; he murmured, "I do hope I shall see youagain," and marched slowly out.

Bessie was clamoring, "But look here! Queen Sidonie wouldunderstand how I mean. After all, there's only one heart that canunderstand and do for a small boy, and that's his mother, so if Icould see her and explain--"

"Her Majesty is resting, and she has every moment filled untilTheir Majesties go to Sandringham next Saturday. So if I mayescort you upstairs--"

This time Elopatak did not offer his arm to Bessie; he tookhers, firmly. Bessie saw that there was danger of a scene whichmight get into the papers, might ruin her. Stiffly she said,"Thanks; I can find my own way.Good day!"

As she clumped upstairs she was touchingly ignorant of whatMaximilian and Terry had whispered to each other while she hadbeen talking to Elopatak.

"I hate it all! Now I'll have to go and make b'lieve I'm aking for a lot of people in the East End. I wish I could run awaywith you!" groaned Maximilian.

"Look, Max! Let'sdo it! I hate being a star. Newsreels! Having to pose. Let's go be cabin boys on a pirateship."

"Really? Really run away?"

"Sure; you bet. Look, Max, they watch you all day, but can'tyou sneak away good and early in the morning? I'll meet youtomorrow morning, by the back stairs, and we'll make plans."

"Yes! I will! But what do you mean by early?"

"Oh, before anybody's up. Eight-thirty. Or is that too earlyfor you? What time do they get you up at home--I mean at thepalace?"

"Six."

"What? Six? In the morning? Why, you poor kid!"

"Then I have to ride an hour before breakfast, and have a coldbath."

"Why, you poorkid! Gee, that's fierce! Gosh, I guessbeing kings is even worse 'n being actors! But I bet you eat onedarn' big breakfast after that."

"Oh, yes. Cocoa and sometimes three rolls!"

"Don't you get any ham and eggs?"

"Forbreakfast? Oh, one couldn't eat eggs forbreakfast!"

"Say, in Poppy Peaks I eat six flapjacks and about six steenmillions of gallons of maplsirup!"

"But," in rather a worried way, "I'm afraid they'll make usget up very early on a pirate ship."

"Naw! Didn't I see 'em making 'Yo, Ho, Ho'? Pirates alwaysdrink rum all night, and they wear silk, and they don't get uptill noon anyway. Look! Quick! I'll be there--back stairs--sixtomorrow."

Max was politely shaking hands with the Taits and making exit;but his hands were held behind him and he was showing sixfingers.

Bessie was cross and hopeless-looking, all that evening. Theywere to have gone to the theater, but Bessie said shortly thatthey would stay home--she had some plans she had to thinkabout.

Terry's chief difficulty that evening was getting hold ofGinger. His mother had explained, adequately, that Ginger was aroughneck, if indeed not an alley cat, and it wastime shedid something about Terry's taste for lowcompanyand where hegot it, she couldn'tsee--and hisfather wasjust as bad.

By bribing the chambermaid to call Ginger, Terry was able tomeet him for a second at the elevator.

"Look! Ginger! Be up here tomorrow, six in the morning. Max'llbe here. We're going to run away; going to be pirates.Understand--six!"

"I'll be there, Gaffer! I'm not on duty till eight--I liveout--but I'll sleep in a linen closet 'ere tonight, swelp meBob!"

It was only because his mind was charged with the thought thathe was going to run away now and lead the jaunty life of a piratethat Terry managed to awake at a quarter to six. He slipped intoblue knickers and a blue jacket, creeping softly about thefog-dimmed room that he might not awaken the snorting Humberstonein the room beyond; he tiptoed down the corridor, followed byJosephus the hound, just as Ginger emerged from an elevator whichhe had run himself, and as Maximilian slipped up the darkness ofthe back stairs.

Terry whispered feverishly, "Weare going to run away.Now swear it!"

"I swear!" muttered Maximilian and Ginger.

"Swert!" said Josephus.

"Till death do us part, by jiminy Christmas!"

"Till death do us part!"

"And," croaked Terry, suddenly inspired, "we're going to startright now."

"Oh, I say, Terry, we couldn't do that! Not--not right now,without making plans. Boys always make plans before they runaway. Lookit Tom Sawyer and Huck," protested Max.

"Am I the boss of this gang?"

Maximilian said humbly, admiringly, "Yes, Terry, but--"

"Am I, Ginger; am I, hey?"

"Ra-ther!"

"Didn't you," Terry demanded of Maximilian, "have some troublegetting up here this morning?"

"Yes. I did. I met a policeman patrolling the hall. He didn'tdare say anything, but I know he watched me. I'm afraid he'll gowake old Elopatak."

"Do you see? Just as I've told you," crowed Terry. "Next timewe may not be able to get together at all. We'll start right now,this minute. Bimeby we'll write nice letters to our mothers--andmy, they'll be proud as anything when we come back from piratingand give 'em parrots and ivory and Spanish doubloons and all likethat."

"I've got no mother nor no father but I'll give me Spanishdoubloons to me uncle 'Ennery--'e used to be a pirate 'isself--'esays it's a rare life. I fancy we'll find a good pirate ship atBristol," said Ginger, in a judicious way.

"Come! We'll start! Ginger'll take us down to the basement andshow us how to sneak out," commanded Terry.

"But Isay," protested Maximilian, "we have nomoney."

"Haven't we, though?" Terry jeered. "Lookit! Here's fiftypounds Mother gave me. I was to give it to the Infants'Charitable and Rehabilitation Institution today . . . Itwould be good publicity, at that. Pictures of me givingeach kid a pound. Still, I guess pirates don't go out forpublicity much. Not anyway when they're running away from theirmothers. Come on,will you?"

And the resolute Terry was followed down the hall, into theelevator, through monastic cellars and corridors and fog-chokedareaways, by the uneasy Maximilian and the triumphant Ginger. Butas they came out on Berkeley Square, in a wet dawn smelling ofcoal smoke, broken only by the sound of a one-lunged taxicab, asMaximilian realized that he had escaped from the ardors ofkinghood without being captured, while at the same time Gingerrealized that he had given up an excellent job and was committinga felony, to wit, stealing and abstracting a valuable piece ofproperty, to wit, one blue uniform, the property of the HotelPicardie Co., Inc., London W. I, their attitudes changed. Gingerbecame uneasy, looking back, trying to whistle, while Max strodeon, rising into song, breathing this damp exciting air, peeringinto this mysterious fog, for the first time an adventurer in aland of boundless freedom, safe from the respectfullydisapproving people who every moment watched him.

And as for Josephus, he rushed hither and yon with all theexcitement of an honest alley dog who has been released from asatin suite.

Ginger stopped them to hiss, "We must disguise ourselves!Directly the alarm is given, any bobby will know us. I'm in meuniform, and anyone can see that you two are gentry."

"Why, Max and I have on awful' simple suits! Nobody would evernotice 'em," insisted Terry.

For once, Ginger was pleasantly able to be superior. "Simple,me eye! You may know all about courts and the likes of that, butI know the bobbies." The other two looked at him humbly,regretting their ignorance, and Ginger crowed: "I know a placewhere we can get some simply 'orrid old clothes. Oh, beautiful!And the man 'e knows me uncle 'Ennery, and I think I can get 'imto exchange our clothes for old ones without charging us a bob.Comeon!"

Ginger led them into the mediterranean mysteries of Soho.Here, in streets that ran like wounded snakes, was a world ofItalians, Greeks, Spaniards, with a sprinkling of Chinese andSyrians, dwelling in gloomy low-windowed flats over restaurantsor over sinister-looking chemist shops with signs in strangepeppery languages.

Josephus went hysterical over rubbish piles and pushcarts.Ginger stopped at an old-clothes bazaar on Greek Street, but atthe door he looked terrified.

"Crickey! The lad will remember me uniform! 'E mustn't see me.You two must get some clothes for me, too; I'll meet you down atthe next alley, and change in the court be'ind."

Ginger vanished, running. Terry and Maximilian glanced at eachother nervously; nervously they called the valiant Josephus andstroked him. They could not confess that they were suchweaklings, but neither had ever been allowed to go into a shop byhimself, unwatched.

"Oh, hang it, I'm not afraid!" snarled Terry. Max lookedgrimly courageous.

The proprietor, a gentleman from the sunny lands of Syria, waseying them from the window. He rubbed his hands when they camein, and simpered.

"I want two old suits, quite old, for this boy and me," saidMax. "We're--uh--going camping. And another suit for a boy abouttwo inches taller than me."

"Erggg," said Josephus, in a tone of positive dislike.

While the proprietor fetched them, Maximilian muttered, "Doyou suppose he has a decent dressing room here? Really, the placeseems dirty!"

"No!" urged Terry. "We mustn't change here and leave ourthings--Scotland Yard might trace us by our clothes if we left'em."

"Oh!" Maximilian seemed distinctly flattered. "I've read aboutScotland Yard--detective stories I borrow from an Englishgardener at the palace at home. Do you suppose we'll have a realinspector hunting for us?Clues? How ripping! Do youreally think so?"

"Oh, rather. At least I should think they'd search for a king,wouldn't you?"

"Oh, yes; I suppose they would. You see, I've been a king soshort a time that I don't quite know. But think of a ScotlandYard inspector hunting for you--microscope and bloodstains andeverything. I say, I do like this! It's so much more practicalthan Latin."

The old-clothes man was coming with three suits which were asbeautifully 'orrid as Ginger had promised. All three of them weregray along the seams, they were greasy, and the buttons hungwearily on worn threads. The three were worth, as masqueradecostumes, six shillings altogether, but anyone with fancies aboutsanitation would have demanded five pounds to touch them.

"Just the thing for an outing, young gentlemen!" exulted thedealer. "Three quid for the lot--and your own clothes, of course.Swelp me, I'm giving 'em away."

The greenhorn Terry was roused to irritation. Three quid--hehad learned from the scholarly Ginger that a quid was a pound. Hesnorted, "Don't be silly! I'll give you a pound and ahalf--what'd you call it, thirty shillings?--and we'll keep ourown clothes."

As he spoke, he had brought out his roll of notes, the fiftypounds that were to see them to Bristol and the gay free life ofpiracy. The dealer's eyes popped, and he said crooningly:

"You're an American, aren't you, matey? And a fine littlefellow, you and your little friend." Then, savagely, graspingTerry's shoulders, his yellow teeth showing evilly, "And wheredid you steal your fine clothes? I'll takefour quid, andkeep quiet--else I'll call in the police and we'll find out whata couple of American stowaways, blinkin' young tramps that'vestole their clothes, are doing in my shop at seven in themorning!"

Josephus had, on sight, fallen out of love with theold-clothes dealer; he had growled when the man seized Terry;now, with enthusiasm, he grabbed the man's trousers leg and beganto tear. The man leaped back, barricaded himself behind a rack ofold coats. Terry snatched up the bundles of clothes, dropped apound note on the counter, shooed Max and Josephus outside.

"He'll have us arrested!" quaked Max.

"Huh! He'll never call the police, now he's got his quid. Theless he sees of the police, the better he'll like it. I ain'tafraid!" said Terry boldly--while inside he was fully as calm asa cat chased up a tree by a pack of dogs.

They reached the alley mouth and the waiting Ginger, andGinger drove them through the alley, a courtyard, another alley,and a blind area way behind a shop. They undressed madly, whileTerry told of their misadventure.

"I'll 'ave my uncle 'Ennery scrag 'im!" raged Ginger, "'E eatsmen alive, Uncle 'Ennery does."

Dressed, they were as scandalously soiled a trio as was to befound in greater London. Ginger insisted on tearing the caps andstockings of his two heroes; on rubbing dirt over theirfaces.

He himself was capless. But now, free of his skin-tightuniform, he chucked his fears away with it, and cried, "Righto,me brave lads! 'Tis off to the boundin' blue--as Uncle 'Ennerysays. What about a bit of breakfast?"

To avoid the old-clothes man, after hiding their properclothes in a garbage can, he led them through further alleys andcourts to a restaurant which he guaranteed to be the besttwopenny dive in London. Relieved of worried relatives whoinsisted on nice porridge with nice cream, Terry and Max joyfullysmeared themselves with a breakfast of fried fish, apple tart,pink cakes, and jam.

Josephus had a voluptuous bone, and as for Ginger, hebreakfasted on tea and fish. He was a pal, he said, of theassistant pastry cook at the Hotel Picardie, and he could haveall the cakes he wanted, any time.

"You can eat all the cakes you want? Any time? And nobodystops you?" gasped H.R.M. Maximilian III.

"All you want?" marveled Terry.

"Ra-ther!" said Ginger superciliously.

Mr. Ginger Bundock knew that Max was a real king, that Terrywas a famous actor, but he couldn't believe it. They looked liketwo dirty small boys, and while they seemed to have read books,which had never been a habit in the Bundock family, they were soignorant of his London that he couldn't help feeling superior.And over the fish and pink cakes he was rather sniffy with themabout reaching Bristol and the haunts of pirate ships.

"It's west of London. Right away west," he saidauthoritatively.

"How far?" asked Terry.

"How far? Oh, a long way. Seventy-five miles. Or per'aps three'undred."

"Pooh! That's not far!" Terry was trying to regain thescornfulness of leadership. "My dad and I drove from Los Angelesto San Francisco in one day, and that's five hundred miles!"

"Oh, I dare say! You Americans! An Englishman wouldn't care togo barging about like that, you know!"

"I think," hinted Max, "we ought to be taking a train at once,before they find we're missing."

"A train?" grumbled Ginger. "Oh, I say now, don't be balmy,Max--I mean, Your Majesty."

"Oh, I like being called Max. Please call me Max, Ginger.We're all fellow pirates now, you know."

"Aw, Max sounds Dutch," reflected Terry. "Let's call him'Mix.'"

"Mix?" queried Maximilian.

"You bet! That's the name of one of the swellest cow-punchersin the movie game, ain't it, Ginger?"

"Oh, that would be nice. 'Mix.' And then of course as a pirateI suppose Iwould have to have anom deguerre."

"A wot?" demanded Ginger.

"He's swallowed a dictionary!" protested Terry.

"Oh, I am sorry!" wailed Maximilian. He wasn't sure what hehad done to offend these superior representatives of theAnglo-Saxon race, but he was ready to apologize for anything orfor nothing to keep their comradeship.

"'T'sall right, Mixie," said Terry generously; then abruptly,to Ginger, "Anyway, why shouldn't we take a train?"

Ginger recognized his master's voice. More humbly: "W're d'yousuppose they'd look for us first? On trains, of course! We mustwalk.Besides! Did you ever 'ear of pirates takingtrains?"

"Don't you think we ought to carry swords, though?" worriedTerry. "Pirates always carry swords."

"Oh, I don't believe modern ones do," said Max. "I fancy theyjust carry revolvers and six-shooters and things like that, and Idon't believe we need buy them till we reach Bristol."

"Well, maybe; but when we get to Bristol, we ought to buysabersand guns, so when we find a pirate ship and goaboard, they won't think we're a lot of tenderfeet," insistedTerry.

"That's right," Ginger agreed. "Now as I say, we must walk,and I think we ought to go up to 'Ampstead 'Eath and practicebeing tramps--you know, meeting savage dogs, and sleeping under'edges, and telling the direction by the bark on the trees, andmaking fires by rubbing sticks together."

"That's so; we must learn that," agreed Captain Terry, and thethree boys, solemnly starting for the Spanish Main by way ofHampstead Heath, made a gallant beginning by finding a Number 24bus.

The morning fog was gone when they reached the heath; thebroad wastes of that tamed moorland were bright with sun andwind, in whose exhilaration the three boys forgot that they wereking and star and expert hotel page, and chased one another,yowled and whistled like any other three small boys, whileJosephus went earnestly mad, snapping at royal heels with lovingpainfulness.

Max remembered from his English history that the heath hadonce been the favorite scene of highway robbery, and the four ofthem played highwaymen. Josephus, unhappily harnessed by Terry'sbelt, was the faithful coach horse, Terry was the driver, Gingerthe haughty and noble passenger, and Max was permitted thegrandest rôle of all, that of the robber.

Old Jim Dangerfield, the gallant coachman of the YorkshireFlyer, was apprehensive. He clucked cheerily enough to his stoutteam of dappled mares, Jo and Sephus, and hummed a carelesslittle tune ("My Toil and Strife Has Gotta Eye on We, Ba-by"),but when his passengers were not looking, brave Old Jimshuddered, hunched down within his many-caped cloak, now whitenedwith flying snowflakes.

On the seat beside him was a mysterious man in the old,ancient costume of the day. He had refused to give his name, buthe was Lord Montmorency. Old Jim knew nothing of this,however.

And so they went on across the heath when all of a sudden acloaked and masked man, riding a huge great big black horse,leaped out from behind a tree and leveling his pistol cried,"Your money or your life!"

Old Jim reached for his own pistol, but the villain shot himdead and he expired all over the ground, while the faithful Joand Sephus licked his face--after craftily sneaking out of theirharness.

But the brave Lord Montmorency was not to be quelled byanybody. Crying, "Come one, come all! I defy the blooming lot o'ye!" he leaped from the coach, drawing his trusty sword and,knocking the pistol from the wicked highwayman's hand, he engagedhim in mortal combat.

It lasted a long time. In fact, it lasted till Old JimDangerfield protested, "Oh, that ain't fair--you two going onswording for hours and hours when I'm dead! I'm going to come tolife!"

In the argument with Lord Montmorency and the robber as towhether a pistoled coachman could prove to be merely playingpossum, they forgot the game and, panting, lay on the grass.

"My uncle 'Ennery was a 'ighwayman once," mused Ginger.

"Oh, didn't they arrest him?" fretted Terry.

"No, 'e wasn'tthat kind of a 'ighwayman. 'E gave all'e robbed to the poor."

"Where was this?" Terry sounded suspicious.

"Hey, quit scattering dust all over me, will you, Mixy?" wasGinger's adequate answer. "Excuse me, Your Majesty, but honestly,it gets in me eyes."

"When we go back--I mean, if we hadn't gone off to be pirates,I'd ask my mother to invite your uncle Henry to the palace,"considered Max. "He must be a wonderful man. I don't like myuncles so much. But I had some lovely ancestors. I'm descendedfrom Genghis Khan!"

"Oh, I've seen 'im. 'E's that banker from New York. 'E oftenstays at the Picardie," condescended Ginger.

"I think that must be another Khan," Max said doubtfully. "Ithink Genghis lived years and years ago. And my grandfather hadan estate with two hundred thousand acres of land!"

"Huh! That's nothing," said Terry. "I know a movie actor inCalifornia that's got a million acres."

"Oh, he has not!" protested Max.

"He has, too. And I'm going to have a million million acresand grow bees, when I grow up."

"Oh, you will not!" complained Max. "Besides, I'll mobilize myarmy and conquer Roumania and Bulgaria and a lot of countries,and then I'll have a million trillion billion acres! And anotherof my ancestors was Seljuk."

"Never heard of him. Jever hear of Seljuk, Ginger?"

"Now! Never 'eard of 'im!"

"And one of my ancestors," continued Terry, "was sheriff ofCattaraugus County, New York!"

"Me uncle 'Ennery was a sergeant major in Boolgaria," Gingerconfided.

"Oh, say, let's play soldiers!" cried Terry. "Which of you hasthe most military training?"

"I almost joined the Boy Scouts once. There was a curate astme to join 'em," reflected Ginger. "But you, Mixy, a king must'ave bushels of military training."

Max confessed, "Not really. Just fencing and riding as yet.Oh, I am a field marshal in the Slovarian Army, and I'm a colonelin the British Army, and in Italy I'm an admiral and a general,but I wouldn't say I was a soldier."

"I know all about militaries. I saw 'em making some of thefilm of 'The Big Parade,'" boasted Terry; and Max, who had beenfaintly irritated at their ignorance of his renowned ancestor,Seljuk, rose again to admiration for his hero, the great TerryTait, and murmured, "Oh, I saw that picture. And you saw themmaking it? That must have been priceless! You be thecaptain on one side, and Ginger can be it on the other."

And that was a very nice war. There were any number ofhand-to-hand combats, as well as a devastating machine gunproduced by Ginger's winding his 3/6 watch and remarking,"Brrrrrrr!"

When the war ended they lay in the long grass again whileGinger modestly admitted that during the World War his uncle'Ennery had single-handed captured sixteen Germans.

Terry interrupted, to shout, "Oh, I've got a dandy game. Let'splay king!"

"Oh, that's no fun!" protested Max.

"I don't mean like any of these ole kings they got today--Imean like there used to be in the Olden Times. I'll show you.You'll like it, Mixy. I'll be king, and Ginger, you're Lord HighExecutioner."

"Kings don't have Lord High Executioners!" protested Max.

"They do too! Anyway, they always usta have! And Ginger is myLord High Executioner, and you're a rebel, Mixy; you're leading aband of brigands."

"Who's the brigands?" said Max darkly.

"Josephus, of course, you poor boob. Now, look. See, here's mythrone." Terry had found a beautiful rock on the heath.

H.R.M. Terry sat down, very royal, his left hand on his hip,his right waving an object which resembled a weed but which tohim was a golden scepter.

"Now, you and Josephus go and hide off there over the hill,"he ordered Max, "and begin to sneak up on us. You're a band ofrebellious peasants. And you, Ginger, you're my Commander inChief."

"But you said I was Lord Executioner, 'ooever 'e is!"

"You're going to be, later, stupid! Now you beat it, Max!That's it, hide!"

As Max and Josephus began a most realistic creep through thegrass, glaring their hatred of all monarchial institutions, KingTerry reasonably addressed his Commander in Chief, together withhordes of other courtiers who were standing behind thecommander:

"What ho, my lieges! Trusty messengers, coming apace, do giveme informations that hell is let loose in our mountaineousdomains and a band of rebels is now approaching. Gwan out, then,my brave troops, and capture 'em. Seek to the nor-nor-east, I bidthee. . . . Now you go capture 'em, Ginger; but you put up afierce battle, Max."

Fierce battle.

During it, King Terry bounced with excitement, demanding,"Lookit, Ginger, you gotta keep running in--you're amessenger--telling me how the battle is going; see, I'm standingup here at the window of a tower looking across my royalplains."

The trusty commander brought in the rebels, and despite aplaintive "Ouch!" from Max, cast them roughly down before theking, who climbed from the tower (which resembled a hummock ofgrass), seated himself on his throne again, and addressed thetraitor:

"Villain, art guilty?"

"What do I say? I've never played this game before," beggedMax.

"Neither have I, stupid! Haven't you got any imagination? Whatwould a villain say if a king bawled him out likethat?"

"I don't know. Oh, I fancy he'd say, 'No, I aren't.'"

"You are too! Commander in Chief,isn't he guilty?Didn't you catch him treasoning?"

"Ra-ther!"

"Then--(Now you're Lord High Executioner.) Then off with hishead!"

"Oh, I say!" protested Max. "Kings can't have people's headscut off!"

"Of course they can! Don't be silly. Maybe they can't inSlovaria, but lots and lots of places they can."

"Can they, honest?" admired Max. "I wish I could! By Jove, I'dhave old Michelowsky's head off in two twos! He's my tutor--ahorrid man!"

"Dry up! You hadn't ought to interrupt a king, don't you knowthat? Now you get your head cut off. And Josephus, too. Now youform a procession. See, I walk in front, and then you andJosephus, and Ginger in behind with the headsman's sword--here,you can take my skepter for sword, Ginger."

And they marched to the sweetly solemn tune of "Onward,Christian Soldiers," chanted by Terry, and the noble tragedy ofthe event was only a little marred by Ginger's peeping at his 3/6watch just before he dealt the awful blow, and exclaiming, "It'sone o'clock! We must find a bit of lunch. I'm not going to startpirating on an empty stomach!"

Bessie Tait, whenever she felt depressed and put upon, sleptlate in the morning, waking only to think of the broiling lettersshe would write to her enemies, and to doze off again. Thismorning, at ten, she was still sunk among the littlepink-and-white lace pillows with which she had adorned the HotelPicardie bed when she was roused by her maid and her secretary,crying, "Oh, madame, there's a lady; I think it's--"

As Bessie sat up, iron-jawed and furious in hermosquito-netting nightgown, the maid and secretary were thrustaside by a woman who dashed into the room raging, "What have youdone with my son?"

She was a tall woman, not unlike Bessie herself, and if hervoice was not so harsh, she was more voluble. "If you havekidnaped him, if you have let him go off with your brat--"

"Are you crazy? Get out of here! Miss Tingle, call apoliceman!" wailed Bessie.

"Oh, madame, it's Queen Sidonie of Slovaria!" whimpered thesecretary.

"Queen! . . . Sidonie! . . . Oh, my Lord!" howled Bessie,capsizing among the pillows.

The queen flew to the bed, savagely seized her arm. "Where ishe? Is he here?"

"Your son? The king?"

"Naturally, idiot! I know you lured him here yesterday--"

"Now, you can't talk to me like that, queen or no queen! Howdo I know where the boys are? I don't get up in the dawn! We'llsee."

Bessie huddled into a dressing gown that was like the froth onsparkling Burgundy. Hoping, in her agitation at this somewhatunexpected way of meeting royalty, that Queen Sidonie wasnoticing her superior chic, she led Sidonie quickly through theliving room, into Terry's room.

And it was empty.

In the room beyond, Humberstone, the valet whom Bessie hadhired just for this purpose of impressing Sidonie, slumbered in afume of gin, and instead of an edifying morning coat he exhibitedthe top of a red flannel nightgown.

If Sidonie had landed on Bessie somewhat precipitately, it hadbeen a lover's greeting compared with the way in which Bessiehailed the valet, seizing an ear in each hand. The tempestuousSidonie, for a generation the storm cloud of the Balkans, lookedalmost admiringly at Bessie's vocabulary, and the flower ofEnglish Service quaked as he stated that, because of hisneuralgia, he had overslept, and of Master Terry and of all kingswhatsoever he knew nothing.

Bessie flew at Terry's cupboard. "His blue suit is gone!" Sheflew at the telephone. "Ginger--that's the no-'count bell boyTerry plays with--he's missing, they say downstairs. Oh, Queen!He's missing! My little boy! And I been so hard on him! Oh, youmay love your kid, the king, a lot, but you don't love him onebit more than I do mine and--"

And two women, Her Majesty of Slovaria and Mrs. Rabbit Tait ofMechanicville, sobbed on each other's shoulders.

It took Bessie exactly six minutes to dress--Sidonie drove outthe trembling maid and herself helped Bessie. In six and a halfminutes they were in the royal suite below--and Bessie, besidethe queen, stalked past the agitated Count Elopatak with the airof a Persian cat. She scarcely noticed the perfumedness andpowderiness of the queen's own rooms, or the weeping maids.

Sidonie had the manager of the hotel, its three detectives,and all the policemen on duty, in her room instantly. Thepolicemen now on guard had gone on duty at eight; they had seennothing of the king. No servant in the hotel had seen anything ofhim since yesterday. Elopatak was, meantime, calling ScotlandYard. In a few minutes he had a report from one of the policemenwho had been on duty in the corridor through the night that hehad seen Maximilian playing ball in the corridor early, aboutsix, he thought; he didn't know whether Maximilian had returnedto his room or had gone upstairs.

Just then Scotland Yard had a report from the Londongarbage-collecting department that two good suits of boys'clothing and a Hotel Picardie uniform had been found in an alleyoff Greek Street, Soho.

Bessie and Queen Sidonie identified the clothes from thedescriptions.

"They've run off together! It's that cursed bell boy's doing!Come on, Queen, let's grab a taxi and start right out from thatalley looking for 'em!"

"Yes!" cried Sidonie, to the stupefaction of her suite, andshe fled toward the door, arm in arm with Bessie Tait. At thedoor she shouted back, "I'll telephone every few minutes! Tellthe Home Secretary to see that hundreds of policemen start rightoff to look for His Majesty." She slammed the door; she jerked itopen to add, "And for Terry. Hundreds, do you hear?Hundreds!"

While the alarm went out to every policeman in Greater London,while the newspaper offices went wild with the news that evenRoyalty could not keep from them, two anxious women, very chummy,sadly patting each other's hands and calling each other "Mydear," rode through all the tangled streets and byways of Soho,stopping to ask every policeman for three small boys and anundistinguished dog who was, for twenty-four hours, to become themost famous dog in the world.

Because of their free and joyful play--and perhaps because ofthe agreeable menu of pork pie, vealnam pie, steak and kidneypudding, sausage and mashed, strawberry tart, vanilla ice,chocolate ice and little mince pies--the three musketeers werecuriously sleepy after luncheon at a "cocoa room" near the Heath.They agreed that they ought to be starting for Bristol and thewild life, oh! immediately, but perhaps they would do better ifthey rested a bit--by attending a movie, which promised somethingnice in the way of a drama about a poisoner.

Terry had become used to tackling shopkeepers. With theloftiest confidence he engaged a greengrocer to keep Josephusduring the movie, and bought the most expensive seats.

It was a pleasant and elevating picture, and moral, as thepoisoner died in tremendous agony.

They came out of the theater at four, to find the streetslittered with newspaper placards shrieking, "Disappearance of BoyKing and Yank Cinema Star."

"Jiminy!" whispered Terry. He hastily bought each of theevening papers and led his pirate band into the darkest, leastconspicuous back corner of an A.B.C. tea room, to read thenews.

The first paper announced that Terry, who, though but eightyears old, had been a celebrated character in Chicago before hebecame a film star (which was a neat way of saying that he was agunman, and still avoiding the libel law), was believed to havepersuaded His Majesty, to whom he had been presented at awell-known West End hotel, to run away. There was no proof thatTerry was connected with the notorious Lisbon gang ofcounterfeiters and kidnapers, but still, the police were lookinginto it.

The second paper spoke of the sinister disappearance of ared-headed hotel page named Alf Bundock, whose record the policewere examining.

The third came out bluntly and proved that it was a crime ofthe Bolsheviki, and demanded that the government renounce itsdastardly policy of permitting Bolshevik spies to roam aroundinnocent England--kidnaping kings this way.

All the newspapers contained enormous biographies of KingMaximilian and much sketchier accounts of Terry, who was,according to the three versions, eight, fourteen, and four yearsof age. And all three had pictures, lots of pictures--Maximilianin the uniform of a Czechoslovakian Horse Marine; Maximilianopening the Museum of Osteothermodynamics in Tzetokoskavar,capital of Slovaria; Terry in the rôle of the Poor LittleBlind Boy (he recovered his sight, of course, when the Kind RichLady and the Big-hearted Surgeon got hold of him) in the film"Out of the Night"; Terry gardening at Poppy Peaks--Terry wasknown to be as fond of gardening as Presidential candidates areof haymaking; the Hotel Picardie--X marks the spot; and sixteenlovely portraits of Queen Sidonie.

But theEvening Era had the greatest triumph of all--anaccount of Josephus the Hound, with a photograph furnished by thecourtesy of the Bond Street Dog and Animal Shop. Only it was thephotograph of a greyhound. But Terry was slightly comforted by afull-page advertisement of his film "Kiddies Kourageous," whichthe enterprising Halcyon Theater was going to revive.

The three boys crouched over the papers; even Josephus wascrouching, under the table.

"All the 'tecs in the United Kingdom will be looking for us.We must cut and run," moaned Ginger. Then, with suchconcentration as he had never given to any intellectual problem,even the question of transmuting a shilling tip into two-and-six,he considered, "No, we must 'ide. They'll be watching even theroads. We'll lay up for a couple of days, and then start out bymidnight. Yuss. 'Ide under 'edges."

"Splendid. Just like escaping from German prison camps!"gloated Terry. "But where shall we hide till--Oh! At your uncleHenry's! You said he lived in London. And he'll tell us all aboutpirates. You said he was a pirate once, didn't--"

Ginger looked dark-browed; Ginger looked distressed. "Now.Can't be done. Me uncle 'Ennery and me isn't on speakingterms."

"Then you'll just have to get on speaking terms! It's the onlyplace we've got."

"Now. Can't."

"Nonsense!" It was Max, very vigorous. "Of course an oldpirate would be glad to greet young ones. You'll take us there atonce, Ginger."

"I will not!"

"Do you hear me, Bundock?" Terry and Ginger stared equally atthe change in the amiable Max's voice. "I'm not requesting it;I'm giving a command. Do you happen to remember who I am?"

Ginger looked more scared than ever; he snapped back into histraining as a hotel servant; he quivered, "Very well, sir, but Idon't advise it; not Uncle 'Ennery I don't."

But he led them, sneaking through alleys, craftily takingroundabout bus lines, shivering every time they fancied apoliceman was looking at them, across the river and into thedistrict of Bermondsey. It was, to Max and Terry, a Londonaltogether different from the city of Palladian clubs, snugGeorgian houses about tranquil squares, haughty shops andimmaculate streets that they had known. They were bewildered by awaste of houses, two stories high, made of stone or a grimygrayish-yellow brick, set side by side, without grass ortrees--miles of brick dog kennels, broken only by bristlingrailroad tracks, warehouses like prisons, innumerable publichouses that smelled of stale beer, and vast streets that were asdisordered as they were noisy.

They left a bus on Abbey Road, and Ginger guided them up aside street full of little shops. It was six o'clock now, withsmoke-streaked fog settling down again; the bars were open andinto them streamed navvies with trousers tied above the ankles,old charwomen in shawls and aprons, scrawny children with beercans. They were all contemptuously indifferent to a strayAmerican small boy, these thirsty workers.

"Let's hurry to your uncle's," Terry begged.

"You won't like 'im," said Ginger darkly.

"But you said he was so jolly! That time he sang 'Knocked 'Emin the Old Kent Road' to the Empress of Japan."

"Oh.That time," observed Ginger.

His steps slackened. For all their urging, for all Josephus'cheerful leaping, Ginger loitered, till they came to a handlaundry and, pointing through a steamy window at a smallsquirrel-toothed narrow-shouldered man who was turning a wringer,Ginger muttered, "That's 'im; that's Uncle 'Ennery."

Terry and Max stared, feeling empty at the stomach. They saidnothing. They didn't need to. They simultaneously doubted whetherUncle 'Ennery had ever captured sixteen Germans at once, or beenmore than just engaged to the princess of the South Seasisle.

"Youwould barge in!" complained Ginger and, inchingopen the door of the laundry, he whimpered, "Uncle 'Ennery!"

Uncle 'Ennery lifted his head, rubbed the back of his neck asthough it hurt, peered through the steam at Ginger, and remarked,"Ow, it's you, you little beggar! Get out of this! Coming aroundin your 'otel uniform, making mock of your betters, and they yourown relations! And now you're in the gutter again; you're inragsantatters again, and I'm glad of it, I am. Get out ofthis!"

"I ayn't in the gutter! I'm just on me 'oliday," protestedGinger.

"Yes, a fine 'oliday, as'll end in the workus. Get out!"

"Give me three bob to show 'im," Ginger whispered to Terryand, displaying the money, smiling a false sugar-sweet smile, hecrooned, "Me and me friends are going tramping. We'll give youthis three bob if you'll let us sleep 'ere tonight."

"Let's see the money!" demanded Uncle 'Ennery. He turned theshillings over and over. Looking slightly disappointed that theyseemed to be genuine, he grunted, "I ought to 'orsewhip you, youyoung misbegotten, but I'll let you stay. Only you goes out andgets your own supper."

Without further welcome, he led the three boys and Josephusamong the tubs in the back room of the laundry, up an outsidestairway to a chaste establishment consisting of one room (Uncle'Ennery was a widower and childless) with one bed, unmade, afireplace stove, a chair and a cupboard.

"You can sleep on the floor," he snarled. "The dog--'e goesout in the areaway."

Terry looked indignant but--they were alone, fugitives, huntedby the entire British police force. . . . What was the penaltyfor kidnaping a king? Hanging, or life imprisonment? He sighedand stood drooping, a very lonely little boy.

Somewhat comforted at being taken in by his loving uncle,Ginger piped, "Cheer-o! We'll go 'ave a bite to eat. There's alove-ly fried-fish shop on the corner."

He walked ahead of his comrades in crime, rather defiantly.Behind him, Terry whispered to Max, "I don't believe his uncleHenry ever was a deep-sea diver!"

"No; and I don't believe he was a sergeant major in theBulgarian Army--hardly more than a private," Max said.

"Or an aviator!"

"Or an African explorer!"

Ginger pretended that it didn't matter that he had lost nowthe Uncle 'Ennery whose exploits had been the one glory by whichhe had been able to shine beside a king. Most boisterously heushered them into the fried-fish shop with, "If you toffs ayn'ttoo good for it, 'ere's the best bloaters in London."

And through supper he contradicted them, laughed at theirignorance of such fundamental matters of culture as the standingof the Middlesex cricket team and the record of the eminentmiddleweight, Mr. Jem Blurry. So Max and Terry became refined.They were sickeningly polite. Their silence shouted that theyregarded him as low.

When they had reluctantly returned to the mansion of Uncle'Ennery, their host was sitting on the one chair, his shoes outon the one bed, reading an evening paper. He glared at them, butthe beer in which he had invested their three shillings hadwarmed his not over-philanthropic heart, and he condescended toGinger, "'Ere's a funny go, and at your 'otel. This kinga-missing, along of a Yank actor. Goings-on!"

Now, for the many weary years of his life, Ginger hadsingularly failed to impress his uncle. Now he had his chance tostartle this exalted relative.

"And did you 'appen to notice who was the third boy went with'em?" he mocked.

"A third one? Now. Ayn't read all the article yet."

Ginger--while Terry and Max wildly shook their heads athim--loftily pointed out a paragraph in the paper. Uncle 'Enneryspelled out, "It is sus-pec-ted that wif them was a pyge nymedAlf Bundock who--" He leaped up, terrified. "Bundock? Is thatyou, you young murdering blighter?"

Ginger laughed like the villainess making exit after tying theheroine to the circular saw.

Uncle 'Ennery looked at Max and Terry with a wild surmise,silent upon a peak in Little West Poultry Street, S. E. Hepointed a terrified finger at Terry. "You, there! Speak, willyer?"

"What's the trouble with you?" snapped Terry.

"My eye! It's true!" wailed Uncle 'Ennery. "You're anAmerican--or some sort of sanguinary foreigner! You three get outof 'ere! I'll have nothing to do with it! Bringing down thepolice on me! Get out of 'ere, all of you, kings or nokings!"

Uncle 'Ennery was in a panic, his eyes insane, his handswaving. He drove them down the stairs, through thecourtyard--when Terry stopped to call Josephus he almost hitthem--and through the laundry into the street. He could be heardslamming the door, bolting it.

"Uncle 'Ennery never did like the police," reflected Ginger."Well, I'll find you a nice bit of 'ay in a ware-'ouse."

In a pile of wet and soggy hay, among vile-smelling boxes andcarboys, between a warehouse and tracks along which freighttrains shrieked all night long, the three boys crept together andshivered and wept--and went fast asleep.

All day they had searched, Bessie Tait and Queen Sidonie,wherever two adventurous boys seemed likely to be. They had sofar forgotten any social differences between them that not onlydid they exchange anecdotes about their boys' incomparablenaughtiness in the matter of sugar on porridge, but also, as theysat exhausted at tea in Sidonie's boudoir, Bessie gave andSidonie gratefully noted down a splendid recipe for bakedVirginia ham with peaches.

"And if you come to America, you simply must come and staywith Mr. Tait and me, and don't let any of these millionaireproducers pinch you off!"

"Iwill come and stay with you, my friend! And Terryand my boy shall play together!" promised H.R.M. "And you willcome to us in Slovaria?"

"Well, if I can find time, I'll certainly try to, Sidonie,"consented Bessie Tait, and the two women--so alike, save thatBessie had the better dressmaker--leaned wearily back and smokedtheir cigarettes, and glared when the terrified Count Elopatakcame in to announce that Prince Sebenéco, Prime Ministerof Slovaria, had left for London by airplane.

"The old fool!" murmured Sidonie.

Then she tried to look haughty, but it ended in the two tiredfemale warriors, grinning at each other as Elopatak elegantlyslunk out.

"Elopatak's misfortune," confided Sidonie, "is that he has nocalm. He permits the gross material to rule him. He would be calmlike myself, if he would only take up Higher Thought."

Bessie leaned forward excitedly. "Oh! Have you taken up HigherThought, too? So have I! Isn't it just lovely! There's the livestHigher Thought teacher in Los Angeles that I go to everyweek--such a fine, noble-looking man, with the loveliest wavyblack hair!

"Before I went to him, I used to lose my temper--people aresuch fools!--and I used to try to exercise my selfish willon them, but now whenever I get sore at some poor idiot, I justsay, 'All is mystery and 'tis a smile that unlocks the eternalkinship of man to man,' and then I get just as placid and nice ascan be. Such a help!"

"Isn't it! We have just the same sentence in HigherThought at home--only it doesn't sound quite the same, being inSlovarian. And isn't that curious: my healer is also a handsomeman, with such won-derful hair! Of course, in my position I haveto belong to the State Church, but it's out of Higher ThoughtI've learned that any man is as good as I am, even when heobviously isn't.

"And now I never lose my temper any more. I just say, 'I amCalmness, therefore I am calm.' If I could only get Elopatak andPrince Sebenéco--the filthy swine! Oh, Bessie, you don'tknow what meeting you means to me! Somehow, in Slovaria and herein England, they don't seem to understand how sensitive Iam!"

All evening the two mothers raged and roamed, but by one ofthe morning, Bessie was asleep, exhausted. A few hours later itwas she who (saluted by bobbies and guards and aides as shestalked down the royal corridor) awoke Sidonie early--and withher she was dragging a scared Ginger Bundock.

This was twelve hours after Ginger, Terry, and Max had laintearfully down in the damp hay by the warehouse inBermondsey.

The management of the Picardie had excitedly telephoned toBessie that Ginger had returned; that he knew the whereabouts ofthe two kings. They brought him in, like a prisoner, and Bessiedragged him to Queen Sidonie.

In Sidonie's bedroom, with its tall bed, scarlet-draped andsurmounted by a vast golden crown, its purple carpet and a vistaof little tables, deep chairs, vast dressing gowns and longmirrors, Sidonie sat up in bed, looking scraggly andcare-channeled, smoking a cigarette nervously, while Bessie, inher foamy dressing gown, paced wildly. And to this dreadfulaudience Ginger told his story.

"It isn't my fault, Your Majesty. 'Is Majesty and Master Tait,they wanted me to go along. They said they were just going for astroll. They said it would be fun to dress up in old clothes. Idon't know what they did with me uniform and their clothes, butwe changed in an alley off Greek Street, Soho. Then we went toplay on 'Ampstead 'Eath. Then they wanted to go into the countryand we walked west--"

Now the warehouse where, so far as Ginger knew, Max and Terrywere still sleeping, was southeast.

"--walked west, far into the country. Oh, we walked far intothe night, we did, and I think we came almost to 'Arrow on the'Ill, and we slept under a 'edge. And when I woke this morning,they were gone. So I 'opped a lorry and came right in to tellyou, ma'am. Swelp me, it was none of my doing! And I 'eard 'emsay something last night about going to Scotland, so if yousearches all the roads north and west--"

Already Sidonie was shrieking for Elopatak; already she wastelephoning to Scotland Yard.

"And of course the 'otel never give me my place again, YourMajesty, but oh, please, could you persuade the police not toarrest me?"

"Certainly. They shan't arrest you," glowed Sidonie. "Ofcourse, if young gentlemen like His Majesty and Master Terry toldyou to accompany them, there was nothing else to do but recognizeyour place and obey them. I quite understand, and I'm thankfulfor your being so brave as to come to us. I don't suppose thehotel will want you, after this, but we might need you. You go upto Terry's room and stay till we call you. I'll see thepolice."

"That's the idea," said Bessie amiably, and to Ginger, "Skip .. . Sidonie! Breakfast! Quick! We'll start for Harrow."

"Right you are! We'll have the little fiends--thedarlings!--in two hours. Oh, I'm so relieved!" said Sidonie ofTzetokoskavar to her friend Bessie of Mechanicville.

Terry woke only enough to know that he was awake, that he wasmiserable, that he was rather wet and extremely cold. He openedhis eyes stupidly, amazed to find himself curled in filthy hay,between two boxes, looking out on a foggy welter of freightcars.

He wanted his warm bed, and cocoa coming, and his mother'svoice. He had a feeling of loss and disaster--no excitement thathe was free of photographers and press agents and about to becomea rollicking pirate.

There was something comfortable about life, however, and heawoke enough to sit up and discover that it was the muzzle ofJosephus, tucked in beside his knee. Josephus roused to lick hishand and to whine hungrily.

"Poor pup! I'll get you something," asserted Terry. Then hissympathy for Josephus widened enough to take in Max, curled withboth hands beneath one cheek, hayseed spotting his filthyclothes. "Poor kid!" muttered Terry, and a horrible doubt creptinto him.

Were they really going to enjoy being pirates?

He realized that Ginger was not there and that a note,scratched in pencil on a muddy sheet of wrapping paper, had beenthrust through Josephus' collar. Terry anxiously snatched it out,to read:

Dear Friends Yr. Majesty &Terry:

I haven't been any help to you I am awful sorry Im just inthe way I made believe I didn't care the way my Uncle acted buthe was turble and I think the best thing I can do for you is togo away am going back to hotel and hope can do this for you, willtell them you are going different way from way you are going sothrough then off the sent they will not know you are going theway you are going I appresheate your taking me along hope havenot been too disrespektfull when you get to be pirates maybe youwill give me a chance to come join you am sure you will sune beOrficers. Must close now yrs respectfly Ginger PS I lied about myUncle he wasn't never no pirate, sodger ettc.

When Max had been awakened and had read the note, he quavered,"I'm not sure we can get along without Ginger. We don't knowabout tramping and all that. Do you think we'd better go homenow? We could take a taxi."

"Never!" said the valiant Terry. "Go home, where you have towash all the time, and they won't let you have any pink cakes,and there's newspaper reporters asking you questions, and youhave to act like you liked it when horrible old maids pat you onthe head? When we could be pirates and sail the boundingmain?"

But he didn't sound very defiant, and feeble was Max's "Well,perhaps."

"Come on, Mixy; come on, you, Josephibus!" caroled Terry, withfalse heartiness. It was suddenly disheartized by a cockney voicebeside them.

"Come out of that, you! Wot d'yer think ye're doing, sleepingthere? Get out!"

It was a large man in a watchman's uniform, and the criminalsslunk most ingloriously out of the railroad yards. Josephus slunkafter them. They found a mean and dirty tea shop.

Terry wanted the corn flakes, Max desired the porridge, atwhich they had scoffed twenty-four hours before. The waitresstold them they could have fried eggs, boiled eggs, bloaters, orkippers.

They sighed, and had fried eggs.

"I wonder," said Max, suddenly excited, "if we dare drink tea.I've always wanted to drink tea. But my mother and ProfessorMichelowsky never would let me. Do you suppose we dare?"

"Oh, let's! No matter what our mothers say! A pirate can'talways be thinking about what his mother says!"

And daringly, taking the first step into lives of dissipation,they ordered tea.

Now it may be true, as envious foreigners assert, that theBritish Empire is founded on four things: tea, beer, calico, anddiplomacy. But this uncheering cup at the den in Bermondsey wasnot the sort of tea on which empires are likely to be founded. Itwas bitter. It was lukewarm.

Max tasted it, and shook his head. "I don't understand whypeople drink it," he mused. "And I don't understand why I have tostudy Latin. And I don't understand why Mother is so cross withme when I tell her I want to be a farmer. Oh, dear, I'm"--hisvoice quavered--"I'm glad we're going to be pirates! They don'tdrink tea. They drink rum. And that must be nice!"

Very slightly cheered by breakfast, they started forBristol.

Bristol, Ginger had said, was west. Very well, they would walkwestward.

The waitress told them which direction was west, and theytrudged for miles. They kept on gallantly--stopping only to keepJosephus out of a dog fight and keep the other dogs in it; to buylarge and indigestible balls of hard candy; to watch a back-yardcricket game; to dally with a light mid-morning refreshment oftoffee, sugar buns, cocoa, tongue, strawberry tart, andshortbread.

Toward noon they came out on a stretch of railroad trackswhich barred their advance. While they were looking for acrossing, Terry started, and whimpered, "Look, Mixy! There'swhere we slept last night! We've gone in a circle!"

"Oh, fiddle!" raged Max the Pirate.

They sat disconsolately on a box, Josephus abashed at theirfeet.

"I guess," Terry suggested, after a gloomy pause, "we bettertake a taxi till we get out of London. Then we can follow a roadwest. Let's see how much money we got left. Gimme that twoshillings I lent you and we'll count up."

They gravely spread all their notes, their silver and copper,between them on the box, and counted them. Of Terry's fiftypounds, together with the fifteen-pence which had been Max'spocket money, they now had left forty-seven pounds and apenny.

"Oh, we can do lots with that!" gloated Terry. "We could buy alady dog, to go with Josephus. He must get lonely."

"But he might not like her."

"Oh, gee,that's easy! Lookit. We'd go into a dogstore, see, and I'd say to the clerk, 'Look,' I'd say, 'I want tofind a lady dog for my dog Josephus,' I'd say, 'and I want him tolook around and see which lady dog he likes,' I'd say, and thenJosephus would look around at all the cages they got dogsin--"

"Honestly, I think it's a shame to keep dogs in cages."

"So do I. I wouldn't like to live in no cage. Gee, I readonce, it was in a book of stories, there was this man that hadbeen a revolution, and they put him in a cage--oh, yes, it was inChina--"

"Oh, I would like to go to China. Let's go to China!"

"Sure; you betcha. Pirates always go to China, I think theydo, and--"

"You don't suppose we'd have to do any murders or anythingnasty like that, do you, Terry, when we're pirates?"

"Oh, notnow; they just did that in the Old Days. Nowthey just stop ships that belong to rich merchants and take silkand all like that, and then they give a lot to the poor--"

"And bleedin' nice of 'em I calls it!" said a new voice, adripping and slimy voice behind them, and a filthy hand swoopedupon their money.

They looked back, gasping, at a man with a hard little nut ofa face under a greasy cap. Instantly the hand had tumbled themoff the box, to right and left; a foot in a broken shoe hadcaught Josephus under the jaw as he leaped up growling; thefilthy hand had scooped up every penny of their horde; and thethief was galloping away.

They followed, Josephus followed, but they could not find therobber.

They crouched again on the box. For five minutes they couldnot quite comprehend that they had no money whatever; nothing forlunch, nothing for movies.

"But nobody can't down us! We'll work our way!" flaredTerry.

It did not sound too convincing, and Max answered nothingwhatever. They started off again silent. By repeatedly asking,they managed to keep going westward and, after their competentmid-morning lunch, they were not too hungry till three o'clock.Terry felt hungry enough then, and Max's face seemed to him thinand taut.

"I guess we better work for some grub now," he muttered."Let's ask 'em here in this news shop. There's a nice,kind-looking old lady in there."

To the nice, kind-looking old lady, in the dusty recesses ofthe shop, he confided, "We're very hungry. Could we do some workfor you?" And, winningly: "Your shop needs cleaning."

The nice, kind-looking old lady said never a word. Sheinspected them benevolently. Then she hurled an old paper-boundbook at them, and at last she spoke: "Get along with you!"

They asked for work at an ironmonger's, at a surgery, at afish market, at three restaurants and coffee stalls, but nowheredid they find it. Toward evening, in a terrifying dimness overunknown streets that stretched endlessly toward nowhere, Terryconfessed:

"We can't do it. We'll have to give ourselves up. But we'llstudy to be tramps and pirates and everything! We'll be able todo it next time!"

"Yes!"

They tramped on till they found a policeman, a jolly, cheerfulpoliceman.

"And what do you gents want?" he chuckled.

"Please, officer, I'm an American cinema star and this is theKing of Slovaria. We're missing. We should like to give ourselvesup, please!"

The policeman roared with joy. "And w'ere is Douglas Fairbanksand the Queen of Rooshia? 'Ave you 'idden 'em around the corner?"Seriously: "You lads ought to be ashamed of yourselves, tellingsuch lies! That's wot comes of the likes of you reading thepapers. The King and the Yankee lad, I 'ear, were captured at'Arrow this afternoon. So cut along now. Scat!"

And they scatted, on feet that felt like hot sponges, utterlyfrightened, overwhelmed by dusk in a forest of petty streets,certain that they would have to go forever till they starved.

"We ought to try to go back to our hotel," sighed Max.

"But it's so far. And I don't believe they'd let us throughthat gosh-awful gold lobby."

"That's so."

As they crept on, they passed hundreds of agitated newspaperposters which told the world that Their Majesties were stilllost. The placards gave Terry his idea.

"Lookit! I guess the papers are always hunting for news. Iguess maybe if we went to a newspaper office and told who wewere, they might help us get back home. Especially if we went tothe London office of an American paper. I can talk American good,anyway! And I know the office of the New YorkVenture ison Fleet Street."

"I tell you, Terry! Let's find a drinking trough and washourselves as well as we can, and then perhaps some taxidriver will take us and wait for his fare."

Terry looked at him with hurt astonishment. "Clean up? Andlose all that publicity, when they'll be taking our photographs?Why, Mixy!"

"What's publicity?" asked Max humbly.

Discouraged by such ignorance, too tired to explain themetaphysical doctrine, Terry merely grunted, "Come on, we'llstart for Fleet Street."

A dozen times they stopped to rest. Once they bathed theirfeet in a fountain. But at nine that evening, they climbed thestairs to the office of the London bureau of the New YorkVenture.

They found a reception room littered with newspapers and withan office boy who snapped, "Nowget along!"

But Terry now was Terry Tait again. "Get along, rats! I wantto see the boss!" he clamored.

"What's all this?" from an inner door, where stood a sleepyyoung man in shirt sleeves. His voice was American.

"I'm Terry Tait. This is the King of Slovaria."

The sleepy young man came awake with vigor. He seized Terry'sshoulder; peered at him; glanced at Max.

"And I believe you are!" he shouted. "Have you been back tothe Picardie?"

"No. We're too dirty. We came here first. We ran away to bepirates, and a man robbed us in Bermondsey of all our money, andwe been wandering around there all day, and we came here becausemy father always reads theVenture and--we're hungry!"

"Wait! For heaven's sake!" The man threw a ten-shilling noteat the gaping office boy. "Beat it! Get some food! Beans! Icecream! Champagne! Anything! But make it snappy! Come in here, youkids--I mean, Your Majesty, and you, Terry." He hustled them intohis office, threw two chairs in their general direction, and wasbellowing into the telephone receiver the number of the centralcable office.

Three minutes later a wild telegraph operator slapped on thedesk of the news editor of theVenture, in New York, adispatch reading:

FLASH TAIT KING SLOVARIA GIVE SELVES UP LONDON BUREAU VENTURERUNAWAY BE PIRATES BULLETIN IMMEDIATELY

And sixteen minutes after that newsboys were racing out of theVenture building bellowing, "Terry Tait and King found!Terry and King found!"

And half an hour after that, the complete story, with"exclusive interviews" with Terry Tait and H.R.M. the King ofSlovaria, was being eagerly read, in various tongues, by excitedjournalists in Rutland and Raleigh, Barcelona and Budapest,Manila and Madrid.

But the most famous two boys in the world, and the most famousdog, almost, in history, were quietly and unctuously eating hamand cold chicken and sally lunns, while a wide-awake young mancalled the Picardie and desired to speak to the suite of theQueen of Slovaria.

In the boudoir of Her Majesty, the Queen of Slovaria, was ascene at once impressive enough for the movies and humble enoughfor--well, humble enough for the movies.

On Her Majesty's lap sat an American small boy, recently anddrastically scrubbed, clad in pajamas and a dressing gown,beatifically eating a most unhygienic and delightful cream roll.Beside them, beaming up at this Madonna scene, was another smallboy, also scrubbed, also in dressing gown, also cramming into hismouth the luscious gooey cream. He was petting a woolly dog--apure-bred Margate Wader--whose tongue lolled out with idioticcontentment.

Facing them was Bessie, smiling over her cigarette. Andrushing around faithfully doing nothing in particular was a youngEnglishman, name of Bundock, who was to be Max's valet in two orthree years, after he had been properly trained in the householdof Sidonie's dear friend, the Duchess of Twickenham.

Now begins, after the pleasant homeliness, the impressiveness.The duchess began it. She was staring at the family scene; shewas tall and gray; she wore rusty black; and within her powerfulbrain she was obviously meditating, "This is what comes oftreating Slovarians and Americans and all suchlike colonials, nomatter how highly placed, as though they were gentry!"

The second touch of impressiveness was given by PrinceSebenéco, Prime Minister of Slovaria.

He was a tall man with a black beard. He was protesting, "But,ma'am, I quite appreciate that it would be an honor for us toentertain Madame Tait and her charming son, but your people,ma'am; they were highly agitated by His Majesty's disappearance,and I fear they would resent your bringing His Majesty'sassociate in this idiot--I mean, in this adventure. How alarmed Iwas you may deduce from my having taken an airplane. Eeee! Anasty device! I was very sick!"

The same assistant manager who had once found Bessie her roomwas ushered in, bowing, timidly venturing, "A cablegram for you,Madame Tait."

Bessie opened the cablegram. She smiled slightly, andsniffed.

"Sebenéco!" said Sidonie.

"Ma'am?"

"You're a fool!"

"I?"

"Exactly. . . . Bessie, my friend, Terry and you will come toSlovaria. He will be educated by my son's tutors. You will bothbecome Slovarian citizens. Some day he will be a general. We willbestow on him a title. Good! In two weeks we start forTzetokoskavar. Do you play piquet, Bessie? I am very fond ofpiquet."

"Well, that's real nice of you, Sidonie," yawned Bessie, "andsome day Terry and I will sure be glad to come over and visityou, but now we've got to beat it back to California. Just had acablegram from Abe Granville, our manager. Well, I guesseverybody better go to bed."

In their room she showed Terry the cablegram fromGranville.

CONGRATULATIONS SWELLEST PUBLICITY EVER PULLED GIVE YOUCONTRACT FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND A YEAR HUSTLE BACK START MAKINGMAJESTY JUNIOR EIGHTEENTH ABE

* * * * * * *

In the Hollywood studio of the Jupiter-Triumph-Tait FilmCorporation they were shooting "His Majesty, Junior," which wasto be the first realistic, intimate, low-down picture of theinside life of royalty that had ever been made.

His Majesty, Terry, sat on a throne at the end of a vast room,and before him stood a squadron of guards, saluting.

The director was outlining the opening scene to Terry. "Yousit on a throne in the throne room, see? The prime ministerstands beside you, see, he's the comedy character, see, andthere's a big gang of guards in fur hats, saluting. You don'tlike the way one of them acts and you say, 'Off with hishead.'"

"Aw, thunder; kings can't say, 'Off with his head,'"complained Terry.

"Now, you, Terence Tait, will you kindly shut up and do whatyou're told?" said Bessie. "Here we work and slave and try toeducate you, and then you just go on being so iggorent!"

"Listen, will you?" demanded the director, while Terrywistfully stroked the head of a broad-backed mongrel dog. "Youwear a regular king's uniform, see--red tights and a jacket withfur--and you carry a sword."

And the splendid labor of making a great realistic movie wenton--while seven thousand miles away a lonely small boy in apalace garden studied Latin and meditated on the day when Terryand he would both be twenty-one, when they would escape from theawful respectability of being kings and celebrities.

Out on the lot, Mr. T. Benescoten Tait was talking to anobsequious extra man. Mr. Tait was wearing a sulphur-coloredtopcoat and a salmon-colored tie which his wife had brought himfrom London.

"Yes, sir!" chanted Mr. Tait. "We wouldn't let the newspapershave the real low-down on Terry's chummin' around with the Kingof Slovaria. You see, this-here is a democratic country, thisUnited States, I mean, and folks might not like it if they knewthat their heroes, like Terry, was just like this with royalty.But fact is, this was all bunk about him and the King bummingaround in old clothes. Fact is, they was introduced in London byspecial request of Queen Sidonie--she's always been crazy aboutTerry's pictures. And then the two kids, they were taken up tothis Sandelham Castle by King George of England--yes, sir, that'sthe real fact."

At the same moment, on the same lot, two other extra men werediscoursing, and one of them was explaining:

"Terry and the King! Say, lissen, where was you brought up?Gosh, you certainly are an easy mark! Mean to say you believe allthis stuff about this Tait kid being chummy with a king? Say,that was all just publicity. Iknow.

"Wiggins, the press agent, told me so himself. Don't tellanybody--I wouldn't tell anybody but you; I don't want this to goany further--but the fact is, Terry and this kid king never metat all.

"These pictures you see of the two of 'em together, in themdirty clothes, is all fake! Wiggins was there in London, and hegot hold of a kid that looked like this king, and had him andTerry photographed together."

"Gee, life's cer'nly different from what you'd expect," saidhis companion.

"Ain't it, though? You said it!"

From the drawer of his table Jasper Holt took a pane of windowglass. He laid a sheet of paper on the glass and wrote, "Now isthe time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." Hestudied his round business-college script, and rewrote thesentence in a small finicky hand, that of a studious old man. Tentimes he copied the words in that false pinched writing. He toreup the paper, burned the fragments in his large ash tray andwashed the delicate ashes down his stationary washbowl. Hereplaced the pane of glass in the drawer, tapping it withsatisfaction. A glass underlay does not retain an impression.

Jasper Holt was as nearly respectable as his room, which, withits frilled chairs and pansy-painted pincushion, was the best inthe aristocratic boarding house of Mrs. Lyons. He was a wiry,slightly bald, black-haired man of thirty-eight, wearing an easygray flannel suit and a white carnation. His hands werepeculiarly compact and nimble. He gave the appearance of being ayoungish lawyer or bond salesman. Actually he was senior payingteller in the Lumber National Bank in the city of Vernon.

He looked at a thin expensive gold watch. It was six-thirty,on Wednesday--toward dusk of a tranquil spring day. He picked uphis hooked walking stick and his gray silk gloves and trudgeddownstairs. He met his landlady in the lower hall and inclinedhis head. She effusively commented on the weather.

"I shall not be there for dinner," he said amiably.

"Very well, Mr. Holt. My, but aren't you always going out withyour swell friends though! I read in theHerald that youwere going to be a star in another of those society plays in theCommunity Theater. I guess you'd be an actor if you wasn't abanker, Mr. Holt."

"No, I'm afraid I haven't much temperament." His voice wascordial, but his smile was a mere mechanical sidewise twist ofthe lip muscles. "You're the one that's got the stage presence.Bet you'd be a regular Ethel Barrymore if you didn't have to takecare of us."

"My, but you're such a flatterer!"

He bowed his way out and walked sedately down the street to apublic garage. Nodding to the night attendant, but sayingnothing, he started his roadster and drove out of the garage,away from the center of Vernon, toward the suburb of Rosebank. Hedid not go directly to Rosebank. He went seven blocks out of hisway, and halted on Fandall Avenue--one of those petty mainthoroughfares which, with their motion-picture palaces, theirgroceries, laundries, undertakers' establishments and lunchrooms, serve as local centers for districts of mean residences.He got out of the car and pretended to look at the tires, kickingthem to see how much air they had. While he did so he covertlylooked up and down the street. He saw no one whom he knew. Hewent into the Parthenon Confectionery Store.

The Parthenon Store makes a specialty of those ingenious candyboxes that resemble bound books. The back of the box is ofimitation leather, with a stamping simulating the title of anovel. The edges are apparently the edges of a number of pages.But these pages are hollowed out, and the inside is to be filledwith candy.

Jasper gazed at the collection of book boxes and chose the twowhose titles had the nearest approach to dignity--Sweets to theSweet and The Ladies' Delight. He asked the Greek clerk to fillthese with the less expensive grade of mixed chocolates, and towrap them.

From the candy shop he went to the drugstore that carried anassortment of reprinted novels, and from these picked out two ofthe same sentimental type as the titles on the booklike boxes.These also he had wrapped. He strolled out of the drugstore,slipped into a lunchroom, got a lettuce sandwich, doughnuts, anda cup of coffee at the greasy marble counter, took them to achair with a table arm in the dim rear of the lunchroom andhastily devoured them. As he came out and returned to his car heagain glanced along the street.

He fancied that he knew a man who was approaching. He couldnot be sure. From the breast up the man seemed familiar, as didthe customers of the bank whom he viewed through the wicket ofthe teller's window. When he saw them in the street he couldnever be sure of them. It seemed extraordinary to find that thesepersons, who to him were nothing but faces with attached armsthat held out checks and received money, could walk about, hadlegs and a gait and a manner of their own.

He walked to the curb and stared up at the cornice of one ofthe stores, puckering his lips, giving an impersonation of a maninspecting a building. With the corner of an eye he followed theapproaching man. The man ducked his head as he neared, andgreeted him, "Hello, Brother Teller." Jasper seemed startled;gave the "Oh! Oh, how are you!" of sudden recognition; andmumbled, "Looking after a little bank property."

The man passed on.

Jasper got into his car and drove back to the street thatwould take him out to the suburb of Rosebank. As he left FandallAvenue he peered at his watch. It was five minutes to seven.

At a quarter past seven he passed through the main street ofRosebank and turned into a lane that was but little changed sincethe time when it had been a country road. A few jerry-builtvillas of freckled paint did shoulder upon it, but for the mostpart it ran through swamps spotted with willow groves, the spongyground covered with scatterings of dry leaves and bark. Openingon this lane was a dim-rutted grassy private road whichdisappeared into one of the willow groves.

Jasper sharply swung his car between the crumbly gate postsand along on the bumpy private road. He made an abrupt turn, camein sight of an unpainted shed and shot the car into it withoutcutting down his speed, so that he almost hit the back of theshed with his front fenders. He shut off the engine, climbed outquickly and ran back toward the gate. From the shield of the bankof alder bushes he peered out. Two clattering women were goingdown the public road. They stared in through the gate and halfhalted.

"That's where that hermit lives," said one of them.

"Oh, you mean the one that's writing a religious book, andnever comes out till evening? Some kind of a preacher?"

"Yes, that's the one. John Holt, I think his name is. I guesshe's kind of crazy. He lives in the old Beaudette house. But youcan't see it from here--it's clear through the block, on the nextstreet."

"I heard he was crazy. But I just saw an automobile go inhere."

"Oh, that's his cousin or brother or something--lives in thecity. They say he's rich, and such a nice fellow."

The two women ambled on, their clatter blurring with distance.Standing behind the alders Jasper rubbed the palm of one handwith the fingers of the other. The palm was dry with nervousness.But he grinned.

He returned to the shed and entered a brick-paved walk almosta block long, walled and sheltered by overhanging willows. Onceit had been a pleasant path; carved wooden benches were placedalong it, and it widened to a court with a rock garden, afountain and a stone bench. The rock garden had degenerated intoa riot of creepers sprawling over the sharp stones; the paint hadpeeled from the fountain, leaving its iron cupids and naiadseaten with rust. The bricks of the wall were smeared with lichensand moss and were untidy with windrows of dry leaves and cakedearth. Many of the bricks were broken; the walk was hilly in itsunevenness. From willows and bricks and scuffled earth rose adamp chill. But Jasper did not seem to note the dampness. Hehastened along the walk to the house--a structure of heavy stonewhich, for this newish Midwestern land, was very ancient. It hadbeen built by a French fur trader in 1839. The Chippewas hadscalped a man in its dooryard. The heavy back door was guarded byan unexpectedly expensive modern lock. Jasper opened it with aflat key and closed it behind him. It locked on a spring. He wasin a crude kitchen, the shades of which were drawn. He passedthrough the kitchen and dining room into the living room. Dodgingchairs and tables in the darkness as though he was used to themhe went to each of the three windows of the living room and madesure that all the shades were down before he lighted the studentlamp on the game-legged table. As the glow crept over the drabwalls Jasper bobbed his head with satisfaction. Nothing had beentouched since his last visit.

The room was musty with the smell of old green rep upholsteryand leather books. It had not been dusted for months. Dustsheeted the stiff red velvet chairs, the uncomfortable settee,the chill white marble fireplace, the immense glass-frontedbookcase that filled one side of the room.

The atmosphere was unnatural to this capable business man,this Jasper Holt. But Jasper did not seem oppressed. He brisklyremoved the wrappers from the genuine books and from thecandy-box imitations of books. One of the two wrappers he laid onthe table and smoothed out. Upon this he poured the candy fromthe two boxes. The other wrapper and the strings he stuffed intothe fireplace and immediately burned. Crossing to the bookcase heunlocked one section on the bottom shelf. There was a row ofrather cheap-looking novels on this shelf, and of these at leastsix were actually such candy boxes as he had purchased thatevening.

Only one shelf of the bookcase was given over to anything sofrivolous as novels. The others were filled with black-covered,speckle-leaved, dismal books of history, theology, biography--theshabby-genteel sort of books you find on the fifteen-cent tableat a secondhand bookshop. Over these Jasper pored for a moment asthough he was memorizing their titles.

He took downThe Life of the Rev. Jeremiah Bodfish andread aloud: "In those intimate discourses with his family thatfollowed evening prayers I once heard Brother Bodfish observethat Philo Judaeus--whose scholarly career always calls to mymind the adumbrations of Melanchthon upon the essence ofrationalism--was a mere sophist--"

Jasper slammed the book shut, remarking contentedly, "That'lldo. Philo Judaeus--good name to spring."

He relocked the bookcase and went upstairs. In a small bedroomat the right of the upper hall an electric light was burning.Presumably the house had been deserted till Jasper's entrance,but a prowler in the yard might have judged from thisever-burning light that someone was in the residence. The bedroomwas Spartan--an iron bed, one straight chair, a washstand, aheavy oak bureau. Jasper scrambled to unlock the bottom drawer ofthe bureau, yank it open, take out a wrinkled shiny suit ofblack, a pair of black shoes, a small black bow tie, a Gladstonecollar, a white shirt with starched bosom, a speckly brown felthat and a wig--an expensive and excellent wig with artfullyunkempt hair of a faded brown.

He stripped off his attractive flannel suit, wing collar, bluetie, custom-made silk shirt and cordovan shoes, and speedily puton the wig and those gloomy garments. As he donned them thecorners of his mouth began to droop. Leaving the light on and hisown clothes flung on the bed he descended the stairs. He wasobviously not the same Jasper, but less healthy, less practical,less agreeable, and decidedly more aware of the sorrow and longthoughts of the dreamer. Indeed it must be understood that now hewas not Jasper Holt, but Jasper's twin brother, John Holt, hermitand religious fanatic.

John Holt, twin brother of Jasper Holt, the bank teller,rubbed his eyes as though he had for hours been absorbed instudy, and crawled through the living room, through the tinyhall, to the front door. He opened it, picked up a couple ofcirculars that the postman had dropped through the letter slot inthe door, went out and locked the door behind him. He was facinga narrow front yard, neater than the willow walk at the back, ona suburban street more populous than the straggly back lane.

A street arc illuminated the yard and showed that a card wastacked on the door. John touched the card, snapped it with a nailof his finger to make sure it was securely tacked. In that lighthe could not read it, but he knew that it was inscribed in asmall finicky hand: "Agents kindly do not disturb, bell will notbe answered, occupant of the house engaged in literary work."

John stood on the doorstep until he made out his neighbor onthe right--a large stolid commuter, who was walking before hishouse smoking an after-dinner cigar. John poked to the fence andsniffed at a spray of lilac blossoms till the neighbor calledover, "Nice evening."

"Yes, it seems to be pleasant."

John's voice was like Jasper's but it was more guttural, andhis speech had less assurance.

"How's the story going?"

"It is--it is very difficult. So hard to comprehend all theinner meanings of the prophecies. Well, I must be hastening toSoul Hope Hall. I trust we shall see you there some Wednesday orSunday evening. I bid you good-night, sir."

John wavered down the street to the drugstore. He purchased abottle of ink. In a grocery that kept open evenings he got twopounds of cornmeal, two pounds of flour, a pound of bacon, a halfpound of butter, six eggs and a can of condensed milk.

"Shall we deliver them?" asked the clerk.

John looked at him sharply. He realized that this was a newman, who did not know his customs. He said rebukingly: "No, Ialways carry my parcels. I am writing a book. I am never to bedisturbed."

He paid for the provisions out of a postal money order forthirty-five dollars, and received the change. The cashier of thestore was accustomed to cashing these money orders, which werealways sent to John from South Vernon, by one R. J. Smith. Johntook the bundle of food and walked out of the store.

"That fellow's kind of a nut, isn't he?" asked the newclerk.

The cashier explained: "Yep. Doesn't even take freshmilk--uses condensed for everything! What do you think of that!And they say he burns up all his garbage--never has anything inthe ashcan except ashes. If you knock at his door, he neveranswers it, fellow told me. All the time writing this book ofhis. Religious crank, I guess. Has a little income though--guesshis folks were pretty well fixed. Comes out once in a while inthe evening and pokes round town. We used to laugh about him, butwe've kind of got used to him. Been here about a year, I guess itis."

John was serenely passing down the main street of Rosebank. Atthe dingier end of it he turned in at a hallway marked by alighted sign announcing in crude house-painter's letters: "SoulHope Fraternity Hall. Experience Meeting. All Welcome."

It was eight o'clock. The members of the Soul Hope cult hadgathered in their hall above a bakery. Theirs was a tiny,tight-minded sect. They asserted that they alone obeyed thescriptural tenets; that they alone were certain to be saved, thatall other denominations were damned by unapostolic luxury, thatit was wicked to have organs or ministers or any meeting placessave plain halls. The members themselves conducted the meetings,one after another rising to give an interpretation of thescriptures or to rejoice in gathering with the faithful, whilethe others commented with "Hallelujah!" and "Amen, brother,amen!" They were plainly dressed, not overfed, somewhat elderly,and a rather happy congregation. The most honored of them all wasJohn Holt.

John had come to Rosebank only eleven months before. He hadbought the Beaudette house with the library of the recentoccupant, a retired clergyman, and had paid for them in newone-hundred-dollar bills. Already he had great credit in the SoulHope cult. It appeared that he spent almost all his time at home,praying and reading and writing a book. The Soul Hope Fraternitywere excited about the book. They had begged him to read it tothem. So far he had only read a few pages, consisting mostly ofquotations from ancient treatises on the Prophecies. Nearly everySunday and Wednesday evening he appeared at the meeting and in ahalting and scholarly way lectured on the world and theflesh.

Tonight he spoke polysyllabically of the fact that one PhiloJudaeus had been a mere sophist. The cult were none too clear asto what either a Philo Judaeus or a sophist might be, but withheads all nodding in a row, they murmured: "You're right,brother! Hallelujah!"

John glided into a sad earnest discourse on his worldlybrother Jasper, and informed them of his struggles with Jasper'sitch for money. By his request the fraternity prayed forJasper.

The meeting was over at nine. John shook hands all round withthe elders of the congregation, sighing: "Fine meeting tonight,wasn't it? Such a free outpouring of the Spirit!" He welcomed anew member, a servant girl just come from Seattle. Carrying hisgroceries and the bottle of ink he poked down the stairs from thehall at seven minutes after nine.

At sixteen minutes after nine John was stripping off his brownwig and the funereal clothes in his bedroom. At twenty-eightafter, John Holt had become Jasper Holt, the capable teller ofthe Lumber National Bank.

Jasper Holt left the light burning in his brother's bedroom.He rushed downstairs, tried the fastening of the front door,bolted it, made sure that all the windows were fastened, pickedup the bundle of groceries and the pile of candies that he hadremoved from the booklike candy boxes, blew out the light in theliving room and ran down the willow walk to his car. He threw thegroceries and candy into it, backed the car out as though he wasaccustomed to backing in this bough-scattered yard, and drovealong the lonely road at the rear.

When he was passing a swamp he reached down, picked up thebundle of candies, and steering with one hand removed thewrapping paper with the other hand and hurled out the candies.They showered among the weeds beside the road. The paper whichhad contained the candies, and upon which was printed the name ofthe Parthenon Confectionery Store, Jasper tucked into his pocket.He took the groceries item by item from the labeled bagcontaining them, thrust that bag also into his pocket, and laidthe groceries on the seat beside him.

On the way from Rosebank to the center of the city of Vernon,he again turned off the main avenue and halted at a goat-infestedshack occupied by a crippled Norwegian. He sounded the horn. TheNorwegian's grandson ran out.

"Here's a little more grub for you," bawled Jasper.

"God bless you, sir. I don't know what we'd do if it wasn'tfor you!" cried the old Norwegian from the door.

But Jasper did not wait for gratitude. He merely shouted"Bring you some more in a couple of days," as he startedaway.

At a quarter past ten he drove up to the hall that housed thelatest interest in Vernon society--The Community Theater. TheBoulevard Set, the "best people in town," belonged to theCommunity Theater Association, and the leader of it was thedaughter of the general manager of the railroad. As a well-bredbachelor Jasper Holt was welcome among them, despite the factthat no one knew much about him except that he was a good bankteller and had been born in England. But as an actor he was notmerely welcome: he was the best amateur actor in Vernon. Hisplacid face could narrow with tragic emotion or puff out withcomedy, his placid manner concealed a dynamo of emotion. Unlikemost amateur actors he did not try to act--he became the thingitself. He forgot Jasper Holt, and turned into a vagrant or ajudge, a Bernard Shaw thought, a Lord Dunsany symbol, a NoelCoward man-about-town.

The other one-act plays of the next program of the CommunityTheater had already been rehearsed. The cast of the play in whichJasper was to star were all waiting for him. So were the ladiesresponsible for the staging. They wanted his advice about theblue curtain for the stage window, about the baby-spot that wasout of order, about the higher interpretation of the rôleof the page in the piece--a rôle consisting of only twolines, but to be played by one of the most popular girls in theyounger set. After the discussions, and a most violent quarrelbetween two members of the play-reading committee, the rehearsalwas called. Jasper Holt still wore his flannel suit and a wiltingcarnation; but he was not Jasper; he was the Duc de San Saba, acynical, gracious, gorgeous old man, easy of gesture, tranquil ofvoice, shudderingly evil of desire.

"If I could get a few more actors like you!" cried theprofessional coach.

The rehearsal was over at half-past eleven. Jasper drove hiscar to the public garage in which he kept it, and walked home.There, he tore up and burned the wrapping paper bearing the nameof the Parthenon Confectionery Store and the labeled bag that hadcontained the groceries.

The Community Theater plays were given on the followingWednesday. Jasper Holt was highly applauded, and at the party atthe Lakeside Country Club, after the play, he danced with theprettiest girls in town. He hadn't much to say to them, but hedanced fervently, and about him was a halo of artisticsuccess.

That night his brother John did not appear at the meeting ofthe Soul Hope Fraternity out in Rosebank.

On Monday, five days later, while he was in conference withthe president and the cashier of the Lumber National Bank, Jaspercomplained of a headache. The next day he telephoned to thepresident that he would not come down to work--he would stay homeand rest his eyes, sleep and get rid of the persistent headache.That was unfortunate, for that very day his twin brother Johnmade one of his frequent trips into Vernon and called at thebank.

The president had seen John only once before, and by acoincidence it had happened on this occasion also Jasper had beenabsent--had been out of town. The president invited John into hisprivate office.

"Your brother is at home; poor fellow has a bad headache. Hopehe gets over it. We think a great deal of him here. You ought tobe proud of him. Will you have a smoke?"

As he spoke the president looked John over. Once or twice whenJasper and the president had been out at lunch Jasper had spokenof the remarkable resemblance between himself and his twinbrother. But the president told himself that he didn't really seemuch resemblance. The features of the two were alike, but John'sexpression of chronic spiritual indigestion, his unfriendlymanner, and his hair--unkempt and lifeless brown, where Jasper'swas sleekly black about a shiny bald spot--made the presidentdislike John as much as he liked Jasper.

And now John was replying: "No, I do not smoke. I can'tunderstand how a man can soil the temple with drugs. I suppose Iought to be glad to hear you praise poor Jasper, but I am moreconcerned with his lack of respect for the things of the spirit.He sometimes comes to see me, at Rosebank, and I argue with him,but somehow I can't make him see his errors. And his flippantways--!"

"We don't think he's flippant. We think he's a pretty steadyworker."

"But he's play-acting! And reading love stories! Well, I tryto keep in mind the injunction, 'Judge not, that ye be notjudged.' But I am pained to find my own brother giving upimmortal promises for mortal amusements. Well, I'll go and callon him. I trust that some day we shall see you at Soul Hope Hall,in Rosebank. Good day, sir."

Turning back to his work, the president grumbled: "I am goingto tell Jasper that the best compliment I can hand him is that heis not like his brother."

And on the following day, another Wednesday, when Jasperreappeared at the bank, the president did make this jestingcomparison, and Jasper signed, "Oh, John is really a good fellow,but he's always gone in for metaphysics and Oriental mysticismand Lord knows what all, till he's kind of lost in the fog. Buthe's a lot better than I am. When I murder my landlady--or say,when I rob the bank, Chief--you go get John, and I bet you thebest lunch in town that he'll do his best to bring me to justice.That's how square he is!"

"Square, yes--corners just sticking out! Well, when you do robus, Jasper, I'll look up John. But do try to keep from robbing usas long as you can. I'd hate to have to associate with areligious detective in a boiled shirt!"

Both men laughed, and Jasper went back to his cage. His headcontinued to hurt, he admitted. The president advised him to layoff for a week. He didn't want to, he said. With the new munitionindustries due to the war in Europe there was much increase infactory pay rolls, and Jasper took charge of them.

"Better take a week off than get ill," argued the presidentlate that afternoon.

Jasper did let himself be persuaded to go away for at least aweek-end. He would run up north, to Wakamin Lake, the comingFriday, he said; he would get some black-bass fishing, and beback on Monday or Tuesday. Before he went he would make up thepay rolls for the Saturday payments and turn them over to theother teller. The president thanked him for his faithfulness, andas was his not infrequent custom, invited Jasper to his house forthe evening of the next day--Thursday.

That Wednesday evening Jasper's brother John appeared at theSoul Hope meeting in Rosebank. When he had gone home andmagically turned back into Jasper this Jasper did not return thewig and garments of John to the bureau but packed them in asuitcase, took the suitcase to his room in Vernon and locked itin his wardrobe.

Jasper was amiable at dinner at the president's house onThursday, but he was rather silent, and as his head stillthrobbed he left the house early--at nine-thirty. Sedatelycarrying his gray silk gloves in one hand and pompously swinginghis stick with the other, he walked from the president's house onthe fashionable boulevard back to the center of Vernon. Heentered the public garage in which he stored his car. Hecommented to the night attendant, "Head aches. Guess I'll takethe 'bus out and get some fresh air."

He drove away at not more than fifteen miles an hour. Heheaded south. When he had reached the outskirts of the city hespeeded up to a consistent twenty-five miles an hour. He settleddown in his seat with the unmoving steadiness of thelong-distance driver; his body quiet except for the tiny subtlemovements of his foot on the accelerator, of his hand on thesteering wheel--his right hand across the wheel, holding it atthe top, his left elbow resting easily on the cushioned edge ofhis seat and his left hand merely touching the wheel.

He drove down in that southern direction for fifteenmiles--almost to the town of Wanagoochie. Then by a rather poorside road he turned sharply to the north and west, and making ahuge circle about the city drove toward the town of St. Clair.The suburb of Rosebank, in which his brother John lived, is alsonorth of Vernon. These directions were of some importance to him;Wanagoochie eighteen miles south of the mother city of Vernon;Rosebank, on the other hand, eight miles north of Vernon, and St.Clair twenty miles north--about as far north of Vernon asWanagoochie is south.

On his way to St. Clair, at a point that was only two milesfrom Rosebank, Jasper ran the car off the main road into a groveof oaks and maples and stopped it on a long-unused woodland road.He stiffly got out and walked through the woods up a rise ofground to a cliff overlooking a swampy lake. The gravelly fartherbank of the cliff rose perpendicularly from the edge of thewater. In that wan light distilled by stars and the earth he madeout the reedy expanse of the lake. It was so muddy, so tangledwith sedge grass that it was never used for swimming, and as itsinhabitants were only slimy bullheads few people ever tried tofish there. Jasper stood reflective. He was remembering the storyof the farmer's team which had run away, dashed over this cliffand sunk out of sight in the mud bottom of the lake.

Swishing his stick he outlined an imaginary road from the topof the cliff back to the sheltered place where his car wasstanding. Once he hacked away with a large pocketknife a mass ofknotted hazel bushes which blocked that projected road. When hehad traced the road to his car he smiled. He walked to the edgeof the woods and looked up and down the main highway. A car wasapproaching. He waited till it had passed, ran back to his owncar, backed it out on the highway, and went on his northwardcourse toward St. Clair, driving about thirty miles an hour.

On the edge of St. Clair he halted, took out his kit of tools,unscrewed a spark plug, and sharply tapping the plug on theengine block, deliberately cracked the porcelain jacket. Hescrewed the plug in again and started the car. It bucked andspit, missing on one cylinder, with the short-circuited plug.

"I guess there must be something wrong with the ignition," hesaid cheerfully.

He managed to run the car into a garage in St. Clair. Therewas no one in the garage save an old negro, the night washer, whowas busy over a limousine with sponge and hose.

"Got a night repair man here?" asked Jasper.

"No, sir; guess you'll have to leave it till morning."

"Hang it! Something gone wrong with the carburetor or theignition. Well, I'll have to leave it then. Tell him--Say willyou be here in the morning when the repair man comes on?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, tell him I must have the car by tomorrow noon. No, sayby tomorrow at nine. Now, don't forget. This will help yourmemory."

He gave a quarter to the negro, who grinned and shouted: "Yes,sir; that'll help my memory a lot!" As he tied a storage tag onthe car the negro inquired: "Name?"

"Uh--my name? Oh, Hanson. Remember now, ready about ninetomorrow."

Jasper walked to the railroad station. It was ten minutes ofone. Jasper did not ask the night operator about the next traininto Vernon. Apparently he knew that there was a train stoppinghere at St. Clair at one-thirty-seven. He did not sit in thewaiting room but in the darkness outside, on a truck behind thebaggage room. When the train came in he slipped into the lastseat of the last car, and with his soft hat over his eyes eitherslept or appeared to sleep. When he reached Vernon he got off andcame to the garage in which he regularly kept his car. He steppedinside. The night attendant was drowsing in a large wooden chairtilted back against the wall in the narrow runway which formedthe entrance to the garage.

Jasper jovially shouted to the attendant: "Certainly ran intosome hard luck. Ignition went wrong--I guess it was the ignition.Had to leave the car down at Wanagoochie."

"Yuh, hard luck, all right," assented the attendant.

"Yump. So I left it at Wanagoochie," Jasper emphasized as hepassed on.

He had been inexact in this statement. It was not atWanagoochie, which is south, but at St. Clair, which is north,that he had left his car.

He had returned to his boarding house, slept beautifully,hummed in his morning shower bath. Yet at breakfast he complainedof his continuous headache, and announced that he was going upnorth, to Wakamin, to get some bass fishing and rest his eyes.His landlady urged him to go.

"Anything I can do to help you get away?" she queried.

"No, thanks. I'm just taking a couple of suitcases, with someold clothes and some fishing tackle. Fact, I have 'em all packedalready. I'll probably take the noon train north if I can getaway from the bank. Pretty busy now, with these pay rolls for thefactories that have war contracts for the Allies. What's it sayin the paper this morning?"

Jasper arrived at the bank, carrying the two suitcases and aneat, polite, rolled silk umbrella, the silver top of which wasengraved with his name. The doorman, who was also the bank guard,helped him to carry the suitcases inside.

"Careful of that bag. Got my fishing tackle in it," saidJasper, to the doorman, apropos of one of the suitcases which washeavy but apparently not packed full. "Well, I think I'll run upto Wakamin today and catch a few bass."

"Wish I could go along, sir. How is the head this morning?Does it still ache?" asked the doorman.

"Rather better, but my eyes still feel pretty rocky. GuessI've been using them too much. Say, Connors, I'll try to catchthe train north at eleven-seven. Better have a taxicab here forme at eleven. Or no; I'll let you know a little before eleven.Try to catch the eleven-seven north, for Wakamin."

"Very well, sir."

The president, the cashier, the chief clerk--all asked Jasperhow he felt; and to all of them he repeated the statement that hehad been using his eyes too much, and that he would catch a fewbass at Wakamin.

The other paying teller, from his cage next to that of Jasper,called heartily through the steel netting: "Pretty soft for somepeople! You wait! I'm going to have the hay fever this summer,and I'll go fishing for a month!"

Jasper placed the two suitcases and the umbrella in his cage,and leaving the other teller to pay out current money he himselfmade up the pay rolls for the next day--Saturday. He casuallywent into the vault--a narrow, unimpressive, unaired cell with ahard linoleum floor, one unshaded electric bulb, and a back wallcomposed entirely of steel doors of safes, all painted a sicklyblue, very unimpressive, but guarding several millions of dollarsin cash and securities. The upper doors, hung on large steel armsand each provided with two dials, could be opened only by twoofficers of the bank, each knowing one of the two combinations.Below these were smaller doors, one of which Jasper could open,as teller. It was the door of an insignificant steel box, whichcontained one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars in bills andfour thousand dollars in gold and silver.

Jasper passed back and forth, carrying bundles of currency. Inhis cage he was working less than three feet from the otherteller, who was divided from him only by the bands of the steelnetting.

While he worked he exchanged a few words with this otherteller.

Once, as he counted out nineteen thousand dollars, hecommented: "Big pay roll for the Henschel Wagon Works this week.They're making gun carriages and truck bodies for the Allies, Iunderstand."

"Uh-huh!" said the other teller, not much interested.

Mechanically, unobtrusively going about his ordinary routineof business, Jasper counted out bills to amounts agreeing withthe items on a typed schedule of the pay rolls. Apparently hiseyes never lifted from his counting and from the typed schedulewhich lay before him. The bundles of bills he made into packages,fastening each with a paper band. Each bundle he seemed to dropinto a small black leather bag which he held beside him. But hedid not actually drop the money into these pay-roll bags.

Both the suitcases at his feet were closed and presumablyfastened, but one was not fastened. And though it was heavy itcontained nothing but a lump of pig iron. From time to timeJasper's hand, holding a bundle of bills, dropped to his side.With a slight movement of his foot he opened that suitcase andthe bills slipped from his hand down into it.

The bottom part of the cage was a solid sheet of stampedsteel, and from the front of the bank no one could see thissuspicious gesture. The other teller could have seen it, butJasper dropped the bills only when the other teller was busytalking to a customer or when his back was turned. In order todelay for such a favorable moment Jasper frequently countedpackages of bills twice, rubbing his eyes as though they hurthim.

After each of these secret disposals of packages of billsJasper made much of dropping into the pay-roll bags the rolls ofcoin for which the schedule called. It was while he was tossingthese blue-wrapped cylinders of coin into the bags that he wouldchat with the other teller. Then he would lock up the bags andgravely place them at one side.

Jasper was so slow in making up the pay rolls that it was fiveminutes of eleven before he finished. He called the doorman tothe cage and suggested, "Better call my taxi now."

He still had one bag to fill. He could plainly be seendropping packages of money into it, while he instructed theassistant teller: "I'll stick all the bags in my safe and you cantransfer them to yours. Be sure to lock my safe. Lord, I betterhurry or I'll miss my train! Be back Tuesday morning, at latest.So long; take care yourself."

He hastened to pile the pay-roll bags into his safe in thevault. The safe was almost filled with them. And except for thelast one not one of the bags contained anything except a fewrolls of coin. Though he had told the other teller to lock hissafe, he himself twirled the combination--which was thoughtlessof him, as the assistant teller would now have to wait and getthe president to unlock it.

He picked up his umbrella and two suitcases, bending over oneof the cases for not more than ten seconds. Waving good-by to thecashier at his desk down front and hurrying so fast that thedoorman did not have a chance to help him carry the suitcases, herushed through the bank, through the door, into the waitingtaxicab, and loudly enough for the doorman to hear he cried tothe driver, "M. & D. Station."

At the M. & D. R. R. Station, refusing offers of redcapsto carry his bags, he bought a ticket for Wakamin, which is alake-resort town one hundred and forty miles northwest of Vernon,hence one hundred and twenty beyond St. Clair. He had just timeto get aboard the eleven-seven train. He did not take a chaircar, but sat in a day coach near the rear door. He unscrewed thesilver top of his umbrella, on which was engraved his name, anddropped it into his pocket.

When the train reached St. Clair, Jasper strolled out to thevestibule, carrying the suitcases but leaving the toplessumbrella behind. His face was blank, uninterested. As the trainstarted he dropped down on the station platform and gravelywalked away. For a second the light of adventure crossed hisface, and vanished.

At the garage at which he had left his car on the eveningbefore he asked the foreman: "Did you get my car fixed--Mercuryroadster, ignition on the bum?"

"Nope! Couple of jobs ahead of it. Haven't had time to touchit yet. Ought to get at it early this afternoon."

Jasper curled his tongue round his lips in startled vexation.He dropped his suitcases on the floor of the garage and stoodthinking, his bent forefinger against his lower lip.

Then: "Well, I guess I can get her to go--sorry--can'twait--got to make the next town," he grumbled.

"Lot of you traveling salesmen making your territory by motornow, Mr. Hanson," said the foreman civilly, glancing at thestorage check on Jasper's car.

"Yep. I can make a good many more than I could by train."

He paid for overnight storage without complaining, thoughsince his car had not been repaired this charge was unjust. Infact, he was altogether prosaic and inconspicuous. He thrust thesuitcases into the car and drove away, the motor spitting. Atanother garage he bought another spark plug and screwed it in.When he went on, the motor had ceased spitting.

He drove out of St. Clair, back in the direction ofVernon--and of Rosebank where his brother lived. He ran the carinto that thick grove of oaks and maples only two miles fromRosebank, where he had paced off an imaginary road to the cliffoverhanging the reedy lake. He parked his car in a grassy spacebeside the abandoned woodland road. He laid a light robe over thesuitcases. From beneath the seat he took a can of deviledchicken, a box of biscuits, a canister of tea, a folding cookingkit and a spirit lamp. These he spread on the grass--a picniclunch.

He sat beside that lunch from seven minutes past one in theafternoon till dark. Once in a while he made a pretense ofeating. He fetched water from the brook, made tea, opened the boxof biscuits and the can of chicken. But mostly he sat still andsmoked cigarette after cigarette.

Once, a Swede, taking this road as a short cut to his truckfarm, passed by and mumbled, "Picnic, eh?"

"Yuh, takin' the day off," said Jasper dully.

The man went on without looking back.

At dusk Jasper finished a cigarette down to the tip, crushedout the light and made the cryptic remark:

"That's probably Jasper Holt's last smoke. I don't suppose youcan smoke, John--damn you!"

He hid the two suitcases in the bushes, piled the remains ofthe lunch into the car, took down the top of the car, and creptdown to the main road. No one was in sight. He returned. Hesnatched a hammer and a chisel from his tool kit, and with a fewsavage cracks he so defaced the number of the car stamped on theengine block that it could not be made out. He removed thelicense numbers from fore and aft, and placed them beside thesuitcases. Then, when there was just enough light to see thebushes as cloudy masses, he started the car, drove through thewoods and up the incline to the top of the cliff, and halted,leaving the engine running.

Between the car and the edge of the cliff which overhung thelake there was a space of about one hundred and thirty feet,fairly level and covered with straggly red clover. Jasper pacedoff this distance, returned to the car, took his seat in anervous, tentative way and put her into gear, starting on secondspeed and slamming her into third. The car bolted toward the edgeof the cliff. He instantly swung out on the running board.Standing there, headed directly toward the sharp drop over thecliff, steering with his left hand on the wheel, he shoved thehand throttle up--up--up with his right. He safely leaped downfrom the running board.

Of itself, the car rushed forward, roaring. It shot over theedge of the cliff. It soared twenty feet out into the air, asthough it were a thick-bodied aeroplane. It turned over and over,with a sickening drop toward the lake. The water splashed up in atremendous noisy circle. Then silence. In the twilight thesurface of the lake shone like milk. There was no sign of the caron the surface. The concentric rings died away. The lake wassecret and sinister and still. "Lord!" ejaculated Jasper,standing on the cliff; then: "Well, they won't find that for acouple of years anyway."

He turned to the suitcases. Squatting beside them he took fromone the wig and black garments of John Holt. He stripped, put onthe clothes of John, and packed those of Jasper in the bag. Withthe cases and the motor-license plates he walked toward Rosebank,keeping in various groves of maples and willows till he waswithin half a mile of the town. He reached the stone house at theend of the willow walk and sneaked in the back way. He burnedJasper Holt's clothes in the grate, melted down the licenseplates in the stove, and between two rocks he smashed Jasper'sexpensive watch and fountain pen into an unpleasant mass of junk,which he dropped into the cistern for rain water. The silver headof the umbrella he scratched with a chisel till the engraved namewas indistinguishable.

He unlocked a section of the bookcase and taking a number ofpackages of bills in denominations of one, five, ten and twentydollars from one of the suitcases he packed them into those emptycandy boxes which, on the shelves, looked so much like books. Ashe stored them he counted the bills. They came to ninety-seventhousand five hundred and thirty-five dollars.

The two suitcases were new. There were no distinguishing markson them. But taking them out to the kitchen he kicked them,rubbed them with lumps of blacking, raveled their edges and cuttheir sides, till they gave the appearance of having been longand badly used in traveling. He took them upstairs and tossedthem up into the low attic.

In his bedroom he undressed calmly. Once he laughed: "Idespise those pretentious fools--bank officers and cops. I'mbeyond their fool law. No one can catch me--it would take memyself to do that!"

He got into bed. With a vexed "Hang it!" he mused, "I supposeJohn would pray, no matter how chilly the floor was."

He got out of bed and from the inscrutable Lord of theUniverse he sought forgiveness--not for Jasper Holt, but for thedenominations who lacked the true faith of Soul HopeFraternity.

He returned to bed and slept till the middle of the morning,lying with his arms behind his head, a smile on his face.

Thus did Jasper Holt, without the mysterious pangs of death,yet cease to exist, and thus did John Holt come into being notmerely as an apparition glimpsed on Sunday and Wednesday eveningsbut as a being living twenty-four hours a day, seven days aweek.

The inhabitants of Rosebank were familiar with the occasionalappearances of John Holt, the eccentric recluse, and they merelysnickered about him when on the Saturday evening following theFriday that has been chronicled he was seen to come out of hisgate and trudge down to a news and stationery shop on MainStreet.

He purchased an evening paper and said to the clerk: "You canhave theMorning Herald delivered at my house everymorning--27 Humbert Avenue."

"Yuh, I know where it is. Thought you had kind of a grouch onnewspapers," said the clerk pertly.

"Ah, did you indeed? TheHerald, every morning, please.I will pay a month in advance," was all John Holt said, but helooked directly at the clerk, and the man cringed.

John attended the meeting of the Soul Hope Fraternity the nextevening--Sunday--but he was not seen on the streets again for twoand a half days.

There was no news of the disappearance of Jasper Holt till thefollowing Wednesday, when the whole thing came out in a violent,small-city, front-page story, headed:

The paper stated that Jasper Holt had been missing for fourdays, and that the officers of the bank, after first denying thatthere was anything wrong with his accounts, had admitted that hewas short one hundred thousand dollars--two hundred thousand,said one report. He had purchased a ticket for Wakamin, thisstate, on Friday and a trainman, a customer of the bank, hadnoticed him on the train, but he had apparently never arrived atWakamin.

A woman asserted that on Friday afternoon she had seen Holtdriving an automobile between Vernon and St. Clair. Thisappearance near St. Clair was supposed to be merely a blind,however. In fact, our able chief of police had proof that Holtwas not headed north, in the direction of St. Clair, but south,beyond Wanagoochie--probably for Des Moines or St. Louis. It wasdefinitely known that on the previous day Holt had left his carat Wanagoochie, and with their customary thoroughness andpromptness the police were making search at Wanagoochie. Thechief had already communicated with the police in cities to thesouth, and the capture of the man could confidently be expectedat any moment. As long as the chief appointed by our popularmayor was in power, it went ill with those who gave even theappearance of wrongdoing.

When asked his opinion of the theory that the alleged fugitivehad gone north the chief declared that of course Holt had startedin that direction, with the vain hope of throwing pursuers offthe scent, but that he had immediately turned south and picked uphis car. Though he would not say so definitely the chief let itbe known that he was ready to put his hands on the fellow who hadhidden Holt's car at Wanagoochie.

When asked if he thought Holt was crazy the chief laughed andsaid: "Yes, he's crazy two hundred thousand dollars' worth. I'mnot making any slams, but there's a lot of fellows among ourpolitical opponents who would go a whole lot crazier for a wholelot less!"

The president of the bank, however, was greatly distressed,and strongly declared his belief that Holt, who was a favorite inthe most sumptuous residences on the Boulevard, besides beingwell known in local dramatic circles, and who bore the best ofreputations in the bank, was temporarily out of his mind, as hehad been distressed by pains in the head for some time past.Meantime the bonding company, which had fully covered theemployees of the bank by a joint bond of two hundred thousanddollars, had its detectives working with the police on thecase.

As soon as he had read the paper John took a trolley intoVernon and called on the president of the bank. John's facedrooped with the sorrow of the disgrace. The president receivedhim. John staggered into the room, groaning: "I have just learnedin the newspaper of the terrible news about my brother. I havecome--"

"We hope it's just a case of aphasia. We're sure he'll turn upall right," insisted the president.

"I wish I could believe it. But as I have told you, Jasper isnot a good man. He drinks and smokes and playacts and makes a godof stylish clothes--"

"Good Lord, that's no reason for jumping to the conclusionthat he's an embezzler!"

"I pray you may be right. But meanwhile I wish to give you anyassistance I can. I shall make it my sole duty to see that mybrother is brought to justice if it proves that he isguilty."

"Good o' you," mumbled the president. Despite this example ofJohn's rigid honor he could not get himself to like the man. Johnwas standing beside him, thrusting his stupid face into his.

The president pushed his chair a foot farther away and saiddisagreeably: "As a matter of fact, we were thinking of searchingyour house. If I remember, you live in Rosebank?"

"Yes. And of course I shall be glad to have you search everyinch of it. Or anything else I can do. I feel that I share fullywith my twin brother in this unspeakable sin. I'll turn over thekey of my house to you at once. There is also a shed at the backwhere Jasper used to keep his automobile when he came to see me."He produced a large, rusty, old-fashioned door key and held itout, adding: "The address is 27 Humbert Avenue, Rosebank."

"Oh, it won't be necessary, I guess," said the president,somewhat shamed, irritably waving off the key.

"But I just want to help somehow! What can I do? Who is--inthe language of the newspapers--who is the detective on the case?I'll give him any help--"

"Tell you what you do: Go see Mr. Scandling, of the MercantileTrust and Bonding Company, and tell him all you know."

"I shall. I take my brother's crime on my shoulders--otherwiseI'd be committing the sin of Cain. You are giving me a chance totry to expiate our joint sin, and, as Brother Jeremiah Bodfishwas wont to say, it is a blessing to have an opportunity toexpiate a sin, no matter how painful the punishment may seem tobe to the mere physical being. As I may have told you I am anaccepted member of the Soul Hope Fraternity, and though we arefree from cant and dogma it is our firm belief--"

Then for ten dreary minutes John Holt sermonized; quotedforgotten books and quaint, ungenerous elders; twisted bitterpride and clumsy mysticism into fanatical spider web. Thepresident was a churchgoer, an ardent supporter of missionaryfunds, for forty years a pew-holder at St. Simeon's Church, buthe was alternately bored to a chill shiver and roused to wrathagainst this self-righteous zealot.

When he had rather rudely got rid of John Holt he complainedto himself: "Curse it, I oughtn't to, but I must say I preferJasper the sinner to John the saint. Uff! What a smell of dampcellars the fellow has! He must spend all his time pickingpotatoes. Say! By thunder, I remember that Jasper had theinfernal nerve to tell me once that if he ever robbed the bank Iwas to call John in. I know why, now! John is the kind ofegotistical fool that would muddle up any kind of a systematicsearch. Well, Jasper, sorry, but I'm not going to have anythingmore to do with John than I can help!"

John had gone to the Mercantile Trust and Bonding Company, hadcalled on Mr. Scandling, and was now wearying him by a detailedand useless account of Jasper's early years and recent vices. Hewas turned over to the detective employed by the bonding companyto find Jasper. The detective was a hard, noisy man, who foundJohn even more tedious. John insisted on his coming out toexamine the house in Rosebank, and the detective did so--butsketchily, trying to escape. John spent at least five minutes inshowing him the shed where Jasper had sometimes kept his car.

He also attempted to interest the detective in his preciousbut spotty books. He unlocked one section of the case, draggeddown a four-volume set of sermons and started to read themaloud.

The detective interrupted: "Yuh, that's great stuff, but Iguess we aren't going to find your brother hiding behind thosebooks!"

The detective got away as soon as possible, after insistentlyexplaining to John that if they could use his assistance theywould let him know.

"If I can only expiate--"

"Yuh, sure, that's all right!" wailed the detective, fairlyrunning toward the gate.

John made one more visit to Vernon that day. He called on thechief of city police. He informed the chief that he had taken thebonding company's detective through his house, but wouldn't thepolice consent to search it also?

He wanted to expiate--The chief patted John on the back,advised him not to feel responsible for his brother's guilt andbegged: "Skip along now--very busy."

As John walked to the Soul Hope meeting that evening, dozensof people murmured that it was his brother who had robbed theLumber National Bank. His head was bowed with the shame. At themeeting he took Jasper's sin upon himself, and prayed that Jasperwould be caught and receive the blessed healing of punishment.The others begged John not to feel that he was guilty--was he notone of the Soul Hope brethren who alone in this wicked andperverse generation were assured of salvation?

On Thursday, on Saturday morning, on Tuesday and on Friday,John went into the city to call on the president of the bank andthe detective. Twice the president saw him, and was infinitelybored by his sermons. The third time he sent word that he wasout. The fourth time he saw John, but curtly explained that ifJohn wanted to help them the best thing he could do was to stayaway.

The detective was out all four times.

John smiled meekly and ceased to try to help them. Dust beganto gather on certain candy boxes on the lower shelf of hisbookcase, save for one of them, which he took out now and then.Always after he had taken it out a man with faded brown hair anda wrinkled black suit, a man signing himself R. J. Smith, wouldsend a fair-sized money order from the post office at SouthVernon to John Holt, at Rosebank--as he had been doing for morethan six months. These money orders could not have amounted tomore than twenty-five dollars a week, but that was even more thanan ascetic like John Holt needed. By day John sometimes cashedthese at the Rosebank post office, but usually, as had been hiscustom, he cashed them at his favorite grocery when he went outin the evening.

In conversation with the commuter neighbor, who every eveningwalked about and smoked an after-dinner cigar in the yard at theright, John was frank about the whole lamentable business of hisbrother's defalcation. He wondered, he said, if he had not shuthimself up with his studies too much, and neglected his brother.The neighbor ponderously advised John to get out more. John lethimself be persuaded, at least to the extent of taking a shortwalk every afternoon and of letting his literary solitude bedisturbed by the delivery of milk, meat, and groceries. He alsowent to the public library, and in the reference room glanced atbooks on Central and South America--as though he was planning togo south some day.

But he continued his religious studies. It may be doubted ifprevious to the embezzlement John had worked very consistently onhis book about Revelation. All that the world had ever seen of itwas a jumble of quotations from theological authorities.Presumably the crime of his brother shocked him into moreconcentrated study, more patient writing. For during the yearafter his brother's disappearance--a year in which the bondingcompany gradually gave up the search and came to believe thatJasper was dead--John became fanatically absorbed in somewhatnebulous work. The days and nights drifted together in meditationin which he lost sight of realities, and seemed through theclouds of the flesh to see flashes from the towered cities of thespirit.

It has been asserted that when Jasper Holt acted a rôlehe veritably lived it. No one can ever determine how great anactor was lost in the smug bank teller. To him were imperialtriumphs denied, yet he was not without material reward. Forplaying his most subtle part he received ninety-seven thousanddollars. It may be that he earned it. Certainly for the riskentailed it was but a fair payment. Jasper had meddled with themystery of personality, and was in peril of losing all consistentpurpose, of becoming a Wandering Jew of the spirit, a strangledbody walking.

The sharp-pointed willow leaves had twisted and fallen, afterthe dreary rains of October. Bark had peeled from the willowtrunks, leaving gashes of bare wood that was a wet and sicklyyellow. Through the denuded trees bulked the solid stone of JohnHolt's house. The patches of earth were greasy between the tawnyknots of grass stems. The bricks of the walk were always dampnow. The world was hunched up in this pervading chill.

As melancholy as the sick earth seemed the man who in a slatytwilight paced the willow walk. His step was slack, his lipsmoved with the intensity of his meditation. Over his wrinkledblack suit and bleak shirt bosom was a worn overcoat, the velvetcollar turned green. He was considering.

"There's something to all this. I begin to see--I don't knowwhat it is I do see! But there's lights--supernatural world thatmakes food and bed seem ridiculous. I am--I really am beyond thelaw! I make my own law! Why shouldn't I go beyond the law ofvision and see the secrets of life? But I sinned, and I mustrepent--some day. I need not return the money. I see now that itwas given me so that I could lead this life of contemplation. Butthe ingratitude to the president, to the people who trusted me!Am I but the most miserable of sinners, and as the blind?Voices--I hear conflicting voices--some praising me for mycourage, some rebuking--"

He knelt on the slimy black surface of a wooden bench beneaththe willows, and as dusk clothed him round about he prayed. Itseemed to him that he prayed not in words but in vast confusingdreams--the words of a language larger than human tongues. Whenhe had exhausted himself he slowly entered the house. He lockedthe door. There was nothing definite of which he was afraid, buthe was never comfortable with the door unlocked.

By candle light he prepared his austere supper--dry toast, anegg, cheap green tea with thin milk. As always--as it hadhappened after every meal, now, for eighteen months--he wanted acigarette when he had eaten, but did not take one. He paced intothe living room and through the long still hours of the eveninghe read an ancient book, all footnotes and cross references,about The Numerology of the Prophetic Books, and the Number ofthe Beast. He tried to make notes for his own book onRevelation--that scant pile of sheets covered with writing in asmall finicky hand. Thousands of other sheets he had covered;through whole nights he had written; but always he seemed withtardy pen to be racing after thoughts that he could never quitecatch, and most of what he had written he had savagelyburned.

But some day he would make a masterpiece! He was feelingtoward the greatest discovery that mortal man had encountered.Everything, he had determined, was a symbol--not just this holysign and that, but all physical manifestations. With frightenedexultation he tried his new power of divination. The hanging lampswung tinily. He ventured: "If the arc of that moving radiancetouches the edge of the bookcase, then it will be a sign that Iam to go to South America, under an entirely new disguise, andspend my money."

He shuddered. He watched the lamp's unbearably slow swing. Themoving light almost touched the bookcase. He gasped. Then itreceded.

It was a warning; he quaked. Would he never leave this placeof brooding and of fear, which he had thought so clever a refuge?He suddenly saw it all.

"I ran away and hid in a prison! Man isn't caught byjustice--he catches himself!"

Again he tried. He speculated as to whether the number ofpencils on the table was greater or less than five. If greater,then he had sinned; if less, then he was veritably beyond thelaw. He began to lift books and papers, looking for pencils. Hewas coldly sweating with the suspense of the test.

Suddenly he cried, "Am I going crazy?"

He fled to his prosaic bedroom. He could not sleep. His brainwas smoldering with confused inklings of mystic numbers andhidden warnings.

He woke from a half sleep more vision-haunted than any wakingthought, and cried: "I must go back and confess! But I can't! Ican't, when I was too clever for them! I can't go back and letthem win. I won't let those fools just sit tight and still catchme!"

It was a year and a half since Jasper had disappeared.Sometimes it seemed a month and a half; sometimes gray centuries.John's will power had been shrouded with curious putteringstudies; long, heavy-breathing sittings with the ouija board onhis lap, midnight hours when he had fancied that tables hadtapped and crackling coals had spoken. Now that the second autumnof his seclusion was creeping into winter he was conscious thathe had not enough initiative to carry out his plans for going toSouth America. The summer before he had boasted to himself thathe would come out of hiding and go South, leaving such a twistytrail as only he could make. But--oh, it was too much trouble. Hehadn't the joy in play-acting which had carried his brotherJasper through his preparations for flight.

He had killed Jasper Holt, and for a miserable little pile ofpaper money he had become a moldy recluse!

He hated his loneliness, but still more did he hate his onlycompanions, the members of the Soul Hope Fraternity--that piousshrill seamstress, that surly carpenter, that tight-lippedhousekeeper, that old shouting man with the unseemly frieze ofwhiskers. They were so unimaginative. Their meetings were all thesame; the same persons rose in the same order and made the sameintimate announcements to the Deity that they alone were hiselect.

At first it had been an amusing triumph to be accepted as themost eloquent among them, but that had become commonplace, and heresented their daring to be familiar with him, who was, he felt,the only man of all men living who beyond the illusions of theworld saw the strange beatitude of higher souls.

It was at the end of November, during a Wednesday meeting atwhich a red-faced man had for a half hour maintained that hecouldn't possibly sin, that the cumulative ennui burst in JohnHolt's brain. He sprang up.

He snarled: "You make me sick, all of you! You think you're socertain of sanctification that you can't do wrong. So did I,once! Now I know that we are all miserable sinners--really are!You all say you are, but you don't believe it. I tell you thatyou there that have just been yammering, and you, BrotherJudkins, with the long twitching nose, and I--I--I, most unhappyof men, we must repent, confess, expiate our sins! And I willconfess right now. I st-stole--"

Terrified he darted out of the hall, and hatless, coatless,tumbled through the main street of Rosebank, nor ceased till hehad locked himself in his house. He was frightened because he hadalmost betrayed his secret, yet agonized because he had not goneon, really confessed, and gained the only peace he could everknow now--the peace of punishment.

He never returned to Soul Hope Hall. Indeed for a week he didnot leave his house save for midnight prowling in the willowwalk. Quite suddenly he became desperate with the silence. Heflung out of the house, not stopping to lock or even close thefront door. He raced uptown, no topcoat over his rottinggarments, only an old gardener's cap on his thick brown hair.People stared at him. He bore it with resigned fury.

He entered a lunch room, hoping to sit inconspicuously andhear men talking normally about him. The attendant at the countergaped. John heard a mutter from the cashier's desk: "There's thatcrazy hermit!"

All of the half-dozen young men loafing in the place werelooking at him. He was so uncomfortable that he could not eateven the milk and sandwich he had ordered. He pushed them awayand fled, a failure in the first attempt to dine out that he hadmade in eighteen months; a lamentable failure to revive thatJasper Holt whom he had coldly killed.

He entered a cigar store and bought a box of cigarettes. Hetook joy out of throwing away his asceticism. But when, on thestreet, he lighted a cigarette it made him so dizzy that he wasafraid he was going to fall. He had to sit down on the curb.People gathered. He staggered to his feet and up an alley.

For hours he walked, making and discarding the mostcontradictory plans--to go to the bank and confess, to spend themoney riotously and never confess.

It was midnight when he returned to his house.

Before it he gasped. The front door was open. He chuckled withrelief as he remembered that he had not closed it. He saunteredin. He was passing the door of the living room, going directly upto his bedroom, when his foot struck an object the size of abook, but hollow sounding. He picked it up. It was one of thebooklike candy boxes. And it was quite empty. Frightened, helistened. There was no sound. He crept into the living room andlighted the lamp.

The doors of the bookcase had been wrenched open. Every bookhad been pulled out on the floor. All of the candy boxes, whichthat evening had contained almost ninety-six thousand dollars,were in a pile, and all of them were empty. He searched for tenminutes, but the only money he found was one five-dollar bill,which had fluttered under the table. In his pocket he had onedollar and sixteen cents. John Holt had six dollars and sixteencents, no job, no friends--and no identity.

When the president of the Lumber National Bank was informedthat John Holt was waiting to see him he scowled.

"Lord, I'd forgotten that minor plague! Must be a year sincehe's been here. Oh, let him--No, hanged if I will! Tell him I'mtoo busy to see him. That is, unless he's got some news aboutJasper. Pump him, and find out."

The president's secretary sweetly confided to John:

"I'm so sorry, but the president is in conference just now.What was it you wanted to see him about? Is there any newsabout--uh--about your brother?"

"There is not, miss. I am here to see the president on thebusiness of the Lord."

"Oh! If that's all I'm afraid I can't disturb him."

"I will wait."

Wait he did, through all the morning, through the lunchhour--when the president hastened out past him--then into theafternoon, till the president was unable to work with the thoughtof that scarecrow out there, and sent for him.

"Well, well! What is it this time, John? I'm pretty busy. Nonews about Jasper, eh?"

"No news, sir, but--Jasper himself! I am Jasper Holt! His sinis my sin."

"Yes, yes, I know all that stuff--twin brothers, twin souls,share responsibility--"

"You don't understand. There isn't any twin brother. Thereisn't any John Holt. I am Jasper. I invented an imaginarybrother, and disguised myself--Why, don't you recognize myvoice?"

While John leaned over the desk, his two hands upon it, andsmiled wistfully, the president shook his head and soothed: "No,I'm afraid I don't. Sounds like good old religious John to me!Jasper was a cheerful, efficient sort of crook. Why, hislaugh--"

"But I can laugh!" The dreadful croak which John uttered wasthe cry of an evil bird of the swamps. The president shuddered.Under the edge of the desk his fingers crept toward the buzzer bywhich he summoned his secretary.

They stopped as John urged: "Look--this wig--it's a wig. See,I am Jasper!"

He had snatched off the brown thatch. He stood expectant, alittle afraid.

The president was startled, but he shook his head andsighed.

"You poor devil! Wig, all right. But I wouldn't say that hairwas much like Jasper's!"

He motioned toward the mirror in the corner of the room.

John wavered to it. And indeed he saw that his hair had turnedfrom Jasper's thin sleek blackness to a straggle of damp graylocks writhing over a yellow skull.

He begged pitifully: "Oh, can't you see I am Jasper? I stoleninety-seven thousand dollars from the bank. I want to bepunished! I want to do anything to prove--Why, I've been at yourhouse. Your wife's name is Evelyn. My salary here was--"

"My dear boy, don't you suppose that Jasper might have toldyou all these interesting facts? I'm afraid the worry of thishas--pardon me if I'm frank, but I'm afraid it's turned your heada little, John."

"There isn't any John! There isn't! There isn't!"

"I'd believe that a little more easily if I hadn't met youbefore Jasper disappeared."

"Give me a piece of paper. You know my writing--"

With clutching claws John seized a sheet of bank stationeryand tried to write in the round script of Jasper. During the pastyear and a half he had filled thousands of pages with the smallfinicky hand of John. Now, though he tried to prevent it, afterhe had traced two or three words in large but shaky letters thewriting became smaller, more pinched, less legible.

Even while John wrote the president looked at the sheet andsaid easily: "Afraid it's no use. That isn't Jasper's fist. Seehere, I want you to get away from Rosebank--go to some farm--workoutdoors--cut out this fuming and fussing--get some fresh air inyour lungs." The president rose and purred: "Now, I'm afraid Ihave some work to do."

He paused, waiting for John to go.

John fiercely crumpled the sheet and hurled it away. Tearswere in his weary eyes.

He wailed: "Is there nothing I can do to prove I amJasper?"

"Why, certainly! You can produce what's left of theninety-seven thousand!"

John took from his ragged waistcoat pocket a five-dollar billand some change. "Here's all there is. Ninety-six thousand of itwas stolen from my house last night."

Sorry though he was for the madman, the president could nothelp laughing. Then he tried to look sympathetic, and hecomforted: "Well, that's hard luck, old man. Uh, let's see. Youmight produce some parents or relatives or somebody to prove thatJasper never did have a twin brother."

"My parents are dead, and I've lost track of their kin--I wasborn in England--Father came over when I was six. There might besome cousins or some old neighbors, but I don't know. Probablyimpossible to find out, in these wartimes, without going overthere."

"Well, I guess we'll have to let it go, old man." Thepresident was pressing the buzzer for his secretary and gentlybidding her: "Show Mr. Holt out, please."

From the door John desperately tried to add: "You will find mycar sunk--"

The door had closed behind him. The president had notlistened.

The president gave orders that never, for any reason, was JohnHolt to be admitted to his office again. He telephoned to thebonding company that John Holt had now gone crazy; that theywould save trouble by refusing to admit him.

John did not try to see them. He went to the county jail. Heentered the keeper's office and said quietly: "I have stolen alot of money, but I can't prove it. Will you put me in jail?"

The keeper shouted: "Get out of here! You hoboes always springthat when you want a good warm lodging for the winter! Why thedevil don't you go to work with a shovel in the sand pits?They're paying two-seventy-five a day."

"Yes, sir," said John timorously. "Where are they?"

The fatalities have been three thousand, two hundred andninety-one, to date, with more reported in every cable from SanColoquin, but it is not yet decided whether the ultimate blame isdue to the conductor of Car 22, to Mrs. Simmy Dolson's blandselfishness, or to the fact that Willis Stodeport patted asarsaparilla-colored kitten with milky eyes.

It was a hypocritical patting. Willis had been playingpumpum-pullaway all afternoon, hence was hungry, and desirous ofwinning favor with his mother by his nice attitude toward ourdumb friends. Willis didn't actually care for being nice to thedumb friend. What he wanted was cookies. So slight was his esteemfor the kitten--whose name was Adolphus Josephus Mudface--thatafterward he took it out to the kitchen and tried to see if itwould drown under the tap of the sink.

Yet such is the strange and delicate balance of nature, withthe lightest tremor in the dream of a terrestrial baby affectingthe course of suns ten million light-years away, that the pattingof Adolphus Josephus Mudface has started a vicious series ofevents that will be felt forever in star beyond mounting star.The death of exiled Napoleon made a few old men stop to scratchtheir heads and dream. The fall of Carthage gave cheap bricks tobuilders of dumpy huts. But the false deed of Willis Stodeporthas changed history.

Mrs. Simmy Dolson was making an afternoon call upon the motherof this portentous but tow-headed Willis, who resides uponScrimmins Street, in the Middle-Western city of Vernon. The twomatrons had discussed the price of butter, the iniquities of thefluffy-headed new teacher in Public School 17, and the idiocy ofthese new theories about bringing up young ones. Mrs. Dolson waskeeping an ear on the car line, for the Oakdale cars run onlyonce in eighteen minutes, and if she missed the next one shewould be too late to prepare supper. Just as she heard it coming,and seized her hat, she saw young Willis edge into the room andstoop to pat the somnolent Adolphus Josephus Mudface.

With a hatpin half inserted Mrs. Dolson crooned, "My, what adear boy! Now isn't that sweet!"

Willis's mother forgot that she had intended to have wordswith her offspring in the matter of the missing knob of the flourbin. She beamed, and to Willis she gurgled, "Do you like thekittie, dearie?"

"Yes, I love our kittie; can I have a cookie?" youngMachiavelli hastened to get in; and Aldebaran, the crimson star,throbbed with premonition.

"Now isn't that sweet!" Mrs. Dolson repeated--then rememberedher car and galloped away.

She had been so delayed by the admiration of daily deeds ofkindness that when she reached the corner the Oakdale car wasjust passing. It was crowded with tired business men in a fret toget home to the outskirts of Vernon, but Mrs. Simmy Dolson wasone of those plump, amiably selfish souls who would keep a wholecity waiting while she bought canary seed. She waved at the carand made deceptive motions of frantic running.

The conductor of the car, which was Number 22, was akind-hearted family man, and he rang for a stop halfway down theblock. Despite the growling of the seventy passengers he held thecar till Mrs. Dolson had wheezed aboard, which made them twominutes late. That was just enough to cause them to miss theswitch at Seven Corners; and they had to wait while three othercars took the switch before them.

By that time Car 22 was three and three-quarters minuteslate.

Mr. Andrew Discopolos, the popular proprietor of the DandyBarber Shop, was the next step in the tragedy. Mr. Discopolos waswaiting for this same Oakdale car. He had promised his wife to gohome to supper, but in his bacchanalian soul he desired to sneakdown to Barney's for an evening of poker. He waited one minute,and was tremendously moral and determined to eschew gambling. Hewaited for two minutes, and began to see what a martyr he was.There would never be another Oakdale car. He would have to walkhome. His wife expected too darn much of him, anyway! He waitedfor three minutes, and in rose tints and soft gold he rememberedthe joys of playing poker at Barney's.

Seven seconds before the delayed Oakdale car turned the cornerMr. Discopolos gave up the struggle, and with outer decorum andinner excitement he rushed up an alley, headed for Barney's. Hestopped at the Southern Café for a Denver sandwich andcuppacoffee. He shook for the cigars at the Smoke House, and wonthree-for's, which indicated to him how right he had been in notgoing home. He reached Barney's at seven-thirty. He did not leaveBarney's till one-thirty in the morning, and when he did leave hewas uncertain of direction, but very vigorous of motion, due tohis having celebrated the winning of four dollars by buying aquart of rye.

Under a dusty and discouraged autumn moon Mr. Discopolosweaved home. Willis Stodeport and Mrs. Simmy Dolson and theconductor of Car 22 were asleep now; even the disreputableAdolphus Josephus Mudface had, after a charming fight behind theSmiths' garbage can, retired to innocent slumbers on the softfolds of the floor mop in the corner of the back porch where hewas least likely to be disturbed by mice. Only Mr. Discopolos wasawake, but he was bearing on the torch of evil destiny; and onone of the planets of the sun that is called Procyon there werefloods and earthquakes.

When Mr. Discopolos awoke in the morning his eyes were filmyand stinging. Before he went to his shop he had three fingers ofpick-me-up, which so exhilarated him that he stood on the corner,swaying and beaming. Normally he had pride in his technic as abarber, but now all his more delicate artistry was gone in aroving desire for adventure. With a professional eye he noted thehaircut of a tough young man loafing in front of the drug store.It was a high haircut, leaving the neck and the back of the headbald clear up to the crown. "Be a joke on some fellow to cut hishair that way!" giggled Mr. Discopolos.

It was the first time in a year that he had needed, or taken,a drink before afternoon. Chuckling Fate sent to him the nexttorchbearer, Mr. Palmer McGee.

Palmer McGee was one of Vernon's most promising young men. Helived at the University Club; he had two suits of eveningclothes; and he was assistant to the president of the M. & D.R. R. He was a technical-school graduate and a Spanish scholar aswell as a business-system expert; and his club-grill manners wereas accurate as his knowledge of traffic routing. Today was hishour of greatness. He had, as the result of long correspondence,this morning received a telegram inviting him to come to New Yorkto see the president and directors of the Citrus and SouthernSteamship Company about the position of Buenos Aires manager forthe company. He had packed in ten minutes. But he had an hourbefore his train, with the station only twenty minutes away bytrolley. Instead of taking a taxi he exuberantly walked from theclub to Selden Street to catch a car.

One door from the corner he beheld the barber shop of Mr.Discopolos, which reminded him that he needed a haircut. He mightnot have time to get one in New York before he saw the steamshipdirectors. The shop was bright, and Mr. Discopolos, by the windowin a white jacket, was clean and jolly.

Palmer McGee popped into the shop and caroled "Haircut;medium." Magnetized by Mr. Discopolos' long light fingers heclosed his eyes and dreamed of his future.

About the middle of the haircut the morning's morning of Mr.Discopolos rose up and jostled him and dimmed his eyes, with theresult that he cut too deep a swath of hair across the back ofMr. McGee's sleek head. Mr. Discopolos sighed, and peeped at thevictim to see if he was aware of the damage. But Mr. McGee wassitting with eyes tight, lips apart, already a lord of oceantraffic, giving orders to Singhalese planters and to traders inthe silent northern pines.

Mr. Discopolos remembered the high-shaved neck of the cornerloafer, and imitated that model. He ruthlessly concealed thetoo-deep slash by almost denuding the back of Mr. McGee's head.That erstwhile polite neck stood out as bare as an ostrich.

Being an artist, Mr. Discopolos had to keep the symmetry--therhythm--correct, so he balanced the back by also removing toomuch hair from in front--from above Mr. McGee's Yalensianears.

When the experiment was complete, Mr. McGee looked like a baldyoung man with a small wig riding atop his head. He looked like awren's nest on top of a clothes pole. He looked painstakingly andscientifically skinned. At least it was thus that he saw himselfin the barber's mirror when he opened his eyes.

He called on a number of deities; he said he wanted toassassinate Mr. Discopolos. But he hadn't time for this work ofmercy. He had to catch his train. He took his maltreated headinto a taxi, feeling shamefully that the taxi driver wassnickering at his haircut.

Left behind, untipped and much berated, Mr. Discopolosgrumbled, "I did take off a little too much; but rats, he'll beall right in couple of weeks. What's couple of weeks? BelieveI'll go get a drink."

Thus, as ignorant as they of taking any part in a progressivetragedy, Mr. Discopolos joined Willis Stodeport, AdolphusJosephus, Mrs. Dolson and the too-generous conductor of Car 22,in the darkness of unimportance, while Palmer McGee was on thePullman--and extremely wretched.

He fancied that everyone from the porter to the silken girlacross the aisle was snickering at his eccentric coiffure. To Mr.McGee, queerness of collar or hair or slang was more wicked thanmurder. He had rigidly trained himself to standards ineverything. There were, for example, only three brands of whiskyon which a gentleman could decently get edged. He was the mostdependable young man in the general offices of the M. & D. R.R., and before that he had been so correctly pleasant to theright fellows and so correctly aloof with the wrong fellows, soagreeably pipe-smoking and laudatory of athletics, that he hadmade both junior and senior societies at Yale. He had had noexperience to teach him to bear up under this utter disgrace of avariation from the standard of haircutting.

As the train relentlessly bore him on toward New York he nowand then accumulated courage to believe that his haircut couldn'tbe so bad as he knew it was. He would stroll with noblecasualness into the smoking compartment, and the instant it wasfree of other passengers he would dart at the mirror. Each timehe made the same quaking discovery that he was even moreridiculous than he remembered.

By day, trying to read or scan the scenery or impress fellowsmokers, by night, folded in his swaying berth--he could think ofnothing else. He read only one paragraph of the weighty bookwhich all persons carry on all Pullmans in the hope that theywill be forced to finish it because they have nothing else toread. He grew more and more sensitive. Every time he heard alaugh he was sure that it was directed at him; and because he souncomfortably looked away from the absent-minded gaze of fellowpassengers he made them gaze the harder.

The beautiful self-confidence which had always concealed Mr.McGee's slight defects from himself and had helped him to rise tothe position of assistant to the railroad president was tornaway, and he began to doubt himself, began to feel that othersmust doubt him. When he finally crept up the cement incline inthe New York station, after a writhing glance at the redcaps, tosee if New Yorkers would notice his ludicrousness as much aspeople had on the way through, he wondered if he could not returnto Vernon and wire the steamship directors that he was ill.

He was not exaggerating about the importance of this trip toNew York. The directors of the Citrus and Southern Line reallywere waiting for him. They needed him.

It is a curious fact of psychological economics that there arealmost as many large employers waiting and praying for the chanceto pay tens of thousands a year to dependable young men as thereare dependable young men waiting and praying for the chance toearn a thousand a year. The president of the Citrus and Southern,the pouchy blob-nosed dean of South American and West Indianshipping, had been in the hospital for six months, afterperitonitis. From his bed he had vaguely directed the policies ofthe company. Things had run well enough, with the old clerksworking mechanically. But a crisis had come. The company hadeither to expand or break.

The Green Feather Line, weary of litigation, wanted to sellall its ships to the Citrus and Southern, which if it bought themmight double its business. If some other company bought them andvigorously increased competition, the Citrus and Southern mightbe ruined.

The Citrus and Southern held a five months' option. By the endof that period they hoped to have found the man who could connectthe sick president's brain with the general office's body--andthey believed that in Palmer McGee they had found that man.

McGee did not know how carefully he had been watched. He hadnever met one of the directors or officers of the Citrus andSouthern, had never seen one of them, and their correspondencehad been polite but not exciting. But the two suave gentlemen whohad been poking about Vernon lately had been commercial secretagents of the Titanic Rating and Credit Company; and they knewall about McGee, from the number of drinks he had at the club tothe amount of his bank account and his manner of listening to thestories of the chief shippers of the M. & D. R. R.

The Citrus and Southern chiefs were certain that they hadfound their man. McGee was to be sent to Buenos Aires, but onlyon test. If he was as good as they thought, he would in threemonths be brought back as vice president at a salary nearly fourtimes as large as the one he had received in Vernon. In thiscrisis they had the generosity of despair.

They were to meet McGee in the president's suite at thehospital at four-thirty; and the train got in atthree-fifteen.

McGee went to a hotel, and sat still, scared, looking athimself in a dressing-table mirror. He became momently morerustic, more tough, more skinned and awkward in his own eyes.

He called up the hospital, got the president. "Th-this isMcGee. I--I'm coming right over," he quavered.

"Huh! That fellow sounds kind of lightwaisted. Not muchself-confidence," complained the president to his old friend, thechairman of the board of directors. "Here, prop me up, Billy. Wemust give him a thorough look-over. Can't take any chances."

The note of doubt was a germ which instantly infected thechairman. "That's too bad. The Rating and Credit people reportedhe was a find. But still--of course--"

When Palmer McGee faced the president, the first vicepresident and a committee of four directors, three of the six hadalready turned from welcoming eagerness to stilly doubt. He feltthat doubt. But he interpreted it thus:

"They think I'm a complete boob to have a haircut like this.Think I don't know any better. And I can't explain. Mustn't admitthat I know there's anything wrong--mustn't admit I was an easymark and let a drunken barber carve me up."

He was so busy with these corroding reflections that he didnot quite catch the sharp question which the president fired athim:

"McGee, what's your opinion of the future of the competitionbetween Australian wheat and the Argentine crop?"

"I--I--I didn't quite understand you, sir," lamented poorMcGee, victim of the cat of the trembling stars.

The president thought to himself: "If he can't get as deadsimple a question as that--Wonder if the first vice presidentwouldn't do, after all? No. Too old-fogyish."

While he meditated he was repeating the query without muchinterest; and without interest he heard McGee's thorough butshaky answer.

And McGee forgot to put in his usual information about thefuture of New Zealand grain.

Two hours later the president and directors decided that McGee"wouldn't quite do"; which meant that he wouldn't do at all; andthey wearily began to talk of other candidates for the position.None of the others were satisfactory.

Four months later they decided that they would have to goslow; wait for the president to recover. They could find no oneadaptable enough to coordinate the president and the workingmanagement. So they gave up their option on the steamers of theGreen Feather Line.

The best of the jest was that Palmer McGee had looked ratherwell in his flippant haircut. Because the Chapel Street barberhad started cutting his hair a certain length when he had been aFreshman in Yale he had kept up that mode, which was respectablebut dull. But the semi-shave had brought out his energetic neckmuscles. Never had he looked so taut and trim. Though dozens ofpeople between the Vernon barber shop and the New York hospitalhad noticed his uneasiness none of them had considered hiscoiffure queer--they had merely wondered whether he was anembezzler or a forger.

McGee returned to Vernon broken, and General Coreos y Dulce,ex-president of the Central American republic of San Coloquin,entered the train of victims of Willis Stodeport, of ScrimminsStreet.

The general had colonized Ynez Island, lying off the coast ofSan Coloquin. Fields of cane and coffee he had created, and hewas happily expropriating ten thousand melodious natives. Thegeneral was a merry and easy ruler. When he had accepted thepresidency of San Coloquin, after certain militarymisunderstandings, he hadn't even executed anybody--except acousin or two, merely for politeness' sake.

His colony on Ynez Island was served by the steamers of theGreen Feather Line. The business was not yet sufficient towarrant a regular stop, but General Dulce had a private agreementwith the manager of the Green Feather, as well as one with thesick president of the Citrus and Southern, which later agreementwas to take effect if the company took over the Green Featherboats.

But when the Citrus and Southern gave up their option theGreen Feather fleet was bought, not by another Atlantic line butby a Seattle firm, for their Alaskan and Siberian trade.Consequently the general had to depend for service on a tin-canline which ran out of San Coloquin.

The owner of that line hated the general; had hated him whenthe general had been president, and had added to that hate withevery meditative gin rickey he had sipped in the long yearssince. The general's fruit spoiled aboard the creaky oldsteamers; it was always too late to catch the boat north. Hiscoffee was drenched, and his sugar short weight. When the generaldesperately bought a freighter of his own it was mysteriouslyburned.

Poverty and failure closed in on Ynez Island. The colonistshadn't enough to eat. When the influenza reached the island theweakened natives died in hordes. Some of them fled to themainland, carrying the disease. The number of fatalities thatwould probably have been prevented by comfort and proper food anda supply of drugs has been estimated by Dr. Prof. Sir HenryHenson Sturgis at three thousand two hundred and ninety. One ofthe last to die was the broken-hearted general.

Before he died the wheel of Fate had turned past him andstopped at a certain European monarch. The general had in all hiscolonizing and his financial schemes been merely the secret agentof that monarch. The king was uncomfortable on his throne. Itrocked and squeaked and threatened to give way at the seat. Itwas kept together only by many fees for repairs--jolly gifts tothe duke who hypocritically led the opposition party, to aforeign agent, to certain clerics and editors and professors,even to the ostensible leader of the left wing of the radicalparty.

Five years before Willis Stodeport had patted AdolphusJosephus Mudface, the king had realized that he was in danger ofusing up all his private estate. He had speculated. He had calledGeneral Coreos y Dulce from Central America; and it was royalty'sown money that had developed the colonization of Ynez Island.

It had been impossible for the king to keep in touch with thedetails of the colonization. Had he learned of the loss of theGreen Feather service he might have raised funds for the purchaseof the whole fleet when the Citrus and Southern gave up theoption. But the proud, dogged general, with his sky-climbingmustachios and his belief that one Castilian was cleverer thanfour Andalusians or eight gringos, had been certain that he couldpull through without help from the royal master.

It was not till the approach of death that he sent the codedcablegram which informed the king that he could expect no incomefrom Ynez Island. Then the monarch knew that he could not keephis promises to certain peers and ministers; that his wordiestsupporters would join the republican movement; that thegold-crusted but shaky-legged throne would at any moment bekicked out from beneath him by rude persons in mechanics'boots.

So it came to pass that at a certain hour the farthest starsquivered with mystic forces from the far-off fleck of dust calledEarth, forces which would, just for a sketchy beginning, changeall the boundaries and customs of Southern Europe. The king hadat that hour desperately called in the two ministers and the oneforeign emissary whom he trusted, and with that famous weak smilehad murmured: "Gentlemen, it is the end. Shall I flee or--or--Youremember they didn't give my cousin the funeral even of a privategentleman."

At that hour, in a hovel in the Jamaica negro quarter of thecapital of San Coloquin, General Coreos y Dulce, friend ofcomposers and masters of science, was dying of nothing at all butsick hope and coldly creeping fear, and a belief that he hadpneumonia.

A thousand and more miles away the president of the Citrus andSouthern Steamship Company was writing his resignation. His oldfriend, the chairman of the board of directors, again begged:"But this means the ruin of the company, Ben. We can't go onwithout you."

"I know, Billy," the president sighed, "but I'm all in. If wecould have found someone to carry out my ideas I could havepulled through--and the company could have. Shame we were fooledabout that McGee fellow. If we hadn't wasted so much time lookinghim over we might have had time to find the right man, and he'dhave taken enough worry off my shoulders so that--Well, I'llabout pass out in three months, I reckon, old man. Let's have onemore go at pinochle. I have a hunch I'm going to get doublepinochle."

About half an hour after that, and half a continent away,Palmer McGee left the home of the president of the M. & D. R.R. He walked as one dreaming. The railroad president had said: "Idon't know what the trouble is, my boy, but you haven't beenworth a hang for quite a while now. And you're drinking too much.Better go off some place and get hold of yourself."

McGee crawled to the nearest telegraph office that was open,and sent a wire to the Buffalo & Bangor, accepting theiroffer in the purchasing department. The salary was not less thanthe one he had been receiving, but there was little future.Afterward he had a cocktail, the fourth that evening.

It cannot be authoritatively determined whether it was thatevening or the one before that a barber named Discopolos firstactually struck his wife, and she observed, "All right, I'llleave you." The neighbors say that though this was the first timehe had mauled her, things had been going badly with them for manymonths. One of them asserts that the trouble started on anevening when Discopolos had promised to come home to supper buthad not shown up till one-thirty in the morning. It seems that,though he had forgotten it, this had been her birthday, and she,poor mouse, had prepared a feast for them.

But it is certainly known that at the same hour on the sameevening there was much peace and much study of the newspapercomics in the house of the Stodeports on Scrimmins Street.

Willis stooped to pull the tail of Adolphus Josephus Mudface,now a half-grown cat. Mrs. Stodeport complained: "Now, Willie, dolet that cat alone! He might scratch you, and you'll get fleasand things. No telling what-all might happen if you go pattingand fooling with--"

Mr. Stodeport yawningly interrupted: "Oh, let the child alone!Way you go on, might think something dreadful would happen, justbecause he strokes a cat. I suppose probably he might get one ofthese germs, and spread it, and before he got through with it,maybe be the cause of two-three people taking sick! Ha, ha, ha!Or maybe he might make somebody rob a bank or something justawful! Ha, ha, ha! You better hold in your imagination, Mamma!We-ell--"

Mr. Stodeport yawned, and put the cat out, and yawned, andwound the clock, and yawned, and went up to bed, still chucklingover his fancy about Willis having a mysterious effect on personsfive or six blocks away.

At exactly that moment in a medieval castle about fivethousand miles from Willis Stodeport, the king of an ancientnation sighed to the Right Honorable the Earl of Arden, K. C. B.,special and secret emissary of the British throne: "Yes, it isthe twilight of the gods. I take some little pride in saying thateven in my downfall I can see clearly the mysteries of Fate. Iknow definitely that my misfortune is a link in a chain of eventsthat impressively started with--"

"--with the loss of thousands of lives and millions of pounds,in San Coloquin," mused Lord Arden.

"No! No! No! Nothing so earthy and petty. I have long been astudent of astrology. My astrologer and I have determined thatthis evil chance of myself and my poor people is but the last actin a cosmic tragedy that started with an esoteric change in themagnetism of Azimech, the cold and virgin star. At least it iscomforting to know that my sorrows originated in nothing trivial,but have been willed by the brooding stars in the farthestabysses of eternal night, and that--"

"Um. Oh, yes. Yes, I see," said the Earl of Arden.

He was named Sidney, for the sake of elegance, just as hisparents had for elegance in their Brooklyn parlor a golden-oakcombination bookcase, desk, and shield-shaped mirror. But SidneyDow was descended from generations of Georges and Johns, ofLorens and Lukes and Nathans.

He was little esteemed in the slick bustle of his city school.He seemed a loutish boy, tall and heavy and slow-spoken, and hewas a worry to his father. For William Dow was an ambitiousparent. Born on a Vermont farm, William felt joyously that he haddone well in the great city of Brooklyn. He had, in 1885, whenSidney was born, a real bathroom with a fine tin tub, gas lights,and a handsome phaeton with red wheels, instead of the washtub inthe kitchen for Saturday-night baths, the kerosene lamps, and theheavy old buggy which his father still used in Vermont. Insteadof being up at 5:30, he could loll abed till a quarter of seven,and he almost never, he chuckled in gratification at hisprogress, was in his office before a quarter to eight.

But the luxury of a red-wheeled carriage and late lying didnot indicate that William's Yankee shrewdness had been cozened byurban vice, or that he was any less solid and respectable thanold George, his own father. He was a deacon in the Universalistchurch, he still said grace before meals, and he went to thetheater only when Ben-Hur was appearing.

For his son, Sidney, William Dow had even larger ambitions.William himself had never gone to high school, and his businesswas only a cautious real-estate and insurance agency, his home asquatting two-story brick house in a red, monotonous row. ButSidney--he should go to college, he should be a doctor or apreacher or a lawyer, he should travel in Europe, he should livein a three-story graystone house in the Forties in Manhattan, heshould have a dress suit and wear it to respectable but expensivehops!

William had once worn dress clothes at an Odd Fellows' ball,but they had been rented.

To enable Sidney to attain all these graces, William toiledand sacrificed and prayed. American fathers have always been asextraordinary as Scotch fathers in their heroic ambitions fortheir sons--and sometimes as unscrupulous and as unwise. Itbruised William and often it made him naggingly unkind to seethat Sidney, the big slug, did not "appreciate how his parentswere trying to do for him and give him every opportunity." Whenthey had a celebrated Columbia Heights physician as guest fordinner, Sidney merely gawked at him and did not at all try tomake an impression.

"Suffering cats! You might have been one of your uncles stillputtering around with dirty pitchforks back on the farm! What areyou going to do with yourself, anyway?" raged William.

"I guess maybe I'd like to be a truck driver," mumbledSidney.

Yet, even so, William should not have whipped him. It onlymade him sulkier.

To Sidney Dow, at sixteen, his eagerest memories were ofoccasional weeks he had spent with his grandfather and uncles onthe Vermont farm, and the last of these was seven years back now.He remembered Vermont as an enchanted place, with curious andamusing animals--cows, horses, turkeys. He wanted to return, buthis father seemed to hate the place. Of Brooklyn, Sidney likednothing save livery stables and occasional agreeable gang fights,with stones inside iced snowballs. He hated school, where he hadto cramp his big knees under trifling desks, where irritable ladyteachers tried to make him see the importance of A's going morerapidly than B to the town of X, a town in which he was even lessinterested than in Brooklyn--school where hour on hour he lookedover the top of his geography and stolidly hated the whiskers ofLongfellow, Lowell, and Whittier. He hated the stiff, cleancollar and the itchy, clean winter underwear connected withSunday school. He hated hot evenings smelling of tarry pavements,and cold evenings when the pavements were slippery.

But he didn't know that he hated any of these things. He knewonly that his father must be right in saying that he was a bad,disobedient, ungrateful young whelp, and in his heart he was ashumble as in his speech he was sullen.

Then, at sixteen, he came to life suddenly, on an early Junemorning, on his grandfather's farm. His father had sent him up toVermont for the summer, had indeed exiled him, saying grimly, "Iguess after you live in that tumbledown big old shack and work inthe fields and have to get up early, instead of lying abed tillyour majesty is good and ready to have the girl wait on you--Iguess that next fall you'll appreciate your nice home and schooland church here, young man!" So sure of himself was his fatherthat Sidney was convinced he was going to encounter hardship onthe farm, and all the way up, in the smarting air of the smokeron the slow train, he wanted to howl. The train arrived at ten inthe evening, and he was met by his uncle Rob, a man rugged as apine trunk and about as articulate.

"Well! Come for the summer!" said Uncle Rob; and after theyhad driven three miles: "Got new calf--yeh, new calf"; and aftera mile more: "Your pa all right?" And that was all theconversation of Uncle Rob.

Seven years it was since Sidney had been in any country wilderthan Far Rockaway, and the silent hills of night intimidated him.It was a roaring silence, a silence full of stifled threats. Thehills that cut the stars so high up on either side the roadseemed walls that would topple and crush him, as a man wouldcrush a mosquito between his two palms. And once he cried outwhen, in the milky light from the lantern swung beneath thewagon, he saw a porcupine lurch into the road before them. It wasdark, chill, unfriendly and, to the boy, reared to the lights andcheery voices of the city, even though he hated them, it wasappallingly lonely.

His grandfather's house was dark when they arrived. Uncle Robdrove into the barn, jerked his thumb at a ladder up to thehaymow and muttered, "Y'sleep up there. Not allowed t' smoke.Take this lantern when we've unharnessed. Sure to put it out. Nosmoking in the barn. Too tired to help?"

Too tired? Sidney would have been glad to work till daylightif Uncle Rob would but stay with him. He was in a panic at thethought of being left in the ghostly barn where, behind thepawing of horses and the nibble of awakened cows, there were thesounds of anonymous wild animals--scratchings, squeaks,patterings overhead. He made the task as slow as possible, thoughactually he was handy with horses, for the livery stables ofBrooklyn had been his favorite refuge and he had often beenpermitted to help the hostlers, quite free.

"Gee, Uncle Rob, I guess I'm kind of all thumbs aboutunharnessing and like that. Seven years since I been here on thefarm."

"That so? G'night. Careful of that lantern now. And nosmoking!"

The barn was blank as a blind face. The lantern wasflickering, and in that witching light the stalls and the heap ofsleighs, plows, old harness, at the back wall of the barn wereimmense and terrifying. The barn was larger than his whole housein Brooklyn, and ten times as large it seemed in the dimness. Hecould not see clear to the back wall, and he imagined abominablemonsters lurking there. He dashed at the ladder up to the haymow,the lantern handle in his teeth and his imitation-leather satchelin one hand.

And the haymow, rising to the darkness of its hand-hewnrafters, seemed vaster and more intimidating than the spacebelow. In one corner a space had been cleared of hay for a cot,with a blanket and a pea-green comforter, and for a chair and ahinged box. Sidney dashed at the cot and crawled into it, waitingonly to take off his shoes and jacket. Till the lantern flamedied down to a red rim of charred wick, he kept it alight. Thenutter darkness leaped upon him.

A rooster crowed, and he startled. Past him things scamperedand chittered. The darkness seemed to swing in swift eddies underthe rafters, the smell of dry hay choked him--and he awoke tolight slipping in silver darts through cracks in the roof, and tojubilant barn swallows diving and twittering.

"Gee, I must have fell asleep!" he thought. He went down theladder, and now, first, he saw the barn.

Like many people slow of thought and doubtful of speech,Sidney Dow had moments of revelation as complete as those of aprophet, when he beheld a scene or a person or a problem in itsentirety, with none of the confusing thoughts of glibber and moreclever people with their minds forever running off on manytracks. He saw the barn--really saw it, instead of merelyglancing at it, like a normal city boy. He saw that the beams,hand-hewn, gray with sixty years, were beautiful; that the sidesof the stalls, polished with rubbing by the shoulders of cattledead these fifty years, were beautiful; that the harrow, with itstrim spikes kept sharp and rustless, was beautiful; that mostbeautiful of all were the animals--cows and horses, chickens thatwalked with bobbing heads through the straw, and a calf tetheredto the wall. The calf capered with alarm as he approached it;then stood considering him with great eyes, letting him strokeits head and at last licking his hand. He slouched to the door ofthe barn and looked down the valley. More radiant in that earlymorning light than even the mountain tops covered with maples andhemlock were the upland clearings with white houses and redbarns.

"Gosh, it looks nice! It's--it's sort of--it looks nice! Ididn't hardly get it when I was here before. But gee"--with allthe scorn of sixteen--"I was just a kid then!"

With Uncle Rob he drove the cows to pasture; with Uncle Ben heplowed; with his grandfather, sourly philanthropic behind hisbeard, he split wood. He found an even greater menagerie than inthe barn--turkeys, geese, ducks, pigs and, in the woods andmowings, an exciting remnant of woodchucks, chipmunks, rabbits,and infrequent deer. With all of them--uncles and grandfather,beasts, wild or tame--he felt at home. They did not expect him tochatter and show off, as had his gang in Brooklyn; they acceptedhim. That, perhaps, more than any ancestral stoutness, more thanthe beauty of the land, made a farmer of him. He was a naturalhermit, and here he could be a hermit without seeming queer.

And a good farmer he was--slow but tireless, patient,unannoyed by the endless work, happy to go to bed early and be upat dawn. For a few days his back felt as though he were burningat the stake, but after that he could lift all day in thehayfield or swing the scythe or drive the frisky young team. Hewas a good farmer, and he slept at night. The noises which on hisfirst night had fretted his city-tortured nerves were soporificnow, and when he heard the sound of a distant train, the barkingof a dog on the next farm, he inarticulately told himself thatthey were lovely.

"You're pretty fair at working," said Uncle Rob, and that waspraise almost hysterical.

Indeed, in one aspect of labor, Sidney was better than any ofthem, even the pine-carved Uncle Rob. He could endure wet dawns,wild winds, all-day drenching. It seems to be true that farmersare more upset by bad weather than most outdoor workers--sailors,postmen, carpenters, brakemen, teamsters. Perhaps it is becausethey are less subject to higher authority; except for chores andgetting in the hay, they can more nearly do things in their owntime, and they build up a habit of taking shelter on nasty days.Whether or no, it was true that just the city crises that hadvexed Sidney, from icy pavements to sudden fire alarms, had givenhim the ability to stand discomforts and the unexpected, like alittle Cockney surprisingly stolid in the trenches.

He learned the silent humor of the authentic Yankee. Eveningshe sat with neighbors on the bench before the general store. To apassing stranger they seemed to be saying nothing, but when thestranger had passed, Uncle Rob would drawl, "Well, if I had flynets on my hosses, guess I'd look stuck-up too!" and the otherswould chuckle with contempt at the alien.

This, thought Sidney, was good talk--not like the smart gabbleof the city. It was all beautiful, and he knew it, though in hisvocabulary there was no such word as "beautiful," and when he sawthe most flamboyant sunset he said only, "Guess going to be cleartomorrow."

And so he went back to Brooklyn, not as to his home but as toprison, and as a prison corridor he saw the narrow street withlittle houses like little cells.

Five minutes after he had entered the house, his fatherlaughed. "Well, did you get enough of farming? I guess you'llappreciate your school now! I won't rub it in, but I swear, howRob and Ben can stand it--"

"I kind of liked it, Dad. I think I'll be a farmer. I--kind ofliked it."

His father had black side whiskers, and between them he hadthin cheeks that seemed, after Uncle Rob and Uncle Ben, pallid asthe under side of a toadstool. They flushed now, and Williamshouted:

"You're an idiot! What have I done to have a son who is anidiot? The way I've striven and worked and economized to give youa chance to get ahead, to do something worth while, and then youwant to slip right back and be ordinary, like your uncles! So youthink you'd like it! You're a fool! Sure you like it in summer,but if you knew it like I do--rousted out to do the chores fiveo'clock of a January morning, twenty below zero, and maybe haveto dig through two feet of snow to get to the barn! Have to trampdown to the store, snowstorm so thick you can't see five feet infront of you!"

"I don't guess I'd mind it much."

"Oh, you don't! Don't be a fool! And no nice company likehere--go to bed with the chickens, a winter night, and no nicelodge meeting or church supper or lectures like there ishere!"

"Don't care so much for those things. Everybody talking allthe while. I like it quiet, like in the country."

"Well, you will care so much for those things, or I'll careyou, my fine young man! I'm not going to let you slump back intobeing a rube like Ben, and don't you forget it! I'll make youwork at your books! I'll make you learn to appreciate goodsociety and dressing proper and getting ahead in the world andamounting to something! Yes, sir, amounting to something! Do youthink for one moment that after the struggle I've gone through togive you a chance--the way I studied in a country school andearned my way through business college and went to work at fivedollars a week in a real-estate office and studied and economizedand worked late, so I could give you this nice house andadvantages and opportunity--No, sir! You're going to be a lawyeror a doctor or somebody that amounts to something, and not arube!"

It would have been too much to expect of Sidney's imaginationthat he should have seen anything fine and pathetic in William'sfierce ambition. That did not move him, but rather fear. He couldhave broken his father in two, but the passion in this blenchedfiling-case of a man was such that it hypnotized him.

For days, miserably returned to high school, he longed for thefarm. But his mother took him aside and begged: "You mustn'toppose your father so, dearie. He knows what's best for you, andit would just break his heart if he thought you were going to bea common person and not have something to show for all hisefforts."

So Sidney came to feel that it was some wickedness in him thatmade him prefer trees and winds and meadows and the kind cattleto trolley cars and offices and people who made little, flat,worried jokes all day long.

He barely got through high school. His summer vacations hespent in warehouses, hoisting boxes. He failed to enter medicalschool, botched his examinations shockingly--feeling wicked atbetraying his father's ambitions--and his father pushed him intoa second-rate dental school with sketchy requirements, a schoolnow blessedly out of existence.

"Maybe you'd be better as a dentist anyway. Requires a lot ofmanipulation, and I will say you're good with your hands," hisfather said, in relief that now Sidney was on the highway tofortune and respectability.

But Sidney's hands, deft with hammer and nails, with reins orhoe or spade, were too big, too awkward for the delicateoperations of dentistry. And in school he hated the long-windedbooks with their queer names and shocking colored plates of man'sinwards. The workings of a liver did not interest him. He hadnever seen a liver, save that of a slain chicken. He would turnfrom these mysteries to a catalogue of harvesting machinery orvegetable seed. So with difficulty he graduated from thisdoubtful school, and he was uneasy at the pit of his stomach,even when his father, much rejoicing now, bought for him acomplete dental outfit, and rented an office, on the new frontierof the Bronx, in the back part of a three-story redbrickapartment house.

His father and mother invited their friends over from Brooklynto admire the office, and served them coffee and cake. Not manyof them came, which was well, for the office was not large. Itwas really a single room, divided by a curtain to make areception hall. The operating room had pink-calcimined walls and,for adornment, Sidney's diploma and a calendar from a dentalsupply house which showed, with no apparent appropriateness, aview of Pike's Peak.

When they had all gone, mouthing congratulations, Sidneylooked wistfully out on the old pasture land which, fifteen yearslater, was to be filled solidly with tall, cheap apartment housesand huge avenues with delicatessen shops and movie palaces.Already these pastures were doomed and abandoned. Cows no longergrazed there. Gaunt billboards lined the roads and behind theirbarricades were unkempt waste lands of ashes and soddennewspapers. But they were open grass, and they brought back thevalleys and uplands of Vermont. His great arms were hungry forthe strain of plowing, and he sighed and turned back to hisshining new kit of tools.

The drill he picked up was absurd against his wide red palm.All at once he was certain that he knew no dentistry, and that henever would; that he would botch every case; that dreadful thingswould happen--suits for malpractice--

Actually, as a few and poorly paying neighborhood patientsbegan to come in, the dreadful things didn't happen. Sidney wasslow, but he was careful; if he did no ingenious dental jeweling,he did nothing wrong. He learned early what certain dentists anddoctors never learn--that nature has not yet been entirelysupplanted by the professions. It was not his patients whosuffered; it was he.

All day long to have to remain indoors, to stand in one place,bent over gaping mouths, to fiddle with tiny instruments, toproduce unctuous sounds of sympathy for cranks who complained oftrivial aches, to try to give brisk and confident advice whichwas really selling talk--all this tortured him.

Then, within one single year, his mother died, his grandfatherdied on the Vermont farm, Uncle Rob and Uncle Ben moved West, andSidney met the most wonderful girl in the world. The name of thisparticular most wonderful girl in the world, who unquestionablyhad more softness and enchantment and funny little ways of sayingthings than Helen of Troy, was Mabelle Ellen Pflugmann, and shewas cultured; she loved the theater, but rarely attended it;loved also the piano, but hadn't time, she explained, to keep upher practice, because, her father's laundry being in a state ofdebility, for several years she had temporarily been cashier atthe Kwiturwurry Lunch.

They furnished a four-room apartment and went to Vermont fortheir honeymoon. His grandfather's farm--Sidney wasn't quite surejust who had bought it--was rented out to what the neighborhoodconsidered foreigners--that is, Vermonters from way over beyondthe Ridge, fifteen miles away. They took in Sidney and Mabelle.She enjoyed it. She told how sick she had become of the smell anddish clatter of the ole lunch and the horrid customers who werealways trying to make love to her. She squealed equally overmountains and ducklings, sunsets and wild strawberries, and asfor certain inconveniences--washing with a pitcher and bowl,sleeping in a low room smelling of the chicken run, and havingsupper in the kitchen with the menfolks in shirt sleeves--shesaid it was just too darling for words--it was, in fact, sweet.But after ten days of the fortnight on which they had planned,she thought perhaps they had better get back to New York and makesure all the furniture had arrived.

They were happy in marriage. Mabelle saw him, and made him seehimself, as a man strong and gallant but shy and blundering. Heneeded mothering, she said, and he got it and was convinced thathe liked it. He was less gruff with his patients, and he had manymore of them, for Mabelle caused him to be known socially. Tillmarriage he had lived in a furnished room, and all evening he hadprowled alone, or read dentistry journals and seed catalogues.Now Mabelle arranged jolly little parties--beer and Welsh rabbitand a game of five hundred. If at the Kwiturwurry Lunch she hadmet many light fellows, West Farms Lotharios, she had also metestimable but bohemian families of the neighborhood--bigtraveling men whose territory took them as far west as Denver,assistant buyers from the downtown department stores, and theoffice manager of a large insurance agency.

Mabelle, a chatelaine now, wanted to shine among them, andwanted Sidney to shine. And he, feeling a little cramped in a newdouble-breasted blue serge coat, solemnly served the beer, andsometimes a guest perceived that here was an honest and soliddentist upon whom to depend. And once they gave a theaterparty--six seats at a vaudeville house.

Yet Sidney was never, when he awoke mornings, excited aboutthe adventure of standing with bent, aching shoulders overpatients all this glorious coming day.

They had two children in three years and began to worry alittle about the rent bill and the grocery bill, and Sidney wasconsiderably less independent with grumbling patients than he hadbeen. His broad shoulders had a small stoop, and he said quitehumbly, "Well, I'll try my best to fix 'em to your satisfaction,Mrs. Smallberg," and sometimes his thick fingers tapped nervouslyon his chin as he talked. And he envied now, where once he haddespised them, certain dental-school classmates who knew littleof dentistry, but who were slick dressers and given to verbalchuckings under the chin, who had made money and openedthree-room offices with chintz chairs in the waiting room. Sidneystill had his old office, with no assistant, and the jerry-builttenement looked a little shabby now beside the six-storyapartment houses of yellow brick trimmed with marble which hadsprung up all about it.

Then their children, Rob and Willabette, were eight and sixyears old, and Mabelle began to nag Sidney over the children'slack of clothes as pretty as those of their lovely little friendsat school.

And his dental engine--only a treadle affair at that--was wornout. And his elbows were always shiny. And in early autumn hisfather died.

His father died, muttering, "You've been a good boy, Sid, anddone what I told you to. You can understand and appreciate nowwhy I kept you from being just a farmer and gave you a chance tobe a professional man. I don't think Mabelle comes from an awfulgood family, but she's a spunky little thing, and real bright,and she'll keep you up to snuff. Maybe some day your boy will bea great, rich banker or surgeon. Keep him away from his Vermontrelations--no ambition, those folks. My chest feels so tight!Bless you, Sid!"

He was his father's sole heir. When the will was read in theshabby lawyer's office in Brooklyn, he was astonished to findthat his father had still owned--that he himself now owned--theancestral Vermont home. His slow-burning imagination lighted. Hewas touched by the belief that his father, for all his pretendedhatred of the place, had cherished it and had wanted his son toown it. Not till afterward did he learn from Uncle Rob thatWilliam, when his own father had died, had, as eldest son, beengiven the choice of the farm or half the money in the estate, andhad taken the farm to keep Sidney away from it. He had beenafraid that if his brothers had it they would welcome Sidney as apartner before he became habituated as a dentist. But in his lastdays, apparently, William felt that Sidney was safely civilizednow and caught. With the farm Sidney inherited some threethousand dollars--not more, for the Brooklyn home wasmortgaged.

Instantly and ecstatically, while the lawyer droned senselessadvice, Sidney decided to go home. The tenant on hisfarm--his!--had only two months more on his lease. He'd take itover. The three thousand dollars would buy eight cows--well, sayten--with a cream separator, a tractor, a light truck, and serveto put the old buildings into condition adequate for a few years.He'd do the repairing himself! He arched his hands with longingfor the feel of a hammer or a crowbar.

In the hall outside the lawyer's office, Mabelle crowed:"Isn't it--oh, Sid, you do know how sorry I am your father'spassed on, but won't it be just lovely! The farm must be worthfour thousand dollars. We'll be just as sensible as can be--notblow it all in, like lots of people would. We'll invest the seventhousand, and that ought to give us three hundred and fiftydollars a year--think of it, an extra dollar every day! You canget a dress suit now, and at last I'll have some decent dressesfor the evening, and we'll get a new suit for Rob right away--howsoon can you get the money? did he say?--and I saw some lovelylittle dresses for Willabette and the cutest slippers, and now wecan get a decent bridge table instead of that rickety old thing,and--"

As she babbled, which she did, at length, on the stairs downfrom the office, Sidney realized wretchedly that it was going totake an eloquence far beyond him to convert her to farming andthe joys of the land. He was afraid of her, as he had been of hisfather.

"There's a drug store over across. Let's go over and have anice-cream soda," he said mildly. "Gosh, it's hot for September!Up on the farm now it would be cool, and the leaves are justbeginning to turn. They're awful pretty--all red and yellow."

"Oh, you and your old farm!" But in her joy she wasamiable.

They sat at the bright-colored little table in the drug store,with cheery colored drinks between them. But the scene shouldhave been an ancient castle at midnight, terrible with wind andlightning, for suddenly they were not bright nor cheery, butblack with tragedy.

There was no manner of use in trying to cajole her. She couldnever understand how he hated the confinement of his dentaloffice; she would say, "Why, you get the chance of meeting allsorts of nice, interesting people, while I have to stay home,"and not perceive that he did not want to meet nice, interestingpeople. He wanted silence and the smell of earth! And he wasunder her spell as he had been under his father's. Only violentlycould he break it. He spoke softly enough, looking at the giddymarble of the soda counter, but he spoke sternly:

"Look here, May. This is our chance. You bet your sweet lifewe're going to be sensible and not blow in our stake! And we'renot going to blow it in on a lot of clothes and a lot of foolbridge parties for a lot of fool folks that don't care one redhoot about us except what they get out of us! For that matter, ifwe were going to stay on in New York--"

"Which we most certainly are, young man!"

"Will you listen to me? I inherited this dough, not you! Gee,I don't want to be mean, May, but you got to listen to reason,and as I'm saying, if we were going to stay in the city, thefirst thing I'd spend money for would be a new dental engine--anelectric one.

"Need it like the mischief--lose patients when they see mepumping that old one and think I ain't up-to-date--which I ain't,but that's no skin off their nose!"

Even the volatile Mabelle was silent at the unprecedentedlength and vigor of his oration.

"But we're not going to stay. No, sir! We're going back to theold farm, and the kids will be brought up in the fresh airinstead of a lot of alleys. Go back and farm it--"

She exploded then, and as she spoke she looked at him witheyes hot with hatred, the first hatred he had ever known inher:

"Are you crazy? Go back to that hole? Have my kids messingaround a lot of manure and dirty animals and out working in thehayfield like a lot of cattle? And attend a little one-roomschool with a boob for a teacher? And play with a lot of nitwitbrats? Not on your life they won't! I've got some ambition for'em, even if you haven't!"

"Why, May, I thought you liked Vermont and the farm! You werecrazy about it on our honeymoon, and you said--"

"I did not! I hated it even then. I just said I liked it tomake you happy. That stifling little bedroom, and kerosene lamps,and bugs, and no bathroom, and those fools of farmers in theirshirt sleeves--Oh, it was fierce! If you go, you go without thekids and me! I guess I can still earn a living! And I guessthere's still plenty of other men would like to marry me when Idivorce you! And I mean it!"

She did, and Sidney knew she did. He collapsed as helplesslyas he had with his father.

"Well, of course, if you can't stand it--" he muttered.

"Well, I'm glad you're beginning to come to your senses!Honest, I think you were just crazy with the heat! But listen,here's what I'll do: I won't kick about your getting the electricdental doodingus if it don't cost too much. Now how do you goabout selling the farm?"

There began for this silent man a secret life of plotting andof lies. Somehow--he could not see how--he must persuade her togo to the farm. Perhaps she would die--But he was shocked at thisthought, for he loved her and believed her to be the best womanliving, as conceivably she may have been. But he did not obey herand sell the farm. He lied. He told her that a Vermontreal-estate dealer had written that just this autumn there was nomarket for farms, but next year would be excellent. And the nextyear he repeated the lie, and rented the farm to Uncle Rob, whohad done well enough on Iowa cornland but was homesick for thehills and sugar groves and placid maples of Vermont. Himself,Sidney did not go to the farm. It was not permitted.

Mabelle was furious that he had not sold, that they had onlythe three thousand--which was never invested--for clothes andbridge prizes and payments on the car and, after a good deal ofirritated talk, his electric dental engine.

If he had always been sullenly restless in his little office,now he was raging. He felt robbed. The little back room, theview--not even of waste land now, but of the center of a cheapblock and the back of new tenements--the anguish of patients,which crucified his heavy, unspoken sympathy for them, and thathorrible, unending series of wide-stretched mouths and bad molarsand tongues--it was intolerable. He thought of meadows scatteredwith daisies and devil's-paintbrush, of dark, healingthundershowers pouring up the long valley. He must go home to theland!

From the landlord who owned his office he got, in the spring ayear and a half after his father's death, the right to garden atiny patch amid the litter and cement areaways in the center ofthe block. Mabelle laughed at him, but he stayed late everyevening to cultivate each inch of his pocket paradise--a largeman, with huge feet, setting them carefully down in a plot tenfeet square.

The earth understood him, as it does such men, and before theLong Island market gardeners had anything to display, Sidney hada row of beautiful radish plants. A dozen radishes, wrapped in atabloid newspaper, he took home one night, and he saidvaingloriously to Mabelle, "You'll never get any radishes likethese in the market! Right out of our own garden!"

She ate one absently. He braced himself to hear a jeering "Youand your old garden!" What he did hear was, in its uncaring,still worse: "Yes, they're all right, I guess."

He'd show her! He'd make her see him as a great farmer! Andwith that ambition he lost every scruple. He plotted. And thiswas the way of that plotting:

Early in July he said, and casually, "Well, now we got thedarn car all paid for, we ought to use it. Maybe we might takethe kids this summer and make a little tour for a couple weeks orso."

"Where?"

She sounded suspicious, and in his newborn guile he droned,"Oh, wherever you'd like. I hear it's nice up around NiagaraFalls and the Great Lakes. Maybe come back by way ofPennsylvania, and see Valley Forge and all them famous historicalsites."

"Well, yes, perhaps. The Golheims made a tour last summerand--they make me sick!--they never stop talking about it."

They went. And Mabelle enjoyed it. She was by no means alwaysa nagger and an improver; she was so only when her interests orwhat she deemed the interests of her children were threatened.She made jokes about the towns through which they passed--anycommunity of less than fifty thousand was to her New Yorkism a"hick hole"--and she even sang jazz and admired his driving,which was bad.

They had headed north, up the Hudson. At Glens Falls he tookthe highway to the right, instead of left toward the Great Lakes,and she, the city girl, the urban rustic, to whom the onlydirections that meant anything were East Side and West Side asapplied to New York, did not notice, and she was stillunsuspicious when he grumbled. "Looks to me like I'd taken thewrong road." Stopping at a filling station, he demanded, "How faris it to Lake George? We ought to be there now."

"Well, stranger, way you're headed, it'll be about twenty-fivethousand miles. You're going plumb in the wrong direction."

"I'll be darned! Where are we? Didn't notice the name of thelast town we went through."

"You're about a mile from Fair Haven."

"Vermont?"

"Yep."

"Well, I'll be darned! Just think of that! Can't even betrusted to stay in one state and not skid across the borderline!"

Mabelle was looking suspicious, and he said with desperategayety, "Say, do you know what, May? We're only forty miles fromour farm! Let's go have a look at it." Mabelle made a sound ofprotest, but he turned to the children, in the back seat amid amess of suitcases and tools and a jack and spare inner tubes, andgloated, "Wouldn't you kids like to see the farm where I workedas a kid--where your grandfather and great-grandfather were born?And see your Granduncle Rob? And see all the little chicks, andso on?"

"Oh, yes!" they shrilled together.

With that enthusiasm from her beloved young, with the smartand uniformed young filling-station attendant listening,Mabelle's talent for being righteous and indignant was gagged.Appearances! She said lightly to the filling-station man, "Thedoctor just doesn't seem to be able to keep the road at all, doeshe? Well, Doctor, shall we get started?"

Even when they had gone on and were alone and ready for alittle sound domestic quarreling, she merely croaked, "Just thesame, it seems mighty queer to me!" And after another mile ofbrooding, while Sidney drove silently and prayed: "Awfullyqueer!"

But he scarcely heard her. He was speculating, without in theleast putting it into words, "I wonder if in the early summerevenings the fireflies still dart above the meadows? I wonder ifthe full moon, before it rises behind the hemlocks and sugarmaples along the Ridge, still casts up a prophetic glory? Iwonder if sleepy dogs still bark across the valley? I wonder ifthe night breeze slips through the mowing? I, who have forfortress and self-respect only a stuffy office room--I wonder ifthere are still valleys and stars and the quiet night? Or wasthat all only the dream of youth?"

They slept at Rutland, Sidney all impatient of the citifiedhotel bedroom. It was at ten in the morning--he drove in twentyminutes the distance which thirty years ago had taken Uncle Roban hour and a half--that he drove up to the white house where,since 1800, the Dows had been born.

He could see Uncle Rob with the hayrake in the south mowing,sedately driving the old team and ignoring the visitors.

"I guess he prob'ly thinks we're bootleggers," chuckledSidney. "Come on, you kids! Here's where your old daddy workedall one summer! Let's go! . . . Thirsty? Say, I'll give you adrink of real spring water--not none of this chlorinated citystuff! And we'll see the menagerie."

Before he had finished, Rob and Willabette had slipped overthe rear doors of the car and were looking down into the valleywith little sounds of excitement. Sidney whisked out almost asquickly as they, while Mabelle climbed down with the dignitysuitable to a dweller in the Bronx. He ignored her. He cluckedhis children round the house to the spring-fed well and pumped abucket of water.

"Oh, it's so cold, Daddy. It's swell!" said Rob.

"You bet your life it's cold and swell. Say! Don't use wordslike 'swell'! They're common. But hell with that! Come on, youbrats! I'll show you something!"

There were kittens, and two old, grave, courteous cats. Therewas a calf--heaven knows by how many generations it was descendedfrom the calf that on a June morning, when Sidney was sixteen,had licked his fingers. There were ducklings, and young turkeyswith feathers grotesquely scattered over their skins like palmtrees in a desert, and unexpected more kittens, and an old,brown-and-white, tail-wagging dog, and a pen of excited littlepigs.

The children squealed over all of them until Mabelle caughtup, puffing a little.

"Well," she said, "the kits are kind of cute, ain't they?"Then, darkly: "Now that you've got me here, Sid, with your plansand all!"

Uncle Rob crept up, snarling, "What you folks want? . . . Bygracious, if it ain't Sid! This your wife and children? Well,sir!"

It was, Sidney felt, the climax of his plot, and he cried tohis son, "Rob! This is your granduncle, that you were named for.How'd you like to stay here on the farm instead of in NewYork?"

"Hot dog! I'd love it! Them kittens and the li'l' ducks! Oh,they're the berries! You bet I'd like to stay!"

"Oh, I'd love it!" gurgled his sister.

"You would not!" snapped Mabelle. "With no bathroom?"

"We could put one in," growled Sidney.

"On what? On all the money you'd make growing orchids andbananas here, I guess! You kids--how'd you like to walk two milesto school, through the snow, in winter?"

"Oh, that would be slick! Maybe we could kill a deer," saidyoung Rob.

"Yes, and maybe a field mouse could kill you, you dumb-bell!Sure! Lovely! All evening with not a dog-gone thing to do aftersupper!"

"Why, we'd go to the movies! Do you go to the movies often,Granduncle Rob?"

"Well, afraid in winter you wouldn't get to go to the moviesat all. Pretty far into town," hesitated Uncle Rob.

"Not--go--to--the--movies?" screamed the city children,incredulous. It was the most terrible thing they had ever heardof.

Rob, Jr., mourned, "Oh, gee, that wouldn't be so good! Say,how do the hicks learn anything if they don't go to the movies?But still, we could go in the summer, Ma, and in the winter itwould be elegant, with sliding and hunting and everything. I'dlove it!"

Mabelle cooked supper, banging the pans a good deal andemitting opinions of a house that had no porcelain sink, no watertaps, no refrigerator, no gas or electricity. She was silentthrough supper, silent as Sidney, silent as Uncle Rob. But Sidneywas exultant. With the children for allies, he would win. And thechildren themselves, they were hysterical. Until Mabelle screamedfor annoyance; they leaped up from the table, to come back withthe most unspeakable and un-Bronxian objects--a cataffectionately carried by his hind leg, but squealing withmisunderstanding of the affection, a dead mole, an unwiped oilcan, a muck-covered spade.

"But, Mother," they protested, "in the city you never findanything, except maybe a dead lemon."

She shooed them off to bed at eight; herself, sniffily, shedisappeared at nine, muttering to Sidney, "I hope you and yourboy friend, Uncle Rob, chew the rag all night and get it out ofyour systems!"

He was startled, for indeed the next step of his plot didconcern Uncle Rob and secret parleys.

For half an hour he walked the road, almost frightened by theintensity of stillness. He could fancy catamounts in the birchclumps. But between spasms of skittish city nerves he stretchedout his arms, arched back his hands, breathed consciously. Thiswas not just air, necessary meat for the lungs; it was a spiritthat filled him.

He knew that he must not tarry after 9:30 for his intriguewith Uncle Rob. Uncle Rob was seventy-five, and in seventy-fivetimes three hundred and sixty-five evenings he had doubtlessstayed up later than 9:30 o'clock several times--dancing with thelittle French Canuck girls at Potsdam Forge as a young man,sitting up with a sick cow since then, or stuck in the mud on hisway back from Sunday-evening meeting. But those few times wereepochal. Uncle Rob did not hold with roistering and staying uptill all hours just for the vanities of the flesh.

Sidney crept up the stairs to Uncle Rob's room.

Mabelle and Sidney had the best bedroom, on the ground floor;young Rob and Bette had Grampa's room, on the second; Uncle Roblived in the attic.

City folks might have wondered why Uncle Rob, tenant andcontroller of the place, should have hidden in the attic, withthree good bedrooms below him. It was simple. Uncle Rob hadalways lived there since he was a boy.

Up the narrow stairs, steep as a rock face, Sidney crept, andknocked.

"Who's there!" A sharp voice, a bit uneasy. How many years wasit since Uncle Rob had heard anyone knock at his bedroomdoor?

"It's me, Rob--Sid."

"Oh, well--well, guess you can come in. Wait 'll I unlock thedoor."

Sidney entered his uncle's room for the first time in hislife. The hill people, anywhere in the world, do not intrude orencourage intrusion.

Perhaps to fastidious and alien persons Uncle Rob's room wouldhave seemed unlovely. It was lighted by a kerosene lamp, smokinga little, with the wick burned down on one side. There was, forfurniture, only a camp cot, with a kitchen chair, a washstand anda bureau. But to make up for this paucity, the room was ratherlittered. On the washstand, beside a pitcher dry from longdisuse, there were a mail-order catalogue, a few packets of seed,a lone overshoe, a ball of twine, a bottle of applejack, and aSpanish War veteran's medal. The walls and ceiling were ofplaster so old that they showed in black lines the edges of everylath.

And Sidney liked it--liked the simplicity, liked the freedomfrom neatness and order and display, liked and envied theold-bach quality of it all.

Uncle Rob, lying on the bed, had prepared for slumber byremoving his shoes and outer clothing. He blinked at Sidney'samazing intrusion, but he said amiably enough, "Well, boy?"

"Uncle Rob, can't tell you how glad I am to be back at the oldplace!"

"H'm."

"Look, I--Golly, I feel skittish as a young colt! Hardly knowthe old doc, my patients wouldn't! Rob, you got to help me.Mabelle don't want to stay here and farm it--maybe me and youpartners, eh? But the kids and I are crazy to. How I hate thatole city! So do the kids."

"Yeh?"

"Sure they do. Didn't you hear how they said they wouldn'tmind tramping to school and not having any movies?"

"Sid, maybe you'll understand kids when you get to be agranddad. Kids will always agree with anything that soundsexciting. Rob thinks it would be dandy to hoof it two milesthrough the snow to school. He won't! Not once he's done it!"Uncle Rob thrust his hands behind his skinny, bark-brown old neckon the maculate pillow. He was making perhaps the longest orationof his life. The light flickered, and a spider moved indignantlyin its web in a corner. "No," said Uncle Rob, "he won't like it.I never did. And the schoolmaster used to lick me. I hated it,crawling through that snow and then get licked because you'relate. And jiminy--haven't thought of it for thirty years, Iguess, maybe forty, but I remember how some big fellow would dareyou to put your tongue to your lunch pail, and it was maybethirty below, and your tongue stuck to it and it took the hideright off! No, I never liked any of it, especially chores."

"Rob, listen! I'm serious! The kids will maybe kind of find ithard at first, but they'll get to like it, and they'll grow upreal folks and not city saps. It'll be all right with them. I'llsee to that. It's Mabelle. Listen, Rob, I've got a swell ideaabout her, and I want you to help me. You get hold of the ladiesof the township--the Grange members and the Methodist ladies andlike that. You tell 'em Mabelle is a swell city girl, and itwould be dandy for the neighborhood if they could get her to stayhere. She's grand, but she does kind of fall for flattery, and inthe Bronx she ain't so important, and if these ladies came andtold her they thought she was the cat's pajamas, maybe she'd fallfor it, and then I guess maybe she might stay, if the ladiescame--"

"They wouldn't!"

Uncle Rob had been rubbing his long and prickly chin andcurling his toes in his gray socks.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, first place, the ladies round here would be onto yourMabelle. They ain't so backwoods as they was in your time. TakeMrs. Craig. Last three winters, her and her husband, Frank, havepacked up the flivver and gone to Florida. But that ain't it.Fact is, Sid, I kind of sympathize with Mabelle."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I never was strong for farming. Hard life, Sid. Alwaysthought I'd like to keep store or something in the city. Youforget how hard the work is here. You with your easy job, justfilling a few teeth! No, I can't help you, Sid."

"I see. All right. Sorry for disturbing you."

As he crept downstairs in bewilderment, Sidney prayed--he whoso rarely prayed--"O Lord, doesn't anybody but me love the landany more? What is going to happen to us? Why, all our life comesfrom the land!"

He knew that in the morning he would beg Mabelle to stay for afortnight--and that she would not stay. It was his last nighthere. So all night long, slow and silent, he walked the countryroads, looking at hemlock branches against the sky, solemnlyshaking his head and wondering why he could never rid himself ofthis sinfulness of longing for the land; why he could never begrown-up and ambitious and worthy, like his father and Mabelleand Uncle Rob.

Doctor Selig was an adventurer. He did not look it, certainly.He was an amiable young bachelor with thin hair. He wasinstructor in history and economics in Erasmus College, and hehad to sit on a foolish little platform and try to coax somefifty young men and women, who were interested only in cuddlingand four-door sedans, to become hysterical about the law ofdiminishing returns.

But at night, in his decorous boarding house, he sometimessmoked a pipe, which was viewed as obscene in the religiousshades of Erasmus, and he was boldly writing a book which was tomake him famous.

Of course everyone is writing a book. But Selig's wasdifferent. It was profound. How good it was can be seen from thefact that with only three quarters of it done, it already hadfifteen hundred footnotes--such lively comments as "Vid.J. A. S. H. S. VIII, 234et seq." A real book, nothingflippant or commercialized.

It was calledThe Influence of American Diplomacy on theInternal Policies of Paneuropa.

"Paneuropa," Selig felt, was a nice and scholarly way ofsaying "Europe."

It would really have been an interesting book if Doctor Selighad not believed that all literature is excellent in proportionas it is hard to read. He had touched a world romantic and littleknown. Hidden in old documents, like discovering in a desert anoasis where girls laugh and fountains chatter and the marketplace is noisy, he found the story of Franklin, who in his mousyfur cap was the Don Juan of Paris, of Adams fighting the BritishGovernment to prevent their recognizing the Confederacy, ofBenjamin Thompson, the Massachusetts Yankee who in 1791 was chiefcounselor of Bavaria, with the title of Count Rumford.

Selig was moved by these men who made the young America moreadmired than she is today. And he was moved and, in a mostunscholarly way, he became a little angry as he reviewed thestory of Senator Ryder.

He knew, of course, that Lafayette Ryder had prevented warbetween England and America in the first reign of GroverCleveland; he knew that Ryder had been Secretary of State, andAmbassador to France, courted by Paris for his wisdom, hismanners, his wit; that as Senator he had fathered (and motheredand wet-nursed) the Ryder-Hanklin Bill, which had saved our wheatmarkets; and that his two books,Possibilities ofDisarmament andThe Anglo-American Empire, were notmerely glib propaganda for peace, but such inspired documents aswould have prevented the Boer War, the Spanish-American War, theGreat War, if there had been in his Victorian world a dozen menwith minds like his. This Selig knew, but he could not rememberwhen Ryder had died.

Then he discovered with aghast astonishment that Senator Ryderwas not dead, but still alive at ninety-two, forgotten by thecountry he had helped to build.

Yes, Selig felt bitterly, we honor our great men inAmerica--sometimes for as much as two months after the particularact of greatness that tickles us. But this is a democracy. Wemustn't let anyone suppose that because we have given him an(undesired) parade up Broadway and a (furiously resented) soakingof publicity on March first, he may expect to be taken seriouslyon May second.

The Admiral Dewey whom the press for a week labeled as acombination of Nelson, Napoleon, and Chevalier Bayard, they laternagged to his grave. If a dramatist has a success one season,then may the gods help him, because for the rest of his lifeeveryone will attend his plays only in the hope that he willfail.

But sometimes the great glad-hearted hordes of boosters do notdrag down the idol in the hope of finding clay feet, but justforget him with the vast, contemptuous, heavy indifference of ahundred and twenty million people.

So felt Doctor Selig, angrily, and he planned for the end ofhis book a passionate resurrection of Senator Ryder. He had a shyhope that his book would appear before the Senator's death, tomake him happy.

Reading the Senator's speeches, studying his pictures inmagazine files, he felt that he knew him intimately. He couldsee, as though the Senator were in the room, that tall ease, thecontrast of long thin nose, gay eyes, and vast globular brow thatmade Ryder seem a combination of Puritan, clown, and benevolentscholar.

Selig longed to write to him and ask--oh, a thousand thingsthat only he could explain; the proposals of LionelSackville-West regarding Colombia; what Queen Victoria really hadsaid in that famous but unpublished letter to President Harrisonabout the Newfoundland fisheries. Why couldn't he write tohim?

No! The man was ninety-two, and Selig had too much reverenceto disturb him, along with a wholesome suspicion that his letterwould be kicked out by the man who had once told Gladstone to goto the devil.

So forgotten was the Senator that Selig could not, at first,find where he lived. Who's Who gave no address. Selig's superior,Professor Munk, who was believed to know everything in the worldexcept the whereabouts of his last-season's straw hat, bleated,"My dear chap, Ryder is dwelling in some cemetery! He passedbeyond, if I remember, in 1901."

The mild Doctor Selig almost did homicide upon a venerablemidwestern historian.

At last, in a bulletin issued by the Anti-Prohibition League,Selig found among the list of directors: "Lafayette Ryder (form.U. S. Sen., Sec'y State), West Wickley, Vermont." Though theSenator's residence could make no difference to him, that nightSelig was so excited that he smoked an extra pipe of tobacco.

He was planning his coming summer vacation, during which hehoped to finish his book. The presence of the Senator drew himtoward Vermont, and in an educational magazine he found theadvertisement: "Sky Peaks, near Wickley, Vt., woodland nook withpeace and a library--congenial and intellectual company andwriters--tennis, handball, riding--nightly Sing round Old-timeBonfire--fur. bung. low rates."

That was what he wanted: a nook and a library and lots of lowrates, along with nearness to his idol. He booked a fur. bung.for the summer, and he carried his suitcase to the station on thebeautiful day when the young fiends who through the year hadtormented him with unanswerable questions streaked off to allparts of the world and for three tremendous months permitted himto be a private human being.

When he reached Vermont, Selig found Sky Peaks an old farm,redecorated in a distressingly tea-roomy fashion. His singlebungalow, formerly an honest corncrib, was now paintedrobin's-egg blue with yellow trimmings and christened "Shelley."But the camp was on an upland, and air sweet from hayfield andspruce grove healed his lungs, spotted with classroom dust.

At his first dinner at Sky Peaks, he demanded of the host, oneMr. Iddle, "Doesn't Senator Ryder live somewhere near here?"

"Oh, yes, up on the mountain, about four miles south."

"Hope I catch a glimpse of him some day."

"I'll run you over to see him any time you'd like."

"Oh, I couldn't do that! Couldn't intrude!"

"Nonsense! Of course he's old, but he takes quite an interestin the countryside. Fact, I bought this place from him and--Don'tforget the Sing tonight."

At eight that evening Iddle came to drag Selig from thesecurity of his corncrib just as he was getting the relations ofthe Locarno Pact and the Versailles Treaty beautifullycoordinated.

It was that kind of Sing. "The Long, Long Trail," and "AllGod's Chillun Got Shoes." (God's Chillun also possessed coats,pants, vests, flivvers, and watermelons, interminably.) BesideSelig at the campfire sat a young woman with eyes, a nose, asweater, and an athletic skirt, none of them very good orparticularly bad. He would not have noticed her, but she pickedon him:

"They tell me you're in Erasmus, Doctor Selig."

"Um."

"Real attention to character. And after all, what benefit isthere in developing the intellect if the character isn'tdeveloped to keep pace with it? You see, I'm in educational workmyself--oh, of course nothing like being on a college faculty,but I teach history in the Lincoln High School at Schenectady--myname is Selma Swanson. We must have some good talks aboutteaching history, mustn't we!"

"Um!" said Selig, and escaped, though it was not till he wassafely in his corncrib that he said aloud, "We mustnot!"

For three months he was not going to be a teacher, or heed thehorrors of character-building. He was going to be a greatscholar. Even Senator Ryder might be excited to know how powerfulan intellect was soothing itself to sleep in a corncrib fourmiles away!

He was grinding hard next afternoon when his host, Iddle,stormed in with: "I've got to run in to Wickley Center. Go rightnear old Ryder's. Come on. I'll introduce you to him."

"Oh, no, honestly!"

"Don't be silly: I imagine he's lonely. Come on!"

Before Selig could make up his mind to get out of Iddle'stempestuous flivver and walk back, they were driving up amountain road and past marble gateposts into an estate. Through adamp grove of birches and maples they came out on meadowsdominated by an old brick house with a huge porch facing thecheckered valley. They stopped with a dash at the porch, and onit Selig saw an old man sunk in a canvas deck chair and coveredwith a shawl. In the shadow the light seemed to concentrate onhis bald head, like a sphere of polished vellum, and on longbloodless hands lying as in death on shawl-draped knees. In hiseyes there was no life nor desire for it.

Iddle leaped out, bellowing, "Afternoon, Senator! Lovely day,isn't it? I've brought a man to call on you. This is Mr. Seligof--uh--one of our colleges. I'll be back in an hour."

He seized Selig's arm--he was abominably strong--and almostpulled him out of the car. Selig's mind was one wretched puddleof confusion. Before he could dredge any definite thought out ofit, Iddle had rattled away, and Selig stood below the porch,hypnotized by the stare of Senator Ryder--too old for hate oranger, but not too old for slow contempt.

Not one word Ryder said.

Selig cried, like a schoolboy unjustly accused:

"Honestly, Senator, the last thing I wanted to do was tointrude on you. I thought Iddle would just introduce us and takeme away. I suppose he meant well. And perhaps subconsciously Idid want to intrude! I know yourPossibilities ofDisarmament andAnglo-American Empire so well--"

The Senator stirred like an antediluvian owl awakening attwilight. His eyes came to life. One expected him to croak, likea cynical old bird, but his still voice was fastidious:

"I didn't suppose anyone had looked into my books since 1910."Painful yet gracious was the gesture with which he waved Selig toa chair. "You are a teacher?"

"Instructor in a small Ohio college. Economics and history.I'm writing a monograph on our diplomacy, and naturally--Thereare so many things that only you could explain!"

"Because I'm so old?"

"No! Because you've had so much knowledge and courage--perhapsthey're the same thing! Every day, literally, in working on mybook I've wished I could consult you. For instance--Tell me, sir,didn't Secretary of State Olney really want war with England overVenezuela? Wasn't he trying to be a tin hero?"

"No!" The old man threw off his shawl. It was somehow a littleshocking to find him not in an ancient robe laced with gold, butin a crisp linen summer suit with a smart bow tie. He sat up,alert, his voice harsher. "No! He was a patriot. Sturdy. Honest.Willing to be conciliatory but not flinching. Miss Tully!"

At the Senator's cry, out of the wide fanlighted door of thehouse slid a trained nurse. Her uniform was so starched that italmost clattered, but she was a peony sort of young woman, thesort who would insist on brightly mothering any male, of any age,whether or not he desired to be mothered. She glared at theintruding Selig; she shook her finger at Senator Ryder, andsimpered:

"Now I do hope you aren't tiring yourself, else I shall haveto be ever so stern and make you go to bed. The doctorsaid--"

"Damn the doctor! Tell Mrs. Tinkham to bring me down the fileof letters from Richard Olney, Washington, for1895--O-l-n-e-y--and hustle it!"

Miss Tully gone, the Senator growled, "Got no more use for anurse than a cat for two tails! It's that mutton-headed doctor,the old fool! He's seventy-five years old, and he hasn't had athought since 1888. Doctors!"

He delivered an address on the art of medicine with suchvigorous blasphemy that Selig shrank in horrified admiration. Andthe Senator didn't abate the blazing crimson of his oration atthe entrance of his secretary, Mrs. Tinkham, a small, narrow,bleached, virginal widow.

Selig expected her to leap off the porch and commit suicide interror. She didn't. She waited, she yawned gently, she handed theSenator a manila envelope, and gently she vanished.

The Senator grinned. "She'll pray at me tonight! She daren'twhile you're here. There! I feel better. Good cussing is atherapeutic agent that has been forgotten in these degeneratedays. I could teach you more about cussing than aboutdiplomacy--to which cussing is a most valuable aid. Now here is aletter that Secretary Olney wrote me about the significance ofhis correspondence with England."

It was a page of history. Selig handled it with more reverencethan he had given to any material object in his life.

He exclaimed, "Oh, yes, you used--of course I've never seenthe rest of this letter, and I can't tell you, sir, how excited Iam to see it. But didn't you use this first paragraph--it must beabout on page 276 of yourAnglo-American Empire?"

"I believe I did. It's not my favorite reading!"

"You know, of course, that it was reprinted from your book intheJournal of the American Society of Historical Sourceslast year?"

"Was it?" The old man seemed vastly pleased. He beamed atSelig as at a young but tested friend. He chuckled, "Well, Isuppose I appreciate now how King Tut felt when they rememberedhim and dug him up. . . . Miss Tully! Hey! Miss Tully, will yoube so good as to tell Martens to bring us whisky and soda, withtwo glasses? Eh? Now you look here, young woman; we'll fight outthe whole question of my senile viciousness after our guest hasgone. Two glasses, I said! . . . Now about Secretary Olney. Thefact of the case was . . ."

Two hours later, Senator Ryder was still talking and in thattwo hours he had given Selig such unrecorded information as theresearcher could not have found in two years of study.

Selig had for two hours walked with presidents andambassadors; he had the dinner conversation of foreign ministers,conversations so private, so world-affecting, that they never hadbeen set down, even in letters. The Senator had revealed hisfriendship with King Edward, and the predictions about the futureWorld War the King had made over a glass of mineral water.

The mild college instructor, who till this afternoon had neverspoken to anyone more important than the president of a prairiecollege, was exalted with a feeling that he had become theconfidant of kings and field marshals, of Anatole France and LordHaldane, of Sarah Bernhardt and George Meredith.

He had always known but till now he had never understood thatin private these great personages were plain human beings, likeDoctor Wilbur Selig of Erasmus. It made him feel close to KingEdward to hear (though the Senator may have exaggerated) that theKing could not pronounce his own name without a German accent; itmade him feel a man of the world to learn the details of acertain not very elevating party at which an English duke and aGerman prince and a Portuguese king, accompanied by questionableladies, had in bibulous intimacy sung to Senator Ryder'sleadership the lyric, "How Dry I Am."

During that two hours, there had been ten minutes when he hadbeen entirely off in a Conan Doyle spirit world. His notion ofprodigious alcoholic dissipation was a bottle of home-brewed beeronce a month. He had tried to mix himself a light whisky andsoda--he noted, with some anxiety about the properdrinking-manners in diplomatic society, that he tookapproximately one third as much whisky as the Senator.

But while the old man rolled his drink in his mouth and shookhis bald head rapturously and showed no effect, Selig wassuddenly lifted six million miles above the earth, throughpink-gray clouds shot with lightning, and at that altitude hefloated dizzily while below him the Senator discoursed on therelations of Cuban sugar to Colorado beets.

And once Iddle blatted into sight, in his dirty flivver,suggested taking him away, and was blessedly dismissed by theSenator's curt, "Doctor Selig is staying here for dinner. I'llsend him back in my car."

Dinner . . . Selig, though he rarely read fiction, had read insome novel about "candle-flames, stilled in the twilight andreflected in the long stretch of waxed mahogany as in a cloudedmirror--candles and roses and old silver." He had read, too,about stag horns and heraldic shields and the swords of oldwarriors.

Now, actually, the Senator's dining room had neither stag hornnor heraldic shield nor sword, and if there were stillcandle-flames, there was no mahogany to reflect them, but insteada silver stretch of damask. It was a long room, simple, with oldportraits against white panels. Yet Selig felt that he wastransported into all the romance he had ever read.

The dinner was countrylike. By now, Selig expected peacocks'tongues and caviar; he got steak and cantaloupe and corn pudding.But there were four glasses at each plate, and along with water,which was the familiar drink at Erasmus, he had, and timidly,tasted sherry, Burgundy, and champagne.

If Wilbur Selig of Iowa and Erasmus had known anything, it wasthat champagne was peculiarly wicked, associated with lightladies, lewd talk, and losses at roulette invariably terminatingin suicide. Yet it was just as he was nibbling at his very firstglass of champagne that Senator Ryder began to talk of hisdelight in the rise of Anglo-Catholicism.

No. It was none of it real.

If he was exhilarated that he had been kept for dinner, he wasecstatic when the Senator said, "Would you care to come fordinner again day after tomorrow? Good. I'll send Martens for youat seven-thirty. Don't dress."

In a dream phantasmagoria he started home, driven by Martens,the Senator's chauffeur-butler, with unnumbered things that hadpuzzled him in writing his book made clear.

When he arrived at the Sky Peaks camp, the guests were stillsitting about the dull campfire.

"My!" said Miss Selma Swanson, teacher of history. "Mr. Iddlesays you've spent the whole evening with Senator Ryder. Mr. Iddlesays he's a grand person--used to be a great politician."

"Oh, he was kind enough to help me about some confusedproblems," murmured Selig.

But as he went to bed--in a reformed corncrib--he exulted, "Ibet I could become quite a good friend of the Senator! Wouldn'tthat be wonderful!"

Lafayette Ryder, when his visitor--a man named Selig orSelim--was gone, sat at the long dining table with a cigaretteand a distressingly empty cognac glass. He was meditating, "Niceeager young chap. Provincial. But mannerly. I wonder if therereally are a few people who know that Lafe Ryder onceexisted?"

He rang, and the crisply coy Miss Tully, the nurse, waltzedinto the dining room, bubbling, "So we're all ready to go to bednow, Senator!"

"We are not! I didn't ring for you; I rang for Martens."

"He's driving your guest."

"Humph! Send in cook. I want some more brandy."

"Oh, now, Daddy Ryder! You aren't going to be naughty, areyou?"

"I am! And who the deuce ever told you to call me 'Daddy'?Daddy!"

"You did. Last year."

"I don't--this year. Bring me the brandy bottle."

"If I do, will you go to bed then?"

"I will not!"

"But the doctor--"

"The doctor is a misbegotten hound with a face like a fish.And other things. I feel cheerful tonight. I shall sit up late.Till All Hours."

They compromised on eleven-thirty instead of All Hours, andone glass of brandy instead of the bottle. But, vexed at havingthus compromised--as so often, in ninety-odd years, he had beenvexed at having compromised with Empires--the Senator was (saidMiss Tully) very naughty in his bath.

"I swear," said Miss Tully afterward, to Mrs. Tinkham, thesecretary, "if he didn't pay so well, I'd leave that horrid oldman tomorrow. Just because he was a politician or something,once, to think he can sass a trained nurse!"

"You would not!" said Mrs. Tinkham. "But heisnaughty."

And they did not know that, supposedly safe in his four-posterbed, the old man was lying awake, smoking a cigarette andreflecting:

"The gods have always been much better to me than I havedeserved. Just when I thought I was submerged in a flood of womenand doctors, along comes a man for companion, a young man whoseems to be a potential scholar, and who might preserve for theworld what I tried to do. Oh, stop pitying yourself, Lafe Ryder!. . . I wish I could sleep."

Senator Ryder reflected, the next morning, that he hadprobably counted too much on young Selig. But when Selig cameagain for dinner, the Senator was gratified to see how quickly hewas already fitting into a house probably more elaborate than anyhe had known. And quite easily he told of what the Senatoraccounted his uncivilized farm boyhood, his life in a stateuniversity.

"So much the better that he is naïve, not one of thesethird-secretary cubs who think they're cosmopolitan because theywent to Groton," considered the Senator. "I must do something forhim."

Again he lay awake that night, and suddenly he had what seemedto him an inspired idea.

"I'll give young Selig a lift. All this money and no one buthang-jawed relatives to give it to! Give him a year of freedom.Pay him--he probably earns twenty-five hundred a year; pay himfive thousand and expenses to arrange my files. If he makes good,I'd let him publish my papers after I pass out. The letters fromJohn Hay, from Blaine, from Choate! No set of unpublisheddocuments like it in America! It wouldmake the boy!

"Mrs. Tinkham would object. Be jealous. She might quit.Splendid! Lafe, you arrant old coward, you've been trying to getrid of that woman without hurting her feelings for three years!At that, she'll probably marry you on your dying bed!"

He chuckled, a wicked, low, delighted sound, the old man alonein darkness.

"Yes, and if he shows the quality I think he has, leave him alittle money to carry on with while he edits the letters. Leavehim--let's see."

It was supposed among Senator Ryder's lip-licking relativesand necessitous hangers-on that he had left of the Ryder fortuneperhaps two hundred thousand dollars. Only his broker and he knewthat he had by secret investment increased it to a million, theseten years of dark, invalid life.

He lay planning a new will. The present one left half hisfortune to his university, a quarter to the town of Wickley for acommunity center, the rest to nephews and nieces, with tenthousand each for the Tully, the Tinkham, Martens, and themuch-badgered doctor, with a grave proviso that the doctor shouldnever again dictate to any patient how much he should smoke.

Now to Doctor Selig, asleep and not even dream-warned in hisabsurd corncrib, was presented the sum of twenty-five thousanddollars, the blessings of an old man, and a store of historicaldocuments which could not be priced in coin.

In the morning, with a headache, and very strong with MissTully about the taste of the aspirin--he suggested that she haddipped it in arsenic--the Senator reduced Selig to five thousand,but that night it went back to twenty-five.

How pleased the young man would be.

Doctor Wilbur Selig, on the first night when he hadunexpectedly been bidden to stay for dinner with Senator Ryder,was as stirred as by--Whatwould most stir Doctor WilburSelig? A great play? A raise in salary? An Erasmus footballvictory?

At the second dinner, with the house and the hero less novelto him, he was calmly happy, and zealous about gettinginformation. The third dinner, a week after, was agreeableenough, but he paid rather more attention to the squab incasserole than to the Senator's revelations about the Baringpanic, and he was a little annoyed that the Senator insisted (soselfishly) on his staying till midnight, instead of going home tobed at a reasonable hour like ten--with, perhaps, beforeretiring, a few minutes of chat with that awfully nice brightgirl, Miss Selma Swanson.

And through that third dinner he found himself reluctantlycritical of the Senator's morals.

Hang it, here was a man of good family, who had had a chanceto see all that was noblest and best in the world and why did hefeel he had to use such bad language, why did he drink so much?Selig wasn't (he proudly reminded himself) the least bitnarrow-minded. But an old man like this ought to be thinking ofmaking his peace; ought to be ashamed of cursing like astableboy.

He reproved himself next morning, "He's been mighty nice tome. He's a good old coot--at heart. And of course a greatstatesman."

But he snapped back to irritation when he had a telephone callfrom Martens, the chauffeur: "Senator Ryder would like you tocome over for tea this afternoon. He has something to showyou."

"All right, I'll be over."

Selig was curt about it, and he raged, "Now, by thunder, ofall the thoughtless, selfish old codgers! As if I didn't haveanything to do but dance attendance on him and amuse him! Andhere I'd planned to finish a chapter this afternoon! 'Course hedoes give me some inside information, but still--as if I neededall the tittle-tattle of embassies for my book! Got all the stuffI need now. And how am I to get over there? The selfish old houndnever thinks of that! Does he suppose I can afford a car to goover? I'll have to walk! Got half a mind not to go!"

The sulkiness with which he came to tea softened when theSenator began to talk about the Queen Victoria letter.

Historians knew that during the presidency of BenjaminHarrison, when there was hostility between America and Britainover the seizure by both sides of fishing boats, Queen Victoriahad written in her own hand to President Harrison. It wasbelieved that she deplored her royal inability to appeal directlyto Parliament, and suggested his first taking the difficulty upwith Congress. But precisely what was in this unofficial letter,apparently no one knew.

This afternoon Senator Ryder said placidly, "I happen to havethe original of the letter in my possession."

"What?"

"Perhaps some day I'll give you a glimpse of it. I think Ihave the right to let you quote it."

Selig was electrified. It would be a sensation--hewould be a sensation! He could see his book, and himself, on thefront pages. But the Senator passed on to a trivial, quiteimproper anecdote about a certain Brazilian ambassador and aWashington milliner, and Selig was irritable again. Darn it, itwas indecent for a man of over ninety to think of such things!And why the deuce was he so skittish and secretive about his oldletter? If he was going to show it, why not do it?

So perhaps Doctor Selig of Erasmus was not quite so graciousas a Doctor Selig of Erasmus should have been when, at parting,the old man drew from under his shawl a worn blue-gray pamphlet,and piped:

"I'm going to give you this, if you'd like it. There's onlysix copies left in the world, I believe. It's the third one of mybooks--privately printed and not ordinarily listed with theothers. It has, I imagine, a few things in it the historiansdon't know; the real story of the Paris commune."

"Oh, thanks," Selig said brusquely and, to himself, in theSenator's car, he pointed out that it showed what an egotisticold codger Ryder was to suppose that just because he'd writtensomething, it must be a blooming treasure!

He glanced into the book. It seemed to have information. Buthe wasn't stirred, for it was out of line with what he haddecided were the subjects of value to Doctor Selig and,therefore, of general interest.

After tea, now, it was too late for work before dinner and hehad Ryder's chauffeur set him down at Tredwell's General Store,which had become for members of the Sky Peaks camp a combinationof department store, post office and café, where theydrank wild toasts in lemon pop.

Miss Selma Swanson was there, and Selig laughingly treated herto chewing gum, Attaboy Peanut Candy Rolls, and seven fishhooks.They had such a lively time discussing that funny Miss Elkingtonup at the camp.

When he started off, with Miss Swanson, he left the Senator'sbook behind him in the store. He did not miss it till he had goneto bed.

Two days afterward, the Senator's chauffeur again telephonedan invitation to tea for that afternoon, but this time Seligsnapped, "Sorry! Tell the Senator I unfortunately shan't be ableto come!"

"Just a moment, please," said the chauffeur. "The Senatorwishes to know if you care to come to dinner tomorrowevening--eight--he'll send for you."

"Well--Yes, tell him I'll be glad to come."

After all, dinner here at Sky Peaks was pretty bad, and he'dget away early in the evening.

He rejoiced in having his afternoon free for work. But theconfounded insistence of the Senator had so bothered him that hebanged a book on his table and strolled outside.

The members of the camp were playing One Old Cat, with SelmaSwanson, very jolly in knickerbockers, as cheer leader. Theyyelped at Selig to join them and, after a stately refusal or two,he did. He had a good time. Afterward he pretended to wrestlewith Miss Swanson--she had the supplest waist and, seen close up,the moistest eyes. So he was glad that he had not wasted hisafternoon listening to that old bore.

The next afternoon, at six, a splendid chapter done, he wentoff for a climb up Mount Poverty with Miss Swanson. The late sunwas so rich on pasture, pine clumps, and distant meadows, andMiss Swanson was so lively in tweed skirt and brogues--but thestockings were silk--that he regretted having promised to be atthe Senator's at eight.

"But of course I always keep my promises," he reflectedproudly.

They sat on a flat rock perched above the valley, and heobserved in rather a classroom tone, "How remarkable that lightis--the way it picks out that farmhouse roof, and then the shadowof those maples on the grass. Did you ever realize that it's lessthe shape of things than the light that gives a landscapebeauty?"

"No, I don't think I ever did. That's so. It's the light! My,how observant you are!"

"Oh, no, I'm not. I'm afraid I'm just a bookworm."

"Oh, you are not! Of course you're tremendously scholarly--my,I've learned so much about study from you--but then, you're soactive--you were just a circus playing One Old Cat yesterday. Ido admire an all-round man."

At seven-thirty, holding her firm hand, he was saying, "Butreally, there's so much that I lack that--But you do think I'mright about it's being so much manlier not to drink like that oldman? By the way, we must start back."

At a quarter to eight, after he had kissed her and apologizedand kissed her, he remarked, "Still, he can wait a while--won'tmake any difference."

At eight: "Golly, it's so late! Had no idea. Well, I betternot go at all now. I'll just phone him this evening and say I gotballed up on the date. Look! Let's go down to the lake and dineon the wharf at the boathouse, just you and I."

"Oh, that would be grand!" said Miss Selma Swanson.

Lafayette Ryder sat on the porch that, along with his diningroom and bedroom, had become his entire world, and waited for thekind young friend who was giving back to him the world he hadonce known. His lawyer was coming from New York in three days,and there was the matter of the codicil to his will. But--theSenator stirred impatiently--this money matter was grubby; he hadfor Selig something rarer than money--a gift for a scholar.

He looked at it and smiled. It was a double sheet of thickbond, with "Windsor Castle" engraved at the top. Above thisaddress was written in a thin hand: "To my friend L. Ryder, touse if he ever sees fit. Benj. Harrison."

The letter began, "To His Excellency, the President," and itwas signed, "Victoria R." In a few lines between inscription andsignature there was a new history of the great Victoria and ofthe Nineteenth Century. . . . Dynamite does not come in largepackages.

The old man tucked the letter into a pocket down beneath therosy shawl that reached up to his gray face.

Miss Tully rustled out, to beg, "Daddy, you won't take morethan one cocktail tonight? The doctor says it's so bad foryou!"

"Heh! Maybe I will and maybe I won't! What time is it?"

"A quarter to eight."

"Doctor Selig will be here at eight. If Martens doesn't havethe cocktails out on the porch three minutes after he gets back,I'll skin him. And you needn't go looking for the cigarettes inmy room, either! I've hidden them in a brand-new place, and I'llprobably sit up and smoke till dawn. Fact; doubt if I shall go tobed at all. Doubt if I'll take my bath."

He chuckled as Miss Tully wailed, "You're so naughty!"

The Senator need not have asked the time. He had groped downunder the shawl and looked at his watch every five minutes sinceseven. He inwardly glared at himself for his foolishness inanticipating his young friend, but--all the old ones weregone.

That was the devilishness of living so many years. Gone, solong. People wrote idiotic letters to him, still, begging for hisautograph, for money, but who save this fine young Selig had cometo him? . . . So long now!

At eight, he stirred, not this time like a drowsy old owl, butlike an eagle, its lean head thrusting forth from its pile ofhunched feathers, ready to soar. He listened for the car.

At ten minutes past, he swore, competently. Confound thatMartens!

At twenty past, the car swept up the driveway. Out of itstepped only Martens, touching his cap, murmuring, "Very sorry,sir. Mr. Selig was not at the camp."

"Then why the devil didn't you wait?"

"I did, sir, as long as I dared."

"Poor fellow! He may have been lost on the mountain. We muststart a search!"

"Very sorry, sir, but if I may say so, as I was driving backpast the foot of the Mount Poverty trail, I saw Mr. Selig with ayoung woman, sir, and they were talking and laughing and goingaway from the camp, sir. I'm afraid--"

"Very well. That will do."

"I'll serve dinner at once, sir. Do you wish your cocktail outhere?"

"I won't have one. Send Miss Tully."

When the nurse had fluttered to him, she cried out with alarm.Senator Ryder was sunk down into his shawl. She bent over him tohear his whisper:

"If it doesn't keep you from your dinner, my dear, I think I'dlike to be helped up to bed. I don't care for anything to eat. Ifeel tired."

While she was anxiously stripping the shawl from him he lookedlong, as one seeing it for the last time, at the darkeningvalley. But as she helped him up, he suddenly became active. Hesnatched from his pocket a stiff double sheet of paper and toreit into fragments which he fiercely scattered over the porch withone sweep of his long arm.

Then he collapsed over her shoulder.

Donald Patrick Dorgan had served forty-four years on thepolice force of Northernapolis, and during all but five of thattime he had patrolled the Forest Park section.

Don Dorgan might have been a sergeant, or even a captain, butit had early been seen at headquarters that he was a crank aboutForest Park. For hither he had brought his young wife, and herehe had built their shack; here his wife had died, and here shewas buried. It was so great a relief in the whirl of departmentpolitics to have a man who was contented with his job that theBig Fellows were glad of Dorgan, and kept him there where hewanted to be, year after year, patrolling Forest Park.

For Don Pat Dorgan had the immense gift of loving people, allpeople. In a day before anyone in Northernapolis had heard ofscientific criminology, Dorgan believed that the duty of apoliceman with clean gloves and a clean heart was to keep peoplefrom needing to be arrested. He argued with drunken men andpersuaded them to hide out in an alley and sleep off the drunk.When he did arrest them it was because they were sedatelystaggering home intent on beating up the wives of their bosoms.Any homeless man could get a nickel from Dorgan and a road-map ofthe doss-houses. To big bruisers he spoke slowly, and he beatthem with his nightstick where it would hurt the most but injurethe least. Along his beat, small boys might play baseball,provided they did not break windows or get themselves in front ofmotor cars. The pocket in his coat-tail was a mine; here weresecreted not only his midnight sandwiches, his revolver andhandcuffs and a comic supplement, but also a bag of striped candyand a red rubber ball.

When the Widow Maclester's son took to the booze, it was DonDorgan who made him enlist in the navy. Such things were Don'swork--his art. Joy of his art he had when Kitty Silva repentedand became clean-living; when Micky Connors, whom Dorgan hadknown ever since Micky was a squawking orphan, became a doctor,with a large glass sign lettered J. J. Connors, M.D., and a nurseto let a poor man in to see the great Doctor Connors!

Dorgan did have for one boy and girl a sneaking fondness thattranscended the kindliness he felt toward the others. They werePolo Magenta, son of the Italian-English-Danish jockey who haddied of the coke, and Effie Kugler, daughter of that Jewishdelicatessen man who knew more of the Talmud than any man in theGhetto--Effie the pretty and plump, black-haired and quick-eyed,a perfect armful for anyone.

Polo Magenta had the stuff of a man in him. The boy worshipedmotors as his father had worshiped horses. At fourteen, when hisfather died, he was washer at McManus' Garage; at eighteen he wasone of the smoothest taxi-drivers in the city. At nineteen,dropping into Kugler's Delicatessen for sausages and crackers forhis midnight lunch, he was waited upon by Effie.

Thereafter he hung about the little shop nightly, till oldKugler frowned upon them--upon Polo, the gallantest lad in LittleHell, supple in his chauffeur's uniform, straight-backed as theEnglish sergeant who had been his grandfather, pale-haired like aDane, altogether a soldierly figure, whispering across thecounter to blushing Effie.

Kugler lurked at the door and prevented Polo from driving pastand picking her up. So Effie became pale with longing to see herboy; Polo took to straight Bourbon, which is not good for ataxi-driver racing to catch trains. He had an accident, once; hemerely smashed the fenders of another car; but one more of thelike, and the taxi-company would let him out.

Then Patrolman Don Dorgan sat in on the game. He decided thatPolo Magenta should marry Effie. He told Polo that he would beara message from him to the girl, and while he was meticulouslyselecting a cut of sausage for sandwich, he whispered to her thatPolo was waiting, with his car, in the alley off Minnis Place.Aloud he bawled: "Come walk the block with me, Effie, you littledivvle, if your father will let you. Mr. Kugler, it isn't oftenthat Don Dorgan invites the ladies to go a-walking with him, butit's spring, and you know how it is with us wicked cops. The girllooks as if she needed a breath of fresh air."

"That's r-r-r-right," said Kugler. "You go valk a block withMr. Dorgan, Effie, and mind you come r-r-r-right back."

Dorgan stood like a lion at the mouth of the alley where,beside his taxi, Polo Magenta was waiting. As he caught the crywith which Effie came to her lover, he remembered the eveningslong gone when he and his own sweetheart had met in the maplelane that was now the scrofulous Minnis Place.

"Oh, Polo, I've just felt dead, never seeing you nowhere."

"Gee, it hurts, kid, to get up in the morning and haveeverything empty, knowing I won't see you any time. I could runthe machine off the Boulevard and end everything, my heart's socold without you."

"Oh, is it, Polo, is it really?"

"Say, we only got a couple minutes. I've got a look in on apartnership in a repair shop in Thornwood Addition. If I canswing it, we can beat it and get hitched, and when your old mansees I'm prospering--"

While Dorgan heard Polo's voice grow crisp with practicalhopes, he bristled and felt sick. For Kugler was coming alongMinnis Place, peering ahead, hunched with suspicion. Dorgan darednot turn to warn the lovers, nor even shout.

Dorgan smiled. "Evening again," he said. "It was a fine walk Ihad with Effie. Is she got back yet?"

He was standing between Kugler and the alley-mouth, his armsakimbo.

Kugler ducked under his arm, and saw Effie cuddled beside herlover, the two of them sitting on the running-board of Polo'smachine.

"Effie, you will come home now," said the old man. There wasterrible wrath in the quietness of his graybeard voice.

The lovers looked shamed and frightened.

Dorgan swaggered up toward the group. "Look here, Mr. Kugler:Polo's a fine upstanding lad. He ain't got no bad habits--tospeak of. He's promised me he'll lay off the booze. He'll make afine man for Effie--"

"Mr. Dorgan, years I have respected you, but--Effie, you comehome now," said Kugler.

"Oh, what will I do, Mr. Dorgan?" wailed Effie. "Should I dolike Papa wants I should, or should I go off with Polo?"

Dorgan respected the divine rights of love, but also he had anold-fashioned respect for the rights of parents with theiroffspring.

"I guess maybe you better go with your papa, Effie. I'll talkto him--"

"Yes, you'll talk, and everybody will talk, and I'll be dead,"cried young Polo. "Get out of my way, all of you."

Already he was in the driver's seat and backing his machineout. It went rocking round the corner.

Dorgan heard that Polo had been discharged by the taxi-companyfor speeding through traffic and smashing the tail-lights ofanother machine; then that he had got a position as privatechauffeur in the suburbs, been discharged for impudence, gotanother position and been arrested for joy-riding with a bunch ofyoung toughs from Little Hell. He was to be tried on the chargeof stealing his employer's machine.

Dorgan brushed his citizen's clothes, got an expensive haircutand shampoo and went to call on the employer, who refused tolisten to maundering defenses of the boy.

Dorgan called on Polo in his cell.

"It's all right," Polo said. "I'm glad I was pinched. I neededsomething to stop me, hard. I was going nutty, and if somebodyhadn't slammed on the emergency, I don't know what I would havedone. Now I've sat here reading and thinking, and I'm rightagain. I always gotta do things hard, booze or be good. And nowI'm going to think hard, and I ain't sorry to have the chanct tobe quiet."

Dorgan brought away a small note in which, with muchmisspelling and tenderness, Polo sent to Effie his oath ofdeathless love. To the delivery of this note Dorgan devoted onebribery and one shocking burglarious entrance.

Polo was sentenced to three years in prison, on a charge ofgrand larceny.

That evening Dorgan climbed, panting, to the cathedral, andfor an hour he knelt with his lips moving, his spine cold, as hepictured young Polo shamed and crushed in prison, and as hediscovered himself hating the law that he served.

One month later Dorgan reached the age-limit, and wasautomatically retired from the Force, on pension. He protested;but the retirement rule was inviolable.

Dorgan went to petition the commissioner himself. It was thefirst time in five years, except on the occasions of the annualpolice parades, that he had gone near headquarters, and he wasgiven a triumphal reception. Inspectors and captains, reportersand aldermen, and the commissioner himself, shook his hand,congratulated him on his forty-five years of clean service. Butto his plea they did not listen. It was impossible to find aplace for him. They heartily told him to rest, because he hadearned it.

Dorgan nagged them. He came to headquarters again and again,till he became a bore, and the commissioner refused to see him.Dorgan was not a fool. He went shamefacedly back to his shack,and there he remained.

For two years he huddled by the fire and slowly becamemelancholy mad--gray-faced, gray-haired, a gray ghost ofhimself.

From time to time, during his two years of hermitage, Dorgancame out to visit his old neighbors. They welcomed him, gave himdrinks and news, but they did not ask his advice. So he hadbecome a living ghost before two years had gone by, and he talkedto himself, aloud.

During these two years the police force was metropolitanized.There were a smart new commissioner and smart new inspectors anda smart new uniform--a blue military uniform with flat cap andputtees and shaped coats. After his first view of that uniform,at the police parade, Dorgan went home and took down from behindthe sheet-iron stove a photograph of ten years before--the Forceof that day, proudly posed on the granite steps of the city hall.They had seemed efficient and impressive then, but--his honestsoul confessed it--they were like rural constables beside thecrack corps of today.

Presently he took out from the redwood chest his own uniform,but he could not get himself to put on its shapeless gray coatand trousers, its gray helmet and spotless white gloves. Yet itspresence comforted him, proved to him that, improbable though itseemed, the secluded old man had once been an active member ofthe Force.

With big, clumsy, tender hands he darned a frayed spot at thebottom of the trousers and carefully folded the uniform away. Hetook out his nightstick and revolver and the sapphire-studdedstar the Department had given him for saving two lives in thecollapse of the Anthony building. He fingered them and longed tobe permitted to carry them. . . . All night, in a dream andhalf-dream and tossing wakefulness, he pictured himselfpatrolling again, the father of his people.

Next morning he again took his uniform, his nightstick and gunand shield out of the redwood chest, and he hung them in thewardrobe, where they had hung when he was off duty in his days ofactive service. He whistled cheerfully and muttered: "I'll beseeing to them Tenth Street devils, the rotten gang of them."

Rumors began to come into the newspaper offices of a"ghost-scare" out in the Forest Park section. An old man hadlooked out of his window at midnight and seen a dead man, in auniform of years before, standing on nothing at all. A strangerto the city, having come to his apartment-hotel, the Forest Arms,some ten blocks above Little Hell, at about two in the morning,stopped to talk with a strange-looking patrolman whose face hedescribed as a drift of fog about burning, unearthly eyes. Thepatrolman had courteously told him of the building up of ForestPark, and at parting had saluted, an erect, somewhat touchingfigure. Later the stranger was surprised to note that theregulation uniform was blue, not gray.

After this there were dozens who saw the "Ghost Patrol," astheChronicle dubbed the apparition; some spoke to him,and importantly reported him to be fat, thin, tall, short, old,young, and composed of mist, of shadows, of optical illusions andof ordinary human flesh.

Then a society elopement and a foreign war broke, and GhostPatrol stories were forgotten.

One evening of early summer the agitated voice of a womantelephoned to headquarters from the best residence section ofForest Park that she had seen a burglar entering the window ofthe house next door, which was closed for the season. The chiefhimself took six huskies in his machine, and they roared out toForest Park and surrounded the house. The owner of the agitatedvoice stalked out to inform the chief that just after she hadtelephoned, she had seen another figure crawling into the windowafter the burglar. She had thought that the second figure had arevolver and a policeman's club.

So the chief and the lieutenant crawled nonchalantly throughan unquestionably open window giving on the pantry at the side ofthe house. Their electric torches showed the dining room to be awreck--glass scattered and broken, drawers of the buffet on thefloor, curtains torn down. They remarked "Some scrap!" andshouted: "Come out here, whoever's in this house. We got itsurrounded. Kendall, are you there? Have you pinched theguy?"

There was an unearthly silence, as of someone breathing interror, a silence more thick and anxious than any mere absence ofsound. They tiptoed into the drawing room, where, tied to adavenport, was that celebrated character, Butte Benny.

"My Gawd, Chief," he wailed, "get me outa this. De place ishaunted. A bleeding ghost comes and grabs me and ties me up. Gee,honest, Chief, he was a dead man, and he was dressed like ahas-been cop, and he didn't say nawthin' at all. I tried towrastle him, and he got me down; and oh, Chief, he beat me crool,he did, but he was dead as me great-grandad, and you could see delight t'rough him. Let's get outa this--frame me up and I'll signde confession. Me for a nice, safe cell for keeps!"

"Some amateur cop done this, to keep his hand in. Ghost meeye!" said the chief. But his own flesh felt icy, and he couldn'thelp looking about for the unknown.

"Let's get out of this, Chief," said Lieutenant Saxon, thebravest man in the strong-arm squad; and with Butte Benny betweenthem they fled through the front door, leaving the pantry windowstill open. They didn't handcuff Benny. They couldn't have losthim!

Next morning when a captain came to look over the damages inthe burglarized house he found the dining room crudelystraightened up and the pantry window locked.

When the baby daughter of Simmons, the plumber of Little Hell,was lost, two men distinctly saw a gray-faced figure in anold-time police helmet leading the lost girl through unfrequentedback alleys. They tried to follow, but the mysterious figure knewthe egresses better than they did; and they went to report at thestation house. Meantime there was a ring at the Simmons' door,and Simmons found his child on the doormat, crying but safe. Inher hand, tight clutched, was the white-cotton glove of apoliceman.

Simmons gratefully took the glove to the precinct station. Itwas a regulation service glove; it had been darned withwhite-cotton thread till the original fabric was almost overlaidwith short, inexpert stitches; it had been whitened withpipe-clay, and from one slight brown spot it must have beenpressed out with a hot iron. Inside it was stamped, in fadedrubber stamping: Dorgan, Patrol, 9th Precinct. The chief took theglove to the commissioner, and between these two harsh, abruptmen there was a pitying silence surcharged with respect.

"We'll have to take care of the old man," said the chief atlast.

A detective was assigned to the trail of the Ghost Patrol. Thedetective saw Don Dorgan come out of his shack at three in themorning, stand stretching out his long arms, sniff the late-nightdampness, smile as a man will when he starts in on the routine ofwork that he loves. He was erect; his old uniform wasclean-brushed, his linen collar spotless; in his hand he carriedone lone glove. He looked to right and left, slipped into analley, prowled through the darkness, so fleet and soft-steppingthat the shadow almost lost him. He stopped at a shutter leftopen and prodded it shut with his old-time long nightstick. Thenhe stole back to his shack and went in.

The next day the chief, the commissioner, and a self-appointedcommittee of inspectors and captains came calling on Don Dorganat his shack. The old man was a slovenly figure, in open-neckedflannel shirt and broken-backed slippers. Yet Dorgan straightenedup when they came, and faced them like an old soldier called toduty. The dignitaries sat about awkwardly, while the commissionertried to explain that the Big Fellows had heard Dorgan was lonelyhere, and that the department fund was, unofficially, going tosend him to Dr. Bristow's Private Asylum for the Aged andMentally Infirm--which he euphemistically called "Doc Bristow'sHome."

"No," said Dorgan, "that's a private booby-hatch. I don't wantto go there. Maybe they got swell rooms, but I don't want to bestowed away with a bunch of nuts."

They had to tell him, at last, that he was frightening theneighborhood with his ghostly patrol and warn him that if he didnot give it up they would have to put him away some place.

"But I got to patrol!" he said. "My boys and girls here, theyneed me to look after them. I sit and I hear voices--voices, Itell you, and they order me out on the beat. . . . Stick me inthe bughouse. I guess maybe it's better. Say, tell Doc Bristow tonot try any shenanigans wit' me, but let me alone, or I'll handhim something; I got a wallop like a probationer yet--I have so,Chief."

The embarrassed committee left Captain Luccetti with him, toclose up the old man's shack and take him to the asylum in ataxi. The Captain suggested that the old uniform be leftbehind.

Dr. Davis Bristow was a conscientious but crotchety man whoneeded mental easement more than did any of his patients. Thechief had put the fear of God into him, and he treated Dorganwith respect at first.

The chief had kind-heartedly arranged that Dorgan was to havea "rest," that he should be given no work about the farm; and allday long Dorgan had nothing to do but pretend to read, and worryabout his children.

Two men had been assigned to the beat, in succession, sincehis time; and the second man, though he was a good officer, camefrom among the respectable and did not understand the surlywistfulness of Little Hell. Dorgan was sure that the man wasn'twatching to lure Matty Carlson from her periodical desire to runaway from her decent, patient husband.

So one night, distraught, Dorgan lowered himself from hiswindow and ran, skulking, stumbling, muttering across theoutskirts and around to Little Hell. He didn't have his oldinstinct for concealing his secret patrolling. A policeman sawhim, in citizen's clothes, swaying down his old beat, tryingdoors, humming to himself. And when they put him in the ambulanceand drove him back to the asylum, he wept and begged to beallowed to return to duty.

Dr. Bristow telephoned to the chief of police, demandingpermission to put Dorgan to work, and set him at gardening.

This was very well indeed. For through the rest of thatsummer, in the widespread gardens, and half the winter, in thegreenhouses, Dorgan dug and sweated and learned the names offlowers. But early in January he began to worry once more. Hetold the super that he had figured out that, with good behavior,Polo Magenta would be out of the pen now, and need looking after."Yes, yes--well, I'm busy; sometime you tell me all about it,"Dr. Bristow jabbered, "but just this minute I'm very busy."

One day in mid-January Dorgan prowled uneasily all daylong--the more uneasy as a blizzard blew up and the world wasshut off by a curtain of weaving snow. He went up to his roomearly in the evening. A nurse came to take away his shoes andovercoat, and cheerily bid him go to bed.

But once he was alone he deliberately tore a cotton blanket tostrips and wound the strips about his thin slippers. He waddednewspapers and a sheet between his vest and his shirt. He foundhis thickest gardening cap. He quietly raised the window. Heknocked out the light wooden bars with his big fist. He put hisfeet over the windowsill and dropped into the storm, and set outacross the lawn. With his gaunt form huddled, his hands rammedinto his coat pockets, his large feet moving slowly, certainly,in their moccasinlike covering of cloth and thin slippers, heplowed through to the street and down toward Little Hell.

Don Dorgan knew that the blizzard would keep him from beingtraced by the asylum authorities for a day or two, but he alsoknew that he could be overpowered by it. He turned into a seriesof alleys, and found a stable with a snowbound delivery wagonbeside it. He brought hay from the stable, covered himself withit in the wagon, and promptly went to sleep. When he awoke thenext afternoon the blizzard had ceased and he went on.

He came to the outskirts of Little Hell. Sneaking throughalleys, he entered the back of McManus' red-light-districtgarage.

McManus, the boss, was getting his machines out into the lastgasps of the storm, for the street-car service was still tied up,and motors were at a premium. He saw Dorgan and yelled: "Hellothere, Don. Where did you blow in from? Ain't seen you these sixmonths. T'ought you was living soft at some old-folks' home orother."

"No," said Dorgan, with a gravity which forbade trifling, "I'ma--I'm a kind of a watchman. Say, what's this I hear, youngMagenta is out of the pen?"

"Yes, the young whelp. I always said he was no good, when heused to work here, and--"

"What's become of him?"

"He had the nerve to come here when he got out, looking for ajob; suppose he wanted the chanct to smash up a few of mymachines too! I hear he's got a job wiping, at the K. N.roundhouse. Pretty rough joint, but good enough for the likes o'him. Say, Don, things is slow since you went, what with thesedirty agitators campaigning for prohibition--"

"Well," said Dorgan, "I must be moseying along, John."

Three men of hurried manner and rough natures threw Dorgan outof three various entrances to the roundhouse, but he sneaked inon the tender of a locomotive and saw Polo Magenta at work,wiping brass--or a wraith of Polo Magenta. He was thin, his eyeslarge and passionate. He took one look at Dorgan, and leaped tomeet him.

''Dad--thunder--you old son of a gun."

"Sure! Well, boy, how's it coming?"

"Rotten."

"Well?"

"Oh, the old stuff. Keepin' the wanderin' boy tonightwanderin'. The warden gives me good advice, and I thinks I'vepaid for bein' a fool kid, and I pikes back to Little Hell withtwo bucks and lots of good intentions and--they seen me coming.The crooks was the only ones that welcomed me. McManus offered mea job, plain and fancy driving for guns. I turned it down andlooks for decent work, which it didn't look for me none. There'sa new cop on your old beat. Helpin' Hand Henry, he is. He gets meup and tells me the surprisin' news that I'm a desprit youngjailbird, and he's onto me--see; and if I chokes any old women orbeats up any babes in arms, he'll be there with the nippers--see:so I better quit my career of murder.

"I gets a job over in Milldale, driving a motor-truck, and hetips 'em off I'm a forger and an arson and I dunno what all, andthey lets me out--wit' some more good advice. Same wit' otherjobs."

"Effie?"

"Ain't seen her yet. But say, Dad, I got a letter from herthat's the real stuff--says she'll stick by me till her dadcroaks, and then come to me if it's through fire. I got ithere--it keeps me from going nutty. And a picture postcard ofher. You see, I planned to nip in and see her before her old manknew I was out of the hoosegow, but this cop I was tellin' youabout wises up Kugler, and he sits on the doorstep with theRevolutionary musket loaded up with horseshoes and cobblestones,and so--get me? But I gets a letter through to her by one of theboys."

"Well, what are you going to do?"

"Search me. . . . There ain't nobody to put us guys next,since you got off the beat, Dad."

"I ain't off it! Will you do what I tell you to?"

"Sure."

"Then listen: You got to start in right here inNorthernapolis, like you're doing, and build up again. Theydidn't sentence you to three years but to six--three of 'em here,getting folks to trust you again. It ain't fair, but it is. See?You lasted there because the bars kep' you in. Are you man enoughto make your own bars, and to not have 'em wished onto you?"

"Maybe."

"You are! You know how it is in the pen--you can't pick andchoose your cell or your work. Then listen: I'm middlin' welloff, for a bull--savin's and pension. We'll go partners in a finelittle garage, and buck John McManus--he's a crook, and we'll runhim out of business. But you got to be prepared to wait, andthat's the hardest thing a man can do. Will you?"

"Yes."

"When you get through here, meet me in that hallway behintMullins' Casino. So long, boy."

"So long, Dad."

When Polo came to him in the hallway behind Mullins' Casino,Dorgan demanded: "I been thinking; have you seen old Kugler?"

"Ain't dared to lay an eye on him, Dad. Trouble enough withoutstirrin' up more. Gettin' diplomatic."

"I been thinking. Sometimes the most diplomatic thing a guycan do is to go right to the point and surprise 'em. Comeon."

They came into Kugler's shop, without parley or trembling; andDorgan's face was impassive, as befits a patrolman, as he thrustopen the door and bellowed "Evenin'!" at the horrified old Jewishscholar and the maid.

Don Dorgan laid his hands on the counter and spoke.

"Kugler," said he, "you're going to listen to me, because ifyou don't, I'll wreck the works. You've spoiled four lives.You've made this boy a criminal, forbidding him a good, finelove, and now you're planning to keep him one. You've kilt Effiethe same way--look at the longing in the poor little pigeon'sface! You've made me an unhappy old man. You've made yourself,that's meanin' to be good and decent, unhappy by a row with yourown flesh and blood. Some said I been off me nut, Kugler, but Iknow I been out beyont, where they understand everything andforgive everything--and I've learnt that it's harder to be badthan to be good, that you been working harder to make us allunhappy than you could of to make us all happy."

Dorgan's gaunt, shabby bigness seemed to swell and fill theshop; his voice boomed and his eyes glowed with a willunassailable.

The tyrant Kugler was wordless, and he listened with respectas Dorgan went on, more gently:

"You're a godly man among the sinners, but that's made youthink you must always be right. Are you willing to kill us alljust to prove you can't never be wrong? Man, man, that's afiendish thing to do. And oh, how much easier it would be to giveway, onct, and let this poor cold boy creep home to the warmnessthat he do be longing so for, with the blizzard bitter aroundhim, and every man's hand ag'in' him. Look--look at them poor,good children!"

Kugler looked, and he beheld Polo and Effie--still separatedby the chill marble counter--with their hands clasped across it,their eyes met in utter frankness.

"Vell--" said Kugler wistfully.

"So!" said Patrolman Dorgan. "Well, I must be back on mebeat--at the asylum . . . There's things that'd bear watchingthere!"

This is not the story of Theodora Duke and Stacy Lindstrom,but of a traveling bag with silver fittings, a collection ofcloisonné, a pile of ratty school-books, and a firelesscooker that did not cook.

Long before these things were acquired, when Theo was a girland her father, Lyman Duke, was a so-so dealer in cut-over lands,there was a feeling of adventure in the family. They lived in asmall brown house which predicated children and rabbits in theback yard, and a father invariably home for supper. But Mr. Dukewas always catching trains to look at pine tracts in northernMinnesota. Often his wife went along and, in the wilds, way andbeyond Grand Marais and the steely shore of Lake Superior, sheheard wolves howl and was unafraid. The Dukes laughed much thoseyears, and were eager to see mountains and new kinds of shadetrees.

Theo found her own freedom in exploring jungles of five-footmullein weeds with Stacy Lindstrom. That pale, stolid littleNorwegian she chose from her playmates because he was alwaysready to try new games.

The city of Vernon was newer then--in 1900. There were nocountry clubs, no fixed sets. The pioneers from Maine and YorkState who had appropriated lumber and flour were richer than thenewly come Buckeyes and Hoosiers and Scandinavians, but they werefriendly. As they drove their smart trotters the leading citizensshouted "Hello, Heinie," or "Evenin', Knute," without a feelingof condescension. In preferring Stacy Lindstrom to Eddie Barnes,who had a hundred-dollar bicycle and had spent a year in aprivate school, Theo did not consider herself virtuouslydemocratic. Neither did Stacy!

The brown-haired, bright-legged, dark-cheeked, glowing girlwas a gorgeous colt, while he was a fuzzy lamb. Theo's father hadan office, Stacy's father a job in a planing mill. Yet Stacy wasthe leader. He read books, and he could do things with his hands.He invented Privateers, which is a much better game than Pirates.For his gallant company of one privateers he rigged a forsakendump cart, in the shaggy woods on the Mississippi bluffs, withsackcloth sails, barrel-hoop cutlasses, and a plank for victimsto walk. Upon the request of the victims, who were Theo, he addedto the plank a convenient handrail.

But anyone could play Ship--even Eddie Barnes. From aterritorial pioneer Stacy learned of the Red River carts which,with the earthquaking squawk of ungreased wheels and the glare ofscarlet sashes on the buckskin-shirted drivers, used to comeplodding all the redskin-haunted way from the outposts of theFree Trappers, bearing marten and silver fox for the throats ofprincesses. Stacy changed the privateers' brigantine into a RedRiver cart. Sometimes it was seven or ten carts, and a barricade.Behind it Stacy and Theo kept off hordes of Dakotas.

After voyaging with Stacy, Theo merely ya-ah'd at Eddie Barneswhen he wanted her to go skating. Eddie considered a figureeight, performed on the ice of a safe creek, the finalaccomplishment of imaginative sport, while Stacy could fromimmemorial caverns call the Wizard Merlin as servitor to a littleplaying girl. Besides, he could jump on ski! And mend a bike!Eddie had to take even a dirty sprocket to the repair shop.

The city, and Theo, had grown less simple-hearted when shewent to Central High School. Twenty-five hundred boys and girlsgathered in those tall gloomy rooms, which smelled of water pailsand chalk and worn floors. There was a glee club, a school paper,a debating society and dress-up parties. The school was brisk andsensible, but it was too large for the intimacy of the gradebuildings. Eddie Barnes was conspicuous now, with his energy inmanaging the athletic association, his beautifully combed hairand his real gold watch. Stacy Lindstrom was lost in themass.

It was Eddie who saw Theo home from parties. He was a man ofthe world. He went to Chicago as calmly as you or I would go outto the St. Croix River to spear pickerel.

Stacy rarely went to parties. Theo invited him to her own, andthe girls were polite to him. Actually he danced rather betterthan Eddie. But he couldn't talk about Chicago. He couldn't talkat all. Nor did he sing or go out for sports. His father wasdead. He worked Saturdays and three nights a week in anupholstery shop--a dingy, lint-blurred loft, where two old Swedeskept up as a permanent institution a debate on the LutheranChurch versus the Swedish Adventist.

"Why don't you get a good live job?" Eddie patronizingly askedStacy at recess, and Theo echoed the question; but neither ofthem had any suggestions about specific good live jobs.

Stacy stood from first to fifth in every class. But what,Eddie demanded, was the use of studying unless you were going tobe a school teacher? Which he certainly was not! He was going tocollege. He was eloquent and frequent on this topic. It wasn'tthe darned old books, but the association with the fellows, thateducated you, he pointed out. Friendships. Fraternities. Helped afellow like the dickens, both in society and business, when hegot out of college.

"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Theo.

Eddie said that Stacy was a longitudinal, latitudinous,isothermic, geologic, catawampaboid Scandahoofian. Everybodyadmired the way Eddie could make up long words. Theo's oldersister, Janet, who had cold, level eyes, said that Theo was afool to let a shabby, drabby nobody like that Stacy Lindstromcarry her books home from school. Theo defended Stacy whenever hewas mentioned. There is nothing which so cools young affection ashaving to defend people.

After high school Eddie went East to college, Stacy was aclerk in the tax commissioner's department of the railroad--andthe Dukes became rich, and immediately ceased to beadventurous.

Iron had been found under Mr. Duke's holdings in northernMinnesota. He refused to sell. He leased the land to theiron-mining company, and every time a scoop brought up a mass ofbrown earth in the open pit the company ran very fast and droppedtwenty-five cents in Mr. Duke's pocket. He felt heavy with silverand importance; he bought the P. J. Broom mansion and became theabject servant of possessions.

The Broom mansion had four drawing rooms, a heraldic limestonefireplace and a tower and a half. The half tower was merely anoctagonal shingle structure with a bulbous Moorish top; but thefull tower, which was of stone on a base of brick, had cathedralwindows, a weather vane, and a metal roof down which drippeddecorative blobs like copper tears. While the mansion was beingredecorated the Duke senior took the grand tour from Miami toPort Said, and brought home a carload of treasures. There was aready-made collection of cloisonné, which an English baronhad spent five years in gathering in Japan and five hours inlosing at Monte Carlo. There was a London traveling bag, realseal, too crammed with silver fittings to admit much of anythingelse, and too heavy for anyone save a piano mover to lift. Therewere rugs, and books, and hand-painted pictures, and a glasswindow from Nuremberg, and ushabti figures from Egypt, and apierced brass lamp in the shape of a mosque.

All these symbols of respectability the Dukes installed in therenovated Broom mansion, and settled down to watch them.

Lyman Duke was a kindly man, and shrewd, but the pride ofownership was a germ, and he was a sick man. Who, he meditated,had such a lamp? Could even the Honorable Gerard Randall point tosuch glowing rods of book backs?

Mrs. Duke organized personally conducted excursions to viewthe Axminster rug in the library. Janet forgot that she had everstood brushing her hair before a pine bureau. Now she sat beforea dressing table displaying candlesticks, an eyelash pencil, anda powder-puff box of gold lace over old rose. Janet movedgraciously, and invited little sister Theo to be cordiallyunpleasant to their grubby friends of grammar-school days.

The accumulation of things to make other people envious isnothing beside their accumulation because it's the thing to do.Janet discovered that life would be unendurable without anevening cloak. At least three evening cloaks were known to existwithin a block of the Broom mansion. True, nobody wore them.There aren't any balls or plays except in winter, and during aVernon winter you don't wear a satin cloak--you wear a fur coatand a muffler and a sweater and arctics, and you brush the frozenbreath from your collar, and dig out of your wraps like a rabbitemerging from a brush pile. But if everybody had them Janetwasn't going to be marked for life as one ignorant of theniceties. She used the word "niceties" frequently and withoutquailing.

She got an evening cloak. Also a pair of fifteen-dollar pumps,which she discarded for patent leathers as soon as she found thateverybody wore those--everybody being a girl in the next block,whose house wasn't anywhere near as nice as "ours."

Theo was only half glad of their grandeur. Oh, undoubtedly shewas excited about the house at first, and mentioned it to othergirls rather often, and rang for maids she didn't need. But shehad a little pain in the conscience. She felt that she hadn'tkept up defending Stacy Lindstrom very pluckily.

She was never allowed to forget Stacy's first call at themansion. The family were settled in the house. They were anxiousfor witnesses of their nobility. The bell rang at eight oneSaturday evening when they were finishing dinner. It was hard tobe finishing dinner at eight. They had been used to starting atsix-thirty-one and ending the last lap, neck and neck, atsix-fifty-two. But by starting at seven, and having a salad, andletting Father smoke his cigar at the table, they had stretchedout the ceremony to a reasonably decent length.

At the sound of the buzz in the butler's pantry Janetsqueaked: "Oh, maybe it's the Garlands! Or even the Randalls!"She ran into the hall.

"Janet! Jan-et! The maid will open the door!" Mrs. Dukewailed.

"I know, but I want to see who it is!"

Janet returned snapping: "Good heavens, it's only that StacyLindstrom! Coming at this early hour! And he's bought a new suit,just to go calling. It looks like sheet iron."

Theo pretended she had not heard. She fled to the distantlibrary. She was in a panic. She was ashamed of herself, but shedidn't trust Stacy to make enough impression. So it was Mr. Dukewho had the first chance at the audience:

"Ah, Stacy, glad to see you, my boy. The girls are round someplace. Theo!"

"Lyman! Don't shout so! I'll send a maid to find her,"remonstrated Mrs. Duke.

"Oh, she'll come a-running. Trust these girls to know when aboy's round!" boomed Mr. Duke.

Janet had joined Theo in the library. She veritably hissed asshe protested: "Boys-s-s-s-s! We come running for a commonplacerailway clerk!"

Theo made her handkerchief into a damp, tight little ball inher lap, smoothed it out, and very carefully began to tear offits border.

Afar Mr. Duke was shouting: "Come see my new collection whilewe're waiting."

"I hate you!" Theo snarled at Janet, and ran into the last ofthe series of drawing rooms. From its darkness she could see herfather and Stacy. She felt that she was protecting this, herbrother, from danger; from the greatest of dangers--being awkwardin the presence of the stranger, Janet. She was aware of Janetslithering in beside her.

"Now what do you think of that, eh?" Mr. Duke was demanding.He had unlocked a walnut cabinet, taken out an enameledplate.

Stacy was radiant. "Oh, yes. I know what that stuff is. I'veread about it. It's cloysoan." He had pronounced it to rime withmoan.

"Well, not precisely! Cloysonnay, most folks would call it.Culwasonnay, if you want to be real highbrow. But cloysoan,that's pretty good! Mamma! Janet! The lad says this is cloysoan!Ha, ha! Well, never mind, my boy. Better folks than you and Ihave made that kind of a mistake."

Janet was tittering. The poisonous stream of it trickledthrough all the rooms. Stacy must have heard. He looked aboutuneasily.

Suddenly Theo saw him as a lout, in his new suit that hunglike wood. He was twisting a button and trying to smile back atMr. Duke.

The cloisonné plate was given to Stacy to admire. Whathe saw was a flare of many-colored enamels in tiny compartments.In the center a dragon writhed its tongue in a field of stars,and on the rim were buds on clouds of snow, a flying bird, andamusing symbols among willow leaves.

But Mr. Duke was lecturing on what he ought to have seen:

"This is asara, and a very fine specimen. Authoritiesdiffer, but it belonged either to theShi sinwo or theMonzeki--princely monks, in the monastery ofNin-na-ji. Note the extreme thinness of the cloisons, andthe pastes are very evenly vitrified. The colors are remarkable.You'll notice there's slate blue, sage green, chrome yellow,and--uh--well, there's several other colors. You see the groundshows thekara kusa. That bird there is aho-ho inflight above the branches of thekiri tree."

Stacy had a healthy suspicion that a few months before Mr.Duke had known no more about Oriental art than Stacy Lindstrom.But he had no Japanese words for repartee, and he could only resthis weight on the other foot and croak "Well, well!"

Mr. Duke was beatifically going on: "Now thischat-subo, you'll notice, is not cloisonné at all,but champlevé. Very important point in studyingshippo ware. Note the unusually finekiku crest onthischawan."

"I see. Uh--I see," said Stacy.

"Just a goat, that's all he is, just a giddy goat," Janetwhispered to Theo in the dark room beyond, and pranced away.

It was five minutes before Theo got up courage to rescueStacy. When she edged into the room he was sitting in a largeleather chair and fidgeting. He was fidgeting in twenty differentbut equally irritating ways. He kept re-crossing his legs, andevery time he crossed them the stiff trousers bagged out in morehideous folds. Between times he tapped his feet. His fingersdrummed on the chair. He looked up at the ceiling, licking hislips, and hastily looked down, with an artificial smile inacknowledgment of Mr. Duke's reminiscences of travel.

Theo swooped on Stacy with hands clapping in welcome, with aflutter of white muslin skirts about young ankles.

"Isn't the house comfy? When we get a pig we can keep himunder that piano! Come on, I'll show you all the hidey holes,"she crowed.

She skipped off, dragging him by the hand--but she realizedthat she was doing altogether too much dragging. Stacy, who hadalways been too intent on their games to be self-conscious, wasself-conscious enough now. What could she say to him?

She besought: "I hope you'll come often. We'll have lots offun out of--"

"Oh, you won't know me any more, with a swell place likethis," he mumbled.

As women do she tried to bandage this raw, bruised moment. Shesnapped on the lights in the third drawing room, and called hisattention to the late Mr. P. J. Broom's coat of arms carved onthe hulking stone fireplace. "I got the decorator to puzzle itout for me, and as far as he could make out, if Pat Broom wasright he was descended from an English duke, a German general anda Serbian undertaker. He didn't miss a trick except--"

"Well, it's a pretty fine fireplace," Stacy interrupted. Helooked away, his eyes roving but dull, and dully he added: "Toofine for me, I guess."

Not once could she get him to share her joy in the house. Heseemed proud of the virtue of being poor. Like a boast soundedhis repeated "Too darned fine for me--don't belong in with allthese doo-dads." She worked hard. She showed him not only thecompany rooms but the delightful secret passage of the clotheschute which led from an upstairs bedroom to the laundry; thecloset drawers which moved on rollers and could be drawn out bythe little finger; the built-in clock with both Trinity andWestminster chimes; the mysterious spaces of the basement, withthe gas drier for wet wash, and the wine cellar which--as it sofar contained only a case of beer and seven bottles of gingerale--was chiefly interesting to the sense of make-believe.

Obediently he looked where she pointed; politely he repeatedthat everything was "pretty fine"; and not once was he hercomrade. The spirit of divine trust was dead, horribly mangledand dead, she panted, while she caroled in the bestnice-young-woman tone she could summon: "See, Stace. Isn't thiscun-ning?"

It is fabled that sometimes the most malignant ghosts aresouls that in life have been the most kindly and beloved. Deadthough this ancient friendship seemed, it had yet one phase ofhorror to manifest. After having implied that he was a plainhonest fellow and glad of it, Stacy descended to actual boasting.They sat uneasily in the smallest of the drawing rooms, theireyes fencing. Theo warned herself that he was merely embarrassed.She wanted to be sorry for him. But she was tired--tired ofdefending him to others, tired of fighting to hold hisaffection.

"I certainly am eating the work in the tax commissioner'soffice. I'm studying accounting systems and banking methodsevenings, and you want to watch your Uncle Stacy. I'll make someof these rich fellows sit up! I know the cashier at the LumberNational pretty well now, and he as much as said I could have ajob there, at better money, any time I wanted to."

He did not say what he wished to put into the railroad and thebank--only what he wished to get out of them. He had no plans,apparently, to build up great institutions for Vernon, but he didhave plans to build up a large salary for Stacy Lindstrom.

And one by one, as flustered youth does, he dragged in thenames of all the important men he had met. The conversation hadto be bent distressingly, to get them all in.

He took half an hour in trying to make an impressive exit.

"I hate him! He expects me to be snobbish! He made it so hardfor me to apologize for being rich. He--Oh, I hate him!" Theosobbed by her bed.

Not for a week did she want to see the boy again; and not fora month did he call. By that time she was used to doing withouthim. Before long she was used to doing without most people. Shewas left lonely. Janet had gone East to a college that wasn't acollege at all, but a manicurist's buffer of a school, allchamois, celluloid, and pink powder--a school all roses andpurring and saddle horses and pleasant reading of little manualsabout art. Theo had admired her older sister. She had been eagerwhen Janet had let her wash gloves and run ribbons. She missedthe joy of service. She missed too the conveniences of the oldbrown house--the straw-smelling dog house in the back yard, withthe filthy, agreeable, gentlemanly old setter who had residedthere; and the tree up which a young woman with secret sorrowscould shin resentfully.

Not only Janet and Eddie Barnes but most of Theo's friends hadescaped domestic bliss and gone off to school. Theo wanted tofollow them, but Mrs. Duke objected: "I wouldn't like to haveboth my little daughters desert me at once." At the age halfwaybetween child and independent woman Theo was alone. She missedplaying; she missed the achievements of housework.

In the old days, on the hired girl's night out, Theo had notminded splashing in rainbow-bubbled suds and polishing the waterglasses to shininess. But now there was no hired girl's nightout, and no hired girls. There were maids instead, three of them,with a man who took care of the furnace and garden and put onstorm windows. The eldest of the maids was the housekeeper-cook,and she was a straight-mouthed, carp-eyed person named Lizzie.Lizzie had been in the Best Houses. She saw to it that neitherthe other servants nor the Dukes grew slack. She would havefainted at the sight of Sunday supper in the kitchen or of Theowashing dishes.

Mr. Duke pretended to be glad that they had a furnace man;that he no longer had to put on overalls and black leather glovesto tend the furnace and sift the ashes. That had been hisbefore-supper game at the shabby brown house. As a real-estateman, he had been mediocre. As a furnace man, he had been asurgeon, an artist. He had operated on the furnace delicately,giving lectures on his technic to a clinic of admiring young. Youmustn't, he had exhorted, shake for one second after the sliversof hot coal tumble through the grate. You must turn off the draftat exactly the moment when the rose-and-saffron flames quiverabove the sullen mound of coal.

His wife now maintained that he had been dreadfully bored andput upon by chores. He didn't contradict. He was proud that he nolonger had to perch on a ladder holding a storm window ormightily whirling the screw driver as the screws sunk unerringlyhome. But with nothing to do but look at the furnace man, andgaze at his collections of jugs and bugs and rugs, he became slowof step and foggy of eye, and sometimes, about nothing inparticular, he sighed.

Whenever they had guests for dinner he solemnly showed thecloisonné and solemnly the guests said, "Oh," and"Really?" and "Is it?" They didn't want to see thecloisonné, and Mr. Duke didn't want to show it, and of hishalf-dozen words of Japanese he was exceedingly weary. But if oneis a celebrated collector one must keep on collecting and showingthe collections.

These dinners and private exhibits were part of a socialsystem in which the Dukes were entangled. It wasn't aneasy-fitting system. It was too new. If we ever have professionalgentlemen in this country we may learn to do nothing and do itbeautifully. But so far we want to do things. Vernon society wentout for businesslike activities. There was much motoring, golfand the discussion of golf, and country-club dances at which themen's costumes ran from full evening dress through dinner coatsto gray suits with tan shoes.

Most of the men enjoyed these activities honestly. They dancedand motored and golfed because they liked to; because it restedthem after the day in the office. But there was a small exclusiveset in Vernon that had to spend all its time in gettingrecognized as a small exclusive set. It was social solitaire. Byliving in a district composed of a particular three blocks on theBoulevard of the Lakes Mr. Duke had been pushed into thatexclusive set--Mrs. Duke giving a hand in the pushing.

Sometimes he rebelled. He wanted to be back at work. He hadengaged a dismayingly competent manager for his real-estateoffice, and even by the most ingenious efforts to find somethingwrong with the books or the correspondence he couldn't keepoccupied at the office for more than two hours a day. He longedto discharge the manager, but Mrs. Duke would not have it. Sheenjoyed the ownership of a leisure-class husband.

For rich women the social system in Vernon does provide moregames than for men. The poor we have always with us, and thepurpose of the Lord in providing the poor is to enable us of thebetter classes to amuse ourselves by investigating them anduplifting them and at dinners telling how charitable we are. Thepoor don't like it much. They have no gratitude. They wouldrather be uplifters themselves. But if they are taken firmly inhand they can be kept reasonably dependent and interesting foryears.

The remnants of the energy that had once taken Mrs. Duke intothe woods beyond the end of steel now drove her intopoor-baiting. She was a committeewoman five deep. She hadpigeonholes of mysteriously important correspondence, and shehustled about in the limousine. When her husband wanted to goback and do real work she was oratorical:

"That's the trouble with the American man. He really likes hissordid office. No, dearie, you just enjoy your leisure for awhile yet. As soon as we finish the campaign for censoring musicyou and I will run away and take a good trip--San Francisco andHonolulu."

But whenever she actually was almost ready to go even he sawobjections. How ridiculous to desert their adorable house, thebeds soft as whipped cream, the mushrooms and wild rice that onlyLizzie could cook, for the discomforts of trains and hotels! Andwas it safe to leave the priceless collections? There had been aburglar scare--there always has just been a burglar scare in allcities. The Dukes didn't explain how their presence would keepburglars away, but they gallantly gave up their lives to guardingthe cloisonné while they talked about getting a caretaker,and never tried to get him.

Thus at last was Lyman Duke become a prison guard shackled tothe things he owned, and the longest journey of the man who hadonce desired new peaks and softer air was a slow walk down to theCommercial Club for lunch.

When Janet and Eddie Barnes and the rest of Theo's friendscame back from college; when the sons went into their fathers'wholesale offices and clubs, and the daughters joined theirmothers' lecture courses and societies, and there was aninheriting Younger Set and many family plans for marriages--thenTheo ceased to be lonely, and remembered how to play. She hadgone to desultory dances during their absence, but only withpeople too old or too young. Now she had a group of her own. Shedanced with a hot passion for music and movement; her questioningabout life disappeared in laughter as she rose to the rushing ofpeople and the flashing of gowns.

Stacy Lindstrom was out of existence in this colored world.Stacy was now chief clerk in the railroad tax commissioner'soffice, and spoken of as future assistant cashier in the LumberNational Bank. But he was quite insignificant. He was thin--notslim. He was silent--not reserved. His clothes were plain--notcleverly inconspicuous. He wore eyeglasses with a gold chainattached to a hoop over one ear; and he totally failed to insistthat he was bored by the vaudeville which everybody attended andeverybody sneered at. Oh, he was ordinary, through andthrough.

Thus with boarding-school wisdom Janet dissected theunfortunate social problem known as Stacy Lindstrom. Theo didn'tprotest much. It was not possible for youth to keep on for fiveyears very ardently defending anybody who changed as little asStacy. And Theo was busy.

Not only to dances did Janet lead her, but into the delightsof being artistic. Janet had been gapingly impressed by the Broommansion when the family had acquired it, but now, after vacationvisits to Eastern friends, she saw that the large brown velvetchairs were stuffy, and the table with the inlaid chessboard ofmother-of-pearl a horror. What Janet saw she also expressed.

In one of the manuals the girls had been tenderly encouragedto glance through at Janet's college it was courageously statedthat simplicity was the keynote in decoration. At breakfast,dinner, and even at suppers personally abstracted from the icebox at two A. M., Janet clamored that their ratty old palaceought to be refurnished. Her parents paid no attention. That wasjust as well.

Otherwise Janet would have lost the chance to get into herportable pulpit and admonish: "When I have a house it will beabsolutely simple. Just a few exquisite vases, and not one chairthat doesn't melt into the environment.Things--things--things--they are so dreadful! I shan't have athing I can't use. Use is the test of beauty."

Theo knew that the admirable Janet expressed something whichshe had been feeling like a dull, unplaced pain. She became amember of an informal art association consisting of herself,Janet, Eddie Barnes, and Harry McPherson, Janet's chief suitor.It is true that the art association gave most of its attention tositting together in corners at dances and giggling at otherpeople's clothes, but Janet did lead them to an exhibit at theVernon Art Institute, and afterward they had tea and feltintellectual and peculiar and proud.

Eddie Barnes was showing new depths. He had attended a greatseaboard university whose principal distinction, besides itsathletics, was its skill in instructing select young gentlemen todiscuss any topic in the world without having any knowledge of itwhatever. During Janet's pogrom against the Dukes' mosque-shapedbrass lamp Eddie was heard to say a number of terribly goodthings about the social value of knowing wall sconces.

When Janet and Harry McPherson were married Eddie was bestman, Theo bridesmaid.

Janet had furnished her new house. When Theo had accompaniedJanet on the first shopping flight she had wanted to know justwhat sort of chairs would perform the miracle of melting into theenvironment. She wondered whether they could be found indepartment stores or only in magic shops. But Janet led her to aplace only too familiar--the Crafts League, where Mrs. Dukealways bought candle shades and small almond dishes.

Janet instantly purchased a hand-tooled leather box forplaying cards, and a desk set which included a locked diary in amorocco cover and an ingenious case containing scissors,magnifying glass, pencil sharpener, paper cutter, steel inkeraser, silver penknife. This tool kit was a delightful toy, andit cost thirty-seven dollars. The clerk explained that it wasespecially marked down from forty-five dollars, though he did notexplain why it should be especially marked down.

Theo wailed: "But those aren't necessary! That lastthingumajig has four different kinds of knives, where you onlyneed one. It's at least as useless as Papa'scloisonné."

"I know, but it's so amusing. And it's entirely different fromPapa's old stuff. It's the newest thing out!" Janetexplained.

Before she had bought a single environment-melting chair Janetadded to her simple and useful furnishings a collection of glassfruit for table centerpiece, a set of Venetian glass bottles, atraveling clock with a case of gold and platinum and works oftin. For her sensible desk she acquired a complicated engineconsisting of a tiny marble pedestal, on which was an onyx ball,on which was a cerise and turquoise china parrot, from whoseback, for no very clear anatomical reason, issued a candlestick.But not a stick for candles. It was wired for electricity.

As she accepted each treasure Janet rippled that it was soamusing. The clerk added "So quaint," as though it rimed withamusing. While Theo listened uncomfortably they two sang a chorusof disparagement of Mid-Victorian bric-a-brac and praise ofmodern clever bits.

When Janet got time for the miraculous chairs--

She had decided to furnish her dining room in friendly,graceful Sheraton, but the clerk spoke confidentially of Frenchlacquer, and Theo watched Janet pledge her troth to a frailred-lacquered dining-room set of brazen angles. The clerk alsospoke of distinguished entrance halls, and wished upon Janet anenormous Spanish chair of stamped leather upholstery anddropsical gilded legs, with a mirror that cost a hundred andtwenty dollars, and a chest in which Janet didn't intend to keepanything.

Theo went home feeling that she was carrying on her shouldersa burden of gilded oak; that she would never again run free.

When Janet's house was done it looked like a sale in a seasidegift shop. Even her telephone was covered with a brocade andchina doll. Theo saw Janet spending her days vaguely endeavoringto telephone to living life through brocade dolls.

After Janet's marriage Theo realized that she was tired ofgoing to parties with the same group; of hearing the same Eddietell the same stories about the cousin of the Vanderbilts who hadalmost invited him to go yachting. She was tired of Vernon's onerich middle-aged bachelor; of the bouncing girl twins who alwaysrough-housed at dances. She was peculiarly weary of the samesalads and ices which all Vernon hostesses always got from thesame caterer. There was one kind of cake with rosettes of nutswhich Theo met four times in two weeks--and expected to meet tillthe caterer passed beyond. She could tell beforehand how anygiven festivity would turn out. She knew at just what momentafter a luncheon the conversation about babies would turn intouneasy yawns, and the hostess would, inevitably, propose bridge.Theo desired to assassinate the entire court of face cards.

Stacy Lindstrom had about once a year indicated a shy desireto have her meet his own set. He told her that they went skiingin winter and picnicking in summer; he hinted how simply andfrankly they talked at dinners. Theo went gladly with him toseveral parties of young married people and a few unmarriedsisters and cousins. For three times she enjoyed the change inpersonnel. As she saw the bright new flats, with the glassed-inporches, the wicker furniture, the colored prints and thedavenports; as she heard the people chaff one another; as sheaccompanied them to a public skating rink and sang to the blaringband--she felt that she had come out of the stupidity of stiltedsocial sets and returned to the naturalness of the old brownhouse.

But after three parties she knew all the jokes of the husbandsabout their wives, and with unnecessary thoroughness she knew theopinions of each person upon movies, Chicago, prohibition, the I.W. W., Mrs. Sam Jenkins' chronic party gown, and Stacy's new jobin the Lumber National. She tried to enliven the parties. Sheworked harder than any of her hostesses. She proposed charades,music. She failed. She gave them one gorgeous dance, anddisappeared from their group forever.

She did go with Stacy on a tramp through the snow, and enjoyedit--till he began to hint that he, too, might have a great houseand many drawing rooms some day. He had very little to say aboutwhat he hoped to do for the Lumber National Bank in return.

Then did Theo feel utterly deserted. She blamed herself. Wassomething wrong with her that she alone found these amusements soagonizingly unamusing? And feeling thus why didn't she dosomething about it? She went on helping her mother in thegigantic task of asking Lizzie what orders Lizzie wanted them togive her. She went on planning that some day she would read largebooks and know all about world problems, and she went onforgetting to buy the books. She was twenty-six, and there was noman to marry except the chattering Eddie Barnes. Certainly shecould not think romantically about that Stacy Lindstrom whoseambition seemed to be to get enough money to become an imitationchattering Eddie Barnes.

Then America entered the war.

Eddie Barnes went to the first officers' training camp, andpresently was a highly decorative first lieutenant in ahundred-dollar uniform. Stacy Lindstrom made his savings over tohis mother, and enlisted. While Eddie was still stationed at acantonment as instructor Stacy was writing Theo ten-word messagesfrom France. He had become a sergeant, and French agriculture wasinteresting, he wrote.

Stacy's farewell had been undistinguished. He called--aslight, commonplace figure in a badly fitting private's uniform.He sat on the piano stool and mouthed: "Well, I have a furlough.Then we get shipped across. Well--don't forget me, Theo."

At the door Stacy kissed her hand so sharply that his teethbruised her skin, and ran down the steps, silent.

But Eddie, who came up from the cantonment at least once amonth, at least that often gave a long, brave farewell to Theo.Handsome, slim, erect, he invariably paced the smallest drawingroom, stopped, trembled, and said in a military tone, tenor butresolute: "Well, old honey, this may be the last time I see you.I may get overseas service any time now. Theo dear, do you knowhow much I care? I shall take a picture of you in my heart, andit may be the last thing I ever think of. I'm no hero, but I knowI shall do my duty. And, Theo, if I don't come back--"

The first two times Theo flared into weeping at this point,and Eddie's arm was about her, and she kissed him. But the third,fourth and fifth times he said good-by forever she chuckled,"Cheer up, old boy." It was hard for her to feel tragic aboutEddie's being in the service, because she was in the serviceherself.

At last there was work that needed her. She had started withthree afternoons a week at Red Cross; chatty afternoons, with hermother beside her, and familiar neighbors stopping in the middleof surgical dressings to gurgle: "Oh, did you hear about howangry George Bangs was when Nellie bought a case of toilet soapat a dollar a cake? Think of it. A dollar! When you can get avery nice imported soap at twenty-five cents."

Theo felt that there was too much lint on the conversation andtoo little on their hands. She found herself one with a dozengirls who had been wrens and wanted to be eagles. Two of themlearned motor repairing and got across to France. Theo wanted togo, but her mother refused. After a dignified protest from Mrs.Duke, Theo became telephone girl at Red Cross headquarters, tillshe had learned shorthand and typing, and was able to serve thehead of the state Red Cross as secretary. She envied themotor-corps women in their uniforms, but she exulted in power--inbeing able to give quick, accurate information to the distressedwomen who came fluttering to headquarters.

Mrs. Duke felt that typing was low. Theo was protected by herfather.

"Good thing for the girl to have business training," he keptinsisting, till the commanding officer of the house impatientlyconsented.

It was the American Library Association collection whichturned Theo from a dim uneasiness about the tyranny ofpossessions to active war. She bounced into the largest drawingroom one dinner time, ten minutes late, crying: "Let's go overall our books tonight and weed out a dandy bunch for thesoldiers!"

Mrs. Duke ruled: "Really, my dear, if you would only try to beon time for your meals! It's hard enough on Lizzie and myself tokeep the house running--"

"Come, come, come! Get your hat off and comb your hair and getready for dinner. I'm almost starved!" grumbled Mr. Duke.

Theo repeated the demand as soon as she was seated. Thesoldiers, she began, needed--

"We occasionally read the newspapers ourselves! Of course weshall be very glad to give what books we can spare. But theredoesn't seem to be any necessity of going at things inthis--this--hit-or-a-miss! Besides, I have some letters to writethis evening," stated Mrs. Duke.

"Well, I'm going over them anyway!"

"I wish to see any books before you send them away!"

With Theo visualizing herself carrying off a carload of books,the Dukes ambled to the library after finishing dinner--andfinishing coffee, a cigar and chocolate peppermints, and adiscussion of the proper chintz for the shabby chairs in theguest room. Theo realized as she looked at the lofty, benign, andcarefully locked bookcases that she hadn't touched one of thebooks for a year; that for six months she hadn't seen anyoneenter the room for any purpose other than sweeping.

After fifteen minutes spent in studying every illustration ina three-volume history Mrs. Duke announced: "Here's something Ithink we might give away, Lym. Nobody has ever read it. A goodmany of the pages are uncut."

Mr. Duke protested: "Give that away? No, sir! I been meaningto get at that for a long time. Why, that's a valuable history.Tells all about modern Europe. Man ought to read it to get anidea of the sources of the war."

"But you never will read it, Papa," begged Theo.

"Now, Theo," her mother remonstrated in the D. A. R. manner,"if your father wishes to keep it that's all there is to be said,and we will make no more words about it." She returned the threevolumes to the shelf.

"I'll turn it over to you just as soon as I've read it," herfather obliged. Theo reflected that if any soldiers in thecurrent conflict were to see the history they would have toprolong the war till 1950.

But she tried to look grateful while her father went on: "Tellyou what I was thinking, though, Mother. Here's these two shelvesof novels--none of 'em by standard authors--all just moonshine orblood and thunder. Let's clear out the whole bunch."

"But those books are just the thing for a rainy day--nicelight reading. And for guests. But now this--this old book onsaddlery. When we had horses you used to look at it, but now,with motors and all--"

"I know, but I still like to browse in it now and then."

"Very well."

Theo fled. She remembered piles of shabby books in the attic.While the Dukes were discovering that after all there wasn't oneof the four hundred volumes in the library which they weren'tgoing to read right away Theo heaped the dining-room table withattic waifs. She called her parents. The first thing Mrs. Dukespied was a Tennyson, printed in 1890 in a type doubtlesssuitable to ants, small sand-colored ants, but illegible to thehuman eye. Mrs. Duke shrieked: "Oh! You weren't thinking ofgiving that handsome Tennyson away! Why, it's a very handsomeedition. Besides, it's one of the first books your father and Iever had. It was given to us by your Aunt Gracie!"

"But Moth-er dear! You haven't even seen the book foryears!"

"Well, I've thought of it often."

"How about all these Christmas books?"

"Now, Theodora, if you wouldn't be so impatient, but kindlygive your father and me time to look them over--"

Two hours and seventeen minutes after dinner, Mr. and Mrs.Duke had almost resignedly agreed to present the followingliterary treasures to the soldiers of these United States fortheir edification and entertainment:

One sixth-grade geography. OneWild Flowers of NorthernWisconsin. Two duplicate copies ofLittle Women. TheCongressional Record for part of 1902. One black,depressed, religious volume entitledThe Dragon's Fight Withthe Woman for 1260 Prophetic Days, from which the last sevenhundred days were missing, leaving the issue of the combat inserious doubt. Four novels, all by women, severally calledGriselda of the Red Hand, Bramleigh of British Columbia, LadyTip-Tippet, andBillikins' Lonely Christmas.

Theo looked at them. She laughed. Then she was sitting by thetable, her head down, sobbing. Her parents glanced at each otherin hurt amazement.

"I can't understand the girl. After all the pains we took totry to help her!" sighed Mrs. Duke later, when they wereundressing.

"O-o-o-oh," yawned Mr. Duke as he removed his collar from theback button--with the slight, invariable twinge in his rheumaticshoulder blades. "Oh, she's nervous and tired from her work downat that Red Cross place. I'm in favor of her having a littleexperience, but at the same time there's no need of overdoing.Plenty of other people to help out."

He intended to state this paternal wisdom to Theo atbreakfast, but Theo at breakfast was not one to whom to statethings paternally. Her normally broad shining lips were suckedin. She merely nodded to her parents, then attended withstrictness to her oatmeal and departed--after privily instructingLizzie to give the smaller pile of books in the dining room tothe junk collector.

Three novels from the pile she did take to the public libraryfor the A. L. A. To these she added twenty books, mostlytrigonometries, bought with her own pocket money. Consequentlyshe had no lunch save a glass of milk for twenty days. But as theDukes didn't know that, everybody was happy.

The battle of the books led to other sanguinaryskirmishes.

There was the fireless cooker.

It was an early, homemade fireless cooker, constructed in thedays when anything in the shape of one box inside another, withany spare scraps of sawdust between, was regarded as a valuabledomestic machine. Aside from the fact that it didn't cook, theDukes' cooker took up room in the kitchen, gathered a film ofgrease which caught a swamp of dust, and regularly bangedLizzie's shins. For six years the Dukes had talked about havingit repaired. They had run through the historical, scientific, andfinancial aspects of cookers at least once a season.

"I've wondered sometimes if we couldn't just have the furnaceman take out the sawdust and put in something else or--Theo,wouldn't you like to run into Whaley & Baumgarten's one ofthese days, and price all of the new fireless cookers?" beamedMrs. Duke.

"Too busy."

In a grieved, spacious manner Mrs. Duke reproved: "Well, mydear, I certainly am too busy, what with the party for the newrector and his bride--"

"Call up the store. Tell 'em to send up a good cooker ontrial," said Theo.

"But these things have to be done with care and thought--"

Theo was stalking away as she retorted: "Not by me theydon't!"

She was sorry for her rudeness afterward, and that evening shewas gay and young as she played ballads for her father and didher mother's hair. After that, when she was going to bed, andvery tired, and horribly confused in her thinking, she was sorrybecause she had been sorry because she had been rude.

The furnace went wrong, and its dissipations were discussed byMr. Duke, Mrs. Duke, Mrs. Harry McPhersonnée Duke,Lizzie, the furnace man, and the plumber, till Theo ran up to herroom and bit the pillow to keep from screaming. She begged herfather to install a new furnace: "The old one will set the houseafire--it's a terrible old animal."

"Nonsense. Take a chance on fire," said he. "House andeverything well insured anyway. If the house did burn downthere'd be one good thing--wouldn't have to worry any more aboutgetting that twelve tons of coal we're still shy."

When Mr. Duke was summoned to Duluth by the iron-miningcompany Mrs. Duke sobbingly called Theo home from the midst oftearing work.

Theo arrived in terror. "What is it? What's happened toPapa?"

"Happened? Why, nothing. But he didn't have a chance to take asingle thing to Duluth, and he simply won't know what to dowithout his traveling bag--the one he got in London--all thefittings and everything that he's used to, so he could put hishand on a toothbrush right in the dark--"

"But, Mother dear, I'm sure bathrooms in Duluth have electriclights, so he won't need to put his hand on tooth-brushes in thedark. And he can get nice new lovely brushes at almost any drugstore and not have to fuss--"

"Fuss? Fuss? It's you who are doing the fussing. He just won'tknow what to do without his traveling bag."

While she helped her mother and Lizzie drag the ponderous bagdown from the attic; while her mother, merely thinking aloud,discussed whether "your father" would want the madras pajamas orthe flannelette; while, upon almost tearful maternal request,Theo hunted all through the house for the missing cut-glass soapcase, she was holding herself in. She disliked herself for beingso unsympathetic. She remembered how touched she had been byexactly the same domestic comedy two years before. Butunsympathetic she was, even two days later, when her mothertriumphantly showed Mr. Duke's note: "I can't tell you how glad Iwas to see good old bag showing up here at hotel; felt lostwithout it."

"Just the same, my absence that afternoon cost the Red Crossat least fifty dollars, and for a lot less than that he couldhave gone out and bought twice as good a bag--lighter, moreconvenient. Things! Poor Dad is the servant of that cursedpig-iron bag," she meditated.

She believed that she was being very subtle about herrebellion, but it must have been obvious, for after Mr. Duke'sreturn her mother suddenly attacked her at dinner.

"So far as I can make out from the way you're pouting andsulking and carrying on, you must have some sort of a socialisticidea that possessions are unimportant. Now you ought--"

"Anarchist, do you mean, Mother dear?"

"Kindly do not interrupt me! As I was saying: It's things thathave made the world advance from barbarism. Motor cars, clothesyou can wash, razors that enable a man to look neat, cannedfoods, printing presses, steamers, bathrooms--those are what havegotten men beyond living in skins in horrid damp caves."

"Of course. And that's why I object to people fussing so aboutcertain things, and keeping themselves from getting full use ofbigger things. If you're always so busy arranging the flowers inthe vase in a limousine that you never have time to go riding,then the vase has spoiled the motor for--"

"I don't get your logic at all. I certainly pay very littleattention to the flowers in our car. Lizzie arranges them forme!" triumphed Mrs. Duke.

Theo was charging on. She was trying to get her own ideasstraight. "And if a man spends valuable time in tinkering with aworn-out razor when he could buy a new one, then he's keepinghimself in the damp cave and the bearskin undies. That isn'tthrift. It's waste."

"I fancy that people in caves, in prehistoric times, did notuse razors at all, did they, Lyman?" her mother majesticallycorrected.

"Now you always worry about Papa's bag. It was nice once, andworth caring for, but it's just a bother now. On your principle afactory would stop running for half the year to patch up or laceup the belting, or whatever it is they do, instead of getting newbelting and thus--Oh, can't you see? Buy things. Use 'em. Butthrow them away if they're more bother than good. If a bag keepsyou from enjoying traveling--chuck it in the river! If a manmakes a tennis court and finds he really doesn't like tennis, letthe court get weedy rather than spend glorious free Octoberafternoons in mowing and raking--"

"Well, I suppose you mean rolling it," said her motherdomestically. "And I don't know what tennis has to do with thesubject. I'm sure I haven't mentioned tennis. And I trust you'lladmit that your knowledge of factories and belting is notauthoritative. No. The trouble is, this Red Cross work is gettingyou so you can't think straight. Of course with this war and all,it may be permissible to waste a lot of good time and moneymaking dressings and things for a lot of green nurses to waste,but you girls must learn the great principle of thrift."

"We have! I'm practicing it. It means--oh, so much, now.Thrift is doing without things you don't need, and taking care ofthings as long as they're useful. It distinctly isn't wastingtime and spiritual devotion over things you can't use--justbecause you happen to be so unfortunate as to own 'em. Like oureternal fussing over that clock in the upper hall that no oneever looks at--"

Not listening, her mother was placidly rolling on: "You seemto think this house needs too much attention. You'd like it,wouldn't you, if we moved to a couple of rooms in the DakotaLodging House!"

Theo gave it up.

Two days later she forgot it.

Creeping into her snug life, wailing for her help, came ayellow-faced apparition whose eyes were not for seeing but meregashes to show the suffering within. It was--it had been--oneStacy Lindstrom, a sergeant of the A. E. F.

Stacy had lain with a shattered shoulder in a shell pit forthree days. He had had pneumonia. Four distinct times all of himhad died, quite definitely died--all but the desire to seeTheo.

His little, timid, vehemently respectable mother sent for Theoon the night when he was brought home, and despite Mrs. Duke'spanicky protest Theo went to him at eleven in the evening.

"Not going to die for little while. Terribly weak, but allhere. Pull through--if you want me to. Not asking you to like me.All I want--want you to want me to live. Made 'em send me home.Was all right on the sea. But weak. Got touch of typhoid in NewYork. Didn't show up till on the train. But all right andcheerful--Oh! I hurt so. Just hurt, hurt, hurt, every inch of me.Never mind. Well, seen you again. Can die now. Guess I will."

Thus in panting words he muttered, while she knelt by him andcould not tell whether she loved him or hated him; whether sheshrank from this skinny claw outstretched from the grave or wasdrawn to him by a longing to nurse his soul back to a desire forlife. But this she knew: Even Red Cross efficiency was nothing inthe presence of her first contact with raw living life--mostrawly living when crawling out from the slime of death.

She overruled Mrs. Lindstrom; got a nurse and DoctorRollin--Rollin, the interior medicine specialist.

"Boy's all right. Hasn't got strength enough to fight veryhard. Better cheer him up," said Doctor Rollin. "Bill? My bill?He's a soldier, isn't he? Don't you suppose I wanted to go intothe army too? Chance to see beautiful cases for once. Yes. Admitit. Like to have fool salutes too. Got to stay home, nurse lot ofdam-fool women. Charge a soldier? Don't bother me," he grumbled,while he was folding up his stethoscope, and closing his bag, andtrying to find his hat, which Mrs. Lindstrom had politelyconcealed.

Every day after her work Theo trudged to the Lindstromhouse--a scrubbed and tidied cottage in whose living room was abureau with a lace cover, a gilded shell, and two photographs ofstiff relatives in Norway. She watched Stacy grow back into life.His hands, which had been yellow and drawn as the talons of astarved Chinaman, became pink and solid. The big knuckles, whichhad been lumpy under the crackly skin, were padded again.

She had been surprised into hot pity for him. She was savedequally by his amusement over his own weakness, and by hisirritableness. Though he had called for her, during the firstweek he seemed to dislike her and all other human beings save hisnurse. In the depths of lead-colored pain nothing mattered to himsave his own comfort. The coolness of his glass of water was moreto him than the war. Even when he became human again, and eagerat her coming, there was nothing very personal in their talk.When he was able to do more than gasp out a few words sheencouraged in him the ambition to pile up money which shedetested.

Uncomfortably she looked at him, thin against a plump pillow,and her voice was artificially cheery as she declared: "You'll beback in the bank soon. I'm sure they'll raise you. No reason whyyou shouldn't be president of it some day."

He had closed his pale eyelids. She thought he wasdiscouraged. Noisily she reassured, "Honestly! I'm sure you'llmake money--lots of it."

His eyes were open, blazing. "Money! Yes! Wonderfulthing!"

"Ye-es."

"Buys tanks and shells, and food for homeless babies. But forme--I just want a living. There isn't any Stacy Lindstrom anymore." He was absorbed in that bigger thing over there, in thatNirvana--a fighting Nirvana! "I've got ambitions, big 'uns, butnot to see myself in a morning coat and new gloves onSunday!"

He said nothing more. A week after, he was sitting up in bed,reading, in a Lindstromy nightgown of white cotton edged withred. She wondered at the book. It wasColloquialFrench.

"You aren't planning to go back?" she asked casually.

"Yes. I've got it straight now." He leaned back, pulled thebedclothes carefully up about his neck and said quietly, "I'mgoing back to fight. But not just for the duration of the war.Now I know what I was meant for. I can do things with my hands,and I get along with plain folks. I'm going back onreconstruction work. We're going to rebuild France. I'mstudying--French, cottage architecture, cabbages. I'm a prettygood farmer--'member how I used to work on the farm,vacations?"

She saw that all self-consciousness was gone from him. He wasagain the Stacy Lindstrom who had been lord of the Red Rivercarts. Her haunted years of nervousness about life disappeared,and suddenly she was again too fond of her boy companion to wastetime considering whether she was fond of him. They were makingplans, laughing the quick curt laughs of intimates.

A week later Mrs. Lindstrom took her aside.

Mrs. Lindstrom had always, after admitting Theo and noddingwithout the slightest expression in her anæmic face,vanished through the kitchen doorway. Tonight, as Theo wassailing out, Mrs. Lindstrom hastened after her through the livingroom.

"Miss! Miss Duke! Yoost a minute. Could you speak wit'me?"

"Why, yes."

"Dis--ay--da boy get along pretty gude, eh? He seem werrygude, today. Ay vish you should--" The little woman's face washard. "Ay don't know how to say it elegant, but if you ever--Iknow he ain't your fella, but he always got that picture of you,and maybe now he ban pretty brave soldier, maybe you could likehim better, but--I know I yoost ban Old Country woman. If you andhim marry--I keep away, not bother you. Your folks is richand--Oh, I gif, I gif him to you--if you vant him."

Mrs. Lindstrom's sulky eyes seemed to expand, grow misty. HerPuritanical chest was terribly heaving. She sobbed: "He alwaystalk about you ever since he ban little fella. Please excuse me Ispoke, if you don't vant him, but I vanted you should know, I doanyt'ing for him. And you."

She fled, and Theo could hear the scouring of a pot in thekitchen. Theo fled the other way.

It was that same evening, at dinner, that Mrs. Duke delicatelyattempted social homicide.

"My dear, aren't you going to see this Lindstrom boy ratheroftener than you need to? From what you say he must beconvalescing. I hope that your pity for him won't lead you intoany foolish notions and sentiment about him."

Theo laughed. "No time to be sentimental about anything thesedays. I've canned the word--"

"'Canned'! Oh, Theo!"

"--'sentiment' entirely. But if I hadn't, Stace wouldn't be abad one to write little poems about. He used to be my buddywhen--"

"Please--do--not--be--so--vulgar! And Theo, however you mayregard Stacy, kindly do stop and think how Mrs. Lindstrom wouldlook in this house!"

The cheerful, gustatory manner died in Theo. She rose. Shesaid with an intense, a religious solemnity: "This house! Damnthis house!"

The Lindstroms were not mentioned again. There was no need.Mrs. Duke's eyebrows adequately repeated her opinions when Theocame racing in at night, buoyant with work and walking andfighting over Stacy's plans.

Theo fancied that her father looked at her moresympathetically. She ceased to take Mr. Duke as a matter ofcourse, as one more fixed than the radiators. She realized thathe spent these autumn evenings in staring at the fire. When helooked up he smiled, but his eyes were scary. Theo noticed thathe had given up making wistful suggestions to Mrs. Duke that hebe permitted to go back to real work, or that they get a farm, orgo traveling. Once they had a week's excursion to New York, butMrs. Duke had to hasten back for her committees. She was everfirmer with her husband; more ready with reminders that it washard to get away from a big house like this; that men oughtn't tobe so selfish and just expect Lizzie and her--

Mr. Duke no longer argued. He rarely went to his office. Hewas becoming a slippered old man.

Eddie Barnes was back in Vernon on the sixth of his positivelylast, final, ultimate farewells.

Theo yelled in joy when he called. She was positively blowzywith healthy vulgarity. She had won an argument with Stacy aboutteaching the French to plant corn, and had walked home almost ata trot.

"Fine to see you! Saying an eternal farewell again?" shebrutally asked Eddie.

For one of the young samurai Eddie was rather sheepish. Hestalked about the largest drawing room. His puttees shone. Eddiereally had very nice legs, the modern young woman reflected.

"Gosh, I'm an awful fareweller. Nope, I'm not going to do asingle weep. Because this time--I've got my orders. I'll be inFrance in three weeks. So I just thought--I justthought--maybe--I'd ask you if you could conveniently--Ouch, thattooth still aches; have to get this bridge finished tomorrowsure. Could you marry me?"

"Ungh!" Theo flopped into a chair.

"You've queered all my poetic tactics by your rude merrymirth. So just got to talk naturally."

"Glad you did. Now let me think. Do I want to marry you?"

"We get along bully. Listen--wait till I get back from France,and we'll have some celebration. Oh, boy! I'll stand for thecooties and the mud till the job's done, but when I get back andput the Croix de Guerre into the safe-deposit I'm going to have adrink of champagne four quarts deep! And you and I--we'll haveone time! Guess you'll be pretty sick of Red Cross by--"

"No. And I know a man who thinks that when the war is overthen the real work begins."

Eddie was grave, steady, more mature than he had ever seemed."Yes. Stacy Lindstrom. See here, honey, he has big advantagesover me. I'm not picturesque. I never had to work for my breadand butter, and I was brought up to try to be amusing, not noble.Nothing more touching than high ideals and poverty. But if I tryto be touching, you laugh at me. I'm--I may get killed, and I'llbe just as dead in my expensible first lieut's pants as anyself-sacrificing private."

"I hadn't thought of that. Of course. You have disadvantages.Comfort isn't dramatic. But still--It's the champagne and the bigtime. I've--"

"See here, honey, you'd be dreadfully bored by poverty. You dolike nice things."

"That's it. Things! That's what I'm afraid of. I'm interestedin tractors for France, but not in the exact shade of hockglasses. And beauty--It's the soul of things, but it's got to beinherent, not just painted on. Nice things! Ugh! And--If Imarried you what would be your plans for me? How would I getthrough twenty-four hours a day?"

"Why--uh--why, how does anybody get through 'em? You'd have agood time--dances, and playin' round and maybe children, and we'drun down to Palm Beach--"

"Yes. You'd permit me to go on doing what I always did tillthe war came. Nope. It isn't good enough. I want to work. Youwouldn't let me, even in the house. There'd be maids, nurses.It's not that I want a career. I don't want to be an actress or acongresswoman. Perfectly willing to be assistant to some man.Providing he can really use me in useful work. No. You pre-warboys are going to have a frightful time with us post-warwomen."

"But you'll get tired--"

"Oh, I know, I know! You and Father and Mother will wear meout. You-all may win. You and this house, this horrible sleekwarm house that Mrs.--that she isn't fit to come into! She thatgave him--"

Her voice was rising, hysterical. She was bent in the bigchair, curiously twisted, as though she had been wounded.

Eddie stroked her hair, then abruptly stalked out.

Theo sat marveling: "Did I really send Eddie away? Poor Eddie.Oh, I'll write him. He's right. Nice to think of brave maidendefiantly marrying poor hero. But they never do. Not in thishouse."

The deep courthouse bell awakening Theo to bewildered staringat the speckled darkness--a factory whistle fantasticallytooting, then beating against her ears in long, steady waves ofsound--the triumphant yelping of a small boy and the quacking ofa toy horn--a motor starting next door, a cold motor that buckedand snorted before it began to sing, but at last roared away withthe horn blaring--finally the distant "Extra! Extra!"

Her sleepy body protestingly curled tighter in a downy ball inher bed on the upper porch, but her mind was frantically awake asthe clamor thickened. "Is it really peace this time? Thearmistice really signed?" she exulted.

In pleasant reasonable phrases the warm body objected to thecold outside the silk comforter. "Remember how you were fooled onThursday. Oo-oo! Bed feels so luxurious!" it insisted.

She was a practical heroine. She threw off the covers. Theindolent body had to awaken, in self-defense. She merely squeaked"Ouch!" as her feet groped for their slippers on the cold floor.She flung downstairs, into rubbers and a fur coat, and she wasout on the walk in time to stop a bellowing newsboy.

Yes. It was true. Official report from Washington. Warover.

"Hurray!" said the ragged newsboy, proud of being outadventuring by night; and "Hurray!" she answered him. She feltthat she was one with awakening crowds all over the country, fromthe T Wharf to the Embarcadero. She wanted to make greatnoises.

The news had reached the almost-Western city of Vernon atthree. It was only four, but as she stood on the porch a crush ofmotor cars swept by, headed for downtown. Bumping behind themthey dragged lard cans, saucepans, frying pans. One man standingon a running board played Mr. Zip on a cornet. Another dashingfor a trolley had on his chest a board with an insistent electricbell. He saw her on the porch and shouted, "Come on, sister!Downtown! All celebrate! Some carnival!"

She waved to him. She wanted to get out the electric and drivedown. There would be noise--singing.

Four strange girls ran by and shrieked to her, "Come on anddance!"

Suddenly she was asking herself: "But do they know what itmeans? It isn't just a carnival. It's sacred." Sharply: "But do Iknow all it means, either? World-wide. History, here, now!"Leaning against the door, cold but not conscious that she wascold, she found herself praying.

As she marched back upstairs she was startled. She fancied shesaw a gray figure fleeing down the upper hall. She stopped. Nosound.

"Heavens, I'm so wrought up! All jumpy. Shall I give Papa thepaper? Oh, I'm too trembly to talk to anyone."

While the city went noise-mad it was a very solemn white smallfigure that crawled into bed. The emotion that for four years hadbeen gathering burst into sobbing. She snuggled close, but shedid not sleep. Presently: "My Red Cross work will be over soon.What can I do then? Come back to packing Papa's bag?"

She noticed a glow on the windows of the room beside thesleeping porch. "They're lighting up the whole city. Wonder if Ioughtn't to go down and see the fun? Wonder if Papa would like togo down? No, Mother wouldn't let him! I want the little old brownshack. Where Stacy could come and play. Mother used to give himcookies then.

"I wish I had the nerve to set the place afire. If I were abig fighting soul I would. But I'm a worm. Am I being bad tothink this way? Guess so--committed mental arson, but hadn't thenerve--My God, the houseis afire!"

She was too frightened to move. She could smell smoke, hear anoise like the folding of stiff wrapping paper. Instantly,apparently without ever having got out of bed, she was running bya bedroom into which flames were licking from the clothes chutethat led to the basement. "That dratted old furnace!" She wasbursting into her parents' room, hysterically shaking hermother.

"Get up! Get up!"

With a drowsy dignity her mother was saying, "Yes--Iknow--peace--get paper morning--let me sleep."

"It's fire! Fire! The house is afire!"

Her mother sat up, a thick gray lock bobbing in front of oneeye, and said indignantly, "How perfectly preposterous!"

Already Mr. Duke was out of bed, in smoke-prickly darkness,flapping his hands in the air. "Never could find that globe.Ought to have bedside light. Come, Mother, jump up! Theo, haveyou got on a warm bathrobe?" He was cool. His voice trembled, butonly with nervousness.

He charged down the back hall, Theo just behind. Mrs. Dukeremained at the head of the front stairs, lamenting, "Don't leaveme!"

The flames were darting hissing heads into the hall. As Theolooked they caught a box couch and ran over an old chest ofdrawers. The heat seemed to slap her face.

"Can't do anything. Get out of this. Wake the servants. Youtake your mother down," grumbled Mr. Duke.

Theo had her mother into a loose gown, shoes, and a hugefleecy couch cover, and down on the front porch by the time Mr.Duke appeared driving the maids--Lizzie a gorgon in curlpapers.

"Huh! Back stairs all afire," he grunted, rubbing his chin.His fingers, rubbing then stopping, showed that for a splitsecond he was thinking, "I need a shave."

"Theo! Run down to the corner. Turn in alarm. I'll try tophone. Then save things," he commanded.

Moved by his coolness to a new passion of love Theo flung herarm, bare as the sleeve of her bathrobe fell from it, about hisseamed neck, beseeching: "Don't save anything but thecloisonné. Let 'em burn. Won't have to go in there, riskyour life for things. Here--let me phone!"

Unreasoning she slammed the front door, bolted him out. Sheshouted their address and "Fire--hustle alarm!" at the telephoneoperator. In the largest drawing room she snatched bit after bitof cloisonné from the cabinet and dumped them into awastebasket. Now the lower hall, at her back, was boiling withflame-tortured smoke. The noise expanded from crackling to aroar.

The window on the porch was smashed. Her father's arm wasreaching up to the catch, unlocking the window. He was crawlingin. As the smoke encircled him he puffed like a man blowing outwater after a dive.

Theo ran to him. "I didn't want you here! I have thecloisonné--"

As calmly as though he were arguing a point at cards hemumbled, "Yes, yes, yes! Don't bother me. You forgot the two bigsaras in the wall safe."

While the paint on the balusters in the hall bubbled andcharred, and the heat was a pang in her lungs, he twirled theknob of the safe behind the big picture and drew out twocloisonné plates. Flames curled round the door jamb of theroom like fingers closing on a stick.

"We're shut off!" Theo cried.

"Yep. Better get out. Here. Drop that basket!"

Mr. Duke snatched the cloisonné from her, dropped it,hurled away his two plates, shoved her to the window he hadopened, helped her out on the porch. He himself was still in theburning room. She gripped his arm when he tried to dart back. Thecloisonné was already hidden from them by puffs ofsmoke.

Mr. Duke glanced back. He eluded her; pulled his arm free;disappeared in the smoke. He came back with a cheap china vasethat for a thing so small was monumentally ugly. As he swung outof the window he said, "Your mother always thought a lot of thatvase." Theo saw through eyes stinging with smoke that his hairhad been scorched.

Fire engines were importantly unloading at the corner, firemenrunning up. A neighbor came to herd the Dukes into her house, andinto more clothes.

Alone, from the room given to her by the neighbor, Theowatched her home burn. The flames were leering out of all thewindows on the ground floor. Her father would never read thethree-volume history that was too valuable for soldiers. Now theattic was glaring. Gone the elephant of a London traveling bag.Woolly smoke curled out of the kitchen windows as a firemansmashed them. Gone the fireless cooker that would not cook. Shelaughed. "It's nicely cooked itself! Oh, I'm beastly. PoorMother. All her beautiful marked linen--"

But she did not lose a sensation of running ungirdled, ofbreathing Maytime air.

Her father came in, dressed in the neighbor-host's corduroyhunting coat, a pair of black dress trousers and red slippers.His hair was conscientiously combed, but his fingers stillquerulously examined the state of his unshaven chin.

She begged: "Daddy dear, it's pretty bad, but don't worry. Wehave plenty of money. We'll make arrangements--"

He took her arms from about his neck, walked to the window.The broken skeleton of their home was tombed in darkness as thefiremen controlled the flames. He looked at Theo in a puzzledway.

He said hesitatingly: "No, I won't worry. I guess it's allright. You see--I set the house afire."

She was silent, but her trembling fingers sought her lips ashe went on: "Shoveled hot coals from the furnace into kindlingbin in the basement. Huh! Yes. Used to be good furnace tenderwhen I was a real man. Peace bells had woke me up. Wanted to befree. Hate destruction, but--no other way. Your mother wouldn'tlet me sell the house. I was going mad, sticking there,waiting--waiting for death. Now your mother will be willing tocome. Get a farm. Travel. And I been watching you. You couldn'thave had Stacy Lindstrom, long as that house bossed us. Youalmost caught me, in the hall, coming back from the basement. Itwas kind of hard, with house afire, to lie there in bed, quiet,so's your mother wouldn't ever know--waiting for you to come wakeus up. You almost didn't, in time. Would have had to confess. Uh,let's go comfort your mother. She's crying."

Theo had moved away from him. "But it's criminal! We'restealing--robbing the insurance company."

The wrinkles beside his eyes opened with laughter.

"No. Watched out for that. I was careful to be careless, andlet all the insurance run out last month. Huh! Maybe I won'tcatch it from your mother for that, though! Girl! Look! It'sdawn!"

The cottonwood is a tree of a slovenly and plebeian habit. Itswoolly wisps turn gray the lawns and engender neighborhoodhostilities about our town. Yet it is a mighty tree, a refuge andan inspiration; the sun flickers in its towering foliage, whencethe tattoo of locusts enlivens our dusty summer afternoons. Fromthe wheat country out to the sagebrush plains between the buttesand the Yellowstone it is the cottonwood that keeps a littlegrateful shade for sweating homesteaders.

In Joralemon we call Knute Axelbrod "Old Cottonwood." As amatter of fact, the name was derived not so much from the qualityof the man as from the wide grove about his gaunt white house andred barn. He made a comely row of trees on each side of thecountry road, so that a humble, daily sort of a man, drivingbeneath them in his lumber wagon, might fancy himself lord of aprivate avenue.

And at sixty-five Knute was like one of his own cottonwoods,his roots deep in the soil, his trunk weathered by rain andblizzard and baking August noons, his crown spread to the widehorizon of day and the enormous sky of a prairie night.

This immigrant was an American even in speech. Save for aweakness about his j's and w's, he spoke the twangy YankeeEnglish of the land. He was the more American because in hisnative Scandinavia he had dreamed of America as a land of light.Always through disillusion and weariness he beheld America as theworld's nursery for justice, for broad, fair towns, and eagertalk; and always he kept a young soul that dared to desirebeauty.

As a lad Knute Axelbrod had wished to be a famous scholar, tolearn the ease of foreign tongues, the romance of history, tounfold in the graciousness of wise books. When he first came toAmerica he worked in a sawmill all day and studied all evening.He mastered enough book-learning to teach district school for twoterms; then, when he was only eighteen, a great-hearted pity forfaded little Lena Wesselius moved him to marry her. Gay enough,doubtless, was their hike by prairie schooner to new farmlands,but Knute was promptly caught in a net of poverty and family.From eighteen to fifty-eight he was always snatching childrenaway from death or the farm away from mortgages.

He had to be content--and generously content he was--with thesecond-hand glory of his children's success and, for himself,with pilfered hours of reading--that reading of big, thick,dismal volumes of history and economics which the lone maturelearner chooses. Without ever losing his desire for strangecities and the dignity of towers he stuck to his farm. Heacquired a half-section, free from debt, fertile, well-stocked,adorned with a cement silo, a chicken-run, a new windmill. Hebecame comfortable, secure, and then he was ready, it seemed, todie; for at sixty-three his work was done, and he was unneededand alone.

His wife was dead. His sons had scattered afar, one a dentistin Fargo, another a farmer in the Golden Valley. He had turnedover his farm to his daughter and son-in-law. They had begged himto live with them, but Knute refused.

"No," he said, "you must learn to stand on your own feet. Ivill not give you the farm. You pay me four hundred dollars ayear rent, and I live on that and vatch you from my hill."

On a rise beside the lone cottonwood which he loved best ofall his trees Knute built a tar-paper shack, and here he "bachedit"; cooked his meals, made his bed, sometimes sat in the sun,read many books from the Joralemon library, and began to feelthat he was free of the yoke of citizenship which he had borneall his life.

For hours at a time he sat on a backless kitchen chair beforethe shack, a wide-shouldered man, white-bearded, motionless; aseer despite his grotesquely baggy trousers, his collarlessshirt. He looked across the miles of stubble to the steeple ofthe Jackrabbit Forks church and meditated upon the uses of life.At first he could not break the rigidity of habit. He rose atfive, found work in cleaning his cabin and cultivating hisgarden, had dinner exactly at twelve, and went to bed byafterglow. But little by little he discovered that he could beirregular without being arrested. He stayed abed till seven oreven eight. He got a large, deliberate, tortoise-shell cat, andplayed games with it; let it lap milk upon the table, called itthe Princess, and confided to it that he had a "sneaking idee"that men were fools to work so hard. Around this coatless oldman, his stained waistcoat flapping about a huge torso, in ashanty of rumpled bed and pine table covered with sheets offood-daubed newspaper, hovered all the passionate aspiration ofyouth and the dreams of ancient beauty. He began to take longwalks by night. In his necessitous life night had ever been aperiod of heavy slumber in close rooms. Now he discovered themystery of the dark; saw the prairies wide-flung and mistybeneath the moon, heard the voices of grass and cottonwoods anddrowsy birds. He tramped for miles. His boots were dew-soaked,but he did not heed. He stopped upon hillocks, shyly threw widehis arms, and stood worshiping the naked, slumbering land.

These excursions he tried to keep secret, but they werebruited abroad. Neighbors, good, decent fellows with no senseabout walking in the dew at night, when they were returning latefrom town, drunk, lashing their horses and flinging whiskybottles from racing democrat wagons, saw him, and they spread thetidings that Old Cottonwood was "getting nutty since he give uphis farm to that son-in-law of his and retired. Seen the oldcodger wandering around at midnight. Wish I had his chance tosleep. Wouldn't catch me out in the night air."

Any rural community from Todd Center to Seringapatam isresentful of any person who varies from its standard, and ismorbidly fascinated by any hint of madness. The countryside beganto spy on Knute Axelbrod, to ask him questions, and to stare fromthe road at his shack. He was sensitively aware of it, andinclined to be surly to inquisitive acquaintances. Doubtless thatwas the beginning of his great pilgrimage.

As a part of the general wild license of his new life--really,he once roared at that startled cat, the Princess: "By gollies! Iain't going to brush my teeth tonight. All my life I've brushed'em, and alvays wanted to skip a time vunce"--Knute tookconsiderable pleasure in degenerating in his taste inscholarship. He wilfully declined to finishThe Conquest ofMexico, and began to read light novels borrowed from theJoralemon library. So he rediscovered the lands of dancing andlight wines, which all his life he had desired. Some economicsand history he did read, but every evening he would stretch outin his buffalo-horn chair, his feet on the cot and the Princessin his lap, and invade Zenda or fall in love with Trilby.

Among the novels he chanced upon a highly optimistic story ofYale in which a worthy young man "earned his way through"college, stroked the crew, won Phi Beta Kappa, and had the mostentertaining, yet moral, conversations on or adjacent to "thedear old fence."

As a result of this chronicle, at about three o'clock onemorning, when Knute Axelbrod was sixty-four years of age, hedecided that he would go to college. All his life he had wantedto. Why not do it?

When he awoke he was not so sure about it as when he had goneto sleep. He saw himself as ridiculous, a ponderous, oldish manamong clean-limbed youths, like a dusty cottonwood among silverbirches. But for months he wrestled and played with that idea ofa great pilgrimage to the Mount of Muses; for he really supposedcollege to be that sort of place. He believed that all collegestudents, except for the wealthy idlers, burned to acquirelearning. He pictured Harvard and Yale and Princeton as ancientgroves set with marble temples, before which large groups ofGrecian youths talked gently about astronomy and good government.In his picture they never cut classes or ate.

With a longing for music and books and graciousness such asthe most ambitious boy could never comprehend, this thick-facedfarmer dedicated himself to beauty, and defied the unconquerablepower of approaching old age. He sent for college catalogues andschool books, and diligently began to prepare himself forcollege.

He found Latin irregular verbs and the whimsicalities ofalgebra fiendish. They had nothing to do with actual life as hehad lived it. But he mastered them; he studied twelve hours aday, as once he had plodded through eighteen hours a day in thehayfield. With history and English literature he hadcomparatively little trouble; already he knew much of them fromhis recreative reading. From German neighbors he had picked upenough Platt-deutsch to make German easy. The trick of studybegan to come back to him from his small school teaching offorty-five years before. He began to believe that he could reallyput it through. He kept assuring himself that in college, withrare and sympathetic instructors to help him, there would not bethis baffling search, this nervous strain.

But the unreality of the things he studied did disillusionhim, and he tired of his new game. He kept it up chiefly becauseall his life he had kept up onerous labor without any taste forit. Toward the autumn of the second year of his eccentric life heno longer believed that he would ever go to college.

Then a busy little grocer stopped him on the street inJoralemon and quizzed him about his studies, to the delight ofthe informal club which always loafs at the corner of thehotel.

Knute was silent, but dangerously angry. He remembered just intime how he had once laid wrathful hands upon a hired man, andsomehow the man's collar bone had been broken. He turned away andwalked home, seven miles, still boiling. He picked up thePrincess, and, with her mewing on his shoulder, tramped out againto enjoy the sunset.

He stopped at a reedy slough. He gazed at a hopping ploverwithout seeing it. Suddenly he cried:

"I am going to college. It opens next veek. I t'ink that I canpass the examinations."

Two days later he had moved the Princess and his sticks offurniture to his son-in-law's house, had bought a new slouch hat,a celluloid collar and a solemn suit of black, had wrestled withGod in prayer through all of a star-clad night, and had taken thetrain for Minneapolis, on the way to New Haven.

While he stared out of the car window Knute was warninghimself that the millionaires' sons would make fun of him.Perhaps they would haze him. He bade himself avoid all these sonsof Belial and cleave to his own people, those who "earned theirway through."

At Chicago he was afraid with a great fear of the lightningflashes that the swift crowds made on his retina, the batteriesof ranked motor cars that charged at him. He prayed, and ran forhis train to New York. He came at last to New Haven.

Not with gibing rudeness, but with politely quizzicaleyebrows, Yale received him, led him through entranceexaminations, which, after sweaty plowing with the pen, he barelypassed, and found for him a roommate. The roommate was alarge-browed soft white grub named Ray Gribble, who had beenteaching school in New England and seemed chiefly to desirecollege training so that he might make more money as a teacher.Ray Gribble was a hustler; he instantly got work tutoring theawkward son of a steel man, and for board he waited on table.

He was Knute's chief acquaintance. Knute tried to fool himselfinto thinking he liked the grub, but Ray couldn't keep his damphands off the old man's soul. He had the skill of a professionalexhorter of young men in finding out Knute's motives, and when hediscovered that Knute had a hidden desire to sip at gay, politeliterature, Ray said in a shocked way:

"Strikes me a man like you, that's getting old, ought to bethinking more about saving your soul than about all these frills.You leave this poetry and stuff to these foreigners and artists,and you stick to Latin and math, and the Bible. I tell you, I'vetaught school, and I've learned by experience."

With Ray Gribble, Knute lived grubbily, an existence of torncomforters and smelly lamp, of lexicons and logarithm tables. Noleisurely loafing by fireplaces was theirs. They roomed in WestDivinity, where gather the theologues, the lesser sort of lawstudents, a whimsical genius or two, and a horde of unplacedfreshmen and "scrub seniors."

Knute was shockingly disappointed, but he stuck to his roombecause outside of it he was afraid. He was a grotesque figure,and he knew it, a white-polled giant squeezed into a small seatin a classroom, listening to instructors younger than his ownsons. Once he tried to sit on the fence. No one but "ringers" saton the fence any more, and at the sight of him trying to lookathletic and young, two upper-class men snickered, and he sneakedaway.

He came to hate Ray Gribble and his voluble companions of thesubmerged tenth of the class, the hewers of tutorial wood. It isdoubtless safer to mock the flag than to question thatbest-established tradition of our democracy--that those who "earntheir way through" college are necessarily stronger, braver, andmore assured of success than the weaklings who talk by the fire.Every college story presents such a moral. But tremblingly thehistorian submits that Knute discovered that waiting on table didnot make lads more heroic than did football or happy loafing.Fine fellows, cheerful and fearless, were many of the boys who"earned their way," and able to talk to richer classmates withoutfawning; but just as many of them assumed an abjectrespectability as the most convenient pose. They were pickers upof unconsidered trifles; they toadied to the classmates whom theytutored; they wriggled before the faculty committee onscholarships; they looked pious at Dwight Hall prayer-meetings tomake an impression on the serious minded; and they drank oneglass of beer at Jake's to show the light minded that they meantnothing offensive by their piety. In revenge for cringing to theinsolent athletes whom they tutored, they would, when safe amongtheir own kind, yammer about the "lack of democracy of collegetoday." Not that they were so indiscreet as to do anything aboutit. They lacked the stuff of really rebellious souls. Knutelistened to them and marveled. They sounded like young hired mentalking behind his barn at harvest time.

This submerged tenth hated the dilettantes of the class evenmore than they hated the bloods. Against one Gilbert Washburn, arich esthete with more manner than any freshman ought to have,they raged righteously. They spoke of seriousness and industrytill Knute, who might once have desired to know lads likeWashburn, felt ashamed of himself as a wicked, wasteful oldman.

Humbly though he sought, he found no inspiration and nocomradeship. He was the freak of the class, and aside from thesubmerged tenth, his classmates were afraid of being "queered" bybeing seen with him.

As he was still powerful, one who could take up a barrel ofpork on his knees, he tried to find friendship among theathletes. He sat at Yale Field, watching the football try-outs,and tried to get acquainted with the candidates. They stared athim and answered his questions grudgingly--beefy youths who intheir simple-hearted way showed that they considered him plaincrazy.

The place itself began to lose the haze of magic through whichhe had first seen it. Earth is earth, whether one sees it inCamelot or Joralemon or on the Yale campus--or possibly even inthe Harvard yard! The buildings ceased to be temples to Knute;they became structures of brick or stone, filled with young menwho lounged at windows and watched him amusedly as he tried toslip by.

The Gargantuan hall of Commons became a tri-daily horrorbecause at the table where he dined were two youths who, havinguncommonly penetrating minds, discerned that Knute had a beard,and courageously told the world about it. One of them, namedAtchison, was a superior person, very industrious and scholarly,glib in mathematics and manners. He despised Knute's lack ofdefinite purpose in coming to college. The other was a play-boy,a wit and a stealer of street signs, who had a wonderful sensefor a subtle jest; and his references to Knute's beard shook thetable with jocund mirth three times a day. So these youths ofgentle birth drove the shambling, wistful old man away fromCommons, and thereafter he ate at the lunch counter at the BlackCat.

Lacking the stimulus of friendship, it was the harder forKnute to keep up the strain of studying the long assignments.What had been a week's pleasant reading in his shack was nowthrown at him as a day's task. But he would not have minded thetoil if he could have found one as young as himself. They wereall so dreadfully old, the money-earners, the serious laborers atathletics, the instructors who worried over their life work ofputting marks in class-record books.

Then, on a sore, bruised day, Knute did meet one who wasyoung.

Knute had heard that the professor who was the idol of thecollege had berated the too-earnest lads in his Browning class,and insisted that they readAlice in Wonderland. Knutefloundered dustily about in a second-hand bookshop till he foundan "Alice," and he brought it home to read over his lunch of ahot-dog sandwich. Something in the grave absurdity of the bookappealed to him, and he was chuckling over it when Ray Gribblecame into the room and glanced at the reader.

"Huh!" said Mr. Gribble.

"That's a fine, funny book," said Knute.

"Huh!Alice in Wonderland! I've heard of it. Sillynonsense. Why don't you read something really fine, likeShakespeare orParadise Lost?"

"Vell--" said Knute, all he could find to say.

With Ray Gribble's glassy eye on him, he could no longer rolland roar with the book. He wondered if indeed he ought not to bereading Milton's pompous anthropological misconceptions. He wentunhappily out to an early history class, ably conducted byBlevins, Ph.D.

Knute admired Blevins, Ph.D. He was so tubbed and eyeglassedand terribly right. But most of Blevins' lambs did not likeBlevins. They said he was a "crank." They read newspapers in hisclass and covertly kicked one another.

In the smug, plastered classroom, his arm leaning heavily onthe broad tablet-arm of his chair, Knute tried not to miss one ofBlevins' sardonic proofs that the correct date of the secondmarriage of Themistocles was two years and seven days later thanthe date assigned by that illiterate ass, Frutari of Padua. Knuteadmired young Blevins' performance, and he felt virtuous inapplication to these hard, unnonsensical facts.

He became aware that certain lewd fellows of the lesser sortwere playing poker just behind him. His prairie-trained earcaught whispers of "Two to dole," and "Raise you two beans."Knute revolved, and frowned upon these mockers of sound learning.As he turned back he was aware that the offenders were chuckling,and continuing their game. He saw that Blevins, Ph.D., perceivedthat something was wrong; he frowned, but he said nothing. Knutesat in meditation. He saw Blevins as merely a boy. He was sorryfor him. He would do the boy a good turn.

When class was over he hung about Blevins' desk till the otherstudents had clattered out. He rumbled:

"Say, Professor, you're a fine fellow. I do something for you.If any of the boys make themselves a nuisance, you yust call onme, and I spank the son of a guns."

Blevins, Ph.D., spake in a manner of culture andnastiness:

"Thanks so much, Axelbrod, but I don't fancy that will ever benecessary. I am supposed to be a reasonably good disciplinarian.Good day. Oh, one moment. There's something I've been wishing tospeak to you about. I do wish you wouldn't try quite so hard toshow off whenever I call on you during quizzes. You answer atsuch needless length, and you smile as though there weresomething highly amusing about me. I'm quite willing to have youregard me as a humorous figure, privately, but there are certainclassroom conventions, you know, certain little conventions."

"Why, Professor!" wailed Knute, "I never make fun of you! Ididn't know I smile. If I do, I guess it's yust because I am soglad when my stupid old head gets the lesson good."

"Well, well, that's very gratifying, I'm sure. And if you willbe a little more careful--"

Blevins, Ph.D., smiled a toothy, frozen smile, and trotted offto the Graduates' Club, to be witty about old Knute and his wayof saying "yust," while in the deserted classroom Knute satchill, an old man and doomed. Through the windows came the lightof Indian summer; clean, boyish cries rose from the campus. Butthe lover of autumn smoothed his baggy sleeve, stared at theblackboard, and there saw only the gray of October stubble abouthis distant shack. As he pictured the college watching him,secretly making fun of him and his smile, he was now faint andashamed, now bull-angry. He was lonely for his cat, his finechair of buffalo horns, the sunny doorstep of his shack, and theunderstanding land. He had been in college for about onemonth.

Before he left the classroom he stepped behind theinstructor's desk and looked at an imaginary class.

"I might have stood there as a prof if I could have comeearlier," he said softly to himself.

Calmed by the liquid autumn gold that flowed through thestreets, he walked out Whitney Avenue toward the butte-like hillof East Rock. He observed the caress of the light upon thescarped rock, heard the delicate music of leaves, breathed in airpregnant with tales of old New England. He exulted: "'Could writepoetry now if I yust--if I yust could write poetry!"

He climbed to the top of East Rock, whence he could see theYale buildings like the towers of Oxford, and see Long IslandSound, and the white glare of Long Island beyond the water. Hemarveled that Axelbrod of the cottonwood country was lookingacross an arm of the Atlantic to New York state. He noticed afreshman on a bench at the edge of the rock, and he becameirritated. The freshman was Gilbert Washburn, the snob, thedilettante, of whom Ray Gribble had once said: "That guy is thedisgrace of the class. He doesn't go out for anything, high standor Dwight Hall or anything else. Thinks he's so doggone muchbetter than the rest of the fellows that he doesn't associatewith anybody. Thinks he's literary, they say, and yet he doesn'teven heel the 'Lit,' like the regular literary fellows! Got notime for a loafing, mooning snob like that."

As Knute stared at the unaware Gil, whose profile was fine inoutline against the sky, he was terrifically public-spirited anddisapproving and that sort of moral thing. Though Gil was muchtoo well dressed, he seemed moodily discontented.

"What he needs is to vork in a threshing crew and sleep in thehay," grumbled Knute almost in the virtuous manner of Gribble."Then he vould know when he vas vell off, and not look like hehad the earache. Pff!" Gil Washburn rose, trailed toward Knute,glanced at him, sat down on Knute's bench.

"Great view!" he said. His smile was eager.

That smile symbolized to Knute all the art of life he had cometo college to find. He tumbled out of his moral attitude withludicrous haste, and every wrinkle of his weathered face creaseddeep as he answered:

"Yes: I t'ink the Acropolis must be like this here."

"Say, look here, Axelbrod; I've been thinking about you."

"Yas?"

"We ought to know each other. We two are the class scandal. Wecame here to dream, and these busy little goats like Atchison andGiblets, or whatever your roommate's name is, think we're foolsnot to go out for marks. You may not agree with me, but I'vedecided that you and I are precisely alike."

"What makes you t'ink I come here to dream?" bristledKnute.

"Oh, I used to sit near you at Commons and hear you try toquell old Atchison whenever he got busy discussing the reasonsfor coming to college. That old, moth-eaten topic! I wonder ifCain and Abel didn't discuss it at the Eden Agricultural College.You know, Abel the mark-grabber, very pious and high stand, andCain wanting to read poetry."

"Yes," said Knute, "and I guess Prof. Adam say, 'Cain, don'tyou read this poetry; it von't help you in algebry.'"

"Of course. Say, wonder if you'd like to look at this volumeof Musset I was sentimental enough to lug up here today. Pickedit up when I was abroad last year."

From his pocket Gil drew such a book as Knute had never seenbefore, a slender volume, in a strange language, bound inhand-tooled crushed levant, an effeminate bibelot over which theprairie farmer gasped with luxurious pleasure. The book almostvanished in his big hands. With a timid forefinger he stroked thelevant, ran through the leaves.

''I can't read it, but that's the kind of book I alvayst'ought there must be some like it," he sighed.

"Listen!" cried Gil. "Ysaye is playing up at Hartford tonight.Let's go hear him. We'll trolley up. Tried to get some of thefellows to come, but they thought I was a nut."

What an Ysaye was, Knute Axelbrod had no notion; but "Sure!"he boomed.

When they got to Hartford they found that between them theyhad just enough money to get dinner, hear Ysaye from galleryseats, and return only as far as Meriden. At Meriden Gilsuggested:

"Let's walk back to New Haven, then. Can you make it?"

Knute had no knowledge as to whether it was four miles orforty back to the campus, but "Sure!" he said. For the last fewmonths he had been noticing that, despite his bulk, he had to becareful, but tonight he could have flown.

In the music of Ysaye, the first real musician he had everheard, Knute had found all the incredible things of which he hadslowly been reading in William Morris and "Idylls of the King."Tall knights he had beheld, and slim princesses in white samite,the misty gates of forlorn towns, and the glory of the chivalrythat never was.

They did walk, roaring down the road beneath the October moon,stopping to steal apples and to exclaim over silvered hills,taking a puerile and very natural joy in chasing a profane dog.It was Gil who talked, and Knute who listened, for the most part;but Knute was lured into tales of the pioneer days, of blizzards,of harvesting, and of the first flame of the green wheat.Regarding the Atchisons and Gribbles of the class both of themwere youthfully bitter and supercilious. But they were not bitterlong, for they were atavisms tonight. They were wanderingminstrels, Gilbert the troubadour with his man-at-arms.

They reached the campus at about five in the morning. Fumblingfor words that would express his feeling, Knute stammered:

"Vell, it vas fine. I go to bed now and I dream about--"

"Bed? Rats! Never believe in winding up a party when it'sgoing strong. Too few good parties. Besides, it's only the shankof the evening. Besides, we're hungry. Besides--oh, besides! Waithere a second. I'm going up to my room to get some money, andwe'll have some eats. Wait! Please do!"

Knute would have waited all night. He had lived almost seventyyears and traveled fifteen hundred miles and endured Ray Gribbleto find Gil Washburn.

Policemen wondered to see the celluloid-collared old man andthe expensive-looking boy rolling arm in arm down Chapel Streetin search of a restaurant suitable to poets. They were allclosed.

"The Ghetto will be awake by now," said Gil. "We'll go buysome eats and take 'em up to my room. I've got some teathere."

Knute shouldered through dark streets beside him as naturallyas though he had always been a nighthawk, with an aversion toanything as rustic as beds. Down on Oak Street, a place of lowshops, smoky lights and alley mouths, they found the slum alreadyastir. Gil contrived to purchase boxed biscuits, cream cheese,chicken-loaf, a bottle of cream. While Gil was chaffering, Knutestared out into the street milkily lighted by wavering gas andthe first feebleness of coming day; he gazed upon Kosher signsand advertisements in Russian letters, shawled women and beardedrabbis; and as he looked he gathered contentment which he couldnever lose. He had traveled abroad tonight.

The room of Gil Washburn was all the useless, pleasant thingsKnute wanted it to be. There was more of Gil's Paris days in itthan of his freshmanhood: Persian rugs, a silver tea service,etchings, and books. Knute Axelbrod of the tar-paper shack andpiggy farmyards gazed in satisfaction. Vast bearded, sunk in aneasy chair, he clucked amiably while Gil lighted a fire.

Over supper they spoke of great men and heroic ideals. It wasgood talk, and not unspiced with lively references to Gribble andAtchison and Blevins, all asleep now in their correct beds. Gilread snatches of Stevenson and Anatole France; then at last heread his own poetry.

It does not matter whether that poetry was good or bad. ToKnute it was a miracle to find one who actually wrote it.

The talk grew slow, and they began to yawn. Knute wassensitive to the lowered key of their Indian-summer madness, andhe hastily rose. As he said good-by he felt as though he had butto sleep a little while and return to this unending night ofromance.

But he came out of the dormitory upon day. It was six-thirtyof the morning, with a still, hard light upon redbrick walls.

"I can go to his room plenty times now; I find my friend,"Knute said. He held tight the volume of Musset, which Gil hadbegged him to take.

As he started to walk the few steps to West Divinity Knutefelt very tired. By daylight the adventure seemed more and moreincredible.

As he entered the dormitory he sighed heavily:

"Age and youth, I guess they can't team together long." As hemounted the stairs he said: "If I saw the boy again, he vould gettired of me. I tell him all I got to say." And as he opened hisdoor, he added: "This is what I come to college for--this onenight. I go avay before I spoil it."

He wrote a note to Gil, and began to pack his telescope. Hedid not even wake Ray Gribble, sonorously sleeping in the staleair.

At five that afternoon, on the day coach of a westbound train,an old man sat smiling. A lasting content was in his eyes, and inhis hands a small book in French.

At two in the morning, on Main Street of a Nebraska prairietown that ought to have been asleep since ten, a crowd was packedunder a lone arc-light, chattering, laughing, and every momentpeering down the dim street to westward.

Out in the road were two new automobile tires, and cans ofgasoline, oil, water. The hose of a pressure air-pump stretchedacross the cement sidewalk, and beside it was an air-gauge in anew chamois case. Across the street a restaurant was glaring withunshaded electric lights; and a fluffy-haired, pert-nose girlalternately ran to the window and returned to look after the foodshe was keeping warm. The president of the local motor club, whowas also owner of the chief garage, kept stuttering to a youngman in brown union overalls, "Now be all ready--for land's sake,be ready. Remember, gotta change those casings in three minutes."They were awaiting a romantic event--the smashing of thecross-continent road-record by a Mallard car driven by J. T.Buffum.

Everyone there had seen pictures of Buffum in the sporting andautomobile pages of the Lincoln and Kansas City papers; everyoneknew that face, square, impassive, heavy-cheeked, kindly, withthe unsmoked cigar between firm teeth, and the almost boyish bangover a fine forehead. Two days ago he had been in San Francisco,between the smeared gold of Chink dens and the tumult of thePacific. Two days from now he would be in distant New York.

Miles away on the level prairie road a piercing jab of lightgrew swiftly into two lights, while a distant drum-roll turnedinto the burring roar of a huge unmuffled engine. The devouringthing burst into town, came fulminating down on them, stoppedwith a clashing jerk. The crowd saw the leather-hooded man at themighty steering wheel nod to them, grinning, human,companionable--the great Buffum.

"Hurray! Hurray!" came the cries, and the silence changed toweaving gossip.

Already the garage youngster, with his boss and three men fromanother garage, was yanking off two worn casings, filling the gastank, the oil well, the radiator. Buffum stiffly crawled from thecar, stretched his shoulders, his mighty arms and legs, in aleonine yawn. "Jump out, Roy. Eats here," he muttered to the manin the passenger seat. This man the spectators did not heed. Hewas merely Buffum's mechanic and relay driver, a poor thing whohad never in his life driven faster than ninety miles anhour.

The garage owner hustled Buffum across to the lunchroom. Themoment the car had stormed into town the pretty waitress, jumpingup and down with impatience, had snatched the chicken from thewarming oven, poured out the real coffee, proudly added realcream. The lunch and the changing of casings took three and aquarter minutes.

The clatter of the motor smote the quiet houses and was gone.The town became drab and dull. The crowd yawned and fumbled itsway home.

Buffum planned to get in two hours of sleep after leaving thisNebraska town. Roy Bender, the relay driver, took the wheel.Buffum sat with his relaxed body swaying to the leaping motion,while he drowsily commented in a hoarse, slow shout that pushedthrough the enveloping roar: "Look out for that hill, Roy. Goingto be slippery."

"How can you tell?"

"I don't know. Maybe I smell it. But watch out, anyway. Goodnight, little playmate. Wake me up at four-fifteen."

That was all of the conversation for seventy-two miles.

It was dawn when Buffum drove again. He was silent; he wasconcentrated on keeping the speedometer just two miles higherthan seemed safe. But for a mile or so, on straight stretches, heglanced with weary happiness at the morning meadows, atshimmering tapestry of grass and young wheat, and caught half anote of the song of a meadowlark. His mouth, so grimly tight indangerous places, rose at the corners.

Toward noon, as Buffum was approaching the village of Apogee,Iowa, the smooth blaring of the motor was interrupted by a noiseas though the engine was flying to pieces.

He yanked at the switch; before the car had quite halted, Royand he had tumbled out at opposite sides, were running forward tolift the hood. The fan-guard, a heavy wire soldered on theradiator, had worked loose and bent a fan-blade, which had rippedout a handful of honeycomb. The inside of the radiator looked asthough it had been hacked with a dull knife. The water wascascading out.

Buffum speculated: "Apogee next town. Can't get radiatorthere. None nearer 'n Clinton. Get this soldered. Here! You!"

The "Here! You!" was directed at the driver of an ancientroadster. "Got to hustle this boat into next town. Want you tohaul me in."

Roy Bender had already snatched a tow-rope from the back ofthe racing car, was fastening it to the front axle of theMallard, the rear of the roadster.

Buffum gave no time for disputes. "I'm J. T. Buffum. Racin''cross continent. Here's ten dollars. Want your machine tenminutes. I'll drive." He had crowded into the seat. Already, withRoy steering the Mallard, they were headed for Apogee.

A shouting crowd ran out from house and store. Buffum slowlylooked them over. Of a man in corduroy trousers and khaki shirt,who had plumped out of a garage, he demanded: "Who's the bestsolderer in town?"

"I am. Good as anybody in Iowa."

"Now, wait! Know who I am?"

"Sure! You're Buffum."

"My radiator is shot to thunder. Got to be soldered. I wantsix hours' work done in one hour, or less. How about the hardwarestore? Isn't there a solderer there that's even better thanyou?"

"Yes, I guess maybe old Frank Dieters is."

"Get him, and get the other good man, and get busy. One of youwork on each side. Roy Bender here will boss you." Already Roywas taking down the radiator. "One hour, remember. Hurry! Plentyof money in it--"

"Oh, we don't care anything about the money!"

"Thanks, old man. Well, I might as well grab a little sleep.Where'll I get a long-distance connection?" he yawned.

"Across the street at Mrs. Rivers'. Be less noise than in thegarage, I guess."

Over the way was a house that was a large square box with anoctagonal cupola on the mansard roof. It was set back in a yardof rough grass and old crabapple trees. At the gate were asmallish, severe woman, in spectacles and apron, and a girl oftwenty-five or -six. Buffum looked at the girl twice, and triedto make out what it was that distinguished her from all the otherwomen in the crowd that had come pushing and giggling to see thefamous car.

She was sharply individualized. It was not that she was talland blazing. She was slight--and delicate as a drypoint etching.Her chin was precise though soft; she had a Roman nose, afeminized charming version of the Roman nose. The thing that madeher distinctive, Buffum reflected, was her poise. The girl by thegate was as quietly aloof as the small cold moon of winter.

He plodded across the road. He hesitated before speaking.

"I hope there hasn't been an accident," she murmured tohim.

"No, just a small repair."

"But, why does everyone seem so much concerned?"

"Why, it's--it's--I'm J. T. Buffum."

"Mr.--uh--Buffum?"

"I reckon you never heard of me."

"Why, uh--should I have?" Her eyes were serious, regretful atdiscourtesy.

"No. You shouldn't. I just mean--Motor-fans usually have. I'ma racer. I'm driving from San Francisco to New York."

"Really? It will take you--ten days?"

"Four to five days."

"In two days you will be in the East? See the--the ocean?Oh!"

In her voice was wistfulness. Her eyes saw far-off things. Butthey came back to Apogee, Iowa, and to the big, dusty man inleather, with a penitent: "I'm ashamed not to have heard of you,but I--we haven't a car. I hope they will make your repairquickly. May Mother and I give you a glass of milk orsomething?"

"I'd be glad if you'd let me use your telephone. So noisyat--"

"Of course! Mother, this is Mr. Buffum, who is driving acrossthe country. Oh--my name is Aurilla Rivers."

Buffum awkwardly tried to bow in two directions at once. Thenhe followed Aurilla Rivers' slender back. He noticed how smoothwere her shoulder-blades. They were neither jagged nor wadded. Itseemed to him that the blue silk of her waist took life from thewarm and eager flesh beneath. In her studied serenity she had notlost her youth.

As he drew away from the prying crowd and the sound of hastyhammers and wrenches, he was conscious of clinging peace. Thebrick of the walk was worn to a soft rose, shaded by gentlymoving branches of lilac bushes. At the end was a wild-grapearbor and an ancient bench. The arbor was shadowy, and full ofthe feeling of long and tranquil years. In this land of newhouses and new red barns and blazing miles of wheat, it seemedmysterious with antiquity.

And on the doorstep was the bleached vertebra of a whale.Buffum was confused. He traveled so much and so swiftly that healways had to stop to think whether he was East or West, andnow--Yes, this was Iowa. Of course. But that vertebra belonged toNew England.

And to New England belonged the conch shell and the mahoganytable in the wide hall with its strip of rag-carpet down whichMiss Rivers led him to the telephone--an old-fashioned wallinstrument. Buffum noticed that Miss Rivers conscientiouslydisappeared through the wide door at the end of the hall into agarden of pinks and pansies and sweet William.

"Please get me long distance."

"I'm long distance and short distance and--"

"All right. This is Buffum, the transcontinental racer. I wantto talk to Detroit, Michigan--Mallard Motor Company--office ofthe president."

He waited ten minutes. He sat on the edge of a William andMary chair, and felt obese, clumsy, extremely dirty. He venturedoff his chair--disapproving of the thunder of his footsteps--andstood at the door of the parlor. The corner by the bow windowseemed to be a shrine. Above a genuine antediluvian hairclothsofa were three pictures. In the center was a rather goodpainting of a man who was the very spirit of 1850 in NewEngland--burnsides, grim white forehead, Roman nose, primtriangle of shirt-front. On the right was a watercolor of ahouse, white doored, narrow eaved, small windowed, standing outagainst gray sand and blue water, with a moored motor-dorybeyond. On the woodshed ell of the pictured house was nailed upthe name-board of a ship--Penninah Sparrow.

On the left of the portrait was a fairly recent enlargedphotograph of a man somewhat like the granther of 1850, so far asRomanness of nose went, but weaker and more pompous, a handsomeold buck, with a pretentious broad eyeglass ribbon and hair thatmust have been silvery over a face that must have beendeep-flushed.

By the sofa was a marble-topped stand on which were freshsweet peas.

Then central called, and Buffum was talking to the presidentof the Mallard Motor Company, who for two days and nights had satby the ticker, watching his flashing progress.

"Hello, chief. Buffum speaking. Held up for about an hour.Apogee, Iowa. Think I can make it up. But better move theschedule up through Illinois and Indiana. Huh? Radiator leak.'By!"

He inquired the amount of toll, and rambled out to the garden.He had to hurry away, of course, and get some sleep, but it wouldbe good for him to see Aurilla Rivers again, to take with him thememory of her cool resoluteness. She was coming toward him. Hemeekly followed her back through the hall, to the front steps.There he halted her. He would see quite enough of Roy Bender andthe car before he reached New York.

"Please sit down here a moment, and tell me--"

"Yes?"

"Oh, about the country around here, and uh--Oh! I owe you forthe telephone call."

"Please! It's nothing."

"But it's something. It's two dollars and ninety-fivecents."

"For a telephone call?"

He caught her hand and pressed the money into it. She plumpeddown on the steps, and he discreetly lowered his bulk beside her.She turned on him, blazing;

"You infuriate me! You do things I've always wanted to--sweepacross big distances, command men, have power. I suppose it's theold Yankee shipmasters coming out in me."

"Miss Rivers, I noticed a portrait in there. It seemed to methat the picture and the old sofa make a kind of shrine. And thefresh flowers." She stared a little before she said:

"Yes. It's a shrine. But you're the first one that everguessed. How did you--"

"I don't know. I suppose it's because I went through someCalifornia missions a few days ago. Tell me about the people inthe pictures."

"You wouldn't--Oh, some day, perhaps."

"Some day! Now, you see here, child! Do you realize that inabout forty minutes I'll be kiting out of here at seventy milesan hour? Imagine that I've met you a couple of times in the bankor the post office, and finally after about six months I'vecalled here, and told your mother I like pansies. All right. Allthat is over. Now, who are you, Aurilla Rivers? Who and what andwhy and how and when?"

She smiled. She nodded. She told.

She was a school teacher now, but before her father haddied--well, the enlarged photograph in there was her father,Bradley Rivers, pioneer lawyer of Apogee. He had come out fromCape Cod, as a boy. The side-whiskered man of the centralportrait was her grandfather, Captain Zenas Rivers, of WestHarlepool, on the Cape. The house in the picture was the Rivers'mansion, birthplace of her father.

"Have you been on the Cape yourself?" Buffum queried. "Iremember driving through Harlepool, but I don't recall anythingbut white houses and a meeting-house with a whale of a bigsteeple."

"The dream of my life has been to go to Harlepool. Once whenFather had to go to Boston he did run down there by himself.That's when he brought back the portrait of Grandfather, and thepainting of the old house, and the furniture and all. He said itmade him so melancholy to see the changes in the town, and henever would go again. Then--he died. I'm saving up money for atrip back East. I do believe in democracy, but at the same time Ifeel that families like the Riverses owe it to the world to setan example, and I want to find my own people again. My ownpeople!"

"Maybe you're right. I'm from the soil. Di-rect! But somehow Ican see it in you, same as I do in the portrait of yourgrandfather. I wish I--Well, never mind."

"But you are an aristocrat. You do things that other peopledon't dare to. While you were telephoning, I saw our schoolprincipal, and he said you were a Vi-king and all kinds of--"

"Here! Now! You! Quit! Stop! Wait! A lot of people, especiallyon newspapers, give me a lot of taffy just because I can drivefast. What I need is someone like you to make me realize what aroughneck I am."

She looked at him clear-eyed, and pondered: "I'm afraid mostof the Apogee boys think I'm rather prim."

"They would! That's why they're stuck in Apogee." Buffumsearched her eyes and speculated: "I wonder if we aren't alike inthis way: Neither of us content to plod. Most people never thinkof why they're living. They reckon and guess and s'pose thatmaybe some day they'll do better, and then--bing!--they're dead.But you and I--I seem--I've known you a long time. Will youremember me?"

"Oh, yes. There aren't so many seventy-an-hour people inApogee!"

From the gate Roy Bender was bellowing: "Ready in two minutes,boss!"

Buffum was on his feet, drawing on his gauntlets and leathercoat. She looked at him gravely, while he urged:

"Going on. Day from now, the strain will begin to kind of getme. Will you think about me then? Will you wireless me some goodthoughts?"

"Yes!"--very quietly. He yanked off his big gauntlet. He felther hand fragile in his. Then he was gone, marching down thewalk, climbing into the car, demanding of Roy: "Look over oil andbattery and ev'thing?"

"You bet. We did everything," said the garage man, "Get alittle rest?"

"Yes. Had a chance to sit in the shade and loaf."

"Saw you talking to Aurilla Rivers--"

Roy interrupted: "All right, all right, boss. Shoot!"

Buffum heard the garage man out:

"Fine girl, Aurilla is. Smart's a whip. She's a real swell.Born and brought up here, too."

"Who's this that Miss Rivers is engaged to?" Buffumrisked.

"Well, I guess probably she'll marry Reverend Dawson. He's adried-up old stick but he comes from the East. Some day she'llget tired of school teaching, and he'll grab her. Marry in hasteand repent at Reno, like the fellow says."

"That's right. Fix up the bill, Roy? G'by."

Buffum was off. Five minutes later he was six andthree-quarters miles away. In his mind was but one thought--tomake up the lost time; in his eyes was no vision save speedometerand the road that rushed toward him.

A little after dark he rumbled at Roy: "Here. Take her. Goingto get some sleep." He did sleep, for an hour, then strugglinginto full wakefulness he dug his knuckles into his eyes like asleepy boy, glanced at the speedometer, laid a hand on thesteering wheel and snapped at Roy: "All right. Move over."

At dawn nothing existed in the world save the compulsion tokeep her at top speed. The earth was shut off from him by a wallof roar and speed. He did not rouse to human feeling even when heboomed into Columbus Circle, the breaker of the record.

He went instantly to bed: slept twenty-six and one-quarterhours, then attended a dinner given to himself, and made a speechthat was unusually incoherent, because all through he rememberedthat he was due in San Francisco in eight days. He was to sailfor Japan, and a road race round the shore of Hondo. Before hereturned, Aurilla Rivers would undoubtedly have married theReverend Mr. Dawson, have gone to Cape Cod on her wedding trip.She would think only with disgust of large men with grease ontheir faces.

He could take one day for the trip up and back. He could getto Cape Cod more quickly by motor than by train. He was going tohave one more hour with Aurilla, on his way to San Francisco. Hewould be more interesting to her if he could gossip of herancestral background. He could take pictures of the place to her,and perhaps an old chair from the mansion. As he drove down FrontStreet, in West Harlepool, he saw the house quite as it hadappeared in Aurilla's picture with the name-board of a wreckedship over the woodshed, thePenninah Sparrow.

Down the road was a one-room shop with the sign "Gaius Bearse,Gen'l Merchandise. Clam Forks, Windmills, and Souvenirs." Out onthe porch poked a smallish man. Buffum ambled toward him and sawthat the man was very old.

"Good morning. This Cap'n Bearse?" inquired Buffum.

"I be."

"Uh, uh! Say--uh, Cap'n, can you tell me who's living in theRivers mansion now?"

"The which mansion?"

"Rivers. The house across there."

"Huh! That's the Kendrick house."

"But it was built by a Rivers."

"No, 'twa'n't. That house was built by Cap'n Cephas. Kendricksliving in it ever since. Owned now by William Dean Kendrick. He'sin the wool business, in Boston, but his folks comes down everysummer. I ought to know. The Kendricks are kin of mine."

"B-but where did the Riverses live?"

"The Riverses? Oh, them! Come from the West, don't ye? Spendthe summer here?"

"No. What makes you think I come from the West?"

"Rivers went out there. Bradley Rivers. He the one you'rethinking of?"

"Yes."

"Friend of yours--"

"No. Just happened to hear about him."

"Well, I'll tell you. There never was any Rivers family."

"What?"

"The father of this here Bradley Rivers called himself ZenasRivers. But land, Zenas' right name was Fernao Ribeiro. He wasnothing but a Portygee deckhand. Fernao, or Zenas, became awrecker. He was a good hand in a dory, but when he was drinking,he was a caution for snakes. He come straight from the Cape VerdeIslands."

"I understand Bradley Rivers' ancestors were howlingaristocrats, and came over on theMayflower."

"Maybe so, maybe so. Aristocrats at drinking Jamaica rum, Iguess. But they didn't come on noMayflower. Zenas Riverscame over on the brigJennie B. Smith!"

"I understand Zenas owned this--this Kendrick House?"

"Him? Why, boy, if Zenas or Brad either ever set foot acrossthe threshold of that house, it was to fill the wood box, ormaybe sell lobsters!"

"B-but--what kind of looking man was Zenas?"

"Thick-set, dark-complected fellow--real Portygee."

"Didn't he have a Roman nose?"

"Him? Huh! Had a nose like a herring."

"But Bradley had a Roman nose. Where'd he get it?"

"From his maw. She was a Yankee, but her folks wa'n't muchaccount. So she married Zenas. Brad Rivers always was an awfulliar. He came back here about seven-eight years ago, and heboasted he was the richest man in Kansas or maybe 'twasMilwaukee."

"Did he buy a picture of the Kendrick mansion while he washere?"

"Believe he did. He got one of these artists to paint apicture of the Kendrick house. And he bought a couple of thingsof me--a horsehair sofy, and a picture of old Cap'n Gould thatMay Gould left here."

"Did--did this Captain Gould in the portrait have a Romannose? And side whiskers? Stern looking?"

"That's him. What's Brad been telling you, boy?"

"Nothing!" sighed Buffum. "Then Rivers was just a plain dub?Like me?"

"Plain? Brad Rivers? Well, Zenas sent Brad to school toTaunton for a year or so, but just the same, we always allowed hewas so ordinary that there wa'n't a dog belonging to a Kendrickor a Bearse or a Doane that would bite him. Ask any of the oldcodgers in town."

"I will, but--thanks."

He came down from the Apogee street, inconspicuously creepingthrough the dust, a large, amiable man in a derby.

He had only fifty-one minutes before the return of the Apogeebranch train to the junction to connect with the next expresswestward.

He rang; he pounded at the front door; he went round to theback; and there he discovered Aurilla's mother, washing napkins.She looked at him over her spectacles, and she sniffed:"Yes?"

"Do you remember I came through here recently? Racing car? Iwanted to see Miss Rivers for a moment."

"You can't. She's at school, teaching."

"When will she be back? It's four now."

"Maybe right away, maybe not till six."

His train left at four-forty-nine. He waited on the frontsteps. It was four-twenty-one when Aurilla Rivers came along thewalk. He rushed to her, his watch in his hand, and before shecould speak, he was pouring out:

"'Member me? Darn glad! Got less 'n twenty-eight minutesbefore have to catch train San Francisco steamer Japan possiblyIndia afterwards glad to see me please oh please don't be aRivers be Aurilla just got twenty-seven 'n' half minutesglad?"

"Why--why--ye-es--"

"Thought about me?"

"Of course."

"Ever wish I might come shooting through again?"

"You're so egotistical!"

"No, just in a hurry. Only got twenty-seven minutes more! Everwish I'd come back? Oh--please! Can't you hear the Japan steamerwhistling--calling us?"

"Japan!"

"Like to see it?"

"Terribly."

"Will you come with me? I'll have a preacher meet us on thetrain. If you'll phone to Detroit, find out all about me. Come!Quick! Marry me! Just twenty-six and a half more."

She could only whisper in answer: "No. I mustn't think of it.It tempts me. But Mother would never consent."

"What has your mother to do--"

"Everything! With our people, the individual is nothing, thefamily's sacred. I must think of Bradley Rivers, and old Zenas,and hundreds of fine old Yankees, building up something so muchbigger than just one individual happiness. It's, oh, noblesseoblige!" How could he, in face of her ancestor worship, tell thetruth? He burst out:

"But you'd like to? Aurilla! Just twenty-five minutes now!" Hechucked his watch into his pocket. "See here. I want to kiss you.I'm going seven thousand miles away, and I can't stand it,unless--I'm going to kiss you, there under the grape arbor!" Hisfingers slipped under her elbow.

She came reluctantly, appealing, "No, no, please, no!" till heswept the words away with a kiss, and in the kiss she forgot allthat she had said, and clung to him, begging: "Oh, don't go away.Don't leave me here in this dead village. Stay here--catch thenext steamer! Persuade Mother--"

"I must catch this one. I'm due there--big race. Come!"

"With--without clothes?"

"Buy 'em on way--San Francisco!"

"No, I mustn't. And there are others to consider besidesMother."

"Mr. Dawson? Really care for him?"

"He's very gentle and considerate and really such a goodscholar. Mother wants Mr. Dawson to get a pastorate on Cape Cod,and she thought that way I might pick up with the old threads,and be a real Rivers again. As Mrs. Dawson, I could find the oldhouse and all--" She was interrupted by his two hands behind hershoulders, by his eyes searching hers with a bitter honesty.

"Don't you ever get tired of ancestors?" he cried.

"I do not! Whatever I may be--they were splendid. Once in amutiny on the clipper that he was commanding, Zenas Rivers--"

"Dear, there wasn't any Zenas Rivers. He was a Portugueseimmigrant named Ribeiro, Fernao Ribeiro. The picture there in thehouse is a Captain Gould."

She had slipped from his embrace. But he went steadily on,trying with eyes and voice to make her understand histenderness:

"Old Zenas was a squat, dark chap, a wrecker, and not verynice. The first real aristocrat in your family is you."

"Wait! You mean that--that it wasn't any of it true? But theRivers' mansion?"

"There isn't any. The house in the picture has always belongedto the Kendricks. I've just been on Cape Cod, and I found--"

"It isn't true? Not any of it, about the Rivers--"

"None of it. I didn't mean to tell you. If you don't believeme, you can write."

"Oh, don't! Wait!" She turned, looked to the right. Heremembered that down the street to the right was a rise of groundwith a straggly village cemetery. She murmured:

"Poor Dad! I loved him, oh, so much, but--I know Dad toldfibs. But never to harm people. Just because he wanted us to beproud of him. Mr.--what is your name?"

"Buffum."

"Come."

He followed her swift steps into the house, into the room ofthe shrined portraits. She looked from "Zenas Rivers" to thesketch of the "Rivers' Mansion." She patted the glass over herfather's photograph. She blew the dust from her fingers. Shesighed: "It smells musty in here, so musty!" She ran to themahogany chest of drawers and took out a sheet of parchment. Onit, he saw, was a coat of arms. She picked up a pencil, turnedover the parchment, and drew a flying motor car.

She turned and thrust the sketch at him, crying: "There's thecoat of arms of the family to come, the crest of a newaristocracy that knows how to work!" With a solemnity that wasn'tsolemn at all, he intoned: "Miss Rivers, would you mind marryingme, somewhere between here and California?"

"Yes," he kissed her--"if you can make"--she kissedhim--"Mother understand. She has friends and a little money. Shecan get along without me. But she believes the aristocracyfable."

"May I lie to her?"

"Why, once might be desirable."

"I'll tell her my mother was a Kendrick of Harlepool, and I'llbe terribly top-lofty, but in a hurry--especially the hurry! Justgot thirteen minutes now!"

From the hall sounded Mrs. Rivers' petulant voice:"Aurilly!"

"Y-yes, Mother?"

"If you and that man are going to catch the train, you betterbe starting."

"W-w-why," Aurilla gasped; then, to Buffum: "I'll run right upand pack my bag."

"It's all 'tended to, Aurilly. Minute I saw that dratted mancoming again, I knew he'd be in a hurry. But I do think you mightlet me know my son-in-law's name before you go. You only goteleven minutes. You better hurry--hurry--hurry!"

Wakamin is a town with a soul. It used to have a sentimentalsoul which got thrills out of neighborliness and "TheStar-Spangled Banner," but now it wavers between two generations,with none of the strong, silly ambition of either. The pioneeringgeneration has died out, and of the young men, a hundred havegone to that new pioneering in France. Along the way they willbehold the world, see the goodness and eagerness of it, and notgreatly desire to come back to the straggly ungenerous streets ofWakamin.

Those who are left, lords of the dead soul of Wakamin, go tothe movies and play tight little games of bridge and aspire onlyto own an automobile, because a car is the sign ofrespectability.

Mr. Gale felt the savorlessness of the town within ten minutesafter he had arrived. He had come north to wind up the estate ofhis cousin, the late proprietor of the Wakamin Creamery. Mr. Galewas from the pine belt of Alabama but he did not resemble thestage Southerner. There was a look of resoluteness and industryabout his broad red jaw. He spoke English very much like a manfrom New York or San Francisco. He did not say "Yessuh," nor "Ahdeclah"; he had neither a large white hat nor a small whiteimperial; he was neither a Colonel nor a Judge. He was Mr. Gale,and he practiced law, and he preferred lemonade to mint juleps.But he had fought clear through the War for the SouthernConfederacy; and once, on a gray wrinkled morning before acavalry battle, he had spoken to Jeb Stuart.

While he was settling up the estate, Mr. Gale tried out theconversational qualities of the editor and the justice of thepeace, and gave up his attempt to get acquainted with theWakamites--except for Mrs. Tiffany, at whose house he went toboard. Mrs. Captain Tiffany was daughter and widow of TerritorialPioneers. She herself had teamed-it from St. Paul, with her younghusband, after the War. The late Captain Tiffany had been thelast commander of the Wakamin G. A. R. Post, and Mrs. Tiffany hadfor years been president of the Women's Relief Corps. After thebarniness of the Wakamin Hotel Mr. Gale was at home in hercottage, which was as precise and nearly as small as thewhitewashed conch shell at the gate. He recovered from theforlorn loneliness that had obsessed him during walks on theselong, cold, blue twilights of spring. Nightly he sat on the porchwith Mrs. Tiffany, and agreed with her about politics,corn-raising, religion, and recipes for hot biscuits.

When he was standing at the gate one evening of April, a smallboy sidled across the street, made believe that he was notmaking-believe soldiers, rubbed one shin with the other foot,looked into the matter of an electric-light bug that wassprawling on its foolish back, violently chased nothing at all,walked backward a few paces, and came up to Mr. Gale with anexplosive, "Hello!"

"Evening, sir."

"You staying with Mrs. Tiffany?"

"Yes, for a while."

"Where do you come from?"

"I'm from Alabama."

"Alabama? Why, gee, then you're a Southerner!"

"I reckon I am, old man."

The small boy looked him all over, dug his toe into theleaf-mold at the edge of the curb, whistled, and burst out, "Aw,gee, you aren't either! You don't wear gray, and you haven't gotany darky body servant. I seen lots of Confederuts in the movies,and they always wear gray, and most always they got a bodyservant, and a big sword with a tossel on it. Have you got asword with a tossel?"

"No, but I've got a suit of butternuts back home."

"Gee, have you? Say, were you ever a raider?"

"No, but I know lots about raiders, and once I had dinner withColonel Mosby."

"Gee, did you? Say, what's your name? Say, are you agen'rul?"

"No, I was a high private. My name is Gale. What is your name,if I may ask you, as one man to another?"

"I'm Jimmy Martin. I live across the street. My dad's got agreat big phonograph and seventy records. Were you a highprivate? How high? Gee, tell me about the raiders!"

"But James, why should a loyal Northerner like you desire toknow anything about the rebel horde?"

"Well, you see, I'm the leader of the Boy Scouts, and wehaven't any Scout Master, at least we did have, but he movedaway, and I have to think up games for the Scouts, and gee, we'reawfully tired of discovering the North Pole, and being Red Crossin Belgium, and I always have to be the Eskimos when we discoverthe North Pole, or they won't play, and I thought maybe we couldbe raiders and capture a Yankee train."

"Well, you come sit on the porch, James. It occurs to me thatyou are a new audience for my stories. Let us proceed to defendRichmond, and do a quick dash into Illinois, to our commonbenefit. Is it a bargain?"

It was, and Jimmy listened, and Mrs. Tiffany came out andlistened also and the three lovers of the Heroic Age sat glowingat one another till from across the village street, long and thinand drowsy, came the call, "Jim-m-m-ee Mar-r-r-tin!"

Later, Jimmy's mother was surprised to discover her heirleading a Confederate raid, and she was satisfied only when shewas assured that the raid was perfectly proper, because it wasled by General Grant, and because all the raiders had voluntarilyset free their slaves.

It was Jimmy Martin who enticed Mr. Gale to go spearingpickerel, and they two, the big slow-moving man and the boy whotook two skips to his one solid pace, plowed through the willowthickets along the creek all one Saturday afternoon.

At the end of the trip, Jimmy cheerfully announced that hewould probably get a whale of a licking, because he ought to havebeen chopping stovewood. Mr. Gale suggested strategic measures;he sneaked after Jimmy, through a stable door to the Martins'woodshed, and cut wood for an hour, while Jimmy scrabbled to pileit.

In the confidences of Jimmy and in Mrs. Tiffany's stories ofher Vermont girlhood and pioneer days in Minnesota, Mr. Galefound those green memories of youth which he had hoped todiscover, on coming North, in comradely talks with veterans ofthe Wakamin G. A. R.

But now there was no G. A. R. at all in Wakamin.

During the past year the local post had been wiped out. Of thefour veterans remaining on Decoration Day a year before, threehad died and one had gone West to live with his son, as is theMid-Western way. Of the sturdy old men who had marched fiftystrong to Woodlawn Cemetery a decade before, not one old man wasleft to leaven the land.

But they did live on in Mrs. Tiffany's gossip, as she beggedMr. Gale to assure her that there would be a decorating of thegraves, though the comrades were gone. This assurance Mr. Galealways gave, though upon sedulous inquiry at the barber shop hediscovered that there was very little chance for a celebration ofthe Day. The town band had broken up when the barber, who wasalso the bandleader, had bought a car. The school principal haddecided that this year it was not worth while to train the girlsto wear red-white-and-blue cheesecloth, and sing "Columbia, theGem of the Ocean" from a decked-over hay wagon.

Mr. Gale endeavored to approve this passing of Decoration Day.He told himself that he was glad to hear that all of his oldenemies had gone. But no matter how often he said it, he couldn'tmake it stick. He felt that he, too, was a derelict, as helistened to Mrs. Tiffany's timid hopes for a celebration. To her,the Day was the climax of the year, the time when all hercomrades, living and dead, drew closer together. She had a dazedfaith that there would be some sort of ceremony.

She went on retrimming the blue bonnet which she had alwaysworn in the parade, at the head of the W. R. C. Not till the daybefore the holiday did she learn the truth. That evening she didnot come down to supper. She called in a neighbor's daughter toserve Mr. Gale. The young woman giggled, and asked idioticquestions about Society Folks in the South, till Mr. Gale madehis iron-gray eyebrows a line of defense. He tramped out the roadeastward from town, after supper, growling to himself betweenperiods of vacuous unhappiness:

"Feel's if it's me and the boys I fought with, not them Ifought against, they're going to neglect tomorrow. Those Yankswere lively youngsters. Made me do some tall jumping. Hate tothink of 'em lying there in the cemetery, lonely and waiting,trusting that we--that the Dam-yanks--will remember them. Lookhere, J. Gale, Esq., you sentimental old has-been, what do youmean, whimpering about them? You know good and well you never didlike Yanks--killed your daddy and brother. But--poor old codgers,waiting out there--"

His walk had brought him to a fenced field. He peered across.It was set with upright and ghostly stones. He had come to thecemetery. He stopped, prickly. He heard creepy murmurs in thedusk. He saw each white stone as the reproachful spirit of an oldsoldier robbed of his pension of honor. He turned away with ameasured calmness that was more panicky than a stumblingretreat.

The morning of the empty Decoration Day was radiant assunshine upon a beech trunk. But nowhere was the old-time bustleof schoolgirls in bunting, of mothers preparing lunch baskets, ofshabby and halting old civilians magically transformed intosoldiers. A few families mechanically hung out flags. Mrs.Tiffany did not. When Mr. Gale came down to breakfast he foundher caressing an ancient silken flag. She thrust it into acloset, locked the door, hastened out to the kitchen. She wasslow in the serving of breakfast, looked dizzy, often pressed herhand against her side. Mr. Gale begged her to let him help. Sheforbade him sternly. She seemed to have a calm and embitteredcontrol of herself.

He hastened out of the house. There was no business to whichhe could attend on this holiday. He made shameless overtures forthe company of Jimmy Martin, who was boisterous over the factthat summer vacation had begun, and his dear, dear teachers goneaway. The Martin family was not going to any of the three or fourpicnics planned for the day, and Jimmy and Mr. Gale consideredgravely the possibility of a fishing trip. They sat in canvaschairs on the tiny lawn, and forgot a certain difference inage.

The door of the Tiffany house slammed. They stopped, listened.Nervous footsteps were crossing the porch, coming along thegravel walk. They looked back. Running toward them was Mrs.Tiffany. She wore no hat. Her hair was like a shell-torn flag,thin gray over the yellowed skin of her brow. Her hands dabbledfeebly in the air before her glaring eyes. She moaned:

"Oh, Mr. Gale, I can't stand it! Don't they know what they'redoing? My boy lies there, my husband, and he's crying for me tocome to him and show I remember him. I tell you I can hear him,and his voice sounds like a rainy wind. I told him I'd go toWoodlawn all by myself, I said I'd fill my little basket withflowers, and crabapple blossoms, but he said he wanted the othersto come too, he wanted a Decoration Day parade that would honorall the graves. Oh, I heard him--"

Mr. Gale had sprung up. He put his arm about her shoulder. Hecried, "There will be a parade, ma'am! We'll remember the boys,every one of them, every grave. You go in the house, honey, andyou put on your bonnet, and pack a little sack for you and me toeat after the ceremony, maybe you'll have time to bake a batch ofbiscuits, but anyway, in an hour or so, maybe hour and a half,you'll hear the parade coming, and you be all ready." Mr. Gale'svoice had something of the ponderous integrity of distant cannon.He smoothed her disordered hair. He patted her, like the softpawing of a fond old dog, and led her to the paint-blistered doorof the house.

He went back to his canvas chair, scratching his scalp,shaking his head. Jimmy, who had edged away, returned and sighed,"Gee, I wisht I could do something."

"I bet you would, if you were a little older, James,but--better run away. This old Rebel has got to stir up hissleepy brain and conjure up a Federal parade, with a band and atleast twenty flags, out of the sparrows in the street.Good-by."

After five minutes, or it may have been ten, of clawing at hischin, Mr. Gale looked happy. He hastened down the street. Heentered the drug store, and from the telephone booth he talked tohotel clerks in three different towns within ten miles ofWakamin.

He hurried to the livery stable which operated the two cars intown that were for hire. One of the cars was out. The second waspreparing to leave, as he lumbered up to the door.

"I want that car," he said to the stableman-chauffeur.

"Well, you can't have it." The stableman bent over, to crankup.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm going to take a skirt out for a spin, see?"

"Look here. I'm Mr. Gale who--"

"Aw, I know all about you. Seen you go by. You out-of-townguys think we have to drop everything else just to accommodateyou--"

Mr. Gale puffed across the floor like a steam-roller. He saidgently, "Son, I've been up all night, and I reckon I've had alee-tle mite too much liquor. I've taken a fancy to going riding.Son, I've got the peacefulest heart that a grown-up human everhad; I'm like a little playing pussy-cat, I am; but I've got agun in my back pocket that carries the meanest .44-40 bullet inthe South. Maybe you've heard about us Southern fire-eaters, heh?Son, I only want that car for maybe two hours. Understand?"

He bellowed. He was making vast, vague, loosely swinginggestures, his perspiring hands very red. He caught the stablemanby the shoulder. The man's Adam's apple worked grotesquely up anddown. He whimpered:

"All right. I'll take you."

Mr. Gale pacifically climbed into the car. "Joralemon, son,and fast, son, particular fast," he murmured.

In the speeding car he meditated: "Let's see. Must be fortyyears since I've toted any kind of a gun--and twenty years sinceI've called anybody 'son.' Oh, well."

Again, "Let's see. I'll be a Major. No, a Colonel; ColonelGale of the Tenth New York. Private Gale, I congratulate you. Ireckon the best you ever got from a darky was 'Cap'n' or 'boss.'You're rising in the world, my boy. Poor woman! Poor, faithfulwoman--''

When they reached the town of Joralemon, Mr. Gale leaned outfrom the car and inquired of a corner loafer, "Where's theDecoration Day parade? The G. A. R.?"

"At the exercises in Greenwood Cemetery."

"Greenwood, son," he blared, and the stableman made haste.

At the entrance to the cemetery Mr. Gale insinuated, "Now waittill I come back, son. I'm getting over that liquor, and I'mugly, son, powerful ugly."

"All right," growled the stableman. "Say, do I getpaid--?"

"Here's five dollars. When I come back with my friends,there'll be another five. I'm going to steal a whole DecorationDay parade."

"How?"

"I'm going to surround them."

"My--Gawd!" whispered the stableman.

The Southerner bristled at the sight of the Northernregimental flag among the trees of the cemetery. But he shruggedhis shoulders and waddled into the crowd. The morning's radiancebrought out in hot primary colors the red and yellow of flowersin muddy glass vases upon the graves. Light flashed from themirrory brown surfaces of polished granite headstones, withinscriptions cut in painfully white letters. The air was thickwith the scent of dust and maple leaves and packed people. Rounda clergyman in canonicals were the eight veterans now left inJoralemon; men to whose scrawny faces a dignity was given bytheir symbolic garb. From their eyes was purged all the meannessof daily grinding. The hand of a sparse-bearded Yankee, who worean English flag pinned beside his G. A. R. button, was resting onthe shoulder of a Teutonic-faced man with the emblem of the SigelCorps.

Round the G. A. R. were ringed the Sons of Veterans, the Hoseand Truck Company, the Women's Relief Corps, and the JoralemonBand; beyond them a great press of townspeople. The road besidethe cemetery was packed with cars and buggies, and the stamp ofhorses' feet as they restlessly swished at flies gave a rusticrhythm to the pause in the clergyman's voice.

Here in a quiet town, unconscious of the stir of the worldbeyond, was renewed the passion of their faith in the Union.

Mr. Gale shoved forward into the front row. Everyone glared atthe pushing stranger. The voice of the gray, sunken-templedclergyman sharpened with indignation for a second. Mr. Gale triedto look unconcerned. But he felt hot about the spine. The dustgot into his throat. The people about him were elbowing andsticky. He was not happy. But he vowed, "By thunder, I'll pullthis off if I have to kidnap the whole crowd."

As the clergyman finished his oration, Mr. Gale pushed amongthe G. A. R. He began loudly, cheerfully, "Gentlemen--"

The clergyman stared down from his box rostrum. "What do youmean, interrupting this ceremony?"

The crowd was squeezing in, like a street mob about a manfound murdered. Their voices united in a swelling whisper. Theirgaping mouths were ugly. Mr. Gale was rigid with the anger thatwipes out all fear of a crowd, and leaves a man facing them asthough they were one contemptible opponent.

"Look here," he bawled, "I had proposed to join you in certainmemorial plans. It may interest you to know that I am ColonelJohn Gale, and that I led the Tenth New York through most of thewar!"

"Ah," purred the clergyman, "you are Colonel--Gale, isit?"

"I am." The clergyman licked his lips. With fictitiousjocularity Mr. Gale said, "I see you do not salute your superiorofficer. But I reckon a dominie isn't like us old soldiers. Now,boys, listen to me. There's a little woman--"

The clergyman's voice cut in on this lumbering amiability as aknife cuts butter: "My dear sir, I don't quite understand thereason for this farce. I am a 'dominie,' as you are pleased tocall it, but also I am an old soldier, the present commander ofthis post, and it may 'interest you to know' that I fought clearthrough the war in the Tenth New York! And if my memory is stillgood, you were not my commanding officer for any considerableperiod!"

"No!" bellowed Mr. Gale, "I wa'n't! I'm a Southerner. FromAlabama. And after today I'm not even sure I'm reconstructed! I'mpowerful glad I never was a blue-bellied Yank, when I think ofthat poor little woman dying of a broken heart up inWakamin!"

With banal phrases and sentimental touches, with simple wordsand no further effort to be friendly, he told the story of Mrs.Captain Tiffany, though he did not satisfy the beggar ears of thecrowd with her name.

His voice was at times almost hostile. "So," he wound up, "Iwant you-all to come to Wakamin and decorate the graves there,too. You, my dear sir, I don't care a damaged Continental whetheryou ever salute me or not. If you boys do come to Wakamin, thenI'll know there's still somemen, as there were in the'60's. But if you eight or nine great big husky young Yanks areafraid of one poor old lone Johnny Reb, then by God, sir, I winanother scrimmage for the Confederate States of America!"

Silence. Big and red, Mr. Gale stood among them like asandstone boulder. His eyes were steady and hard as his clenchedfist. But his upper lip was trembling and covered with a triplerow of sweat drops.

Slowly, as in the fumbling stupor of a trance, the clergymandrew off his canonicals and handed them to a boy. He was formaland thin and rather dry of aspect in his black frock coat. Hisvoice was that of a tired, polite old gentleman, as he demandedof Mr. Gale, "Have you a car to take us to Wakamin?"

"Room for five."

To a man beside him the clergyman said, "Will you have anothercar ready for us?" Abruptly his voice snapped: "'Tention. Fallin. Form twos. B' th' right flank. For'ard. March!"

As he spoke he leaped down into the ranks, and the veteranstramped toward the gate of the cemetery, through the partingcrowd. Their faces were blurred with weariness and dust and age,but they stared straight ahead, they marched stolidly, as thoughthey had been ordered to occupy a dangerous position and were toofagged to be afraid.

The two rear-line men struck up with fife and drum. The fiferwas a corpulent banker, but he tootled with the agility of a boy.The drummer was a wisp of humanity. Though his clay-hued handskept up with the capering of "When Johnny Comes Marching HomeAgain," his yellowish eyes were opening in an agonized stare, andhis chin trembled.

"Halt!" the clergyman ordered. "Boys, seems to me thecommander of this expedition ought to be Colonel Gale. Colonel,will you please take command of the post?"

"W--why, I wouldn't hardly call it regular."

"You old Rebel, I wouldn't call any of this regular!"

"Yes," said Mr. Gale. "'Tention!"

The old drummer, his eyes opening wider and wider, sankforward from the knees, and held himself up only by tremblingbent arms. Two men in the crowd caught him. "Go on!" he groaned.His drumsticks clattered on the ground.

Uneasily exchanging glances, the other old men waited. Eachface said, "Risky business. Hot day. We might collapse, too."

The clergyman slipped the drum belt over his own head, pickedup the sticks. "Play, confound you, Lanse!" he snapped at thepompous banker-fifer, and together they rolled into a rudeversion of "Marching Through Georgia."

The squad straightened its lines and marched on without evenan order from Mr. Gale, who, at the head of the procession, wasmarveling, "I never did expect to march to that tune!"

The two motor cars shot from Joralemon to Wakamin, withsteering wheels wrenching and bucking on the sandy road, and oldmen clinging to seat-edge and robe-rack. They stopped before theTiffany cottage.

Mrs. Tiffany sat on the porch, her blue bonnet lashed to herfaded hair, with a brown veil, a basket of flowers and a shoe-boxof lunch on her knees. As the cars drew up, she rushed out, withflustered greetings. The old men greeted her elaborately. One,who had known Captain Tiffany, became the noisy spokesman. But hehad little of which to speak. And the whole affair suddenlybecame a vacuous absurdity. Now that Mr. Gale had them here, whatwas he going to do with them?

The quiet of the village street flowed over them. This was noparade; it was merely nine old men and an old woman talking inthe dust. There was no music, no crowd of spectators, none of theincitements of display which turn the ordinary daily sort of meninto one marching thrill. They were old, and tired, and somewhathungry, and no one saw them as heroes. A small automobile passed;the occupants scarce looked at them.

The unparading parade looked awkward, tried to keep up brisktalk, and became dull in the attempt.

They were engulfed in the indifferent calm of the day. Afterthe passing of the one automobile, there was no one to be seen.The box-elder trees nodded slowly. Far off a rooster crowed,once. In a vacant lot near by a cud-chewing cow stared at themdumb and bored. Little sounds of insects in the grass underlaidthe silence with a creeping sleepiness. The village street,stretching out toward the wheat fields beyond, grew hotter andmore hazy to their old eyes. They all stood about the cars,plucking at hinges and door-edges, wondering how they could giveup this childish attempt and admit that they were grannies. Asparrow hopped among them unconcernedly.

"Well?" said the clergyman.

"Wel-l--" said Mr. Gale.

Then Jimmy Martin strolled out in front of his house.

He saw them. He stopped short. He made three jubilant skips,and charged on them.

"Are you going to parade?" he shrilled at Mr. Gale.

"Afraid not, Jimmy. Reckon we haven't quite got the makings.The young people don't appear to care. Reckon we'll give up."

"No, no, no!" Jimmy wailed. "The Scouts want to come!"

He dashed into his house, while the collapsed parade staredafter him with mild elderly wonder. He came back to the gate. Hewore a Boy Scout uniform and a red neckerchief, and he carried acheap bugle.

He stood at the gate, his eyes a glory, and he blew the onebugle call he knew--the Reveille. Wavering at first, harsh andtimorous, the notes crept among the slumberous trees, thenswelled, loud, madly imploring, shaking with a boy's worship ofthe heroes.

Another boy ran out from a gate down the street, looked, camerunning, stumbling, panting. He was bare headed, in corduroyknickers unbuckled at the knees, but in his face was the sameageless devotion that had made a splendor of the mere boys whomarched out in '64 and '65. He saluted Jimmy. Jimmy spoke, andthe two of them, curiously dignified, very earnest, marched outbefore the scatter of old people and stood at attention, theirserious faces toward Woodlawn and the undecked graves.

From a box-elder down the street climbed another boy; onepopped out of a crabapple orchard; a dozen others from drowsydistances. They scurried like suddenly disturbed ants. They couldbe heard calling, clattering into houses. They came out again inScout uniforms; they raced down the street and fell intoline.

They stood with clean backs rigid, eyes forward, waiting toobey orders. As he looked at them, Mr. Gale knew that some dayWakamin would again have a soul.

Jimmy Martin came marching up to Mr. Gale. His voice wasplaintive and reedy, but it was electric as he reported: "The BoyScouts are ready, sir."

"'Tention!" shouted Mr. Gale.

The old men's backs had been straightening, the rheumy rednessof disappointment had gone from their eyes. They lined out behindthe boys. Even the Wakamin stableman seemed to feel inspiration.He sprang from his car, helped Mrs. Tiffany in, and wheeled thecar to join the procession. From nowhere, from everywhere, acrowd had come, and stood on the sidewalk, rustling with faintcheering. Two women hastened to add flowers to those in Mrs.Tiffany's basket. The benumbed town had awakened to energy andeagerness and hope.

To the clergyman Mr. Gale suggested, "Do you suppose that justfor once this Yankee fife-and-drum corps could play 'Dixie'?"Instantly the clergyman-drummer and the banker-fifer flashed into"Way Down South in the Land of Cotton." The color-bearer raisedthe flag.

Mr. Gale roared, "Forward! M--"

There was a high wail from Mrs. Tiffany: "Wait! Land o'goodness! What's Decoration Day without one single sword, and youmenfolks never thinking--"

She ran into her house. She came out bearing in her two hands,as though it were an altar vessel, the saber of CaptainTiffany.

"Mr. Gale, will you carry a Northerner's sword?" sheasked.

"No, ma'am, I won't!"

She gasped.

He buckled on the sword belt, and cried, "This isn't aNortherner's sword any more, nor a Southerner's, ma'am. It's anAmerican's! Forward! March!"

Bates lay staring at the green-shaded light on his desk anddisgustedly he realized that he must have been sleeping there forhours on the leather couch in his office. His eyes were peppery,his mouth dry. He rose, staggering with the burden of drowsiness,and glanced at his watch. It was three in the morning.

"Idiot!" he said.

He wreathed to the window, twelve stories above the New Yorkpavements. The stupidity that lay over his senses like uncombedwool was blown away as he exulted in the beauty of the citynight. It was as nearly quiet now as Manhattan ever becomes.Stilled were the trolleys and the whang of steel beams in the newbuilding a block away. One taxicab bumbled on the dark pavementbeneath. Bates looked across a swamp of roofs to East River, to aline of topaz lights arching over a bridge. The sky was not darkbut of a luminous blue--a splendid, aspiring, naked blue, inwhich the stars hung golden.

"But why shouldn't I fall asleep here? I'll finish the nighton the couch, and get after the New Bedford specifications beforebreakfast. I've never spent twenty-four hours in the officebefore. I'll do it!"

He said it with the pride of a successful man. But he ended,as he rambled back to the couch and removed his coat and shoes:"Still, I do wish there were somebody who cared a hang whether Icame home or stayed away for a week!"

When the earliest stenographer arrived she found Bates atwork. But often he was first at the office. No one knew of hisdiscovery that before dawn the huckstering city is enchanted toblue and crocus yellow above shadowy roofs. He had no one whowould ever encourage him to tell about it.

To Bates at thirty-five the world was composed of re-enforcedconcrete; continents and striding seas were office partitions andinkwells, the latter for signing letters beginning "In reply toyour valued query of seventh inst." Not for five years had heseen storm clouds across the hills or moths that flutter whiteover dusky meadows. To him the arc light was the dancing placefor moths, and flowers grew not in pastures but in vases onrestaurant tables. He was a city man and an office man. Papers,telephone calls, eight-thirty to six on the twelfth floor, werethe natural features of life, and the glory and triumph ofcivilization was getting another traction company to introducethe Carstop Indicator.

But he belonged to the new generation of business men. He wasnot one of the race who boast that they have had "mighty littlebook learning," and who cannot be pictured without their derbyhats, whether they are working, motoring, or in bed. Bates wasslender, immaculate, polite as a well-bred woman, his mustachelike a penciled eyebrow; yet in decision he was firm as a chunkof flint.

When he had come to New York from college Bates had believedthat he was going to lead an existence of polite society and theopera. He had in fourteen years been to the opera six times. Hedined regularly with acquaintances at the Yale Club, he knew twomen in his bachelor apartment building by their first names, andhe attended subscription dances and was agreeable to young womenwho had been out for three years. But New York is a thief offriends. Because in one night at a restaurant you may meet twentynew people therefore in one day shall you also lose twenty olderfriends. You know a man and like him; he marries and moves toGreat Neck; you see him once in two years. After thirty Bates wasincreasingly absorbed in the one thing that always wanted him,that appreciated his attention--the office.

He had gone from a motor company to the Carstop IndicatorCompany. He had spent a year in the Long Island City factorywhich manufactures the indicators for the Eastern trade. He hadworked out an improvement in the automatic tripping device. Atthirty-five he was a success. Yet he never failed when he wasdining alone to wish that he was to call on a girl who was worthcalling on.

After fourteen years of the candy-gobbling, cabaret-curious,nice-man-hunting daughters of New York, Bates had become unholilycautious. His attitude to the average debutante was that of anaviator to an anti-aircraft shell. And he was equallyuncomfortable with older, more earnest women. They talked abouteconomics. Bates had read a book all about economics shortlyafter graduation, but as he could never quite remember the titleit didn't help him much in earnest conversations. He preferred totalk to his stenographer. He mentioned neither wine suppers norher large black eyes. "Has the draftsman sent over the blueprints for Camden?" he said. Or: "Might hurry up the McGuldencorrespondence." That was real conversation. It gotsomewhere.

Then he began to talk to the girl in the building across thestreet.

That building was his scenery. He watched it as an old maidbehind a lace curtain gapes at every passer-by on her villagestreet. It had the charm of efficiency that is beginning to makeAmerican cities beautiful with a beauty that borrows nothing fromFrench châteaux or English inns. The architect had supposedthat he was planning neither a hotel nor a sparrow's paradise,but a place for offices. He had left off the limestone supportingcaps that don't support anything, and the marble plaques whichare touchingly believed to imitate armorial shields but whichactually resemble enlarged shaving mugs. He had created abuilding as clean and straight and honest as the blade of asword. It made Bates glad that he was a business man.

So much of the building opposite was of glass that the officeswere as open to observation as the coops at a dog show. Batesknew by sight every man and woman in twenty rooms. From his deskhe could not see the building, but when he was tired it was hishabit to loaf by the window for a moment. He saw the men comingin at eight-thirty or nine, smoking and chatting before they gotto work, settling at desks, getting up stiffly at lunch-time, andat closing hour, dulled to silence, snapping out the lightsbefore they went home. When he worked late at night Bates wassaved from loneliness by the consciousness of the one or two menwho were sure to be centered under desk lights in offices acrossthe way.

He sympathized with the office boy at whom the red-mustachedboss was always snarling in the eleventh-floor office on theright, and was indignant at the boy he saw stealing stamps on thethirteenth. He laughed over a clerk on the eleventh changing intoevening clothes at six--hopping on one leg to keep his trousersoff the floor, and solemnly taking dress tie and collar from thetop drawer of his desk. And it was a personal sorrow when tragedycame to his village; when the pretty, eager secretary of themanager in the twelfth-floor office exactly opposite was missingfor several days, and one morning a funeral wreath was laid onher desk by the window.

The successor of the dead girl must have come immediately, butBates did not notice her for a week. It was one of those weekswhen he was snatched from Task A to Task B, and from B to hustleout C, when the salesman out on the road couldn't sell milk to ababy, when the telephone rang or a telegram came just as Batesthought he had a clear moment, when he copied again every nightthe list of things he ought to have done day before yesterday,and his idea of heaven was a steel vault without telephoneconnection. But at the end of the storm he had nothing to doexcept to try to look edifyingly busy, and to amble round andwatch the stenographers stenograph and the office boy beofficious.

He sat primly lounging in the big chair by the window, smokinga panetela and unconsciously gazing at the building across thestreet. He half observed that the manager in the office justopposite was dictating to a new secretary, a slim girl in bluetaffeta with crisp white collar and cuffs. She did not slop overthe desk tablet, yet she did not sit grimly, like the oldishstenographer in the office just above her. She seemed at thedistance to be unusually businesslike. In all the hive that waslaid open to Bates' observation she was distinguished by hererect, charming shoulders, her decisive step, as she was to beseen leaving the manager's desk, going through thepartition--which to Bates' eye was an absurdly thin sheet of oakand glass--hastening to her typewriter, getting to work.

Bates forgot her; but at dusk, spring dusk, when he stood byhis window, late at the office yet with nothing to do, enervatedwith soft melancholy because there was no place he wanted to gothat evening, he noticed her again. Her chief and she were alsostaying late. Bates saw them talking; saw the chief sign a pileof correspondence, give it to her, nod, take his derby, yawn andplunge out into the general office, heading for the elevator. Thesecretary briskly carried away the correspondence. But shestopped at her desk beside a window. She pressed her eyes withher hand, passed it across them with the jerky motion of a mediumcoming out of a trance.

"Poor tired eyes!" Bates heard himself muttering.

No scent of blossoms nor any sound of eager birds reached thecement streets from the spring-flushed country, but there wasrestlessness in the eternal clatter, and as the darkeningsilhouette of the building opposite cut the reflected glow in theeastern sky his melancholy became a pain of emptiness. He yearnedacross to the keen-edged girl and imagined himself talking toher. In five minutes she was gone, but he remained at the window,then drooped slowly up to the Yale Club for dinner.

Doubtless Bates' life was making him selfish, but that eveningwhile he was being incredibly bored at a musical comedy he didthink of her, and for a second hoped that her eyes wererested.

He looked for her next morning as soon as he reached theoffice, and was displeased with the entire arrangement of theheavenly bodies because the light wasn't so good across there inthe morning as in the afternoon.

Not till three o'clock was he certain that she was wearingwhat appeared to be a waist of corn-colored rough silk, and thatfor all her slight nervousness her throat was full and smooth.Last night he had believed her twenty-eight. He promoted her totwenty-three.

He sighed: "Capable-looking young woman. Wish my secretarywere as interested in her work. She walks with--well, graceful.Now who can I get hold of for dinner tonight?"

He saw her coming in at nine o'clock; saw her unpin her hatand swiftly arrange her hair before her reflection in the groundglass of the partition. He saw her take morning dictation; bringcustomers in to the boss. He saw her slipping out to lunch,alone, at noon. He saw her quick, sure movements slacken as theafternoon became long and weary. He saw her preparing to go homeat night, or staying late, even her straight shoulders hunched asshe heavily picked out the last words on her typewriter. Allthrough the day he followed her, and though he knew neither hername nor her origin, though he had never heard her voice, yet heunderstood this girl better than at marriage most men understandthe women they marry.

The other people in her office treated her with respect. Theybowed to her at morning, at night. They never teased her, as thefluffy telephone girl was teased. That interested Bates, but formany weeks she was no part of his life.

On an afternoon in early summer, when his hands were twitchingand his eyeballs were hot coals from too-constant study ofspecifications, when everybody in the world seemed to be pickingat his raw nerves and he longed for someone who would care forhim, who would bathe his eyes and divert his mind from the rowsof figures that danced blood-red against darkness as he closedhis stinging lids, then he caught himself deliberately seekingthe window, passionately needing a last glimpse of her as the onehuman being whom he really knew.

"Confound her, if she isn't over there I'll--well, I won't gohome till she is!"

She was by the window, reading a letter. She looked up, caughthim staring at her. It was a very dignified Mr. Bates who plumpedon his hat and stalked away. Obviously he would never do anythingso low as to spy on offices across the street! The word stuck inhis mind, and scratched it. Certainly he had never spied, hedeclared in a high manner as he fumbled at a steak minute thatwas exactly like all the ten thousand steaks minute he hadendured at restaurants. Well, he'd take care that no one evercame in and misunderstood his reflective resting by the window.He would never glance at that building again!

And so at nine o'clock next morning, with three telegrams andan overdue letter from Birmingham Power and Traction unopened onhis desk, he was peering across the street and admiring a newhat, a Frenchy cornucopia with fold above fold of pale-bluestraw, which the girl was removing from her sleek hair.

There are several ways of stopping smoking. You can hide yourtobacco in a drawer in the next room, and lock the drawer, andhide the key. You can keep a schedule of the number of times yousmoke. You can refuse to buy cigarettes, and smoke only those youcan cadge from friends. These methods are all approved by theauthorities, and there is only one trouble with them--not one ofthem makes you stop smoking.

There are also numerous ways of keeping from studying thearchitecture of buildings across the street. You can be scornful,or explain to yourself that you don't know anything aboutemployees of other offices, and don't want to know anything. Youcan relax by sitting on the couch instead of standing by thewindow. The only trouble with these mental exercises is that youcontinue to find yourself gaping at the girl across and--

And you feel like a spy when you catch her in self-betrayalsthat pinch your heart. She marches out of the manager's office,cool, competent, strong, then droops by her desk and for astrained moment sits with thin fingers pressed to her poundingtemples.

Every time she did that Bates forgot his coy games. His spiritsped across the canyon and hovered about her, roused from thenagging worries about business and steaks minute and musicalcomedies which had come to be his most precious concerns. Withagitating clearness he could feel his finger tips caressing herforehead, feel the sudden cold of evaporation on his hand as hebathed the tired, cramped back of her neck with alcohol.

He gave up his highly gentlemanly effort not to spy. Hewondered if perhaps there wasn't something to all thesemetaphysical theories, if he wasn't sending currents offriendship across to cheer her frail, brave spirit in its fightto be businesslike. He forgot that he was as visible at hiswindow as she at hers. So it happened that one evening when hewas frankly staring at the girl she caught him, and turned herhead away with a vexed jerk.

Bates was hurt because he had hurt her. He who had regardedlife only from the standpoint of Bates, bachelor, found himselfthinking through her, as though his mind had been absorbed inhers. With a shock of pain he could feel her lamenting that itwas bad enough to be under the business strain all day, withoutbeing exposed to ogling in her house of glass. He wanted toprotect her--from himself.

For a week he didn't once stand by the window, even to lookdown at the street, twelve stories below, which he had watched asfrom his mountain shack a quizzical hermit might con the life ofthe distant valley. He missed the view, and he was glad to missit. He was actually giving up something for somebody. He felthuman again.

Though he did not stand by the window it was surprising howmany times a day he had to pass it, and how innocently he caughtglimpses of the life across the way. More than once he saw herlooking at him. Whenever she glanced up from work her eyes seemeddrawn to his. But not flirtatiously, he believed. In the distanceshe seemed aloof as the small cold winter moon.

There was another day that was a whirl of craziness. Everybodywanted him at once. Telegrams crossed each other. The factorycouldn't get materials. Two stenographers quarreled, and both ofthem quit, and the typewriter agency from which he got his girlshad no one to send him just then save extremely alien enemies whoconfounded typewriters with washing machines. When the office wasquiet and there was only about seven more hours of work on hisdesk, he collapsed. His lax arms fell beside him. He pantedslowly. His spinning head drooped and his eyes were blurred.

"Oh, buck up!" he growled.

He lifted himself to his feet, slapped his arms, found himselfat the window. Across there she was going home.Involuntarily--looking for a greeting from his one companion inwork--he threw up his arm in a wave of farewell.

She saw it. She stood considering him, her two hands up to herhead as she pinned her hat. But she left the window without asign. Suddenly he was snapping: "I'll make you notice me! I'm nota noon-hour window flirt! I won't stand your thinking I am!"

With a new energy of irritation he went back. Resting his eyesevery quarter of an hour he sat studying a legal claim, makingnotes. It was eight--nine--ten. He was faint, yet not hungry. Herose. He was surprised to find himself happy. He hunted for thesource of the glow, and found it. He was going to draw thatfrosty moon of a girl down to him.

In the morning when he came in he hastened to the window andwaited till she raised her head. He waved--a quick, modest,amiable gesture. Every morning and evening after that he sentacross his pleading signal. She never answered but she observedhim and--well, she never pulled down the window shade.

His vacation was in July. Without quite knowing why, he didnot want to go to the formal seaside hotel at which he usuallyspent three weeks in being polite to aunts in their nieces'frocks, and in discovering that as a golfer he was a goodsmall-boat sailor. He found himself heading for the LebanonValley, which is the valley of peace; and he discovered thatyellow cream and wild blackberries and cowslips and the art ofwalking without panting still exist. He wore soft shirts andbecame tanned; he stopped worrying about the insolvency of theDownstate Interurban Company, and was even heard to laugh at thelandlord's stories.

At least a tenth of his thoughts were devoted to planning avacation for the girl across. She should lie with nervous fingersrelaxed among the long-starred grasses, and in the cornflowerblue of the sky and comic plump white clouds find healing. Afterarranging everything perfectly he always reminded himself thatshe probably hadn't been with her firm long enough to have earnedmore than a five-day vacation, and with etched scorn he pointedout that he was a fool to think about a girl of whom he knew onlythat:

She seemed to take dictation quickly.

She walked gracefully.

She appeared at a distance to have delicate oval cheeks.

She was between sixteen and forty.

She was not a man.

About Article Five, he was sure.

He was so strong-minded and practical with himself that by theend of his holidays the girl was cloudy in his mind. He was curedof sentimentalizing. He regarded with amusement hisre-enforced-concrete romance, his moth dance under the arclight's sterile glare. He would--oh, he'd call on ChristineParrish when he got back. Christine was the sister of a classmateof his; she danced well and said the right things about ParkAvenue and the Washington Square Players.

He got back to town on Monday evening, just at closing time.He ran up to his office, to announce his return. He dashed intohis private room--less dashingly to the window. The girl acrosswas thumbing a book, probably finding a telephone number. Sheglanced up, raising a finger toward her lips. Then his hat wasoff, and he was bowing, waving. She sat with her half-raised handsuspended. Suddenly she threw it up in a flickering gesture ofwelcome.

Bates sat at his desk. The members of his staff as they camein to report--or just to be tactful and remind the chief of theirvaluable existence--had never seen him so cheerful. When theywere gone he tried to remember what it was he had planned to do.Oh, yes; call up Christine Parrish. Let it go. He'd do it someother night. He went to the window. The girl was gone, but thepale ghost of her gesture seemed to glimmer in the darkeningwindow.

He dined at the new Yale Club, and sat out on the roof afterdinner with a couple of temporary widowers and Bunk Selby's kidbrother, who had graduated in the spring. The city beneath themflared like burning grass. Broadway was a streak of tawny fire;across the East River a blast furnace stuttered flames; theBiltmore and Ritz and Manhattan, the Belmont and Grand CentralStation were palaces more mysterious in their flashing firststories, their masses of shadow, their splashes of white upliftedwall, than Venice on carnival night. Bates loved the hot beautyof his city; he was glad to be back; he didn't exactly know why,but the coming fall and winter gave promise of endless conquestand happiness. Not since he had first come to the city had helooked forward so exultantly. Now, as then, the future was notall neatly listed, but chaotic and trembling with adventure.

All he said to the men smoking with him was "Goodvacation--fine loaf." Or, "Got any money on copper?"

But they looked at him curiously.

"You sound as though you'd had a corking time. What you beendoing? Licking McLoughlin at tennis or something?"

Bunk Selby's kid brother, not having been out of college longenough to have become reliable and stupid, ventured: "Say, Bunk,I bet your young friend Mr. Bates is in love!"

"Huh!" said Bunk with married fatness. "Batesy? Never! He'sthe buds' best bunker."

At two minutes of nine the next morning Bates was at thewindow. To him entered his stenographer, bearing mail.

"Oh, leave it on the desk," he complained.

At one minute past nine the girl across could be seen in thegeneral office, coming out of the dimness to her window. He wavedhis arm. She sent back the greeting. Then she turned her back onhim. But he went at his mail humming.

She always answered after that, and sometimes during the dayshe swiftly peered at him. It was only a curt, quick recognition,but when he awoke he looked forward to it. His rusty imaginationcreaking, he began to make up stories about her. He was convincedthat whatever she might be she was different from thegood-natured, commonplace women in his own office. She was amystery. She had a family. He presented her with a father of leandistinction, hawk nose, classical learning--and the most alarminginability to stick to the job, being in various versions abishop, a college president, and a millionaire who had lost hismoney.

He decided that she was named Emily, because Emily meant allthe things that typewriters and filing systems failed to mean.Emily connoted lavender-scented chests, old brocade, and twilitgardens brimmed with dewy, damask roses, spacious halls of whitepaneling, and books by the fire. Always it was Bates who restoredher to the spacious halls, the brocade, and the arms of herbishop-professor-millionaire father.

There was one trouble with his fantasy: He didn't dare see hercloser than across the street, didn't dare hear her voice, forfear the first sacred words of the lady of the damask roses mightbe: "Say, listen! Are you the fella that's been handing me thedouble O? Say, you got your nerve!"

Once when he was sailing out of the street entrance, breezyand prosperous, he realized that she was emerging across the way,and he ducked back into the hall. It was not hard to avoid her.The two buildings were great towns. There were two thousandpeople in Bates' building, perhaps three thousand in hers; and inthe streams that tumbled through the doorways at night theindividual people were as unrecognizable as in the mad passing ofa retreating brigade.

It was late October when he first definitely made out herexpression, first caught her smile across the chill and empty airthat divided them. In these shortening days the electric lightswere on before closing time, and in their radiance he could seeher more clearly than by daylight.

In the last mail came a letter from the home office, informinghim with generous praise that his salary was increased a thousanda year. All the world knows that vice presidents are not likeoffice boys; they do not act ignorantly when they get a raise.But it is a fact that, after galloping to the door to see whetheranybody was coming in, Bates did a foxtrot three times about hisdesk. He rushed to the window. Four times he had to visit itbefore she glanced up. He caught her attention by waving theletter. Her face was only half toward him, but he could make outher profile, gilded by the light over her desk. He held out theletter and with his forefinger traced each line, as though hewere reading it to her. When he had finished he clapped his handsand whooped.

The delicate still lines of her face wrinkled; her lipsparted; she was smiling, nodding, clapping her hands.

"She--she--she understands things!" crowed Bates.

He had noted that often instead of going out she ate a boxlunch at her desk, meditatively looking down to the street as shemunched a cake; that on Friday--either the office busy day or theday when her week's salary had almost run out--she always stayedin, and that she lunched at twelve. One Friday in early winter hehad the housekeeper at his bachelor apartments preparesandwiches, with coffee in a vacuum bottle. He knew that hissubordinates, with their inevitable glad interest in anyeccentricities of the chief, would wonder at his lunching in.

"None of their business, anyway!" he said feebly. But heobserved to his stenographer: "What a rush! Guess I won't go outfor lunch." He strolled past the desk of young Crackins, thebookkeeper, whom he suspected of being the office wit and ofcollecting breaks on the part of the boss as material fordelicious scandal.

"Pretty busy, Crackins? Well, so am I. Fact, I don't thinkI'll go out to lunch. Just have a bite here."

Having provided dimmers for the fierce light that beats abouta glass-topped desk he drew a straight chair to the window andspread his feast on the broad sill at a few minutes after twelve.Emily was gnawing a doughnut and drinking a glass of milk. Hebowed, but he inoffensively nibbled half a sandwich before he gotover his embarrassment and ventured to offer her a bite. She wasmotionless, the doughnut gravely suspended in air. She sprangup--left the window.

"Curse it, double curse it! Fool! Beast! Couldn't even let hereat lunch in peace! Intruding on her--spoiling her leisure."

Emily had returned to the window. She showed him a small waterglass. She half filled it with milk from her own glass, anddiffidently held it out. He rose and extended his hand for it.Across the windy space he took her gift and her greeting.

He laughed; he fancied that she was laughing back, though hecould see her face only as a golden blur in the thin fallsunshine. They settled down, sharing lunches. He was insisting onher having another cup of coffee when he was conscious that thedoor to his private room had opened, that someone wasentering.

Frantically he examined a number of imaginary specks on hiscup. He didn't dare turn to see who the intruder was. He held upthe cup, ran a finger round the edge and muttered "Dirty!" Theintruder pattered beside him. Bates looked up at him innocently.It was Crackins, the office tease. And Crackins was grinning.

"Hair in the soup, Mr. Bates?"

"In the--Oh! Oh, yes. Hair in the soup. Yes. Dirty--dirtycup--have speak--speak housekeeper," Bates burbled.

"Do you mind my interrupting you? I wanted to ask you aboutthe Farmers' Rail-line credit. They're three weeks behind inpayment--"

Did Bates fancy it or was Crackins squinting through thewindow at Emily? With an effusiveness that was as appropriate tohim as a mandolin to an Irish contractor, Bates bobbed up and ledCrackin back to the main office. He couldn't get away for tenminutes. When he returned Emily was leaning against the windowjamb and he saw her by a leaded casement in the bishop's mansion,dreaming on hollyhocks and sundial below.

She pantomimed the end of her picnic; turned her small blacklunch box upside down and spread her hands with a plaintivegesture of "All gone!" He offered her coffee, sandwiches, a barof chocolate; but she refused each with a shy, quick shake of herhead. She pointed at her typewriter, waved once, and was back atwork.

As Christmas approached, as New York grew so friendly that mennodded to people who hadn't had the flat next door for more thanseven years, Bates wondered if Emily's Christmas would besolitary. He tried to think of a way to send her a remembrance.He couldn't. But on the day before he brought an enormous wreathto the office, and waited till he caught her eye. Not tillfour-thirty, when the lights were on, did he succeed. He hung thewreath at the window and bowed to her, one hand on his heart, theother out in salutation.

Snow flew through the cold void between them and among cliffsof concrete and steel ran the icy river of December air, but theystood together as a smile transfigured her face--face of agold-wreathed miniature on warm old ivory, tired and a littlesad, but tender with her Christmas smile.

She was gone, and he needed her. She had been absent a weeknow, this evening of treacherous melancholy. Winter had grown oldand tedious and hard to bear; the snow that had been jolly inDecember was a filthy smear in February. Had there ever been sucha thing as summer--ever been a time when the corners had not beenfoul with slush and vexatious with pouncing wind? He was tired ofshows and sick of dances, and with a warm personal hatred hehated all the people from out of town who had come to New Yorkfor the winter and crowded the New Yorkers out of their favoritedens in tea rooms and grills.

And Emily had disappeared. He didn't know whether she had anew job or was lying sick in some worn-carpeted room, unattended,desperate. And he couldn't find out. He didn't know her name.

Partly because he dreaded what might happen to her, partlybecause he needed her, he was nervously somber as he lookedacross to her empty window tonight. The street below was a crazytumult, a dance of madmen on a wet pavement purple from arclights--frenzied bells of surface cars, impatient motors, rippingtaxis, home-hungry people tumbling through the traffic orstanding bewildered in the midst of it, expecting to be killed,shivering and stamping wet feet. A late-working pneumatic riveterpunctured his nerves with its unresting r-r-r-r-r--the grindingmachine of a gigantic dentist. The sky was wild, the jaggedclouds rushing in panic, smeared with the dull red of afterglow.Only her light, across, was calm--and she was not there.

"I can't stand it! I've come to depend on her. I didn't know Icould miss anybody like this. I wasn't living--then. Somethinghas happened to me. I don't understand! I don't understand!" hesaid.

She was back next morning. He couldn't believe it. He keptreturning to make sure, and she always waved, and he wassurprised to see how humbly grateful he was for that recognition.She pantomimed coughing for him, and with a hand on her browindicated that she had had fever. He inquiringly laid his cheekon his hand in the universal sign for going to bed. Shenodded--yes, she had been abed with a cold.

As he left the window he knew that sooner or later he mustmeet her, even if she should prove to be the sort who would say"Listen, kiddo!" He couldn't risk losing her again. Only--well,there was no hurry. He wanted to be sure he wasn't ridiculous.Among the people he knew the greatest rule of life was never tobe ridiculous.

He had retired from the window in absurd envy because the menand girls in the office across were shaking Emily's hand,welcoming her back. He began to think about them and about heroffice. He hadn't an idea what the business of the officewas--whether they sold oil stock or carrier pigeons or didblackmail. It was too modern to have lettering on the windows.There were blue prints to be seen on the walls, but they mightindicate architecture, machinery--anything.

He began to watch her office mates more closely, and took themost querulous likes and dislikes. Her boss--he was a decentchap; but that filing girl, whom he had caught giggling atEmily's aloof way, she was a back-alley cat, and Bates had aback-alley desire to slap her.

He was becoming a clumsy sort of mystic in his aching care forher. When he waved good-night he was sending her his deepest selfto stand as an invisible power beside her all the dark night.When he watched the others in her office he was not a peeringgossip; he was winning them over to affection for her.

But not too affectionate!

He disapproved of the new young man who went to work in theoffice opposite a week or two after Emily's return. The new youngman went about in his shirt sleeves, but the shirt seemed to beof silk, and he wore large intelligentsia tortoise-shellspectacles, and smoked a college sort of pipe in adear-old-dormitory way. He had trained his molasses-colored lockstill each frightened hair knew its little place and meekly keptit all day long. He was a self-confident, airy new young man, andapparently he was at least assistant manager. He was to be beheldtalking easily to Emily's chief, one foot up on a chair, puffingmuch gray smoke.

The new young man appeared to like Emily. He had his ownstenographer in his coop 'way over at the left, but he was alwayshanging about Emily's desk, and she looked up at him brightly. Hechatted with her at closing hour, and at such times her back wasto the window; and across the street Bates discreditablyneglected his work and stood muttering things about drowningpuppies.

She still waved good-night to Bates, but he fancied that shewas careless about it.

"Oh, I'm just the faithful old dog. Young chap comesalong--I'm invited to the wedding! I bet I've been best man atmore weddings than any other man in New York. I know the WeddingMarch better than the organist of St. Thomas', and I can smelllost rings across the vestry. Of course. That's all they want mefor," said Bates.

And he dictated a violent letter to the company which made thecards for the indicator, and bitterly asked the office boy if hecould spare time from the movies to fill the inkwells during thenext few months.

Once Emily and the new young man left the office together atclosing time, and peering twelve stories down Bates saw thememerging, walking together down the street. The young man wasbending over her, and as they were submerged in the crowd Emilyglanced at him with a gay upward toss of her head.

The lonely man at the window above sighed. "Well--well, Iwanted her to be happy. But that young pup--Rats! He's probablyvery decent. Heavens and earth, I'm becoming a moral Peeping Tom!I hate myself! But--I'm going to meet her. I won't let him takeher away! I won't!"

Easy to say, but like paralysis was Bates' training in doingwhat other nice people do--in never being ridiculous. He despisedqueer people, socialists and poets and chaps who let others knowthey were in love.

Still thinking about it a week later he noticed no one abouthim as he entered a near-by tea room for lunch, and sat at atiny, white, fussy table, with a paranoiac carmine rabbit paintedin one corner of the bare top. He vaguely stared at a menu ofwalnut sandwiches, cream-cheese sandwiches, and chicken hash.

He realized that over the top of the menu he was lookingdirectly at Emily, alone, at another dinky white table across theroom.

Suppose she should think that he had followed her? That he wasa masher? Horrible!

He made himself small in his chair, and to the impatientwaitress modestly murmured: "Chicken hash, please; cuppacoffee."

His fear melted as he made sure that Emily had not seen him.She was facing in the same direction as he, and farther down theroom, so that her back was toward him, and her profile. She wasreading a book while she neglectfully nibbled at a soft whiteroll, a nice-minded tea-room roll. He studied her hungrily.

She was older than he had thought, from her quick movements.She was twenty-seven, perhaps. Her smooth, pale cheeks, free ofall padding or fat, all lax muscles of laziness, were silken. Ineverything she was fine; the product of breeding. She was,veritably, Emily!

He had never much noticed how women were dressed, but now hefound himself valuing every detail: The good lines and simplicityof her blue frock with chiffon sleeves, her trim brown shoes, herunornamented small blue toque, cockily aside her head withmilitary smartness. But somehow--It was her overcoat, on the backof her chair, that got him--her plain brown overcoat with bandsof imitation fur; rather a cheap coat, not very warm. The insidewas turned back, so that he saw the tiny wrinkles in the liningwhere it lay over her shoulders--wrinkles as feminine as thefaint scent of powder--and discovered that she had patched thearmhole. He clenched his fists with a pity for her poverty thatwas not pity alone but a longing to do things for her.

Emily was stirring, closing her book, absently pawing for hercheck as she snatched the last sentences of the story beforegoing back to work. He had, so far, only picked juicy littlewhite pieces out of the chicken hash, and had ignobly put off thetask of attacking the damp, decomposed toast. And he was hungry.But he didn't know what to do if in passing she recognizedhim.

He snatched his coat and hat and check, and galloped out, notlooking back.

He went to a hotel and had a real lunch, alternately glowingbecause she really was the fine, fresh, shining girl he hadfancied and cursing himself because he had not gone over andspoken to her. Wittily. Audaciously. Hadn't he been witty andaudacious to the Binghamton traction directors?

And--now that he knew her he wasn't going to relinquish her tothe windy young man with the owl spectacles!

At three-thirty-seven that afternoon without visible cause heleaped out of his chair, seized his hat, and hustled out throughthe office. He sedately entered the elevator. The elevator runnerwas a heavy, black-skirted amiable Irishwoman who rememberedpeople. He wondered if he couldn't say to her, "I am about to goacross the street and fall in love."

As for the first time in all his study of it he entered thebuilding opposite, he was panting as though he had been smokingtoo much. His voice sounded thick as he said "Twelve out," in theelevator.

Usually, revolving business plans, he walked through buildingsunseeing, but he was as aware of the twelfth-floor hall, of themarble footboards, the floor like fruit cake turned to stone,wire-glass lights, alabaster bowls of the indirect lighting, asthough he were a country boy new to this strange indoor worldwhere the roads were tunnels. He was afraid, and none too clearwhy he should be afraid, of one slim girl.

He had gone fifty feet from the elevator before it occurred tohim that he hadn't the slightest idea where he was going.

He had lost his directions. There were two batteries ofelevators, so that he could not get his bearings from them. Hedidn't know on which side her office was. Trying to look asthough he really had business here he rambled till he found awindow at the end of a corridor. He saw theTimes tower,and was straight again. Her office would be on the right.But--where?

He had just realized that from the corridor he couldn't tellhow many outside windows each office had. He had carefullycounted from across the street and found that her window was thesixth from the right. But that might be in either the FloralHeights Development Company or the Alaska Belle MiningCorporation, S. Smith--it was not explained whether S. Smith wasthe Belle or the Corporation.

Bates stood still. A large, red, furry man exploded out of theFloral Heights office and stared at him. Bates haughtily retiredto the window at the end of the corridor and glowered out.Another crushing thought had fallen on him. Suppose he did pickthe right office? He would find himself in an enclosed waitingroom. He couldn't very well say to an office boy: "Will you tellthe young lady in the blue dress that the man across the streetis here?"

That would be ridiculous.

But he didn't care a hang if he was ridiculous!

He bolted down the corridor, entered the door of the AlaskaBelle Mining Corporation. He was in a mahogany andcrushed-morocco boudoir of business. A girl with a black frockand a scarlet smile fawned, "Ye-es?" He wasn't sure, but hethought she was a flirtatious person whom he had noted asbelonging in an office next to Emily's. He blundered: "C-could Isee some of your literature?"

It was twenty minutes later when he escaped from a friendlyyoung man--now gorgeous in a new checked suit, but positivelyknown by Bates to have cleaned the lapels of his other suit withstuff out of a bottle two evenings before--who had tried to sellhim stock in two gold mines and a ground-floor miracle in thecopper line. Bates was made to feel as though he was betraying anold friend before he was permitted to go. He had to accept alibrary of choice views of lodes, smelters, river barges, andAlaskan scenery.

He decorously deposited the booklets one by one in the mailchute, and returned to his favorite corridor.

This time he entered the cream-and-blue waiting room of theFloral Heights Development Company. He had a wild, unformed planof announcing himself as a building inspector and being takenthrough the office, unto the uttermost parts, which meant toEmily's desk. It was a romantic plan and adventurous--and heinstantly abandoned it at the sight of the realistic office boy,who had red hair and knickers and the oldest, coldest eye in theworld.

"You people deal in suburban realty, don't you?"

"Yep!"

"I'd like to see the manager." It would be Emily who wouldtake him in!

"Whadyuhwannaseeimbout?"

"I may consider the purchase of a lot."

"Oh, I thought you was that collector from the towelcompany."

"Do I look it, my young friend?"

"You can't tell, these days--the way you fellows spend yourmoney on clothes. Well, say, boss, the old man is out, but I'llchase Mr. Simmons out here."

Mr. Simmons was, it proved, the man whom Bates disliked morethan any other person living. He was that tortoise-spectacled,honey-haired, airy young man who dared to lift his eyes to Emily.He entered with his cut-out open; he assumed that he was Bates'physician and confessor; he chanted that at Beautiful FloralHeights by the Hackensack, the hydrants gave champagne, allbabies weighed fifteen pounds at birth, values doubled overnight,and cement garages grew on trees.

Bates escaped with another de-luxe library, which included aglossy postcard showing the remarkable greenness of FloralHeights grass and the redness and yellowness of "Bungalow erectedfor J. J. Keane." He took the postcard back to his office andaddressed it to the one man in his class whom he detested.

For four days he ignored Emily. Oh, he waved goodnight; therewas no reason for hurting her feelings by rudeness. But he didnot watch her through the creeping office hours. And he called onChristine Parrish. He told himself that in Christine's atmosphereof leisure and the scent of white roses, in her chatter about thesingles championship and Piping Rock and various men referred toas Bunk and Poodle and Georgie, he had come home to his ownpeople. But when Christine on the davenport beside him lookeddemurely at him through the smoke of her cigarette he seemed tohear the frightful drum fire of the Wedding March, and he rushedto the protecting fireplace.

The next night when Emily, knife-clean Emily, waved good-byand exhaustedly snapped off her light Bates darted to theelevator and reached the street entrance before she appearedacross the way. But he was still stiff with years of training inpropriety. He stood watching her go down the street, turn thecorner.

Crackins, the bookkeeper, blandly whistling as he left thebuilding, was shocked to see Bates running out of the doorway,his arms revolving grotesquely, his unexercised legs stumbling ashe dashed down a block and round the corner.

Bates reached her just as she entered the Subway kiosk and wasabsorbed in the swirl of pushing people. He put out his hand totouch her unconscious shoulder, then withdrew it shiveringly,like a cat whose paw has touched cold water.

She had gone two steps down. She did not know he wasthere.

"Emily!" he cried.

A dozen Subway hurriers glanced at him as they shoved past.Emily turned, half seeing. She hesitated, looked away from himagain.

"Emily!"

He dashed down, stood beside her.

"Two lovers been quarreling," reflected an oldish woman as sheplumped by them.

"I beg your pardon!" remonstrated Emily.

Her voice was clear, her tone sharp. These were the firstwords from his princess of the tower.

"I beg yours, but--I tried to catch your attention. I've beenfrightfully clumsy, but--You see, hang it, I don't know yourname, and when I--I happened to see you, I--I'd thought of you as'Emily.'"

Her face was still, her eyes level. She was not indignant, butshe waited, left it all to him.

He desperately lied: "Emily was my mother's name."

"Oh! Then I can't very well be angry, but--"

"You know who I am, don't you? The man across the streetfrom--"

"Yes. Though I didn't know you at first. The man across isalways so self-possessed!"

"I know. Don't rub it in. I'd always planned to be verysuperior and amusing and that sort of stuff when I met you, andmake a tremendous impression."

Standing on the gritty steel-plated steps that led to thecavern of the Subway, jostled by hurtling people, he faltered on:"Things seem to have slipped, though. You see, I felt beastlylonely tonight. Aren't you, sometimes?"

"Always!"

"We'd become such good friends--you know, our lunchestogether, and all."

Her lips twitched, and she took pity on him with: "I know. Areyou going up in the Subway? We can ride together, at least as faras Seventy-second."

This was before the days of shuttles and H's, when dozens ofpeople knew their way about in the Subway, and one spokeconfidently of arriving at a given station.

"No, I wasn't going. I wanted you to come to dinner with me!Do, please! If you haven't a date. I'm--I'm not really a masher.I've never asked a girl I didn't know, like this. I'm really--Oh,hang it, I'm a solid citizen. Disgustingly so. My name is Bates.I'm g. m. of my office. If this weren't New York we'd have metmonths ago. Please! I'll take you right home after--"

Young women of the Upper West Side whose fathers were in BroadStreet or in wholesale silk, young women with marquetry tables,with pictures in shadow boxes in their drawing rooms, and toomany servants belowstairs, had been complimented when Bates tookthem to dinner. But this woman who worked, who had the tensionwrinkle between her brows, listened and let him struggle.

"We can't talk here. Please walk up a block with me," hebegged.

She came but she continued to inspect him. Once they were outof the hysteria of the Subway crowd, the ache of hisembarrassment was relieved, and on a block of dead old brownstonehouses embalmed among loft buildings he stopped and laughedaloud.

"I've been talking like an idiot. The crowd flustered me. Andit was so different from the greeting I'd always planned. May Icome and call on you sometimes, and present myself as a correctold bachelor, and ask you properly to go to dinner? Will youforgive me for having been so clumsy?"

She answered gravely: "No, you weren't. You were nice. Youspoke as though you meant it. I was glad. No one in New York everspeaks to me as though he meant anything--except givingdictation."

He came close to saying: "What does the chump with the foolishspectacles mean?"

He saved himself by a flying mental leap as she went on: "AndI like your laugh. I will go to dinner with you tonight if youwish."

"Thank you a lot. Where would you like to go? And shall we goto a movie or something to kill time before dinner?"

"You won't--I'm not doing wrong, am I? I really feel as if Iknew you. Do you despise me for tagging obediently along when I'mtold to?"

"Oh! Despise--You're saving a solitary man's life!Where--"

"Any place that isn't too much like a tea room. I go to tearooms twice a day. I am ashamed every time I see a boiled egg,and I've estimated that if the strips of Japanese toweling I'vedined over were placed end to end they would reach from Elkhartto Rajputana."

"I know. I wish we could go to a family dinner--not a smartone but an old-fashioned one, with mashed turnips, and Mothersaying: 'Now eat your nice parsnips; little girls that can't eatparsnips can't eat mince pie.'"

"Oh, there aren't any families any more. You are nice!"

She was smiling directly at him, and he wanted to tuck herhand under his arm, but he didn't, and they went to a movie tillseven. They did not talk during it. She was relaxed, her smalltired hands curled together in her lap. He chose the balcony ofthe Firenze Room in the Grand Royal Hotel for dinner, becausefrom its quiet leisure you can watch gay people and hear distantmusic. He ordered a dinner composed of such unnecessary things ashors d'oeuvres, which she wouldn't have in tea rooms. He did notorder wine.

When the waiter was gone and they faced each other, with nowalking, no movies, no stir of the streets to occupy them, theywere silent. He was struggling enormously to find something tosay, and finding nothing beyond the sound observation thatwinters are cold. She glanced over the balcony rail at a bouncingpink-and-silver girl dining below with three elephantishlyskittish men in evening clothes. She seemed far easier than he.He couldn't get himself to be masterful. He examined the crest ona fork and carefully scratched three triangles on the cloth, andran his watch chain between his fingers, and told himself not tofidget, and arranged two forks and a spoon in an unfeasiblefortification of his water glass, and delicately scratched hisear and made a knot in his watch chain, and dropped a fork withan alarming clang, and burst out:

"Er-r-r--Hang it, let's be conversational! I find myself lotsdumber than an oyster. Or a fried scallop."

She laid her elbows on the table, smiled inquiringly,suggested: "Very well. But tell me who you are. And what doesyour office do? I've decided you dealt in Christmas mottoes. Youhave cardboard things round the walls."

He was eloquent about the Carstop Indicator. The device was,it seemed, everything from a city guide to a preventive ofinfluenza. All traction magnates who failed to introduce itwere--

"Now I shall sell you a lot at Floral Heights," sheinterrupted.

"Oh, you're right. I'm office mad. But it really is a goodthing. I handle the Eastern territory. I'm a graduate--now Ishall be autobiographical and intimate and get your sympathy formy past--I come from Shef.--Sheffield Scientific School of YaleUniversity. My father was a chemical engineer, and I wrote onepoem, at the age of eleven, and I have an uncle in Sing Sing forforgery. Now you know all about me. And I want to know if youreally are Emily?"

"Meaning?"

"I didn't--er--exactly call you Emily because of my mother,but because the name means old gardens and a charming family. Ihave decided that your father was either a bishop or a Hartfordbanker."

She was exploring hors d'oeuvres. She laid down her fork andsaid evenly: "No. My father was a mill superintendent in FallRiver. He was no good. He drank and gambled and died. My motherwas quite nice. But there is nothing romantic about me. I didhave three years in college, but I work because I have to. I haveno future beyond possibly being manager of the girls in some bigoffice. I am very competent but not very pleasant. I am horriblylonely in New York, but that may be my fault. One man likes me--aman in my office. But he laughs at my business ambitions. I amnot happy, and I don't know what's ahead of me, and some day Imay kill myself--and I definitely do not want sympathy. I'venever been so frank as this to anyone, and I oughtn't to havebeen with you."

She stopped dead, looked at the trivial crowd below, and Batesfelt as though he had pawed at her soul.

Awkwardly kind he ventured: "You live alone?"

"Yes."

"Can't you find some jolly girls to live with?"

"I've tried it. They got on my nerves. They were as hopelessas I was."

"Haven't you some livelier girl you can play with?"

"Only one. And she's pretty busy. She's a social worker. Andwhere can we go? Concerts sometimes, and walks. Once we tried togo to a restaurant. You know--one of these Bohemian places. Threedifferent drunken men tried to pick us up. This isn't a verygentle city."

"Emily--Emily--I say, what is your name?"

"It's as unromantic as the rest of me: Sarah Pardee."

"Look here, Miss Pardee, I'm in touch with a good manydifferent sorts of people in the city. Lived here a good while,and classmates. Will you let me do something for you? Introduceyou to people I know; families and--"

She laid down her fork, carefully placed her hands flat on thetable, side by side, palms down, examined them, fitted her thumbscloser together, and declared: "There is something you can do forme."

"Yes?" he thrilled.

"Get me a better job!"

He couldn't keep from grunting as though he had quiteunexpectedly been hit by something.

"The Floral Heights people are nice to work for, but there'sno future. Mr. Ransom can't see a woman as anything but astenographer. I want to work up to office manager of some bigconcern or something."

He pleaded:

"B-but--Of course I'll be glad to do that, but don't youwant--How about the human side? Don't you want to meet real NewYorkers?"

"No."

"Houses where you could drop in for tea on Sunday?"

"No."

"Girls of your own age, and dances, and--"

"No. I'm a business woman, nothing else. Shan't be anythingelse, I'm afraid. Not strong enough. I have to get to bed at ten.Spartan. It isn't much fun but it--oh, it keeps me going."

"Very well. I shall do as you wish. I'll telephone you bytomorrow noon."

He tried to make it sound politely disagreeable, but it is tobe suspected that he was rather plaintive, for a glimmer of asmile touched her face as she said: "Thank you. If I could justfind an opening. I don't know many employers here. I was in aBoston office for several years."

This ending, so like a lecture on auditing and costs,concluded Bates' quest for high romance.

He was horribly piqued and dignified, and he talked in anelevated manner of authors whom he felt he must have read, seeingthat he had always intended to read them when he got time. Insidehe felt rather sick. He informed himself that he had been a fool;that Emily--no, Miss Sarah Pardee!--was merely an enameledmachine; and that he never wanted to see her again.

It was all of six minutes before he begged: "Did you like mywaving good-night to you every evening?"

Dubiously: "Oh--yes."

"Did you make up foolish stories about me as I did aboutyou?"

"No. I'll tell you." She spoke with faint, measured emphasis."I have learned that I can get through a not very appealing lifeonly by being heartless and unimaginative--except about my work.I was wildly imaginative as a girl; read Keats, and Kipling ofcourse, and pretended that every man with a fine straight backwas Strickland Sahib. Most stenographers keep up making believe.Poor tired things, they want to marry and have children, and filenumbers and vocabularies merely bewilder them. But I--well, Iwant to succeed. So--work. And keep clear-brained, and exact.Know facts. I never allow fancies to bother me in office hours. Ican tell you precisely the number of feet and inches of sewerpipe at Floral Heights, and I do not let myself gurgle over thepigeons that come up and coo on my window sill. I don't believe Ishall ever be sentimental about anything again. Perhaps I've madea mistake. But--I'm not so sure. My father was full of thechoicest sentiment, especially when he was drunk. Anyway, there Iam. Not a woman, but a business woman."

"I'm sorry!"

He took her home. At her suggestion they walked up, throughthe late-winter clamminess. They passed a crying child on adoorstep beside a discouraged delicatessen. He noted that shelooked at the child with an instant of mothering excitement, thenhastened on.

"I'm not angry at her now. But even if I did want to see heragain, I never would. She isn't human," he explained tohimself.

At her door--door of a smug semiprivate rooming house on WestSeventy-fourth Street--as he tried to think of a distinguishedway of saying good-by he blurted: "Don't get too interested inthe young man with spectacles. Make him wait till you study thegenus New Yorker a little more. Your Mr. Simmons is amiable butshallow."

"How did you know I knew Mr. Simmons?" she marveled. "How didyou know his name?"

It was the first time she had been off her guard, and he wasable to retreat with a most satisfactory "One notices!Good-night. You shall have your big job."

He peeped back from two houses away. She must have gone inwithout one glance toward him.

He told himself that he was glad their evening was over. Buthe swooped down on the Yale Club and asked five several men whatthey knew about jobs for a young woman, who, he asserted entirelywithout authorization, was a perfect typist, speedy at takingdictation, scientific at filing carbons--and able to find thecarbons after she had scientifically filed them!--and so charmingto clients that before they even saw one of the selling forcethey were longing to hand over their money.

He telephoned about it to a friend in a suburb, whichnecessitated his sitting in a smothering booth and shouting: "No,no, no! I want Pelham, not Chatham!" After he had gone to bed hehad a thought so exciting and sleep-dispelling that he got up,closed the windows, shivered, hulked into his bathrobe and satsmoking a cigarette, with his feet inelegantly up on theradiator. Why not make a place for Emily in his own office?

He gave it up reluctantly. The office wasn't big enough toafford her a chance. And Emily--Miss Pardee--probably wouldrefuse. He bitterly crushed out the light of the cigarette on theradiator, yanked the windows open and climbed back into bed. Hefuriously discovered that during his meditation the bed hadbecome cold again. There were pockets of arctic iciness down inthe lower corners.

"Urg!" snarled Bates.

He waved good morning to Emily next day, but brusquely, andshe was casual in her answer. At eleven-seventeen, after thesixth telephone call, he had found the place. He telephoned toher.

"This is Mr. Bates, across the street."

He leaped up and by pulling the telephone out to the end ofits green tether he could just reach the window and see her atthe telephone by her window.

He smiled, but he went on sternly: "If you will go to theTechnical and Home Syndicate--the new consolidation of tradepublications--and ask for Mr. Hyden--H-y-d-e-n--in theadvertising department, he will see that you get a chance. Reallybig office. Opportunities. Chance to manage a lot ofstenographers, big commercial-research department, maybe a shotat advertising soliciting. Please refer to me. Er-r-r."

She looked across, saw him at the telephone, startled.Tenderness came over him in a hot wave.

But colorless was her voice as she answered "That's very goodof you."

He cut her off with a decisive "Good luck!" He stalked back tohis desk. He was curiously gentle and hesitating with hissubordinates all that day.

"Wonder if the old man had a pal die on him?" suggestedCrackins, the bookkeeper, to the filing girl. "He looks peaked.Pretty good scout, Batesy is, at that."

A week later Emily was gone from the office across. She hadnot telephoned good-by. In a month Bates encountered Hyden, ofthe Technical Syndicate office, who informed him: "That MissPardee you sent me is a crackajack. Right on the job, andintelligent. I've got her answering correspondence--dictating.She'll go quite a ways."

That was all. Bates was alone. Never from his twelfth-floortower did he see her face or have the twilight benediction offarewell.

He told himself that she was supercilious, that she wasuninteresting, that he did not like her. He admitted that hisoffice had lost its exciting daily promise of romance--that hewas tired of all offices. But he insisted that she had nothing todo with that. He had surrounded her with a charm not her own.

However neatly he explained things to himself, it was stilltrue that an empty pain like homesickness persisted whenever helooked out of his window--or didn't look out but sat at his deskand wanted to. When he worked late he often raised his head witha confused sense of missing something. The building across hadbecome just a building across. All he could see in it wasordinary office drudges doing commonplace things. Even Mr.Simmons of the esthetic spectacles no longer roused interestingrage. As for Emily's successor, Bates hated her. She smirked, andher hair was a hurrah's nest.

March had come in; the streets were gritty with dust. Bateslanguidly got himself to call on Christine Parrish again. Amidthe welcome narcissus bowls and vellum-backed seats andhand-tooled leather desk fittings of the Parrish library he wasroused from the listlessness that like a black fog had beenclosing in on him. He reflected that Christine was sympathetic,and Emily merely a selfish imitation of a man. But Christine madehim impatient. She was vague. She murmured: "Oh, it must bethrilling to see the street railways in all these funny towns."Funny towns! Huh! They made New York hustle. Christine's mind wasflabby. Yes, and her soft shining arms would become flabby too.He wanted--oh, a girl that was compact, cold-bathed.

As he plodded home the shivering fog that lay over him hid thefuture. What had he ahead? Lonely bachelorhood--begging mere boysat the club to endure a game of poker with him?

He became irritable in the office. He tried to avoid it. Hewas neither surprised nor indignant when he overheard Crackinsconfide to his own stenographer: "The old man has an ingrowinggrouch. We'll get him operated on. How much do you contribute,Countess? Ah, we thank you."

He was especially irritable on a watery, bleary April day whenevery idiot in New York and the outlying districts telephonedhim. He thought ill of Alexander Graham Bell. The factory wantedto know whether they should rush the Bangor order. He hadn'texplained that more than six times before. A purchasing agentfrom out of town called him up and wanted information abouttheater-ticket agencies and a tailor. The girl in the outsideoffice let a wrong-number call get through to him, and a greasyvoice bullied: "Is dis de Triumph Bottling Vorks? Vod? Get off deline! I don't vant you! Hang up!"

"Well, I most certainly don't want you!" snapped Bates. But itdidn't relieve him at all.

"Tr-r-r-r!" snickered the telephone bell.

Bates ignored it.

"Tr-r-r-r-. R-r-r-r! Tr-r-r-r!"

"Yeah!" snarled Bates.

"Mr. Bates?"

"Yep!"

"Sarah Pardee speaking."

"Who?"

"Why--why, Emily! You sound busy, though. I won't--"

"Wait! W-w-wait! For heaven's sake! Is it really you? How areyou? How are you? Terribly glad to hear your voice! How are you?We miss you--"

"We?"

"Well, I do! Nobody to say good-night. Heard from Hyden; doingfine. Awfully glad. What--er--what--"

"Mr. Bates, will you take me out to dinner some time thisweek; or next?"

"Will you come tonight?"

"You have no engagement?"

"No, no! Expected to dine alone. Please come. Will you meetme--Shall we go up to the Belle Chic?"

"Please may we go to the Grand Royal again, and early, aboutsix-thirty?"

"Of course. I'll meet you in the lobby. Six-thirty.Good-by."

He drew the words out lingeringly, but she cut him off with acrisp telephonic "G'-by."

Afterward he called up an acquaintance and broke the dinnerengagement he had had for four days. He lied badly, and the mantold him about it.

In his idiotic, beatific glow it wasn't for half an hour thatthe ugly thought crept grinning into his mind, but it persisted,squatting there, leering at him: "I wonder if she just wants meto get her another job?"

It served to quiet the intolerable excitement. In the GrandRoyal lobby he greeted her with only a nod. . . . She was ontime. Christine Parrish had a record minimum of twenty minuteslate.

They descended the twisting stairs to the Firenze Room.

"Would you prefer the balcony or downstairs?" he saideasily.

She turned.

She had seemed unchanged. Above the same brown fur-trimmedcoat, which he knew better than any other garment in the world,was the same self-contained inspection of the world. Standing onthe stairs she caught the lapel of her coat with a nervous hand,twisted it, dropped her eyes, looked up pleadingly.

"Would I be silly if I asked for the same table we had before?We--oh, it's good luck."

"Of course we'll have it."

"That's why I suggested dining early, so it wouldn't be taken.I have something rather serious to ask your advice about."

"Serious?"

"Oh, not--not tragic. But it puzzles me."

He was anxious as he followed her. Their table was untaken. Hefussily took her coat, held her chair.

Her eyes became shrewdly clear again while he ordered dinner,and she said: "Will you please examine the crest on one of theforks?"

"Why?"

"Because you did last time. You were adorably absurd, and verynice, trying not to alarm the strange girl."

He had obediently picked up a fork, but he flung it down andcommanded: "Look here, what is this that puzzles you?"

Her hand drooping over the balcony rail by their table wasvisibly trembling. She murmured: "I have discovered that I am awoman."

"I don't quite--"

"I've tried to keep from telling you, but I can't. I do--I domiss our good-nights and our lunches. I have done quite well atthe Technical Syndicate, but I don't seem to care. I thought Ihad killed all sentimentality in me. I haven't. I'msloppy-minded. No! I'm not! I don't care! I'm glad." A flush onher cheek like the rosy shadow of a wine glass on linen, sheflung out: "I find I cared more for our silly games than I do forsuccess. There's no one across the way now to smile at me.There's just a blank brick wall, with a horrible big garage sign,and I look at it before I go home nights. Oh, I'm a failure. Ican't go on--fighting--alone--always alone!"

He had caught both her hands. He was unconscious of waitersand other guests. But she freed herself.

"No! Please! Just let me babble. I don't know whether I'm glador sorry to find I haven't any brains. None! No courage! But allI want--Will you dine with me once a month or so? Let me goDutch--"

"Oh, my dear!"

"--and sometimes take me to the theater? Then I won't feelsolitary. I can go on working, and make good, and perhaps getover--Please! Don't think I'm a Bernard Shaw superwoman pursuinga man. It's just that--You were the first person to make mewelcome in New York. Will you forgive--"

"Emily, please don't be humble! I'd rather have you make mebeg, as you used to." He stopped, gasped and added quietly:"Emily, will you marry me?"

"No."

"But you said--"

"I know. I miss you. But you're merely sorry for me. HonestlyI'm not a clinger. I can stand alone--almost alone. It's sweet ofyou, and generous, but I didn't ask that. Just play with mesometimes."

"But I mean it. Dreadfully. I've thought of you every hour.Will you marry me? Now!"

"No."

"Some time?"

"How can I tell? A month ago I would have cut a girl who wasso sloppy-minded that she would beg a man for friendship. Ididn't know! I didn't know anything! But--No! No!"

"See here, Emily. Are you free? Can I depend on you? Are youstill interested in young Simmons?"

"He calls on me."

"Often?"

"Yes."

"You refused?"

"Yes. That was when I discovered I was a woman. But not--nothis woman!"

"Mine, then! Mine! Think, dear--it's incredible, but the citydidn't quite get us. We're still a man and a woman! What day isthis? Oh, Wednesday. Listen. Thursday you go to the theater withme."

"Yes."

"Friday you find an excuse and have to see someone at theFloral Heights Company, and you wave to me from across thestreet, so that my office will be blessed again; and we meetafterward and go to supper with my friends the Parrishes."

"Yes-es."

"Saturday we lunch together, and walk clear through VanCortlandt Park, and I become a masterful brute, and propose toyou, and you accept me."

"Oh, yes, I suppose so. But that leaves Sunday. What do we doSunday?"

I dare say there's no man of large affairs, whether he is bankpresident or senator or dramatist, who hasn't a sneaking love forsome old rum-hound in a frightful hat, living back in a shantyand making his living by ways you wouldn't care to examine tooclosely. (It was the Supreme Court Justice speaking. I do notpretend to guarantee his theories or his story.) He may be aMaine guide, or the old garageman who used to keep the liverystable, or a perfectly useless innkeeper who sneaks off to shootducks when he ought to be sweeping the floors, but your pompousbig-city man will contrive to get back and see him every year,and loaf with him, and secretly prefer him to all the highfalutinleaders of the city.

There's that much truth, at least, to this Open Spaces stuffyou read in advertisements of wild and woolly Western novels. Idon't know the philosophy of it; perhaps it means that we retaina decent simplicity, no matter how much we are tied to Things, tohouses and motors and expensive wives. Or again it may give awaythe whole game of civilization; may mean that the apparentlycivilized man is at heart nothing but a hobo who prefers flannelshirts and bristly cheeks and cussing and dirty tin plates to allthe trim, hygienic, forward-looking life our womenfolks make usput on for them.

When I graduated from law school I suppose I was about asartificial and idiotic and ambitious as most youngsters. I wantedto climb, socially and financially. I wanted to be famous anddine at large houses with men who shuddered at the Common Peoplewho don't dress for dinner. You see, I hadn't learned that theonly thing duller than a polite dinner is the conversationafterward, when the victims are digesting the dinner andaccumulating enough strength to be able to play bridge. Oh, I wasa fine young calf! I even planned a rich marriage. Imagine thenhow I felt when, after taking honors and becoming fifteenthassistant clerk in the magnificent law firm of Hodgins, Hodgins,Berkman and Taupe, I was set not at preparing briefs but atserving summonses! Like a cheap private detective! Like a mangysheriff's officer! They told me I had to begin that way and,holding my nose, I feebly went to work. I was kicked out ofactresses' dressing rooms, and from time to time I wasrighteously beaten by large and indignant litigants. I came toknow, and still more to hate, every dirty and shadowy corner ofthe city. I thought of fleeing to my home town, where I could atonce become a full-fledged attorney-at-law. I rejoiced one daywhen they sent me out forty miles or so to a town called NewMullion, to serve a summons on one Oliver Lutkins. This Lutkinshad worked in the Northern Woods, and he knew the facts about acertain timberland boundary agreement. We needed him as awitness, and he had dodged service.

When I got off the train at New Mullion, my sudden affectionfor sweet and simple villages was dashed by the look of theplace, with its mud-gushing streets and its rows of shops eitherpaintless or daubed with a sour brown. Though it must havenumbered eight or nine thousand inhabitants, New Mullion was aslittered as a mining camp. There was one agreeable-looking man atthe station--the expressman. He was a person of perhaps forty,red-faced, cheerful, thick; he wore his overalls and denim jumperas though they belonged to him, he was quite dirty and veryfriendly and you knew at once he liked people and slapped them onthe back out of pure easy affection.

"I want," I told him, "to find a fellow named OliverLutkins."

"Him? I saw him 'round here 'twan't an hour ago. Hard fellowto catch, though--always chasing around on some phony business orother. Probably trying to get up a poker game in the back ofFritz Beinke's harness shop. I'll tell you, boy--Any hurry aboutlocating Lutkins?"

"Yes. I want to catch the afternoon train back." I was asimpressively secret as a stage detective.

"I'll tell you. I've got a hack. I'll get out the boneshakerand we can drive around together and find Lutkins. I know most ofthe places he hangs out."

He was so frankly friendly, he so immediately took me into thecircle of his affection, that I glowed with the warmth of it. Iknew, of course, that he was drumming up business, but hiskindness was real, and if I had to pay hack fare in order to findmy man, I was glad that the money would go to this good fellow. Igot him down to two dollars an hour; he brought from his cottage,a block away, an object like a black piano-box on wheels.

He didn't hold the door open, certainly he didn't say "Ready,sir." I think he would have died before calling anybody "sir."When he gets to Heaven's gate he'll call St. Peter "Pete," and Iimagine the good saint will like it. He remarked, "Well, youngfellow, here's the handsome equipage," and his grin--well, itmade me feel that I had always been his neighbor. They're soready to help a stranger, those villagers. He had already made ithis own task to find Oliver Lutkins for me.

He said, and almost shyly: "I don't want to butt in on yourprivate business, young fellow, but my guess is that you want tocollect some money from Lutkins--he never pays anybody a cent; hestill owes me six bits on a poker game I was fool enough to getinto. He ain't a bad sort of a Yahoo but he just naturally hatesto loosen up on a coin of the realm. So if you're trying tocollect any money off him, we better kind of you might say creepup on him and surround him. If you go asking for him--anybody cantell you come from the city, with that trick Fedora ofyours--he'll suspect something and take a sneak. If you want meto, I'll go into Fritz Beinke's and ask for him, and you can keepout of sight behind me."

I loved him for it. By myself I might never have foundLutkins. Now, I was an army with reserves. In a burst I told thehack driver that I wanted to serve a summons on Lutkins; that thefellow had viciously refused to testify in a suit where hisknowledge of a certain conversation would clear up everything.The driver listened earnestly--and I was still young enough to begrateful at being taken seriously by any man of forty. At the endhe pounded my shoulder (very painfully) and chuckled: "Well,we'll spring a little surprise on Brer Lutkins."

"Let's start, driver."

"Most folks around here call me Bill. Or Magnuson. WilliamMagnuson, fancy carting and hauling."

"All right, Bill. Shall we tackle this harnessshop--Beinke's?"

"Yes, jus' likely to be there as anywheres. Plays a lot ofpoker and a great hand at bluffing--damn him!" Bill seemed toadmire Mr. Lutkins's ability as a scoundrel; I fancied that if hehad been sheriff he would have caught Lutkins with fervor andhanged him with affection.

At the somewhat gloomy harness shop we descended and went in.The room was odorous with the smell of dressed leather. A scantysort of a man, presumably Mr. Beinke, was selling a horse collarto a farmer.

"Seen Nolly Lutkins around today? Friend of his looking forhim," said Bill, with treacherous heartliness.

Beinke looked past him at my shrinking alien self; hehesitated and owned: "Yuh, he was in here a little while ago.Guess he's gone over to the Swede's to get a shave."

"Well, if he comes in, tell him I'm looking for him. Might getup a little game of poker. I've heard tell that Lutkins playsthese here immoral games of chance."

"Yuh, I believe he's known to sit in on Authors," Beinkegrowled.

We sought the barber shop of "the Swede." Bill was again goodenough to take the lead, while I lurked at the door. He asked notonly the Swede but two customers if they had seen Lutkins. TheSwede decidedly had not; he raged: "I ain't seen him, and I don'twant to, but if you find him you can just collect the dollarthirty-five he owes me." One of the customers thought he had seenLutkins "hiking down Main Street, this side of the hotel."

"Well, then," Bill concluded, as we labored up into the hack,"his credit at the Swede's being ausgewent, he's probably gettinga scrape at Heinie Gray's. He's too darn lazy to shavehimself."

At Gray's barber shop we missed Lutkins by only five minutes.He had just left--presumably for the poolroom. At the poolroom itappeared that he had merely bought a pack of cigarettes and goneon. Thus we pursued him, just behind him but never catching him,for an hour, till it was past one and I was hungry. Village bornas I was, and in the city often lonely for good coarse countrywit, I was so delighted by Bill's cynical opinions on the barbersand clergymen and doctors and draymen of New Mullion that Iscarcely cared whether I found Lutkins or not.

"How about something to eat?" I suggested. "Let's go to arestaurant and I'll buy you a lunch."

"Well, ought to go home to the old woman. And I don't caremuch for these restaurants--ain't but four of 'em and they're allrotten. Tell you what we'll do. Like nice scenery? There's anelegant view from Wade's Hill. We'll get the old woman to put usup a lunch--she won't charge you but a half dollar, and it'd costyou that for a greasy feed at the caef--and we'll go up there andhave a Sunday-school picnic."

I knew that my friend Bill was not free from guile; I knewthat his hospitality to the Young Fellow from the City was notaltogether a matter of brotherly love. I was paying him for histime; in all I paid him for six hours (including the lunch hour)at what was then a terrific price. But he was no more dishonestthan I, who charged the whole thing up to the Firm, and it wouldhave been worth paying him myself to have his presence. Hiscountry serenity, his natural wisdom, was a refreshing bath tothe city-twitching youngster. As we sat on the hilltop, lookingacross orchards and a creek which slipped among the willows, hetalked of New Mullion, gave a whole gallery of portraits. He wascynical yet tender. Nothing had escaped him, yet there wasnothing, no matter how ironically he laughed at it, which wasbeyond his understanding and forgiveness. In ruddy color hepainted the rector's wife who when she was most in debt mostloudly gave the responses at which he called the "Episcopalopianchurch." He commented on the boys who came home from college in"ice-cream pants," and on the lawyer who, after years oftorrential argument with his wife, would put on either a linencollar or a necktie, but never both. He made them live. In thatday I came to know New Mullion better than I did the city, and tolove it better.

If Bill was ignorant of universities and of urban ways, yetmuch had he traveled in the realm of jobs. He had worked onrailroad section gangs, in harvest fields and contractors' camps,and from his adventures he had brought back a philosophy ofsimplicity and laughter. He strengthened me. Nowadays, thinkingof Bill, I know what people mean (though I abominate thesimpering phrase) when they yearn over "real he-men."

We left that placid place of orchards and resumed the searchfor Oliver Lutkins. We could not find him. At last Bill cornereda friend of Lutkins and made him admit that "he guessed Oliver'dgone out to his ma's farm, three miles north."

We drove out there, mighty with strategy.

"I know Oliver's ma. She's a terror. She's a cyclone," Billsighed. "I took a trunk out for her once, and she pretty neartook my hide off because I didn't treat it like it was a crate ofeggs. She's somewheres about nine feet tall and four feet thickand quick's a cat, and she sure manhandles the Queen's English.I'll bet Oliver has heard that somebody's on his trail and he'ssneaked out there to hide behind his ma's skirts. Well, we'll trybawling her out. But you better let me do it, boy. You may begreat at Latin and geography, but you ain't educated incussing."

We drove into a poor farmyard; we were faced by an enormousand cheerful old woman. My guardian stockily stood before her andsnarled, "Remember me? I'm Bill Magnuson, the expressman. I wantto find your son Oliver. Friend of mine here from the city's gota present for him."

"I don't know anything about Oliver and I don't want to," shebellowed.

"Now you look here. We've stood for just about enough plentynonsense. This young man is the attorney general's provost, andwe got legal right to search any and all premises for the personof one Oliver Lutkins."

Bill made it seem terrific, and the Amazon seemed impressed.She retired into the kitchen and we followed. From the low oldrange, turned by years of heat into a dark silvery gray, shesnatched a sadiron, and she marched on us, clamoring, "You justsearch all you want to--providin' you don't mind getting burnt toa cinder!" She bellowed, she swelled, she laughed at our nervousretreat.

"Let's get out of this. She'll murder us," Bill groaned and,outside: "Did you see her grin? She was making fun of us. Can youbeat that for nerve?"

I agreed that it was lese majesty.

We did, however, make adequate search. The cottage had but onestory. Bill went round it, peeking in at all the windows. Weexplored the barn and the stable; we were reasonably certain thatLutkins was not there. It was nearly time for me to catch theafternoon train, and Bill drove me to the station. On the way tothe city I worried very little over my failure to find Lutkins. Iwas too absorbed in the thought of Bill Magnuson. Really, Iconsidered returning to New Mullion to practice law. If I hadfound Bill so deeply and richly human might I not come to lovethe yet uncharted Fritz Beinke and the Swede barber and a hundredother slow-spoken, simple, wise neighbors? I saw a candid andhappy life beyond the neat learnings of universities' law firms.I was excited, as one who has found a treasure.

But if I did not think much about Lutkins, the office did. Ifound them in a state next morning; the suit was ready to come totrial; they had to have Lutkins; I was a disgrace and a fool.That morning my eminent career almost came to an end. The Chiefdid everything but commit mayhem; he somewhat more than hintedthat I would do well at ditch-digging. I was ordered back to NewMullion, and with me they sent an ex-lumber-camp clerk who knewLutkins. I was rather sorry, because it would prevent my loafingagain in the gorgeous indolence of Bill Magnuson.

When the train drew in at New Mullion, Bill was on the stationplatform, near his dray. What was curious was that the olddragon, Lutkins's mother, was there talking to him, and they werenot quarreling but laughing.

From the car steps I pointed them out to the lumber-campclerk, and in young hero-worship I murmured: "There's a finefellow, a real man."

"Meet him here yesterday?" asked the clerk.

"I spent the day with him."

"He help you hunt for Oliver Lutkins?"

"Yes, he helped me a lot."

"He must have! He's Lutkins himself!"

But what really hurt was that when I served the summonsLutkins and his mother laughed at me as though I were a brightboy of seven, and with loving solicitude they begged me to go toa neighbor's house and take a cup of coffee.

"I told 'em about you, and they're dying to have a look atyou," said Lutkins joyfully. "They're about the only folks intown that missed seeing you yesterday."

The grandfather was Zebulun Dibble. He had a mustache like ahorse's mane; he wore a boiled shirt with no collar, and hemanufactured oatmeal, very wholesome and tasteless. He moved fromNew Hampshire out to the city of Zenith in 1875, and in 1880became the proud but irritated father of T. Jefferson Dibble.

T. Jefferson turned the dusty oatmeal factory into a lyricsteel-and-glass establishment for the manufacture of Oatees,Barlenated Rice and Puffy Wuffles, whereby he garnered a milliondollars and became cultured, along about 1905. This was thebeginning of the American fashion in culture which has expandednow into lectures by poetic Grand Dukes and Symphonies on theradio.

T. Jefferson belonged to the Opera Festival Committee and theBatik Exposition Conference, and he was the chairman of theLecture Committee of the Phoenix Club. Not that all thisenervating culture kept him from burning up the sales managerfrom nine-thirty A.M. to five P.M. He felt that he had beenbetrayed; he felt that his staff, Congress, and the labor unionshad bitten the hand that fed them, if the sale of Rye Yeasties(Vitaminized) did not annually increase four per cent.

But away from the office, he announced at every club andcommittee where he could wriggle into the chairman's seat thatAmerica was the best country in the world, by heavens, and Zeniththe best city in America, and how were we going to prove it? Notby any vulgar boasting and boosting! No, sir! By showing moreculture than any other burg of equal size in the world! Give himten years! He'd see that Zenith had more square feet of oldmasters, more fiddles in the symphony orchestra, and more marblestatues per square mile than Munich!

T. Jefferson's only son, Whitney, appeared in 1906. T.Jefferson winced every time the boys called him "Whit." He wincedpretty regularly. Whit showed more vocation for swimming, ringingthe doorbells of timorous spinsters, and driving a flivver thanfor the life of culture. But T. Jefferson was determined.

Just as he bellowed, "By golly, you'll sell Barley Gems to thewholesalers or get out!" in the daytime, so when he arrived athis neat slate-roofed English Manor Style residence in FloralHeights, he bellowed at Whit, "By golly, you'll learn to play thepiano or I'll lam the everlasting daylights out of you! Ain't youashamed! Wanting to go skating! The idea!"

Whitney was taught--at least theoretically he was taught--theseveral arts of piano-playing, singing, drawing, water-colorpainting, fencing, and French. And through it all Whit remainedruddy, grinning, and irretrievably given to money-making. Foryears, without T. Jefferson's ever discovering it, he conducted alucrative trade in transporting empty gin bottles in his father'sspare sedan from the Zenith Athletic Club to the emporia of thebootleggers.

But he could draw. He sang like a crow, he fenced like asculptor, but he could draw, and when he was sent to Yale hebecame the chief caricaturist of theYale Record.

For the first time his father was delighted. He had Whit'soriginal drawings framed in heavy gold, and showed all of them tohis friends and his committees before they could escape. WhenWhit sold a small sketch toLife, T. Jefferson sent him anautographed check for a hundred dollars, so that Whit, otherwisea decent youth, became a little vain about the world's need ofhis art. At Christmas, senior year, T. Jefferson (with the solemnexpression of a Father about to Give Good Advice to his Son)lured him into the library, and flowered in language:

"Now, Whitney, the time has come, my boy, when you must takethought and decide what rôle in this world's--whatrôle in the world--in fact, to what rôle you feelyour talents are urging you, if you get what I mean."

"You mean what job I'll get after graduation?"

"No, no, no! The Dibbleses have had enough of jobs! I havemoney enough for all of us. I have had to toil and moil. But theDibbleses are essentially an artistic family. Your grandfatherloved to paint. It is true that circumstances were such that hewas never able to paint anything but the barn, but he had a fineeye for color--he painted it blue and salmon-pink instead of red;and he was responsible for designing the old family mansion onClay Street--I should never have given it up except that thebathrooms were antiquated--not a single colored tile in them.

"It was he who had the Moorish turret with the copper roof puton the mansion, when the architect wanted a square tower with apagoda roof. And I myself, if I may say so, while I have not hadthe opportunity to develop my creative gifts, I was responsiblefor raising the fund of $267,800 to buy the Rembrandt for theZenith Art Institute, and the fact that the Rembrandt laterproved to be a fake, painted by a scoundrel named John J. Jones,was no fault of mine. So--in fact--if you understand me--howwould you like to go to Paris, after graduation, and studyart?"

"Paris!"

Whit had never been abroad. He pictured Paris as a series ofbars, interspersed with sloe-eyed girls (he wasn't quite surewhat sloe eyes were, but he was certain that the eyes of allParisian cuties were sloe), palms blooming in January, andBohemian studios where jolly artists and lively models lived onspaghetti, red wine, and a continuous singing of"Auprès de Ma Blonde."

"Paris!" he said; and, "That would be elegant, sir!"

"My boy!" T. Jefferson put his puffy palm on Whit's shoulderin a marvelous impersonation of a Father about to Send His SonForth into the Maelstrom of Life, "I am proud of you.

"I hope I shall live to see you one of the world's greatpictorial artists, exhibiting in London, Rome, Zenith, andelsewhere, and whose pictures will carry a message of high idealsto all those who are dusty with striving, lifting their soulsfrom the sordid struggle to the farther green places.

"That's what I often tell my sales manager, Mr. Mountgins--heought to get away from mere thoughts of commerce and refreshhimself at the Art Institute--and the stubborn jackass, he simplywon't increase the sale of Korn Krumbles in southern Michigan!But as I was saying, I don't want you to approach Paris in anyspirit of frivolity, but earnestly, as an opportunity of making abigger and better--no, no, I mean a bigger and--a bigger--I meana better world! I give you my blessings."

"Great! Watch me, Dad!"

When, after Christmas, Whit's classmates reveled in the greatSenior Year pastime of wondering what they would do aftergraduation, Whit was offensively smug.

"I got an idea," said his classmate, Stuyvesant Wescott, whoalso came from Zenith. "Of course it's swell to go into law orbond selling--good for a hundred thou. a year--and a fellowoughtn't to waste his education and opportunities by going outfor lower ideals. Think of that poor fish Ted Page, planning toteach in a prep school--associate with a lot of dirty kids andnever make more'n five thou. a year! But the bond game is prettywell jammed. What do you think of getting in early on television?Millions in it!"

Mr. Whitney Dibble languidly rose, drew a six-inch scarletcigarette holder from his pocket, lighted a cigarette and flickedthe ash off it with a disdainful forefinger. The cigaretteholder, the languor, the disdain, and the flicking habit were allstrictly new to him, and they were extremely disapproved of byhis kind.

"I am not," he breathed, "at all interested in your lowbrowplans. I am going to Paris to study art. In five years from now Ishall be exhibiting in--in all those galleries you exhibit in. Ihope you have success with your money-grubbing and your golf.Drop in to see me at mypetit château when you'reabroad. I must dot out now and do a bit of sketching."

Whitney Dibble, riding a Pullman to greatness, arrived inParis on an October day of pearl and amber. When he had droppedhis baggage at his hotel, Whit walked out exultantly. The Placede la Concorde seemed to him a royal courtyard; Gabriel's twinbuildings of the Marine Ministry were the residences of emperorsthemselves. They seemed taller than the most pushing skyscraperof New York, taller and nobler and more wise.

All Paris spoke to him of a life at once more vivid and moredemanding, less hospitable to intrusive strangers, than any hehad known. He felt young and provincial, yet hotly ambitious.

Quivering with quiet exultation, he sat on a balcony thatevening, watching the lights fret the ancient Seine, and nextmorning he scampered to the atelier of Monsieur CyprienSchoelkopf, where he was immediately to be recognized as agenius.

He was not disappointed. Monsieur Schoelkopf (he was of thecelebrated Breton family of Schoelkopf, he explained) had astudio right out of fiction; very long, very filthy, with a nakedmodel on the throne. The girls wore smocks baggy at the throat,and the men wore corduroy jackets.

Monsieur Schoelkopf was delighted to accept Whit, also his tenthousand francs in advance.

Whit longed to be seated at an easel, whanging immortal paintonto a taut canvas. He'd catch the model's very soul, make itspeak through her eyes, with her mere body just indicated. . . .Great if his very first picture should be a salon piece!

But before leaping into grandeur he had to have a Bohemianbackground, and he went uneasily over the Left Bank looking foran apartment. (To live in comfort on the Right Bank would bebourgeois and even American.)

He rented an apartment 'way out on the AvenueFélix-Faure. It was quiet and light--and Whit wastired.

That evening he went to the famous Café Fanfaron, onthe Boulevard Raspail, of which he had heard as the international(i. e., American) headquarters for everything that was newest andmost shocking in painting, poetry, and devastating criticism inlittle magazines.

In front of the café the sidewalk was jammed withtables at which sat hundreds of young people, most of themlaughing, most of them noticeable--girls in slinksy dresses, verylow, young men with jaunty tweed jackets, curly hair and keeneyes; large men (and they seemed the most youthful of all) withhuge beards that looked false.

Whit was waved to a table with a group of Americans. In halfan hour he had made a date to go walking in the Bois de Boulognewith a large-eyed young lady named Isadora, he had been reassuredthat Paris was the one place in the world for a person withCreative Hormones, and he had been invited to a studio party by alively man who was twenty-four as far up as the pouches beneathhis eyes, and sixty-four above.

It was a good party.

They sat on the floor and drank cognac and shouted. The host,with no great urging, showed a few score of his paintings. Inthem, the houses staggered and the hills looked like garbageheaps, so Whit knew they were the genuine advanced things, and hewas proud and happy.

From that night on, Whit was in a joyous turmoil of artisticadventure. He was the real thing--except, perhaps, during thehours at Monsieur Schoelkopf's, when he tried to paint.

Like most active young Americans, he discovered the extremedifficulty of going slow. During a fifty-minute class in Yale hehad been able to draw twenty caricatures, all amusing, all vivid.That was the trouble with him! It was infinitely harder to spendfifty minutes on a square inch of painting.

Whit was reasonably honest. He snarled at himself that hispictures had about as much depth and significance as acroquis for a dressmakers' magazine.

And Monsieur Schoelkopf told him all about it. He stoodtickling the back of Whit's neck with his beard, and observed"Huh!" And when Monsieur Schoelkopf said "Huh!" Whit wanted to gooff and dig sewers.

So Whit fled from that morgue to the Café Fanfaron, andto Isadora, whom he had met his first night in Paris.

Isadora was not a painter. She wrote. She carried a briefcase, of course. Once it snapped open, and in it Whit saw abottle of vermouth, some blank paper, lovely pencils all red andblue and green and purple, a handkerchief and a pair of silkstockings. Yet he was not shocked when, later in the evening,Isadora announced that she was carrying in that brief case themanuscript of her novel.

Isadora came from Omaha, Nebraska, and she liked to bekissed.

They picnicked in the Forest of Fontainebleau, Isadora and he.Whit was certain that all his life he had longed for just this;to lunch on bread and cheese and cherries and Burgundy, then tolie under the fretwork of oak boughs, stripped by October,holding the hand of a girl who knew everything and who wouldcertainly, in a year or two, drive Edith Wharton and Willa Catheroff the map; to have with her a relationship as innocent aschildren, and, withal, romantic as the steeple-hatted princesseswho had once hallooed to the hunt in this same royal forest.

"I think your water-color sketch of Notre Dame is wonderful!"said Isadora.

"I'm glad you like it," said Whitney.

"So original in concept!"

"Well, I tried to give it a new concept."

"That's the thing! The new! We must get away from theold-fashioned Cubists and Expressionists. It's so old-fashionednow to be crazy! We must have restraint."

"That's so. Austerity. That's the stuff. . . . Gee, doggoneit, I wish there was some more of that wine left," said Whit.

"You're a darling!"

She leaned on her elbow to kiss him, she sprang up and fledthrough the woodland aisle. And he gamboled after her in arapture which endured even through a bus ride back to theFontainebleau station with a mess of tourists who admired all thewrong things.

The Fanfaron school of wisdom had a magnificent show windowbut not much on the shelves. It was a high-class evening'sentertainment to listen to Miles O'Sullivan, the celebrated Irishcritic from South Brooklyn, on the beauties of Proust. But when,for the fifth time, Whit had heard O'Sullivan gasp in a drowningvoice, "I remember dear old Marcel saying to me, 'Miles,monpetit, you alone understand that exteriority can be expressedonly by inferiority,'" then Whit was stirred to taxi defiantlyover to the Anglo-American Pharmacy and do the most Americanthing a man can do--buy a package of chewing gum.

Chewing gum was not the only American vice which was in lowrepute at the Fanfaron. In fact, the exiles agreed that with thepossible exceptions of Poland, Guatemala, and mid-VictorianEngland, the United States was the dumbest country that had everexisted. They were equally strong about the inferiority ofAmerican skyscrapers, pork and beans, Chicago, hired girls, jazz,Reno, evening-jacket lapels, Tom Thumb golf courses, aviationrecords, tooth paste, bungalows, kitchenettes, dinettes,diswashettes, eating tobacco, cafeterias, Booth Tarkington, cornflakes, flivvers, incinerators, corn on the cob, Coney Island,Rotarians, cement roads, trial marriages, Fundamentalism,preachers who talk on the radio, drugstore sandwiches, lettersdictated but not read, noisy streets, noiseless typewriters, Muttand Jeff, eye shades, mauve-and-crocus-yellow golf stockings,chile con carne, the Chrysler Building, Jimmy Walker, Hollywood,all the Ruths in Congress, Boy Scouts, Tourists-Welcome camps,hot dogs, Admiral Byrd, flagpole sitters, safety razors, theChautauqua, and President Hoover.

The exiles unanimously declared that they were waiting to jointhe Foreign Legion of whatever country should first wipe out theUnited States in war.

For three months Whit was able to agree with all of thisindictment, but a week after his picnic with Isadora he wentsuddenly democratic. Miles O'Sullivan had denounced the puerilityof American fried chicken.

Now it was before dinner, and Miles was an excellent reporter.The more Whit listened, the more he longed for the crisp,crunching taste of fried chicken, with corn fritters and maplesirup, candied sweet potatoes, and all the other vulgaritiesloathed by the artistic American exiles who were brought up onthem.

Whit sprang up, muttering "Urghhg," which Miles took as atribute to his wit.

It wasn't.

Whit fled down the Boulevard Raspail. He had often noted, withlow cultured sneers, a horribly American restaurant called "CabinMammy's Grill." He plunged into it now. In a voice of restrainedhysteria he ordered fried chicken, candied sweets and cornfritters with sirup.

Now, to be fair on all sides--which is an impossibility--thechicken was dry, the corn fritters were soggy, the fried sweetswere poisonous and the sirup had never seen Vermont. Yet Whitenjoyed that meal more than any of the superior food he haddiscovered in Paris.

The taste of it brought back everything that was native inhim. . . . Return home for Christmas vacation in his freshmanyear; the good smell of the midwestern snow; the girls whom hehad loved as a brat; the boys with whom he had played. A dinnerdown at Momauguin in senior year, and the kindly tragedy ofparting.

They had been good days; cool and realistic and decent.

So Whit came out of Cabin Mammy's Grill thinking of snow onChapel Street and the New Haven Green--and he was buffeted by thefirst snow of the Paris winter, and that wasn't so good.

Although he was a college graduate, Whitney had learned alittle about geography, and he shouldn't have expected Paris tobe tropical. Yet he had confusedly felt that this capital of theworld could never conceivably be cold and grim. He turned up thecollar of his light topcoat and started for--oh, for Nowhere.

After ten blocks, he was exhilarated by the snow and theblasty cold which had first dismayed him. From time to time hemuttered something like a sketch for future thoughts:

"I can't paint! I'd be all right drawing machinery for acatalogue. That's about all! Paris! More beautiful than any townin America. But I'm not part of it. Have nothing to do with it.I've never met a real Frenchman, except my landlady, and thathired girl at the apartment and a few waiters and a few cops andthe French literary gents that hang around the Fanfaron becausewe give 'em more of a hand than their own people would.

"Poor old T. Jefferson! He wants me to be a Genius! I guessyou have to have a little genius to be a Genius. Gosh, I'd liketo see Stuyvy Wescott tonight. With him, it would be fun to havea drink!"

Without being quite conscious of it, Whit drifted from thesacred Left Bank to the bourgeois Right. Instead of returning tothe Fanfaron and Isadora, he took refuge at the Café de laPaix.

Just inside the door was a round-faced, spectacled American,perhaps fifty years old, looking wistfully about for company.

Whit could never have told by what long and involved processof thought he decided to pick up this Babbitt. He flopped down atthe stranger's table, and muttered, "Mind 'f I sit here?"

"No, son, tickled to death! American?"

"You bet."

"Well, say, it certainly is good to talk to a white man again!Living here?"

"I'm studying art."

"Well, well, is that a fact!"

"Sometimes I wonder if it is! I'm pretty bad."

"Well, what the deuce! You'll have a swell time here whileyou're a kid, and I guess prob'ly you'll learn a lot, and thenyou can go back to the States and start something. Easterner,ain't you?"

"No; I was born in Zenith."

"Well, is that a fact! Folks live there?"

"Yes. My father is T. Jefferson Dibble of the Small GrainProducts Company."

"Well, I'm a son-of-a-gun! Why, say, I know your dad. Myname's Titus--Buffalo Grain Forwarding Corp.--why, I've had a lotof dealings with your dad. Golly! Think of meeting somebody youknow inthis town! I'm leaving tomorrow, and this is thefirst time I've had a shot at any home-grown conversation. Say,son, I'd be honored if you'd come out and bust the town loosewith me this evening."

They went to the Exhibit of the Two Hemispheres, which MilesO'Sullivan had recommended as the dirtiest show in Europe. Whitwas shocked. He tried to enjoy it. He told himself that otherwisehe would prove himself a provincial, a lowbrow--in fact, anAmerican. But he was increasingly uncomfortable at the antics ofthe ladies at the Exhibit. He peeped at Mr. Titus, and discoveredthat he was nervously twirling a glass and clearing histhroat.

"I don't care so much for this," muttered Whit.

"Neither do I, son! Let's beat it!"

They drove to the New Orleans bar and had a whisky-soda. Theydrove to the Kansas City bar and had a highball. They drove tothe El Paso bar and had a rock and rye. They drove to theVirginia bar, and by now Mr. Titus was full of friendliness andmanly joy.

Leaning against the bar, discoursing to a gentleman from SouthDakota, Mr. Titus observed:

"I come from Buffalo. Name's Titus."

"I come from Yankton. Smith is my name."

"Well, well, so you're this fellow Smith I've heard so muchabout!"

"Ha, ha, ha, that's right."

"Know Buffalo?"

"Just passing through on the train."

"Well, now, I want to make you a bet that Buffalo willincrease in pop'lation not less than twenty-seven per cent thisdecade."

"Have 'nother?"

"Have one on me."

"Well, let's toss for it."

"That's the idea. We'll toss for it. . . . Hey, Billy, got anygalloping dominoes?"

When they had gambled for the drink, Mr. Titus bellowed, "Say,you haven't met my young friend Whinney Dibble."

"Glad meet you."

"He's an artist!"

"Zatta fact!"

"Yessir, great artist. Sells pictures everywhere. London andFort Worth and Cop'nagen and everywhere. Thousands and thousandsdollars. His dad's pal of mine. Wish I could see good old Dibble!Wish he were here tonight!"

And Mr. Titus wept, quietly, and Whit took him home.

Next morning, at a time when he should have been in theatelier of Monsieur Schoelkopf, Whit saw Mr. Titus off at theGare St.-Lazare, and he was melancholy. There were so many prettyAmerican girls taking the boat train; girls with whom he wouldhave liked to play deck tennis.

So it chanced that Whit fell into the lowest vice any Americancan show in Paris. He constantly picked up beefy and lonesomeAmericans and took them to precisely those places in Paris, likethe Eiffel Tower, which were most taboo to the brave lads of theFanfaron.

He tried frenziedly to paint one good picture at MonsieurSchoelkopf's; tried to rid himself of facility. He produced adecoration in purple and stony reds which he felt to be far fromhis neat photography.

And looking upon it, for once Monsieur Schoelkopf spoke: "Youwill be, some time, a good banker."

The day before Whit sailed for summer in Zenith, he tookIsadora to the little glassed-in restaurant that from theshoulder of Montmartre looks over all Paris. She dropped herflowery airs. With both hands she held his, and besought him:

"Whit! Lover! You are going back to your poisonous MiddleWest. Your people will try to alienate you from Paris and all thefreedom, all the impetus to creation, all the strange and lovelythings that will exist here long after machines have beenscrapped. Darling, don't let them get you, with their efficiencyand their promise of millions!"

"Silly! Of course! I hate business. And next year I'll be backhere with you!"

He had told the Fanfaron initiates not to see him off at thetrain. Feeling a little bleak, a little disregarded by thishumming city of Paris, he went alone to the station, and helooked for no one as he wretchedly followed the porter to a seatin the boat train.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the shouts of a dozen familiarsfrom the Fanfaron. It wasn't so important--thoughimprobable--that they should have paid fifty centimes each for abillet de quai, for that they should have arisen beforenine o'clock to see him off was astounding.

Isadora's kind arms were around him, and she was wailing, "Youwon't forget us; darling, you won't forget me!"

Miles O'Sullivan was wringing his hand and crying, "Whit, lad,don't let the dollars get you!"

All the rest were clamoring that they would feverishly awaithis return.

As the train banged out, he leaned out waving to them, and hewas conscious that whatever affectations and egotism they hadshown in their drool at the Fanfaron, all pretentiousness waswiped now from their faces, and that he loved them.

He would come back to them.

All the way to Cherbourg he fretted over the things he had notseen in Paris. He had been in the Louvre only three times. He hadnever gone to Moret or to the battlemented walls of Provins.

Whit ran into the living room at Floral Heights, patted T.Jefferson on the shoulder, kissed his mother and muttered:

"Gee, it certainly is grand to be back!"

"Oh, you can speak to us in French, if you want to," said T.Jefferson Dibble, "we've been studying it so we can return toParis with you some time.Avez vous oo un temps charmantcette--uh--year?"

"Oh, sure,oui. Say, you've redecorated the breakfastroom. That red-and-yellow tiling certainly is swell."

"Nowécoutez--écoute, moh fis. It's notnecessary for you, Whitney, now that you have become a man of theworld, to spare our feelings. I know, and you know, that thatred-and-yellow tiling is vulgar. But to return to pleasantertopics, I long for your impressions of Paris. How many times didyou go to the Louvre?"

"Oh. Oh, the Louvre! Well, a lot."

"I'm sure of it. By the way, a funny thing happened, Whitney.A vulgarian by the name of Titus, from Buffalo, if I remember,wrote to me that he met you in Paris. A shame that such a man,under pretense of friendship with me, should have disturbedyou."

"I thought he was a fine old coot, Dad."

"Mon père! No, my boy, you are again beingconciliatory and trying to spare my feelings. This Titus is a manfor whom I have neither esteem nor--in fact, we have nothing incommon. Besides, the old hellion, he did me out of eleven hundredand seventy dollars on a grain deal sixteen years ago! But as Isay, your impressions of Paris! It must seem like a dreamwreathed with the vapors of golden memory.

"Now, I believe, you intend to stay here for two months. Ihave been making plans. Even in this wretched mid-western town, Ithink that, with my aid, you will be able to avoid the banalitiesof the young men with whom you were reared. There is a splendidnew Little Theater under process of organization, and perhaps youwill wish to paint the scenery and act and even design thecostumes.

"Then we are planning to raise a fund to get the E. HeezFlemming Finnish Grand Opera Company here for a week. That willhelp to occupy you. You'll be able to give these hicks yourtrained European view of Finnish Grand Opera. So, to start withthis evening, I thought we might drop in on the lecture byProfessor Gilfillan at the Walter Peter Club on 'Traces ofMechanistic Culture in the Coptic.'"

"That would be splendid, sir, but unfortunately--On the way Ireceived a wire from Stuyv Wescott asking me to the dance at thecountry club this evening. I thought I'd dine with you andMother, and then skip out there. Hate like the dickens to hurttheir feelings."

"Of course, of course, my boy. A gentleman, especially when heis also a man of culture, must always think ofnoblesseoblige. I mean, you understand, of the duties of a gentleman.But don't let these vulgarians like Wescott impose on you. Yousee, my idea of it is like this . . ."

As he drove his father's smaller six to the country club, Whitwas angry. He was thinking of what his friends--ex-friends--atthe club would do in the way of boisterous "kidding." He couldhear them--Stuyv Wescott, his roommate in Yale, Gilbert Scott,Tim Clark (Princeton '28) and all the rest--mocking:

"Why, it's our little Alphonse Gauguin!"

"Where's the corduroy pants?"

"I don't suppose you'd condescend to take a drink with a poordumb Babbitt that's been selling hardware while you've beenassociating with the counts and jukes and highbrows andhighbrowesses!"

And, sniggering shamefacedly, "Say, how's the littlemidinettes and theje ne sais quoi's in Paris?"

He determined to tell them all to go to hell, to speak withquiet affection of Isadora and Miles O'Sullivan, and to hustleback to Paris as soon as possible. Stick in this provincial town,when there on Boulevard Raspail were inspiration and hisfriends?

Stay here? What an idea!

He came sulkily into the lounge of the country club, clearednow for dancing. Stuyvy Wescott, tangoing with a girl whoglittered like a Christmas tree, saw him glowering at the door,chucked the girl into the ragbag, dashed over and grunted, "Whit,you old hound, I'm glad to see you! Let's duck the bunch andsneak down to the locker room. The trusty gin awaits!"

On the way, Stuyv nipped Gil Scott and Tim Clark out of thegroup.

Whit croaked--Youth, so self-conscious, so conservative, solittle "flaming," so afraid of what it most desires andadmires!--he croaked, "Well, let's get the razzing over! I s'poseyou babies are ready to pan me good for being a loafer whileyou've been saving the country by discounting notes!"

The other three looked at him with mild, fond wonder.

Stuyv said meekly, "Why, what a low idea! Listen, Whit, we'retickled to death you've had a chance to do something besides keepthe pot boiling. Must have been swell to have a chance at thereal Europe and art. We've all done pretty well, but I guess anyone of us would give his left leg to be able to sit down on theChamps Élysées and take time to figure out whatit's all about."

Then Whit knew that these were his own people. He blurted,"Honestly, Stuyv, you mean to say you've envied me? Well, it's agrand town, Paris. And some great eggs there. And even some guysthat can paint. But me, I'm no good!"

"Nonsense! Look, Whit, you have no idea what thismoney-grubbing is. Boy, you're lucky! And don't stay here! Don'tlet the dollars get you! Don't let all these babies with theirpromises of millions catch you! Beat it back to Paris. Culture,that's the new note!"

"Urghhg!" observed Whit.

"You bet," said Tim Clark.

Tim Clark had a sister, and the name of that sister wasBetty.

Whit Dibble remembered her as a sub-flapper, always going offto be "finished" somewhere in the East. She was a Young Lady oftwenty-odd now, and even to Whit's professionally artistic eye itseemed that her hair, sleek as a new-polished range, wasinteresting. They danced together, and looked at each other witha fury of traditional dislike.

Midmost of that dance Whit observed, "Betty, Darlingest!"

"Yeah?"

"Let's go out and sit on the lawn."

"Why?"

"I want to find out why you hate me."

"Hm. The lawn. I imagine it takes a training in Yale athleticsand Paris artisticking to be so frank. Usually the kits start outwith a suggestion of the club porch and the handsome modernistreed chairs andthen they suggest the lawn and 'Oh, Greta,so charmé to meet you' afterwards!"

But during these intolerabilities Betty had swayed with him tothe long high-pillared veranda, where they crouched together on achintz-covered glider.

Whit tried to throw himself into what he conceived, largelyfrom novels, to be Betty's youthful era. He murmured: "Kiddo,where have you been all my life?"

From Betty's end of the glider, a coolness like the long wetstretches of the golf course; a silence; then a very littlevoice:

"Whit, my child, you have been away too long! It's a year now,at least, since anyone--I mean anyone you could know--has said'Where have you been all my life?' Listen, dear! The worst thingabout anybody's going artistic, like you, is that they're alwaysso ashamed of it. Jiminy! Your revered father and the Onward andUpward Bookshop have grabbed off Culture for keeps in this town.And yet--

"Dear, I think that somewhere there must be people who do allthese darn' arts without either being ashamed of 'em--like you,you poor fish!--or thinking they make the nice gilded cornice onthe skyscraper, like your dad. Dear, let's us beus.Cultured or hoboes, or both. G'night!"

She had fled before he could spring up and be wise in themanner of Isadora and Miles O'Sullivan, or the more portentousmanner of T. Jefferson Dibble.

Yet, irritably longing all the while for Betty Clark, he had atremendous time that night at the country club, on the land wherehis grandfather had once grown corn.

What did they know, there in Paris? What did either Isadora orMiles O'Sullivan know of those deep provincialisms, smellingalways of the cornfields, which were in him? For the first timesince he had left Paris, Whit felt that in himself might be somegreatness.

He danced that night with many girls.

He saw Betty Clark only now and then, and from afar. And theless he saw of her, the more important it seemed to him that sheshould take him seriously.

There had been a time when Whit had each morning heard thegood, noisy, indignant call of T. Jefferson demanding, "Are yougoing to get up or ain't you going to get up? Hey! Whit! If youdon't wanna come down for breakfast, you ain't gonna have anybreakfast!"

Indeed it slightly disturbed him, when he awoke at eleven ofthe morning, to find there had been no such splendid,infuriating, decent uproar from T. Jefferson.

He crawled out of bed and descended the stairs. In the lowerhall he found his mother.

(It is unfortunate that in this earnest report of the turningof males in the United States of America toward culture, it isnot possible to give any great attention to Mrs. T. JeffersonDibble. Aside from the fact that she was a woman, kindly andrather beautiful, she has no existence here except as the wife ofT. Jefferson and the mother of Whitney.)

"Oh, Whit! Dear! I do hope your father won't be angry! Hewaited such a long while for you. But I am so glad, dearie, thathe understands, at last, that possibly you may have just as muchto do with all this Painting and Art and so on as he has! . . .But I mean to say: Your father is expecting you to join him atthree this afternoon for the meeting of the Finnish OperaFurtherance Association. Oh, I guess it will be awfullyinteresting--it will be at the Thornleigh. Oh, Whit, dear, it'slovely to have you back!"

The meeting of the Finnish Opera Furtherance Association atthe Hotel Thornleigh was interesting.

It was more than interesting.

Mrs. Montgomery Zeiss said that the Finns put it all over theGermans and Italians at giving a real modernistic version ofopera.

Mr. T. Jefferson Dibble said that as his son, Whitney, hadbeen so fortunate as to obtain a rather authoritative knowledgeof European music, he (Whitney) would now explain everything tothem.

After a lot of explanation about how artistic opera was, andhow unquestionably artistic Zenith was, Whit muttered that he hadto beat it. And while T. Jefferson stared at him with a sorrowfulface, Whit fled the room.

At five o'clock Whit was sitting on the dock of StuyvWescott's bungalow on Lake Kennepoose, muttering, "Look, Stuyv,have you got a real job?"

"Yeah, I guess you'd call it a job."

"D'you mind telling me what you are making a year now?"

"About three thou. I guess I'll make six in a couplayears."

"Hm! I'd like to make some money. By the way--it just occursto me, and I hope that I am not being too rude in asking--whatare you doing?"

"I am an insurance agent," remarked Stuyv with a melancholydignity.

"And you're already making three thousand dollars a year?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"I think I ought to be making some money. It's funny. InEurope it's the smart thing to live on money that somebody elsemade for you. I don't know whether it's good or bad, but fact is,somehow, most Americans feel lazy, feel useless, if they don'tmake their own money.

"Prob'ly the Europeans are right. Prob'ly it's because we'rerestless. But anyway, I'll be hanged if I'm going to live on theOld Man the rest of my life and pretend I'm a painter! The whichI ain't! Listen, Stuyv! D'yuh think I'd make a good insuranceman?"

"Terrible!"

"You're helpful. Everybody is helpful. Say! What's this newidea that it's disgraceful to make your own living?"

"Don't be a fool, Whit. Nobody thinks it's disgraceful, butyou don't get this new current of thought in the Middle West thatwe gotta have art."

"Get it! Good heavens, I've got nothing else! I will say thisfor Paris--you can get away from people who believe in art justby going to the next café. Maybe I'll have to live therein order to be allowed to be an insurance agent!"

Stuyv Wescott was called to the telephone, and for threeminutes Whit sat alone on the dock, looking across that clear,that candid, that sun-iced lake, round which hung silver birchesand delicate willows and solid spruce. Here, Whit felt, was aplace in which an American might find again, even in these daysof eighty-story buildings and one-story manners, the courage ofhis forefathers.

A hell-diver, forever at his old game of pretending to be aduck, bobbed out of the mirror of the lake, and Whitney Dibble atlast knew that he was at home.

And not so unlike the hell-diver in her quickness andimperturbable complexity, Betty Clark ran down from the roadbehind the Wescott bungalow and profoundly remarked, "Oh!Hello!"

"I'm going to be an insurance man," remarked Whit.

"You're going to be an artist!"

"Sure I am. As an insurance man!"

"You make me sick."

"Betty, my child, you have been away too long! It's a yearnow, at least, since anyone--I mean anyone you could know--hassaid, 'You make me sick!'"

"Oh--oh! You make me sick!"

T. Jefferson was extremely angry when Whit appeared fordinner. He said that Whit had no idea how he had offended theOpera Committee that afternoon. Consequently, Whit had to gothrough the gruesome ordeal of accompanying his father to anartistic reception in the evening. It was not until eleven thathe could escape for a poker game in an obscure suite of the HotelThornleigh.

There were present here not only such raw collegians as StuyvWescott, Gil Scott, and Tim Clark, but also a couple of older andmore hardened vulgarians, whereof one was a Mr. Seidel, who hadmade a million dollars by developing the new University Heightsdistrict of Zenith.

When they had played for two hours, they stopped for hot dogs;and Room Service was again drastically ordered to "hustle up withthe White Rock and ice."

Mr. Seidel, glass in hand, grumbled: "So you're an artist,Dibble? In Paris?"

"Yeah."

"And to think that a fella that could bluff me out of sevendollars on a pair of deuces should live over there, when he'd bean A-1 real-estate salesman."

"Are you offering me a job?"

"Well, I hadn't thought about it. . . . Sure I am!"

"How much?"

"Twenty-five a week and commissions."

"It's done."

And the revolution was effected, save for the voice of StuyvWescott, wailing, "Don't do it, Whit! Don't let these babies getyou with their promise of millions!"

Whit had never altogether lost his awe of T. Jefferson and hewas unable to dig up the courage to tell his father of histreachery in becoming American again until eleven of the morning,when he called upon him at his office.

"Well, well, my boy, it's nice to see you!" said T. Jefferson."I'm sorry that there is nothing really interesting for us to dotoday. But tomorrow noon we are going to a luncheon of theBibliophile Club."

"That's what I came to see you about, Dad. I'm sorry, but Ishan't be able to go tomorrow. I'll be working."

"Working?"

"Yes, sir. I've taken a job with the Seidel DevelopmentCompany."

"Well, that may be interesting for this summer. When youreturn to Paris--"

"I'm not going back to Paris. I can't paint. I'm going to sellreal estate."

The sound that T. Jefferson now made was rather like a carloadof steers arriving at the Chicago stockyards. In this restrictedspace it is possible to give only a hundredth of his observationson Life and Culture, but among many other things he said:

"I might have known! I might have known it! I've alwayssuspected that you were your mother's boy as much as mine. Howsharper than a serpent's tooth! Serpent in a fella's ownbosom!

"Here I've given up my life to manufacturing Puffy Wuffles,when all the time my longing was to be artistic, and now when Igive you the chance--Serpent's tooth! The old bard said itperfectly! Whit, my boy, I hope it isn't that you feel I can'tafford it! In just a few days now, I'm going to start my schemesfor extending the plant; going to get options on the five acresto the eastward. The production of Ritzy Rice will be doubled inthe next year. And so, my boy . . . You'll either stick to yourart or I'll disown you, sir! I mean, cut you off with a shilling!Yes, sir, a shilling! I'll by thunder make you artistic, if it'sthe last thing I do!"

On the same afternoon when he had, and very properly, beenthrown out into the snowstorm with a shawl over his head, Whitborrowed five thousand from Stuyv Wescott's father, with itobtained options on the five acres upon which his father plannedto build, with them reported to Mr. Seidel, from that low realtorreceived the five thousand dollars to repay Mr. Wescott, plus afive-thousand-dollar commission for himself and spent twenty-fivedollars in flowers, and with them appeared at the house of BettyClark at six-fifteen.

Betty came down, so lovely, so cool, so refreshing in skirtsthat clipped her ankles; and so coolly and refreshingly she said:"Hey, Whit, my dear! What can I do for you?"

"I don't think you can do anything besides help me spend thefive thousand and twenty-five dollars I've made today. I spentthe twenty-five for these flowers. They're very nice, aren'tthey?"

"They certainly are."

"But do you think they're worth twenty-five dollars?"

"Sure they are. Listen, darling! I'm so sorry that you wastedyour time making five thousand dollars when you might have beenpainting. But of course an artist has to be an adventurer. I'mglad that you've tried it and that it's all over. We'll go backto Paris as soon as we're married, and have a jolly li'l'Bohemian flat there, and I'll try so hard to make all of yourartistic friends welcome."

"Betty! Is your brother still here?"

"How should I know?"

"Would you mind finding out?"

"Why no? But why?"

"Dear Betty, you will understand what a scoundrel I am in afew minutes. Funny! I never meant to be a scoundrel. I never evenmeant to be a bad son. . . . Will you yell for Timmy,please?"

"Of course I will." She yelled, very competently.

Tim came downstairs, beaming. "I hope it's all over."

"That's the point," said Whit. "I am trying to persuade T.Jefferson that I don't want to be an artist. I'm trying--Lordknows what I'm trying!" With which childish statement Whit fledfrom the house.

He found a taxi and gave the driver the address of his boss,Mr. Seidel, at the Zenith Athletic Club.

In his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, Mr. Seidel waseating dinner. "Hello, boy, what's the trouble?" he said.

"Will you let me pay for a telephone call if I make ithere?"

"Sure I will."

Whit remarked to the Athletic Club telephone girl, "I'd liketo speak to Isadora at the Café Fanfaron, Paris."

The voice of that unknown beauty answered, "Which state,please?"

"France."

"France?"

"Yes, France."

"France,Europe?"

"Yes."

"And what was the name, please?"

"Isadora."

"What is the lady's last name?"

"I don't know. . . . Hey, get me Miles O'Sullivan, sameaddress."

"Just a moment, please. I will get the supervisor."

A cool voice said, "To whom do you wish to speak, please?"

"I wish to speak, if I may, to Miles O'Sullivan at theCafé Fanfaron. In Paris. . . . Right. Thank you very much.Will you call me as soon as you can?

"All right, thank you. . . . I am speaking from the ZenithAthletic Club and the bill is to be charged to Mr. TiberiusSeidel."

When the telephone rang, it was the voice of the head waiterof the Fanfaron, a Russian, that answered.

He said,"Allo--allo!"

"May I speak to Miles O'Sullivan?" demanded Whit.

"Je ne comprends pas."

"C'est Monsieur Dibble queparle--d'Amérique."

"D'Amérique?"

"Oui, et je desire to talk to Monsieur MilesO'Sullivan, right away,tout suite."

"Mais oui; je comprends. Vous desirez parler avec MonsieurMiles O'Sullivang?"

"That's the idea. Make it snappy."

"Oui, right away."

Then O'Sullivan's voice on the phone.

While Mr. Seidel smiled and watched the second hand of hiswatch, Whit bellowed into the telephone, "Miles! Listen! I wantto speak to Isadora."

That voice, coming across four thousand miles of rolling wavesand laboring ships and darkness, mumbled, "Isadorawho?Jones or Pater or Elgantine?"

"For heaven's sake, Miles, this is Whitney Dibble speakingfrom America! I want to speak to Isadora.My Isadora."

"Oh, you want to speak to Isadora? Well, I think she's out infront. Listen, laddie, I'll try to find her."

"Miles, this has already cost me more than a hundreddollars."

"And you have been caught by the people who think aboutdollars?"

"You're darned right I have! Will you please get Isadoraquick?"

"You mean quickly, don't you?"

"Yeah, quick or quickly, but please get Isadora."

"Right you are, my lad."

It was after only $16.75 more worth of conversation thatIsadora was saying to him, "Hello, Whit darling, what is it?"

"Would you marry a real-estate man in Zenith, in the MiddleWest? Would you stand for my making ten thousand dollars ayear?"

From four thousand miles away Isadora crowed, "Sure Iwill!"

"You may have to interrupt your creative work."

"Oh, my darling, my darling, I'll be so glad to quitfour-flushing!"

Mr. Whitney Dibble looked at his chief and observed, "After Ifind out how much this long-distance call has cost, do you mindif I make a local call?"

Mr. Seidel observed, "Go as far as you like, but please giveme a pension when you fire me out of the firm."

"Sure!"

Whit telephoned to the mansion of T. Jefferson Dibble.

T. Jefferson answered the telephone with a roar: "Yes, yes,yes, what do you want?"

"Dad, this is Whit. I tried to tell you this morning that I amengaged to a lovely intellectual author in Paris--Isadora."

"Isadorawhat?"

"Do you mean to tell me you don't know who Isadora is?"

"Oh,Isadora! The writer? Congratulations, my boy. I'msorry I misunderstood you before."

"Yes. Just talked to her, long-distance, and she's promised tojoin me here."

"That's fine, boy! We'll certainly have an artistic centerhere in Zenith."

"Yeah, we certainly will."

Mr. Seidel remarked, "That local call will cost you just fivecents besides the eighty-seven fifty."

"Fine, boss," said Whitney Dibble. "Say, can I interest you ina bungalow on Lake Kennepoose? It has two baths, a lovely livingroom, and--Why do you waste your life in this stuffy club room,when you might have a real home?"

THE END

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