THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN MEMORY OF Professor Aram Torossian 1884-1941 ? - I ^ & r The Powers at Play The Powers at Play By Bliss Perry Author of "The Broughton House," "The Plated City," etc. We caught for a moment the powers at play " ROBERT BROWNING Charles Scribner s Sons New York 1899 Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner s Sons TROW DIRECTORY (TING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK CONTENTS Page His Word of Honor / In tbe Rip 75 By the Committee 97 Madame Annalena 133 Tbe Incident of the British Ambassador 157 71}e Fish-Warden of Madrid . . . . 193 Jepson s Third Adjective 239 The White Blackbird 257 169 His Word of Honor His Word of Honor O HE came running down-stairs into the ^ big, dimly lighted drawing-room, his card still in her hand. " It is Dr. Colburn, I see," she exclaimed delightedly. " Let me congratulate you. Really, isn t it impressive ! " She swept downward and backward in mock ceremony, with eyes fixed demurely upon the gleaming card which announced to the world that Samuel W. Colburn had been made an M.D. " Thank you, Miss Warburton," said the young fellow, laughing. " It is the first time I have used one of them. You don t mind my experimenting upon you? I thought I detected Robert smiling a little when he took it up-stairs." " Robert smiling? You alarm me, Dr. Colburn. No ; we won t sit down here, af ter all. Come into my room, it s so very much cooler." 3 His Word of Honor Miss Warburton led the way across the hall and into a tiny reception-room opening at the farther end upon a stone balcony, be tween whose carved balusters glistened the electric-lighted foliage of the park. The June night was oppressively hot, but a breath of sea-breeze found its way in from the balcony, and made the candles in the silver sconces throw momentary shadows upon the pale-damask walls. Colburn glanced around the room, and then at his hostess, with a delicious sense of intimacy. Often as he had called in the last six months, she had never received him here before, and he felt that it marked a new stage in their acquaintance. He settled himself as com fortably as he dared in his fragile chair, while she nestled among the sofa-pillows. " Well," she said, in the spirit of scientific inquiry that befitted the daughter of a great surgeon, " please tell me exactly how you feel. It must be very interesting." " You mean, how I feel to be graduated, and all that sort of thing?" he replied radiantly. " It s extremely pleasant." " Don t be commonplace. How does it 4 His Word of Honor really seem to win the hospital appointment and the first Harsen prize? Won t you analyze your sensations for me ? " " The prize ? " he exclaimed. " I did not know I had won it; that is your father hinted something of the sort, but " " Nonsense," said Dr. Warburton s daughter. " Papa told me all about it this morning. And I knew you would take it, anyway. To have given it to that horrid Chilian would have been for us to violate every tradition of the P. and S." Colburn smiled at her identification of herself with the institution which had just honored him. " I certainly have no fault to find with the decision; and the hospital appointment brings me back to New York again for a while, for one thing." She was watching him keenly. " Of course you must stay in New York/ she said rather rapidly. " Where else would you be satisfied? But you ought to take a thor ough rest now, after the grind." " It has been a grind," he admitted, shak ing his square shoulders as if to throw off 5 His Word of Honor the memory of the load he had been carry ing ; " and the Chilian had the advantage of me in that he didn t go out at all. I was a little handicapped." " Thank you," she said ironically. " Is that the extent of your gratitude to our dancing-class? And you are really sorry you have been asked to usher so often this season? And you actually repent of the dinners, now the> have been eaten ? That s just what I asked you in the first place. I want an analysis of your impressions, now that everything is over, and all the prizes are yours, and you need never be brilliant any more unless you please." She spoke in a low, almost quizzical tone, but her dark eyes were alert and her inquisitive, mobile face had a certain intentness as she spoke. " Brilliant any more ? That s very good of you. I may take my ease, may I? It will be such a new sensation, after the intel lectual strain of a social season plus grind ing for a competitive examination ! But seriously, Miss Warburton, there were a dozen in the class more clever than I. My only luck was in the constitution I brought 6 His Word of Honor down from Vermont. I can get home at two, work till five, sleep till nine, hear lect ures and work till eight, and keep it up as long as I like. Most men are used up by it." " All men are used up by it," said Dr. Warburton s daughter, dogmatically; " some sooner than others, that is all. Do you know, I never imagined until lately that you and your friend in the law-school Mr. Kennedy, is it? were really working. I should have seen to it that you were not asked out so much, if I had known." Miss Warburton s assumption of respon sibility for him was subtly flattering. " Yes," he said, in a sort of confidence he had never shown her ; " Kennedy and I came down here from Dartmouth three years ago, and neither of us knew anybody. People have been very kind. And then, I think we have enjoyed it all the more because it was so new to us. You don t get tired of din ners in two years. I say two, because the first winter we went out very little." " And the last year," she murmured, as if buried in abstract computation, " you have ushered at how many weddings ? " 7 His Word of Honor " Eleven ; and I have been best man three times." " And you have beaten the Chilian," she added, " and passed the best examination of any P. and S. man for six years. You have an admirable constitution, Dr. Col- burn ! " But she was wondering not so much at the young fellow s freshness of color and clearness of eye as at his unsophistication of attitude, his inability to be bored. Her own zest for dinners had disappeared long before her second season was over. Miss War- burton was an eager girl, passionately fond of her dolls while they lasted, though en dowed with ringers pitiably sensitive to the feel of the sawdust underneath the silk. The two excitements that had never yet failed her were dancing and driving. Mr. Col- burn had been the most tireless dancer in her set the past winter, and it was he whom she happened to take up in her cart, that windy day in May, not five minutes before the mare ran with her ; and he had kept on chatting as coolly as ever until she got the brute in hand again, and had been delicate 8 His Word of Honor enough not to offer manlike to take the reins himself. She admitted to herself now, as she sat scrutinizing his face and catechising him upon his New York experience, that she liked him. He was coming back to the city. Her father prophesied for Colburn a brilliant career. Obviously, she could in the future see more of him, if she chose ; she could see as much of him as she liked. And beyond that? One s thoughts may go far on a June night when one is but two-and- twenty, and stretches out motherless hands imperiously toward a world that must, if the books say true, hold somewhere in reserve a boundless store of happiness. " When do you go ? " she asked abruptly. "To-morrow. Indeed, I came to say good-by. I suppose you will be out of town until October ? " " Very probably. You know, this is papa s summer to go abroad. Auntie and I are getting up a coaching-party for the last two weeks of June. You should seethe new leaders papa has bought for me, by the way ! Then, I imagine, we shall stay at Litchfield 9 His Word of Honor until September, and perhaps drive again after that to the mountains, very likely. And you?" "I? Oh, I shall be at home for three weeks, and then come back on the ist of July for the hospital work." " You told me once where you lived ; it s in southern Vermont, isn t it ? " He bowed. " At North Enderby. It is on the map, and that s about all." " Why, wait ! " she cried. " Isn t it some where near Wilmington ? " " Between Wilmington and Brattleboro." " Of course ! We are going to cross from Wilmington to Brattleboro on our trip north, week after next. Let me show you." She darted across the room to a tiny escritoire, and returned with an old dance- card and pencil. " Here is Litchfield," she said, sitting down cosily beside Dr. Colburn ; " we start, of course, from there. The first day we go to Lenox " she made another dot on the back of the card " and the second to Will- iamstown ; then to Bennington, and the fourth day to Wilmington " she drew a line 10 His Word of Honor at right angles to the other " and I want to cross to Brattleboro and go up the river. We drove to Manchester and Burlington last year. And I forgot to say at Lenox " the dainty pencil went down to the second dot " we are going to pick up the Tarra- ways and Charlie McDuffer ; and there will be my small brother, of course; but that still leaves one seat vacant." The pencil moved up across the card, and made a swift interrogation-point between Wilmington and Brattleboro. "Will you not join us? We do really need another man." Colburn shifted rather uneasily in his slender chair. " It would give me immense pleasure," he said; "but " " But you don t want to," she flashed back. " On the contrary, I want to very much. I am simply questioning whether I ought. You know I have but three weeks at home anyway, and mother " " As you like," decided Miss Warburton, a trifle petulantly. " But you might give us a couple of days. And then, Auntie would IX His Word of Honor be so relieved," she added gayly, " to have a surgeon in the party. You know, I am go ing to be the whip myself, and she always thinks I am so reckless. Come, just two days?" " You will confine your recklessness to those two days ? " She glanced up at him. It was impossible to detect from his manner whether he wished any meaning to be attached to his words. " I never make promises," she said. Her eyes fell, and the pencil began to trace aim less lines upon the card. Colburn was trying to think fast. There was just one reason for his hesitancy to ac cept her invitation for those two days. He was not sure not quite sure that it was an adequate reason, but it happened to be one that he could not comfortably explain to Miss Warburton herself. The blue pencil still wandered aimlessly over the map, but he thought it moved a trifle more impa tiently. There was a footstep in the hall, and Robert drew aside the portiere. He carried a box of familiar size and shape, and a note elaborately sealed. Miss Warburton 12 His Word of Honor opened the roses first, and passed them to Colburn, and then she glanced at the note. " Tell Mr. McDuffer s man that there is no answer needed, Robert ; " and Robert, picking up -the tissue-paper from the floor, withdrew as automatically as he had entered. The ceremony had taken but a moment, but during the interval Dr. Colburn had made and formulated his decision. Yet it was Miss Warburton who spoke first. " Charlie McDuffer is off for Lenox. Did I tell you we were going to pick him up there? He asks if he mayn t bring his French horn. It s the dear boy s one ac complishment ; of course he may. Aren t those lovely roses ! And Mr. McDuffer," she added, rather wickedly, " didn t have to be asked twice." " Nor I either," replied Dr. Colburn, who cherished a cordial hatred for the innocent McDuffer. " I will join you whenever you say." "Really?" she cried. "How delight ful ! " She glanced at him with a low, rapid laugh as the conviction flashed upon her 13 His Word of Honor that men were easily enough managed, after all. " Thank you. When shall it be ? " He had left that uncomfortable scruple far be hind him now, and spoke as eagerly as she. " Remember," he continued, " for two days you may be as reckless as you please ; it shall be two wheels over the edge all the time, if you say so, provided your aunt and Charlie McDuffer do not scream ! Shall I bring splints and plasters for the inevitable emergency ? " But it was the edge of some thing other than a Vermont road over which those two days would find them swaying to gether, and she felt the undertone of mean ing in his words as well as he. It thrilled her deliciously, but she dared not betray her self. " Let me see," she said slowly, putting McDuffer s roses to her face again ; " we reach Wilmington the evening of the i8th. Will you join us then, or on the iQth at Brat- tleboro, or at some point between? Is North Enderby on the county road ? " He shook his head. Colburn had never spoken to her about his family, but she knew 14 His Word of Honor he was poor, and she had a sort of instinct that he might not care to have the fashion able tally-ho pull up before his front door. And she was right, though not to do him justice for the reason she supposed. " North Enderby is a mile or two out of your way," he said easily, " and the hill is a hard one. Suppose you let me meet you at the Four Corners. Where is the card, once more?" She nodded as he drew a line to mark the intersection of the county road by the hill road to Enderby. " Very well ; we will take you up, then, at ten o clock on the morning of the igih. It will be ever so much nicer than meeting us in a country hotel, and you can send your things ahead to Brattleboro, you know." " Of course," he said, amused at her prac tised forethought for details ; " and how much grace will you allow me, or shall I allow you, at the Four Corners? Must it be ten o clock to the minute ? " " To the very minute ! Just as I pull up at the Four Corners, out you must spring from the roadside, like a highwayman no ; 15 His Word of Honor that isn t very nice; like Orson the wood- knight! Who was he? I am sure I can t remember. But keeping tryst, you know ! Won t the rest open their eyes when I sum mon you to the box! I won t tell anyone except Auntie she will send you the invita tion, of course that you are coming. Wait ! wait ! Here s something better yet ! " She sprang to her feet, and began to laugh. " Let s arrange a regular opera entrance ! At the exact minute I ll get Charlie McDuf- fer to play something on his French horn. You hear the echoes, and in you come ! Tableau!" Colburn was laughing, too. " Superb ! " he cried, though even in that flattering mo ment it struck him that the stage arrange ment was a trifle unfair to McDuffer. " But what shall he play ? What can he play ? He knows three tunes," she said de murely : " Elizabeth s Prayer in Tann- hauser, Suwanee River, and See ! the Conquering Hero Comes/ You may have your choice." " Then I choose the last," said Colburn. He was beginning to lose his head a little, 16 His Word of Honor too. " But I don t know the tune when I hear it. Play it to me ! " " Of course you do, you nonsensical boy ! " she exclaimed, as she caught at the tips of Colburn s ringers, and pirouetted with him down the room and across the hall to the piano, where she crashed out the open ing bars of the tune, and made him whistle them after her till she pronounced him per fect. Then she whirled around on the piano-stool, and looked steadily at him an instant. " Haven t we been fearfully silly ? " she demanded, the key of her voice changing suddenly. He shook his head, smiling, but he saw that it was time to go. She stood by him in the hall as he drew on his light overcoat. He always had looked handsome in evening dress, and his French beard became him. " Good-by, then," he said, putting out his hand, " until ten o clock on the igth. Isn t it ridiculous ? " " Good-by," she answered, taking his hand with a sort of timidity he had never ob- 17 His Word of Honor served in her. " You must not fail me, now that I have tired myself out playing the tune for you. I may count upon you cer tain sure, as the children say? " " Honor bright, " he answered, and the heavy door closed noiselessly behind him. Dr. Colburn stood a moment, looking out over the park. Then he shrugged his shoul ders with a kind of boyish petulance, and, folding his gloved hands behind his back in a manner that was not boyish at all, walked slowly down the brownstone steps. A cer tain scruple, forgotten during the last half- hour, had silently reasserted itself. He was thinking of a thoroughly nice girl named Juletta Perkins, his next-door neighbor at North Enderby, to whom he had been en gaged to be married ever since the winter vacation of his junior year. II AT half-past five o clock on the afternoon of the i8th, Dr. Colburn flung out his arms in a spasmodic effort to keep his balance, and then the rotten hemlock bark gave way 18 His Word of Honor altogether, and he sat down with painful swiftness astride of a big log that spanned the turbulent waters of Poorhouse Brook. For an instant he gripped the log hard with his thighs, and glanced nervously at the rocks a dozen feet below him. He was safe enough, however; and as soon as his pulse began to slacken its pace he settled his straw hat straight again, threw one leg over the log, and mechanically hitched up his summer trousers a trifle at the knees. Then he looked around him in a jaded, dazed fashion, and uttered an exclamation of min gled satisfaction and disgust. For the first time in several hours he recognized his bear ings. On the right, beyond the tangle of dead blackberry-bushes through which he had just torn his way, was Big Swamp, where he had been wandering in most idiotic circles since three o clock. To be sure, the old path had been quite obliterated by sec ond-growth spruces and swamp alders since he had last tried this short cut from Enderby across Big Swamp, and the black thunder clouds had spread so rapidly across the sky after he had started that it had been quite 19 His Word of Honor impossible to get the points of compass ; but making all allowances for himself, the fact remained that he had lost his way, like the merest schoolboy, within six miles of home. It was all plain enough now. On his left, arching queerly above the fern-covered hil locks of a clearing, were the tops of the old charcoal kilns, disused for many a year, and a half-mile from the charcoal-kilns was the Hollow. Thence the Pond road led straight to his friend Kennedy s house, where he had meant to pass the night. An hour s sharp walking would bring him there, and not too late for supper. The clouds grew steadily more threatening. Nevertheless, Dr. Col- burn swung his feet irresolutely over Poor- house Brook, and began discontentedly to pick the blackberry thorns out of his coat sleeves. His accidentally selected seat was not exactly to his liking, but he was too weary to change it, and there was, at least, a sort of consonance between the uncomfort- ableness of his body and a certain conscious discomfort of his mind. He felt a little like a defaulter. He had quietly sent his bag to Brattleboro that 20 His Word of Honor morning, and had told his mother that he was going to spend the night with Walter Kennedy, and the next two days with some friends from New York ; that was all. The widow Colburn received the announcement with imperfectly concealed disappointment. Her boy s vacation with her was so short, at best! But she would no more have ques tioned the Tightness of Samuel s decisions than she would the justice of " the moral law " an institution to which the natives of North Enderby made somewhat frequent reference. Nor would Juletta. For months the girl had dreamed of her lover s home coming, and it had taken all her fortitude to rejoice unselfishly at the hospital appoint ment which would separate Colburn from her so soon. Since the previous summer she had seen him but once, namely, during the memorable three days she had spent in New York as a delegate to the Christian En deavor convention. There was so much in the city that she wanted to see, and there were so many details she wanted to talk over with her fiance, whose letters had grown shorter in the last year ; but still she felt that 21 His Word of Honor her duty as a delegate was clear. One even ing only did they have together ; and when Juletta read her report to the North Enderby Endeavorers, she colored as she summa rized alas! from the secular press the speeches at the omitted session, and dreaded lest someone should suspect that she had passed that Thursday evening in the dark ened back parlor of a boarding-house, all alone with Sam. They had been so happy that night ! happier, Juletta reflected with a vague wonderment, than they were now that he had come home. The ten days just passed had not brought them nearer to gether. Yet they had been engaged five years, and Juletta had never dreamed of car ing for anyone else, nor had it entered her gentle, unsuspecting soul that Colburn ever found more than a passing relaxation from his studies in those social events of which he sometimes wrote her so gayly. Of course, she meditated, other girls could not help admiring Sam. He was so handsome, so good-natured, and such a fine scholar ; but Heaven had given her his heart. She ac cepted the favor with a tranquil thankful- 22 His Word of Honor ness, never ceasing, indeed, to be conscious of her undeserts, but never for a moment imagining that his love had not come to her, as hers to him, for better and for worse, and for forever and a day. And being also, like most idealists, of a practical turn of mind, her table-linen had been ready since the last November, and she had bought her other things in May. It was precisely Dr. Colburn s sense of this steadfast fidelity of Juletta which made those ten days so uncomfortable for him. If he had said frankly, " I am thinking of going on the iQth to spend two days in the coaching-party of one of the most attractive girls in New York; she has asked me be cause she likes me better than the gilded youth who is seriously making love to her ; I am fond of her indeed, just how fond we are of each other I suppose neither of us knows," Juletta would have answered placid ly : " You must go by all means, Sam. You have been working hard, and the outing will do you good. I am sure I do not want you to neglect your best friends just because you and I are engaged to be married. A young 23 His Word of Honor doctor ought to make just as many friends as he can. And you must remember to tell me exactly how Miss Warburton has trimmed her summer hat." It was impossible ever to be angry with Juletta, but Dr. Colburn made amends for this gap in his experience by being angry at himself. He was distinctly aware that he had put himself in a false position. He had given his word of honor to Elinor Warbur ton ; but could he honorably keep it ? He knew very well what those two days in her company would imply : it would be a definite entering of the lists against McDuffer ; and his instinct told him that the prize might be his, if he chose. Yet there was Juletta ; and throughout their long engagement he had, in the face of manifold distractions, been faithful, even in thought, to his boyish prom ise of five years before. It was now for the first time, when he confessed to a certain lack of piquancy in Juletta s society com pared with the anticipated excitements of a seat upon Miss Warburton s tally-ho, that he wondered whether his engagement had not been a mistake. Certainly he had erred 24 His Word of Honor in never mentioning the engagement to Miss Warburton. He had debated the ad visability of asking her to call upon Juletta at the time of the convention, but on the whole had decided not to. It might have been a little awkward for all parties, and he was quite sure that Juletta and Miss War- burton would not understand each other al together; and besides, Juletta was such a conscientious delegate that he was not likely to see very much of her himself. And so he had allowed matters to go along until now. It had been the simpler way appar ently, and Colburn always hated complica tions. But he found himself at present per plexed by the most intricate and inexorable of complications. To have two strings upon your bow may show excellent foresight for an emergency ; but, after all, you must shoot with one string at a time, and the other one is then sadly in the way. This good-natured young doctor had been fingering a new string adjusting it hesitatingly, as it were, and by no means desiring to slip the faithful old one and lo! circumstance had caught him in the act, and cried sternly, " Shoot, and at once ! " 25 His Word of Honor Half a dozen times, that afternoon, as he paused for breath in the blind tangle of Big Swamp, he resolved, if he ever got out again, to go straight back to Juletta, and tell her everything. He thought he could tell her in such a way that even her unsuspicious vision would discern how near their happi ness had come to being shattered, and she would know that he had need of her forgive ness. And he would let Charlie McDuffer play " See ! the Conquering Hero Comes " to the empty winds that blew across the Four Corners. Miss Warburton would be bitterly angry at the failure of her impro vised drama ; she would be angrier still when she learned as she was bound to some time of the reason for his staying away; and then the whole affair would be ended. And a half-dozen other times he shook his head doggedly, and resolved to push through, as he had intended, to Walter Ken nedy s, and lay the troublesome question before the judicial mind of his friend. But he was dogged because he knew perfectly well what advice Kennedy would give him. That newly fledged member of the New 26 His Word of Honor York bar would decide cheerfully : " Sam, if you promised, honor bright, to meet a cer tain pretty girl at a certain place, on a cer tain hour, you re a lucky fellow, that s all. Gather your roses while you may. Keep your word, and follow your star. I only wish it were I." To be sure, Kennedy had always consid ered his chum s engagement to Miss Juletta Perkins, of North Enderby fresh-colored blonde and good-hearted girl as she un doubtedly was to be something of a social mistake. As Dr. Colburn picked the last blackberry thorn out of his coat-sleeve he was aware that the moment had come for him to follow one of those two alternating resolutions. It was ridiculous to sit there, swinging his feet over Poorhouse Brook, not knowing what he wanted. A drop of rain struck the back of his hand, and that decided him. He glanced toward the Hollow and the Pond road with a sudden relief. It was absurd that it had taken him so long to settle the question. The Kennedys would have fin ished supper, very likely, before he could 27 His Word of Honor reach there ; but that would make no differ ence. He and Walter would have a fine old-time talk, that night, about getting on in the world, and in the morning Walter could drive him close to the Four Corners. The morning ! How fresh everything would be after the rain ! How merrily Miss War- burton would send her new leaders along over the hard, clean-washed road! And the Tarraway girl would be poking sly fun at McDuffer ; and Elinor s aunt would be in mortal terror of the ever-possible overturn ; and he himself, seated by her side upon the box, erect and buoyant in the sunny morn ing wind ah, there was a whip that would be sending him along, too, faster than ever her leaders travelled swift swift and with the bit in his teeth ! Ill DR. COLBURN spread his hands upon the slippery wood, and, throwing his whole weight upon his palms, began to hitch his way cautiously to the farther end of the log. When two-thirds of the way over he halted 28 His Word 01 Honor in utter astonishment. From the point he had reached, the bed of the brook was visible for fifty yards below him. Perhaps half that distance away, crouching ankle-deep in the gray water, was a human figure ; and as it straightened itself stealthily the startled young fellow perceived it was the figure of a woman. He sat motionless, perched upon his log, staring. Straight up-stream toward him crept the figure, now bal ancing itself upon the stones, already treacherous with midsummer slime, now brushing lightly against the willow tips that overhung the stream, but ever with eyes fixed narrowly upon the water. Out side of Bedlam, was ever creature more curiously garbed ? Up to the knees came a pair of jaunty riding-boots. Descending barely to the boot-tops were limp skirts, with torn fringes of lace, and here and there a tinsel spangle. Folded across the bust, and confined by a canvas belt, was a flowing pur ple tunic, whose tattered ends were caught up again under the belt, out of the reach of the water. Where the folds crossed each other on the bosom there was a glimpse of 29 His Word of Honor metal corselet scales, and where the bare arms rounded into a pair of perfect shoul ders there were absurd epaulets of brass. To crown all, set recklessly upon a mass of glistening black hair was a man s broken- visored cap. She was within forty feet of him before he got it through his head what she was doing. The wretched alder pole she was carrying was no staff, but a fishing-rod ; and all of a sudden she knelt behind a big rock mid stream, and, peering cautiously over it, let the angleworm bait weighted with a rusty nail dangle an instant hesitatingly, and then sink deep among the stones. Another instant, and she stood erect, grabbing un erringly at a quarter-pound trout as it swung struggling past her. And still Colburn sat, wide-eyed, watching the precision with which she pulled to the front her basket it was an old coffee-pot fastened to her belt and slipped the cover down upon the fish before the latter had time to be ashamed at the unscientific manner of his capture. The strangely accoutred fisherman tried the weight of the coffee-pot once or twice, 3 His Word of Honor then shifted it back upon her hip as if not yet quite satisfied. But the raindrops came faster now, and glancing skyward, she caught sight of the hemlock log and the pendent legs of Dr. Samuel Colburn. She gave a little scream, and one hand went up to the corselet scales with an instinctive gesture that seemed to Colburn reassur ingly feminine. He lifted his hat with habitual deference. " Good afternoon, madam," he remarked. " You seem to be very successful." Samuel Colburn s polished address to all sorts and conditions of people had always given him a reputation in North Enderby. * * How d ye do ?" she answered. Then she pulled the ends of the purple tunic free from her belt, and let them fall over the spangled skirt. He took her for a gypsy now, and eyed her freely. " Who are you ? " she demanded curtly. " My name is Colburn Dr. Samuel Col burn," he added, with a smile. He still liked to roll his tongue over the title, now some three weeks old. " No ! " she cried, her whole countenance His Word of Honor changing, as she strode nearer him through the rain-dotted water. " Say, you ain t a doctor ; what are you givin me ? " There was indeed little that was professional in the doctor s aspect. " I could have no object in deceiving you, madam," was the injured reply, and Colburn turned up his coat collar against the rain with the air of a man who closes the discussion. It convinced her. " Well, if you are a doctor," she de manded, " come off that log. I want to have you go with me. It ain t any time to stand foolin here." The language struck him as too idiomatic for a gypsy queen s. Who was she ? Im patiently she splashed through the brook and came out upon the bank at his end of the log. " Come on ! " she repeated ; and, with as much alacrity as the situation would allow, Colburn hitched along the log and scram bled down beside her. She was perhaps twenty-three. He looked her over once more, from the red water-soaked toes of her worn riding-boots up to the broken-visored 32 His Word of Honor cap, upon which was stamped, in gilt letters : " Elephant Man No. 7." A light broke in upon him, and, in spite of his professional dignity and his invariable courtesy to womankind, he ejaculated, " I swear ! " " Don t," she said, succinctly. " It ain t right. But you may if you want to, though ; I m a married woman. Just take this fish- pole, will you, and come along. Look out for that hook; it s the only one I ve got. We re goin to get soaked if we stay here." Pushing well behind her back the coffee pot, in which the latest-captured trout still flapped a resonant protest, and gathering up her frayed tunic as decorously as she might, she strode off Diana-like through the patches of wet fern, Colburn following won- deringly in her train. IV Two or three minutes of sharp walking brought them to the deserted charcoal-kilns. The domes of rough brickwork loomed huge against the rapidly blackening sky, 33 His Word of Honor and made the clearing seem even lonelier. As they reached the low archway, long since doorless, that gave entrance to the second kiln, Colburn s guide turned suddenly. " I didn t introduce myself," she said, with absolute simplicity. " I forgot to as soon as I found out you were a doctor. I am Mrs. Jake Hunter. Come in." He leaned the fishing-pole against the outer wall of the kiln, and ducked under the doorway after her. The dusky dome, twenty feet in diameter, had once had an opening at the top ; but this had been cov ered with strips of hemlock bark, so that the only light came from the low doorway. Op posite the entrance was a rusty cooking- stove, propped on the bricks that had been knocked out of the wall to make a passage for its pipe. On either side were huge piles of new hay, and beyond one of them, and completing the furniture of the interior, were two inverted flour-barrels and a dry- goods box. Mrs. Jake Hunter walked swiftly to the larger of the hay-piles, and bent over it. Colburn followed. " I ve come back, Jake," she said cheerily ; 34 His Word of Honor " and what do you think ? I ve brought the doctor ! " An inarticulate moan was the only an swer. The woman bent lower, and pressed her hand to a white, drawn face. Colburn bent over, too, and distinguished in the fail ing light a man s form, stretching to an ex traordinary length along the hay. Rough bandages were wrapped around the right arm and shoulder. " Jake, Jake ! " called the woman s clear voice again. " Brace up, Jakey. The doc tor s come do you hear ? the doctor ! " Slowly the eyes opened, and the muscles around the mouth, set in the stupor of long pain, relaxed a little. It was a loose-hung, lantern-jawed face, mild-eyed and patient. The man murmured something, and put out his left hand amicably. Colburn took it ; it was feverish. " Don t you understand, Jake? This is a doctor to see you," said the woman, more anxiously than before. This time Mr. Jake Hunter spoke. " Glad to see you, Doc," he said huskily. " Say, Doc, have you any tobacco ? " 35 His Word of Honor Mrs. Hunter broke into a ripple of laugh ter, and Colburn, immensely relieved, felt in his pockets for a cigar. " Don t light it yet," whispered the sick man ; " that s all right ; " and, closing his smooth-shaven lips upon it, he shut his eyes dreamily. Colburn watched him, every atom of professional instinct on the alert. Away down in the hay, an unconscionable length from the cigar, there was a move ment, then another parallel to it ; Jake Hun ter s feet were rising and falling in rhythmic ecstasy. He had not tasted tobacco for three days. The young surgeon turned to his hostess. " He seems to have the use of his lower extremities," he remarked courteously. "What s the matter with his shoulder? And you will pardon my curiosity if I in quire what under the heavens you and your husband are doing here ? You are ahem ! professional people, are you not ? " He phrased it as delicately as he could. She nodded carelessly. "Every time. Did you ever go to the Consolidated Pan- American Show ? That s where we belong, 36 His Word of Honor Jake and I. It s the best show on the road. I used to ride and do one trapeze act. Jake s been the Boneless Wonder and the Human Serpent, and once he took tickets for two weeks. Since he got hurt, though, he s had to take a job as elephant man, for he can t do his acts. Don t you suppose you can fix his shoulder, doctor?" " I can t answer that," said Colburn, dis creetly, " until I have made an examination. What is the nature of the trouble, madam ? " " I don t know," she whispered disconso lately, loosening the coffee-pot from her belt, and letting the fish slip out into a tin pan that was on the stove-cover. " It hap pened six weeks ago last Sunday morning. Jake says that he got it paintin the zebra. You see they have to paint up a zebra every Sunday. They take a different mule each week, because the paint strikes in and kills em. And that Sunday, Jake says, they got to foolin , and the mule kicked. But I think Jake lies. My belief is, he got into a scrap with the Australian giant. Mike is apt to be ugly Sundays, and to be shootin off his mouth about me and the Kid ; and I 37 His Word of Honor think Jake punched him, and the giant tripped up Jake. There ain t a man in the show that could throw Jake in a fair wrastle ; but Mike McGowan was always mean." " It was a sprain, then ? " inquired Col- burn. " That s what the doctor that travels with the show called it. He gave Jake some lini ment, and said twould be all right next day. But it wasn t. It got worse and worse. He couldn t do his contortion act, and by and by he couldn t do anything but lead the baby elephant in the grand parade. And here last week, at Brattleboro, they shipped him from the show and that meant me and the Kid, too until he got well again. When he does we can have our old places, sure; I ain t afraid of that. But just now it s hard lines, ain t it? And all on account of that knock-kneed Australian ! " Colburn opened his eyes a little wider still, and peered around the darkening kiln for some evidence of the existence of a child. The rain was falling in torrents now, and the drops splashed in from the doorway al most to the feet of the Boneless Wonder. 38 His Word of Honor Mrs. Hunter poked at the lower door of the stove with the tip of the soaked boot, and her bare arms seemed to be shivering. Sud denly she recalled herself to the present. " Look here ; we can t stand around in this style, can we? You just push that box against the door, will you, doctor? Jake ll get wet. And you can t look at his shoul der till I get my lantern goin , anyhow. I guess I ll touch up this fire and get the fish on, because the Kid is liable to wake up any minute now, and then I ll have to stop to let him have some supper." The last information was imparted to the doctor with maternal pride. By the time that Colburn had successfully barricaded the doorway against the storm, the ex- equestrienne had lighted the fire, and was rapidly dressing the trout on a barrel-head. " Do you like your trout dressed ? " she inquired affably. Colburn, warming his wet fingers above the crackling stove, admitted his preference. " So does Jake. Don t some folks think they re sweeter if you fry em with the in ards ? In Michigan my mamma used to 39 His Word of Honor cook em that way ; but after we moved to York State she made us girls dress em and catch em, too, most generally. My pop was lazy, most too lazy to fish. Say, it s lucky I found that hook an line, ain t it? Those camping fellows must have left it. Oh, I didn t tell you about those camping fellows ; I started to, and forgot it." A hoarse whisper from the hay-pile inter rupted her, and she took the cracked lantern and held it close to her husband s face. Soon she came back with his cigar. " Jake wants to light up now," she said affectionately. " You don t suppose he ll set fire to that hay, do you ? " and, snatching a burning stick from the stove, she lighted the cigar dexterously, and put it into the mouth of her consort. Then she passed swiftly to the smaller pile of hay, and stooped over it a moment with a smile. " You see," she continued, returning to the stove, and rubbing a slice of pork over the frying-pan before she slid the trout into it, " we started to walk from Brattleboro over to Bennington County, where I ve got relations. It went slow, I tell you ! Jake s 40 His Word of Honor shoulder and arm hurt him so that he had to swear every step of the way ; and I carried the Kid, and he s an awful heavy one, for ten weeks ! And I guess our clothes kind o* gave us away. Someone stole my dresses the night before we started all but one and a shawl. And I sold that shawl to a peddler for some liniment for Jake the first day. And the dress was about gone ; when I tore it up last night to make a bandage for Jake, there wa n t much left. Well, these campers struck us, and had a talk with Jake, and told us to come right here. They d left some things for another lot of fellows that was coming next Saturday the stove and pan and kettle, you see, and some potatoes and pork and coffee. Guess they thought we were pretty bad off. They said they d send a selectman here, and a doctor ; but he hasn t come, and I can t leave Jake and the Kid long enough to go for anyone, if I knew the way; and the potatoes are most gone, and it s lucky I thought of going fishin this af ternoon, after the Kid got asleep. But we re all right now. I tell you, I m all-fired glad to see you, doctor." 41 His Word of Honor He bowed in acknowledgment of this compliment to the omnipotence of his pro fession, though with inward dismay at the responsibility imposed upon him. But the fragrant odor from the frying-pan was a temporary alleviation. Mrs. Hunter was turning the trout with one hand, and thrust ing a fork into the pot of boiling potatoes with the other. Her arms were a deep pink now, and the brass epaulets gleamed curi ously in the firelight. She detected his gaze. " Well," she said, with a touch of defiance in her tone, " I ain t dressed exactly as a lady should be, that s a fact. But Jake s shoulder was so cold last night, and I tore the dress up there ! and I put on this. Jake had it in his bundle. But it does look queer, don t it, doctor ? " The doctor admitted that when he first saw it the costume struck him as singular. " It s what they wear in Tyre, you know," she explained. " I suppose it does look sort of out of place here. You see, I was sick for awhile after the Kid came, and I couldn t ride any more, and it made me dizzy just to look at a trapeze. So I wa n t anything but 42 His Word of Honor a maid of Tyre. You ve seen the Fall of Tyre ? Well, I was the third maid from the end, on the temple side, and I tell you it seemed slow, after the ring. Nothing to do but to wave these purple skirts, grip your epaulets so fashion and yell ! Now, doc tor, if you ll get two plates from that barrel, we ll begin. I ll save enough for Jake. Here, I ll show you." She set the two plates on the stove-hearth, and filled them with trout and potatoes ; then she poured some coffee into a tomato-can, and placed it hospitably at his side of the hearth. " You can have the first drink," she said ; " there s only one cup." Then she dropped upon her side of the stove in a most companionable way, and be gan to eat ravenously. Outside, the rain gusts were sweeping fiercely, and echoes of the thunder that was bursting over Big Swamp rumbled in the hollow vault of the coal-kiln. Before long there was a tiny stir and rustle in the pile of hay behind Colburn s back, and the wife of the Boneless Wonder lifted her head to lis ten. Then she leaped up with a look that 43 His Word of Honor made the young doctor think her, for the moment, radiantly beautiful. " It s the Kid ! " she exclaimed, and in a minute was back again, on her knees before the fire, clucking to the child. It wriggled hungrily, then caught sight of the glowing chink in the stove door, and stared at it with serious black eyes. " Ain t he a splendid baby, doctor ? You ought to see the fat on his little legs! I want to call him Reginald; but Jake he s stuck on Adoniram, because he had a brother of that name who died of lockjaw. Which do you think sounds best, doctor? Perhaps we ll call him both. Oh, you cun- nin little clown ! Does you want your sup per ? " And she buried her nose in the pink folds of the baby s neck, and lost her breath, and caught it, and spent it again in inarticu late maternal speech; and then she turned her back skilfully on the doctor, and com manded him, over her shoulder, to keep Jake s trout from getting burned. " I can t tend to it just now," she conde scended to explain ; and Colburn silently obeyed. Ten minutes passed thus. 44 His Word of Honor " Now, don t you want to hold him just a minute, doctor, while I give Jake some sup per?" The astonished young graduate of the P. and S. drew a long breath, but crooked his left elbow without a word, and received the burden. Yet no reluctant bachelor had ever a lighter task. The Kid blinked up at him benignantly ; and when Colburn ventured to touch its cheeks with his forefinger, they dimpled in a way that reminded him, singu larly enough, of Juletta s when she was a girl. Then it nestled closer in his arms, brought its pink fists together under its chin, gave a queer little satisfied shudder, and could keep the grave eyes open but an instant more. At intervals Colburn overheard the young woman s cheery whisperings to Jake Hun ter, between the administered mouthfuls of trout and potato. The doctor would know right away what was the matter ; he was such a splendid doctor, she knew he held the baby so natural ! And Sam Colburn grew more nervous with each instant. It was pitiful to see the trust she had suddenly re- 45 His Word of Honor posed in him. He hated to disappoint her, but what, after all, was the chance of his being able to do anything? If he had the contortionist on a comfortable bed in the long ward of the hospital, with a history of the case and a full set of surgeon s supplies, and Dr. Warburton to look in twice a day to see that everything was going well, why, that was another matter! But up here in southern Vermont, with a deserted char coal-kiln for sole refuge against the storm, four miles from a human habitation, and he himself, the champion of science, absolutely empty-handed for the struggle against pain, was he not well-nigh impotent? Yet he was a born surgeon, like his father before him, and the instant Reginald Adoniram was laid back in the nest of hay, Colburn was at Jake Hunter s side, asking shrewd questions. He learned nothing, except that Mrs. Hunter s suspicions as to the Aus tralian giant had been well founded. Col- burn took off his coat, and began to uncover the bandaged shoulder and right arm. The Maid of Tyre, eager-faced, held the battered lantern close. Cowering upon his left side, 46 His Word of Honor the sick man quivered at each touch as Col- burn passed his fingers lightly over the swollen muscles. According to Dr. War- burton, it was the most delicate hand in the P. and S. ; and as it moved slowly over the point of the shoulder, Colburn stopped, while a slight exclamation of surprise es caped him. Once more the fingers passed over the point, very, very deliberately, and with a greater pressure. Jake Hunter groaned. Then Colburn put one arm un der the Wonder, and pulling him half-way up in bed, caressed the left shoulder in sim ilar fashion, then the right one once more, then the left again. His own pulse was bounding ; could he possibly be right ? His voice shook a little with excitement as he turned to the Maid. " Hold that right arm out so ; never mind the lantern. Now, hold it steady ; just brace your foot against mine." Jake groaned again. " One minute more, my man." The most delicate hands in the P. and S. were gripping him as in a vise ; it pained like fire. 47 His Word of Honor "There!" There was a snap, a sort of smothered click as from a well-oiled breech-loader, and the Boneless Wonder, profanely ejaculating, was deposited tenderly upon his left side. Colburn s eyes sparkled with triumph. He turned to Mrs. Jake Hunter with an easy smile. "The case was improperly diagnosed at the outset, madam. There was no strain; it was a simple dislocation of the humerus. He ll get better now." The look in her face repaid him for every thing. " What did you say Jake had ? " she asked, in an awe-struck but happy voice. " Dislocation of the humerus ; that is, his shoulder was out of joint and no one told him so." Professional discretion forbade further comment on Dr. Colburn s part; but poor Jake Hunter, feeling no such restriction to expression, gave utterance to a single fluent and heartfelt and unquotable sentence which covered the entire ground. The Maid of Tyre nodded a loyal but somewhat alarmed 48 His Word of Honor assent to the malediction, and then watched Colburn with open-eyed admiration as he re-bandaged the shoulder in the most approved P. and S. style. The process re duced Reginald Adoniram s stock of safety- pins to three ; but Colburn himself was tol erably satisfied with the result, considering all the circumstances. As he finished, the Boneless Wonder spoke again : " Say, Doc, if you d put that cigar-stub into my mouth, so that I could just feel twas there, I believe I could go to sleep. I ain t slept for three nights." He closed his eyes contentedly, and Mrs. Hunter stroked his lank cheek, and piled the hay more warmly above him. Then she took a peep at the Kid, and came back to the stove, where Colburn stood looking at his watch. It was half-past nine. The thunder had rolled to the northward, but the rain still fell heavily. 49 His Word of Honor V " WELL," he said, as much to himself as to her. She replenished the fire, and dropped into her former posture beside it. " He ll go to sleep now, sure," she replied softly. " Jake s awful good. He hasn t said one cuss-word at me, you know, in all this time. You d better sit down, doctor; you look real tired. Is there much sickness round here? " Colburn threw himself down upon the other side of the stove, without noticing her question. " I declare," she continued, " I never thought till this minute that somebody else might be waitin for you, somebody as bad off as Jake. I saw you on that log, and said, Come along, without thinkin . I was just tickled to death. Were you goin to see a sick man, doctor? " Colburn shook his head. She seemed re lieved. " Come to think, you didn t seem in much of a hurry, did you ? You were sittin there, His Word of Honor bareback fashion, as if you didn t know whether to take another turn around the ring or not." She smiled amiably as she drew this picture. " How far do you live from here, doctor?" "About six miles," he replied dryly ; " that is, if you take the short cut through the swamp." " Good gracious ! You can t go back to night in all this rain! You d better stay right here. I ve got wood enough to keep the fire goin , and there is more hay there than the Kid needs. You see, we ain t ex actly to home ourselves," she added, as if in apology for any defect in hospitality. " This is only sort o campin out." " What do you expect to do in the morn ing? " he asked abruptly. " I don t know," the Tyrian Maid an swered, with girlish carelessness. " Just now we re livin one day at a time. Perhaps that selectman ll come. The boys said they d be sure to send him. I guess we d be on the town then, wouldn t we ? " she laughed. " How far is it to the place where your His Word of Honor relatives live ? " persisted Colburn. " Would they do anything for you ? " " Jake figured out that Huckleville was about fifteen miles from here. Yes ; I sup pose my cousin s folks there would be awful glad to see us. It ain t as if Jake were goin to be sick on their hands now, you see. I lived with em the year before I was married. Why, I worked one week in the mill where my cousin s the boss spinner watchin a big machine that makes seamless under shirts." " Very good," said Colburn, gravely. " If I can think of some way to get you and your husband over there, how would it do for you to settle down with your own folks, and go into the mill ? Haven t you had enough of the show business ? " She shrugged the brass epaulets. " Stop ridin ? " she burst out, " and Jake stop his acts ? And neither of us see anythin or do anythin any more, but just stand around a room and see a big oily machine chew up rags and spit out undershirts ? No, siree ! " She stretched out one of the worn riding- boots, and flicked at it with an imaginary 5 2 His Word of Honor whip, muttering gayly a hoarse " Go on ! " which, more than anything she had yet said, was suggestive of the sawdust circle. Colburn looked at her and laughed. They both were in the twenties, after all, and he liked her for knowing what she liked best. " But the little fellow ? " he ventured. " A show must be a rather inconvenient place to bring up a child in." Sam Colburn did not know why he should be talking in this supe rior strain to Mrs. Hunter, except that he was conscious of a strong curiosity as to her point of view. " Oh," she said, reproachfully, " he likes it ! Of course, he s some bother just now ; but just think what a daisy time he ll have when he s grown up, playin with the trick ponies, and ridin the baby elephant ! And Jake an I are going to teach him some trapeze acts as soon as he s big enough to sit the bar, and we ll have the Hunter family j n let s see ; how s it billed ? Aerial Evo lutions. That s it! And it ll be a real family, too none of them fakes." Colburn surrendered. " I wish the Hun ter family every prosperity," he said, in his 53 His Word of Honor most perfect form. " And, if you don t mind, I think I ll accept your invitation to spend the night. In the morning we ll see what can be done." She nodded non chalantly at the last sentence, and then glanced around the coal-kiln. From one hay-pile her husband s heavy breathing gave assurance of the long-hoped-for sleep; in the other Reginald Adoniram, still more silently, was following his father s example. " Are you a married man, doctor? " Colburn shook his head. The informa tion evidently perturbed her a little. " Oh ! " she exclaimed, " I supposed doc tors always were. I was goin to say," she continued, hesitatingly, " that, bein a mar ried man, you wouldn t be so much put out if the Kid woke up by and by ; that s all." " Not in the least," was Colburn s assur ance. But Mrs. Hunter was conscious of being disappointed in her new acquaintance. " Ain t you even engaged ? " she persisted. Colburn nodded, looking at the crack in the stove door. " You are ? " was the triumphant re sponse. " I thought you were married, or 54 His Word of Honor engaged, or somethin . You see, the Kid took to you right away ! " Upon this specimen of feminine logic Col- burn made no comment. " Doctor," said Mrs. Hunter, coaxingly, " would you be mad if I asked you to tell me her first name? I m awful fond of names." " Her name," said Colburn, still without looking up, " is Juletta." " My ! " she exclaimed, " I never heard that one before. She must be real nice." Again Colburn nodded gravely, with his eyes fixed on the stove. There was one more question which the Tyrian Maid was burning to ask, but she did not dare ask it openly. " I wonder," she suggested, with a fine in difference, " if you ve been engaged as long as Jake and I were. We were engaged to be married a whole year a whole year. He was in the show, and I waited for him to come round to York State again. Twelve months is a terrible long time for a woman to wait." " Is it? " said Colburn, absently. " I guess you d think so !" she cried, 55 His Word of Honor " especially as Jake and I only knew each other three days when he had to move on with the show! You see, he was takin tickets then. I saw him twice Saturday, and Sunday we were introduced; and the circus train had to leave Monday night about an hour after we got engaged. That was at Malone, York State. And I said I d wait for Jake till the show came round again." Still the doctor seemed reluctant to exchange confidences, and she went on : " My folks didn t like it, and sent me over to my cousin s, up here in Huckleville ; and they all laughed at my wantin to marry a circus man. They said twas just because pop had always raised colts, and I could ride em bareback. You see, they didn t know Jake. He was mighty good. He used to write every Sunday. I ve got letters from every State in the United States except fourteen. And next year, sure enough, there was Jake; and I just skipped from Huckleville to Malone, and we got married. But that year was as long as five." " I would like to ask," said Colburn, rais ing his eyes suddenly, " what you would 56 His Word of Honor have done if he had taken up with somebody else married another girl after you had waited for him all that time. What would you have done ? " " If he d gone back on me, you mean? " she cried. " My ! I don t know. But you ain t on to Jake, or you wouldn t have said that. Jake ain t that kind. Why, Jake s a Christian! He will swear, you know, cause he was raised in North Car liny, and swore when he was a boy ; but that s all. He couldn t go back on a woman ! There are such folks, sure enough. I tell you, you don t know how many of em there are till you travel awhile with a show. But Jake ain t one of em. He ain t mean enough. Why, the man that goes back on a woman is too mean to live ! " Her eyes sparkled, and she set her lips scornfully. In her resent ment of any imputation against Jake Hun ter s honor, she quite forgot her adroit little ruse for finding out the length of the doctor s engagement. A moment later she recalled it ; but Colburn had dropped his face to the firelight again, as if in disinclination to pur sue the subject. It was a handsome face, 57 His Word of Honor she reflected, but he looked played out. Her woman s kindness then got the better of her flagging curiosity, and she suggested that it might be time for him to go to bed. She filled up the stove again, made a shake-down of hay in front of it, bade him good night a trifle shyly, and then he heard her cuddle down by Reginald Adoniram, and draw the thin blanket over the child and herself. Soon the rustling ceased, and there was no sound but the hard breathing of Hunter and the mellow swish of the rain against the huge dome of the coal-kiln. Silently the young doctor stretched him self out before the stove, his head propped upon one hand, and his eyes still gazing at the chink of flame. The enthusiasm over his professional triumph, which had filled them a half-hour before, had departed and left them rather haggard. It seemed a life time since he made those fruitless circles in the swamp, trying all the while to make up his mind. It was like an unreal experience, a sort of dream, out of which he had been suddenly thrust into life itself, into contact with anxiety, joy, pain, humor, devotion. 58 His Word of Honor A disabled contortionist, a Tyrian Maid, a grave-eyed baby, were sleeping within ten feet of him, hushed by the brooding wings of who knows what beings that wait upon birth and love and sorrow and sleep and death. The man, the woman, and the child were real, and Colburn shut his lips in the resolve that, whatever became of his word of honor, he would not desert them on the morrow. He was back once more in the county where he had been brought up, and they were to him as his own people. The heart of Mrs. Jake Hunter was simple and affectionate, like the hearts that had sur rounded him from his cradle. What mat tered it that she had been mastered by the rural passion for the show ? Was it a worse show than the one he himself, a country boy, had been performing in for the last six months? Usher at eleven weddings, and best man three times! The audience had given him plenty of applause; yes, there was no doubt that he had done his acts clev erly, especially that brilliant feat of riding two horses at once! Colburn dropped his face upon his arm 59 His Word of Honor and groaned. Terribly clear before his vision lay those six delicious months that had closed with his call upon Elinor War- burton. He had been tempted, and had not been strong. The great surgeon, childless except for this girl, and with a practice that would have turned the head of another man, had liked his steady-going, smooth-voiced pupil from Vermont, and had liked to have his daughter like him. Nothing had been said, of course it was from her father that the girl inherited her pride but Colburn s path had been made easy. And how easily he had strolled down it, glancing more at the slender, wayward figure beside him, it is true, than at the path itself. It all seemed so pleasurably natural then. Now, lying face downward in the dusky kiln, he saw ex actly whither he had been straying at her side, and he recoiled. He had been on the verge of treachery. He belonged in Mrs. Jake Hunter s category of the men that are too mean to live. Five years Juletta had waited for him five whole years. Yet the December night when she had definitely promised herself to 60 His Word of Honor him was no longer ago than yesterday. They were on their way home from a sleighing- party, the old horse picking his way soberly along the drifted road, the runners creaking in the frosty air, and the glittering snow- fields spreading wide around them in the moonlight. How cold her cheek had been when his own had touched it, and how she had looked up at him ! Was ever such utter trustfulness, such absolute rapture, in a girl s face? And through all the months and years that followed, how invariably sweet had been her patient waiting, how proud she was of his student triumphs and social favor, how unstained had been her loyalty ! Colburn pressed his closed eyes upon his arm in a paroxysm of remorse. That was the woman whom for months he had been neglecting, bent upon getting the most pleasure out of his last winter in New York. He had left his own people to do trick-riding in a show. And worse than this he might have done if, on his way to Walter Ken nedy s that afternoon, he had not spied the Maid of Tyre ! " The man that goes back 61 His Word of Honor on a woman ? " " The man that goes back on a woman ? " Following the wave of remorse came wave upon wave of passion. If he could only see her at that moment, could touch her finger tips even, could ask her to take him back again! What would she say? Ah, she would say nothing. She would simply look him in the eyes and smile forgiveness ; she would bend toward him the young fellow trembled as he had not since that December night when he had kissed her first. Hour after hour he lay there, falling at intervals into a troubled sleep. Once he was wakened by a rustling of hay on the other side of the dark kiln, and the insistent fretting of the child, followed by instant still ness, and the low laugh to herself of a woman who was happy. Then all was quiet again, except the raindrops that beat in irregular intervals against the worn brick dome. To Colburn s overwrought fancy they seemed to be pattering in rhythm, in five staccato notes : " The man that goes back the man that goes back " then, gathering im petus, "the man that goes back on a woman" 62 His Word of Honor then, pausing ominously, and closing the cadence with full tones that smote upon his brain in persistent iteration, " is too mean to live." VI HE was roused next morning by some one pushing the dry-goods box from the doorway. Sunlight flooded the kiln. Col- burn and the Maid sprang to their feet simultaneously, and, seeing a pair of wet rubber boots beyond the arch, Colburn stooped and went out. It was Walter Ken nedy s father, first selectman of the town ship, with a stout farm-wagon, and his wife on the back seat. " The land sakes ! You here, Sam ? Are they dead ? " was her despondent exclama tion. " Not a bit of it," said the graduate of the P. and S. " The case is progressing very well. But we are rather short of breakfast, and I am glad to see you." "Well, it s lucky Abel got home last night," ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy, descend- 63 His Word of Honor ing ponderously from the wagon. " Those campers sent word only yesterday afternoon that there was a family in awful trouble here, and that they wa n t really respectable. Who sent for you ? Abel, just hitch those horses, and take out that lunch-basket, and we ll go right in. Dear me ! " " Mrs. Kennedy, my friend Mrs. Hun ter," remarked Sam Colburn, with his old fondness for the formalities. The farmer s wife gave one shocked glance toward Dr. Colburn s friend, and handed her own shawl to the Maid without a word. But her heart opened to Reginald Adoniram, whom she forthwith took to her ample bosom, and proceeded to exhibit to Abel with an air of old proprietorship. It was nine o clock before the Hunters and their attendant physician had break fasted, and the Boneless Wonder s shoulder- blade had been firmly rebandaged. While the women, mutually hostile at heart, united in making Reginald Adoniram s morning toilet, Mr. Kennedy succeeded in making Colburn agree with him that the best thing to be done now was for him, in his capacity 64 His Word of Honor of selectman, to take the " circus people " on to Huckleville at once. " You see," argued the thrifty Vermonter, " they ll be a town charge if they stay here, and it ain t likely we could collect anything from Huckleville. I guess it can t be more n sixteen miles from here, if I take the Ridge road, and then they ll be with their friends. Wife and I ve got lunch enough, and we can go right along over there. I wa n t expect ing to cut any hay to-day, anyway ; and " with a solemn wink at Colburn " I s pose I can make my four dollars a day self and team, you know on town business. I think we d better get em into the wagon, bag and baggage, and start along. Which way was you going? " " Home," said Colburn, laconically. He pencilled a note to the doctor at Huckleville, whom he happened to know, describing the case of Mr. Jacob Hunter. But when it was written, and the Wonder safely deposited upon the hay-covered bottom of the big wagon, with his head, unfortunately, under the front seat, Colburn felt singularly free. The night before, in his resolve not to desert 65 His Word of Honor these people, he had vague visions of watch ing over them in his mother s house, and conducting the " case " to a successful issue, quite oblivious of the word of honor which pledged him to join Miss Warburton s coaching-party. And now the Hunters were taken off his hands, almost without his volition. He stood waiting, in a sort of un decided posture, after the others had seated themselves in the wagon. Abel Kennedy gathered up the reins. " Look here, Sam," he said ; " if you are going home, jump in. I ll take you along a piece, and show you a short cut across to the county road. Hadn t you better go up to the house and see Walter, though ? He s all alone." Colburn shook his head, and climbed up beside the Tyrian Maid. The wagon jolted slowly across the clearing, and then out upon the Pond road. Colburn glanced down at it involuntarily. The traces of last night s rain had already nearly disappeared in the sunshine and the wind, and the horses feet were musical upon the hard ground. What a wonderful forenoon for 66 His Word of Honor driving ! Alas for us ! the evening and the morning are not always, as in old time, the one day; they may be two very different days, and our moods shift with the revolving hours. What subtle change is it that is ac complished in us between the midnight and the dawn? Colburn s conscience-stricken vigil seemed to have left as its legacy a moral lassitude. Two or three miles passed. He was unfamiliar with this part of the road even ignorant of its direction but he felt whither the stout farm-horses were bearing him. Furtively he glanced at his watch. It was five minutes to ten. Just then Abel Kennedy pulled up. It seemed like fate. " Sam/ he said, " do you see that rock just beyond the sumacs? There s a path there that ll take you right down to the Four Corners. It ain t three minutes walk. You know your road, then, don t you ? " Colburn nodded. He climbed over the wheel slowly, without speaking. Then he took off his hat, and bade good-by to Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Hunter, and snapped his fingers noisily in the face of the Kid. The Maid s bare arm slipped out of Mrs. 67 His Word of Honor Kennedy s shawl as she shook hands with him. " And, doctor," she reminded him, " you won t forget to send the bill to Jake at Huckleville? If he only had what he s spent for liniment, he could pay it now. And say, doctor," she added, timidly, " when you re married, would you mind sending Jake and me cards, care of the Consolidated Pan-American Show? We d like to see cm real well." " Very gladly," said Colburn, forcing a laugh. " Good-by." The wagon rumbled out of sight. With it went something of that curious fatalism that for half an hour had oppressed him. He was on his own feet now, and the roads leading from the Four Corners were open to his choice. He strode through the wet underbrush to the clump of sumacs, and, turning the corner of a huge rock, saw beneath him the guide-post and watering-trough that marked the trysting- place. Once more he looked at his watch. It was the exact hour. And down the wind came the sound of wheels, and horses hoofs striking sharp upon worn seams of granite 68 His Word of Honor in the road. Colburn leaned against the rock, breathing hard. But the thought up permost in his mind at that supreme instant was a most irrelevant one. What would Mrs. Jake Hunter say, when she opened his wedding-cards, if she did not find Juletta s name? She had liked the name. What would she say? He shrank, somehow, at the thought of her verdict upon him. And why, after all, should the name not be Juletta s ? He loved the girl ; he was never more conscious of loving her than at this crazy moment when he stood here waiting for somebody else for a woman who had simply fascinated him, but whom he did not love at all. What in the devil s name, then, had brought him here? He felt terribly helpless again, as if everything he cared about were being taken from him while he stood impotently by. The wheels stopped below him. He peered over the shrubbery, and then, in the sudden reaction, laughed aloud. It was no body but Lige Porter, getting leisurely down from his stage to uncheck his horses at the trough nothing but the old Brattle- 69 His Word of Honor boro stage that had passed his mother s doorway and Juletta s every Tuesday and Friday since he was a boy ! And nobody there but old Lige Porter, who had taken Juletta and himself to Brattleboro to buy Christmas presents for each other the week after they were engaged ! In less than half an hour the stage could leave him at Juletta s door. All at once Colburn felt strangely secure and happy. It was like getting home again, after a long, long so journ at the show. Thus it was that when, a moment after ward, there rang from far up the Wilming ton road the unmistakable hoof-beats of a four-in-hand, and Miss Warburton, only three minutes late, swung her new leaders round the last turn and down the ticklish hill to the Four Corners, it came to pass that Dr. Samuel Colburn leaned back against his rock with folded arms, staring into the woods in the direction of North Enderby. He even heard her low voice as she steadied the excited horses. There was an instant s silence ; and then, startlingly clear in the narrow valley, rose the notes of " See, the 70 His Word of Honor Conquering Hero Comes ! " rendered with painstaking accuracy upon Charlie McDuf- fer s French horn. But Orson the wood- knight stood motionless. Again young McDuffer played the tune, and again the wind carried the echoes idly down the val ley. There was a laugh from the Tarraway girl. It was followed by the crack of a whip-lash, the sound of plunging horses and rattling harness, the shrill scraping of a wheel, a confusion of voices, in which Col- burn distinguished the raucous tenor of Lige, and a frightened scream from Miss Warburton s aunt; then the whip fell an grily again, twice, thrice, and the tally-ho whirled back up the Wilmington road at full gallop. Dr. Colburn scrambled down the ledge, and was waiting by the roadside as Lige came along. " Hullo, Sam ! I heard you was home. Git in." Colburn climbed on to the front seat. " Tlk ! Gid-ap ! " The horses stumbled into their familiar stiff-kneed trot. " Say, did ye see them city folks ? " 7* His Word of Honor " I ve just come out of the woods," said Colburn. " Hev, eh ? Didn t know but ye might a seen that team. Remember them little mares that Luke Avery used to drive in Brattleboro last winter? Off mare inter fered. Luke never did know anythin about shoein a hoss. Remember em? I heard Luke say he d sold the pair for six hundred in New York, but I supposed the critter lied. Well, by Johnny, I was just waterin back here at the Corners when one of these tally- hos come lickety-split down that hill, with Luke s mares hitched up in front ! I tell ye, they look pretty! Tails clipped, ye know, and silver harness. Shouldn t a known em if I hadn t been lookin at the hind legs of that off mare. She s shod this time by someone that understands the job, but she ain t quite right yet. Tlk ! Gid-ap, Bill ! . . . "Didn t see em, eh? Wish ye hed. There wa n t nobody but a girl on the box. Pretty slick driver she was, all the same! Wore a pair of them ere ga ntlets. Darned if I know now, though, what she was after. She pulled up right there by the trough, and 72 His Word of Honor one of them dudes ye call em in the city, don t ye? played somethin on a bugle. The girl kind o looked all round, and then she says, Play it again, and the feller played it. Then there was a girl with a red parasol leaned forward and said somethin , and it must a made this girl who was drivin pretty mad madder n blazes ! She just gathered up them lines, and h isted Luke s mares right across the road it s pretty narrer there, ye know and I see she was tryin to turn round. I started to back off from the trough, to give her a little more room to cramp, ye see, when that dude with the bugle hollers to me, Get out o the way, can t ye? and it kind o riled me, and I says, I m carryin the United States mail, by gosh ! Git out o the way yerself ! And an old lady on top she hollered, and the nigh leader got her leg over the traces, and a feller with a fancy suit jumped down from behind somewhere, lookin scared. But the girl she just laughed. She was mad, though, clear through. Wai, the feller got the trace fixed in no time ; and the girl says, * No ; I tell ye, I m goin back ; and then the 73 His Word of Honor dude crawled over on to the box, and she leaned down and cut them horses like all possessed, and I m darned if she didn t make the turn as neat as y ever see, and run the critters right back up the hill, Wilming ton way, where they come from! Queer, wa n t it? I must remember to tell Luke about them mares. Tlk ! Gid-ap, Bill ! Gid-ap!" As the stage rattled into North Enderby, Juletta stood in the shadow of the big apple- tree at the end of the garden, placidly re- twining her sweet-pea tendrils that had been loosened by the storm. Colburn vaulted the fence and came toward her. She gave a cry of pleasure; but when his arms were around her, she looked up into his face with a sort of rapturous fear. She had forgotten that a man s arms were so strong. Their lips met, and she trembled a little. He had never kissed her in that way before. But her eyes closed slowly, and she put up her lips again. 74 In the Rip In the Rip " \17 E can t make it," pronounced the * Captain, oracularly ; " no, sir, we re not goin to make it. Might as well come about. Look out for the boom, sir ! " He jammed down the tiller, and the big cat- boat came up into the wind, trembled a mo ment, and then loafed away lazily on the other tack. There was no help for it. We were tide- hung, with a falling wind, off the Race Light. It was nearing sunset, and straight across our course to New London Harbor foamed the Rip, at that hour a wall of plung ing water curving from Plum Island to Fishers Island. The noise of it was like the thunder of a dam, and yet on either side of that angry seam across the Sound there were curling " slicks " and broad, shiny spaces that already began to mirror the evening sky. But the tide was running like a race- 77 In the Rip horse, and the trolling-lines which I was holding, in the stern of the cat-boat, were swept now to windward, now to leeward, and then actually ahead of us, in a way that must have puzzled even the bluefish. The Captain flung up his stubbly chin and studied the pennant quavering at the mast head. The hotel on Fishers Island was swinging ominously around the Race Light. We were drifting, but the Captain did not like to admit it. " Come, Henry," he called, petulantly, " what are you doin ? " The barefooted little rascal curled up by the mast was hauling in his line at a tre mendous rate, and presently held up the squid with a well-feigned expression of as tonishment. " Look at the marks of that bluefish s teeth ! " he cried. " I thought I wasn t goin to lose that one." He pointed to some sus picious-looking scratches upon the strip of bright metal above the hook. " Henry," said the Captain, severely, keeping his eye fixed on the receding light house, " you ve got a pious mother and you 78 In the Rip had a pious father, and to try to fool this gentleman by scratchin that jig with your knife is dreadful mean." The abashed youth jerked the squid over board sulkily, but the incident seemed to re store the Captain s spirits. " We ll get in before dark," he remarked, reassuringly, "and you ve got some nice bluefish anyhow. I guess I ll have to stand off again pretty soon, but by-and-by we ll make it. There ain t any use in stickin our nose into that Rip. See that feller ! " he cried, pointing to a three-masted schooner that was beating up the channel. " He thinks he s goin to make it all right, but I ll bet he ll learn better. Look at that ! look at that!" The three-master came on grandly, a quarter of a mile away from us, but the mo ment her bow touched the crested ridge of the Rip, the lurking fingers of the tide gave her a savage twist that swung her broadside, with sails flapping ; and then she came about, helplessly, and stood off. She might as well have put her bow against a tidal wave as against the Rip when the Rip is master. 79 In the Rip The Captain laughed. " He d ought to know more. That schooner is from down Rockland way, I guess, and has come through here a hundred times most likely. But it s just like some folks to put their nose right on the grindstone and hold it there, no matter if it s God Almighty that s turnin the crank. Some folks are built so." " Obstinate ? " I suggested. " Exactly. Now that fellow might just as well have waited a half-hour, and stood off there till the tide turned. He ain t gained an inch by stickin himself into that Rip, and he s just made himself ridiculous. Did I ever tell you about my father and Seth Kim- ball?" " I believe not," said I. The boy gave his line a half-hitch around the cleat on the gunwale and swung his legs over into the cockpit. " Well," began the Captain, deliberately, pulling the cat-boat a point closer into the fitful wind, " father was wilful. He was about as wilful a man as there was in Ken- nebec County ; and when you get a Maine man that s really set, you know somethin s 80 In the Rip got to give. He won t. Why, I ve seen father strike a stone, ploughin out the north pasture, and break a plough on it rather n go round ; and send back to the barn for an other, and break that ; and then borrow Seth Kimball s plough and hitch on to it, and whip that team of horses right up to that stone again, till the stone came! It had to come; and I guess likely it realized it. That s the kind of a man he was. " I couldn t go it. I don t know as I d ought to say so, but I couldn t get along with father. Mother sent me to the spring one day for two tin pails of water ; and the stage for Augusta came along just then, and I filled those pails and set em down by the spring, and climbed on board that stage and ran away. I wa n t but fifteen years old, either. I got down to Portland and shipped on a whaler, and was gone three years. Toward the end of the third year the boatswain got inflammatory rheumatism that was up in Baffin s Bay and I took his place. We made a big catch about that time, and I drew his boatswain s prize- money ; so I came into Portland with eleven 81 In the Rip hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket. For a boy of eighteen, that was doin pretty well. It s more n I ve ever had since ! " Well, I took it into my head to go home to Kennebec County and see my folks, and when I got off the stage, down by the spring, what do you think? There sat those tin pails ! Mother had had father build a little fence around em like a graveyard, and wouldn t let anybody touch em. There they d stood, summer and winter, and I picked em up and filled em rusty as they was and carried em into the house." " What did your mother say ? " asked the boy, in an awed voice. "Mother was moppin the kitchen floor, and she looked up, kind o white, and says : I knew you d come back, Abijah. Don t slop that water on this clean floor. " Henry looked at me curiously, and the Captain went on : " What do you think your father s doin ? says she ; and then she began to cry. He s gone to law with Seth Kimball over that lane up to the cow-pasture. He s terrible set, and Mis Kimball ain t been 82 In the Rip over to see me since March, and your father and Seth don t either of em go to meetin , and it s cost your father over six hundred dollars already/ " Father came in from the barn just then, and he stood there, and I didn t know whether he was goin to speak to me or not. But he set down the mijk and shook hands, and I thought he was goin to cry, too ; and says he : Abijah, I m glad to see you. Can t you remember what Seth Kimball said to us about that right of way, the mornin we was layin that stone wall ? Didn t he say, " One rod is all I ever claimed, Dan ? " " That s what he did/ says I, as near as I can remember/ " Father pounded on the table like one possessed. Let s have some samp n milk for supper, says he, and I ll hitch up and drive down to Square Bainbridge s. I ve got a new witness, and I ll beat Seth Kim- ball yet/ "All through supper he couldn t talk about anything but that right of way. It wa n t nothin to quarrel over, either, you might say just a question whether Seth s 83 In the Rip right of way across the end of our orchard up to his fall pasture was one rod or two rods wide. There was land enough there, in all conscience, and it wa n t good for nothin , anyway. But Seth up V claimed two rods, whereas father said he had a right to only one. You see, neither of em had any papers to show for it ; it was just an old agreement runnin back to Aunt Lizy s time sort o proscription, the lawyers called it. Well, father had always had that rod fenced off, and when the fence rotted out he laid a stone wall just on the old line. But Seth served notice on him, and, when father didn t pay any attention to it, Seth s hired man came over and pulled the wall down. That was just after I ran away from home. Father was mad, clean through. " All right/ says he. I ll lay that wall once more, and if Seth Kimball touches it, we ll see who owns that right of way. " So he laid it up, and that time Seth Kim- ball came over and tore it down himself. " Well and good, says father, and he drove down to Square Bainbridge s and told him how things stood. 84 In the Rip " By the eternal/ says Square Bain- bridge, we ll take that before twelve men/ And that s how they began it. " Well, the whole story was longer n the moral law, but the upshot of it was that when father got through I forgot all about the way he and I used to quarrel ; and says I : Go ahead, father ; I ll back you. I ve brought home two hundred dollars with me, and I ve got more n nine hundred in the bank at Portland, and I won t see my folks beaten in a law-suit, not if / can help it/ " Father, he couldn t say enough, and af ter he d hitched up and gone, mother let on to me that he d had to mortgage the place to raise the six hundred. He felt kind o bad about it, because he d just paid off the old mortgage that had been runnin ever since he was married. Mother had wanted him to give in, one time, and let Seth Kimball have the two rods ; but when she saw I was goin to turn my money over to father, I guess she thought that Mis Kimball had treated her sort o mean, after all. And so things took a fresh start. "Well, I stayed around home long enough 85 In the Rip to help father get in his oats, and by that time I was crazy to be on salt water again, and shipped for Australia; and what with one thing and another, and lyin sick at Syd ney six months at one time, I was gone five years. When I came home I didn t come by stage, either. I had to foot it from Bath, and had just two York shillings to my name. And where do you think I found the old folks ? Well, sir, father was livin down at the foot of the hill, in the little red house where he was born. Our place was gone, every dollar of it, to the lawyers, and Seth Kimball s money was all used up, too, and still they couldn t find out who owned that right of way. There wa n t a lawyer in Kennebec County that wa n t on one side or the other, and they had appealed it to the Superior Court, and it was goin to be de cided the week after I got home. Our place stood in father s name still, but Square Bainbridge was livin there, rent free, and claimin that he d have to foreclose the mort gage to protect his own interests, though he d stuck by father all along. " Father was like a wild man, only he 86 In the Rip never said nothin . He looked just as he did when he was smashin plough after plough over that stone; he was bound to have his way, no matter what broke. He hadn t been to church, and he hadn t mended a fence or bought a new piece of harness all those years; he had just kept right on ploughin up against Seth Kimball, and he looked eighty, though he wa n t but sixty- five. Mother was discouraged, and she and Mis Kimball used to kind o make friends with each other again down in the back gar den of the red house, near Mis KimbaH s sister s orchard, and agree to get their hus bands to give it up. But Seth Kimball was sure he was goin to win in the Superior Court, and as for askin father to give up, you might as well ask that Rip to stop run- nin . He couldn t give up. I guess we ll come about, Henry." The boy gave the boom an officious push as it swung across the cockpit, and the cat- boat lurched over and drew away along the wall of clamorous foaming water. The wind was freshening again. " How did it come out ? " said I. 8? In the Rip " That s the most curi s thing about it," reflected the Captain. " That s what I was comin to. I d been home about a week, and had got the old red house tidied up a little twas the spring of the year and one forenoon I picked a mess of dandelion greens for dinner. They taste pretty good to a man right off a whaler. Well, father and mother and I had just sat down to those greens, that noon, when Square Bainbridge ran in, puffin pretty hard. Father kind o looked up at him, but he didn t say a word. The stage has just come in, Dan/ shouts the Square, pretty excited, and by the eternal, we ve beat him at last! The court handed down its decision at five o clock yesterday afternoon, and we ve got judgment against him for two hundred dol lars damages ! " Mother, she began to cry. But it s cost us every penny we had in the world/ says she, except this old red house. " What s that got to do with it/ says father, good and loud, as long as we ve got our rights ? And I want a little more vine gar on these greens/ says he ; but when he 88 In the Rip reached for it his hand was tremblin* as if he had had a stroke. " Those greens do smell good/ says Square Bainbridge. We ain t had a mess of em yet, up to our house/ " When mother heard him say our house* so natural, she began to cry again ; and Square Bainbridge saw that he hadn t ought to have said it, and went off up the hill. " The next afternoon we got word that Seth was comin over to pay what he owed. Father was dressed up, and opened the par lor blinds, and there we sat, with Seth s law yer and Square Bainbridge, when Seth Kim- ball came round the corner by the store. He was dressed up, too, and he was drivin a pair of oxen and that was every last head of stock he owned. He left the oxen standin by the hitchin -post, and walked in, and kind o nodded to his lawyer and to me. But he and father hadn t spoken for pretty near eight years, for all they d been boys to gether, and on the parish committee, and all that. " My client/ says Seth s lawyer, sort o hesitatin , is obliged to ask a favor of the In the Rip prosecution. We mean to pay this two hun dred dollars and stop where we be ; but we want Mr. Richards to accept that yoke of cattle in part payment. We had em prized this morning by three men, and they said that they d ought to be worth eighty dollars. " And here s the one hundred and twenty in money, says Seth, pullin out his wallet ; and he knew, and there wa n t a man in the room but knew, that that was every dollar Seth Kimball could raise. He was a proud man, too full as proud as father; but he knew when he was licked. " Everybody looked at father, and he got up from where he was sittin by the centre table, and his hand was shakin so that he had to hold on to the Family Bible it lay right on the edge of the table and there he stood, kind o swallerin , and finally he says : Damn you, keep your money ! I guess I can get along without it better n you can. And I ll outlive ye, too! " And he sat down, and the Family Bible was shakin under his grip. Father was a perfessor, for all he hadn t been to church since the lawsuit began, and he d never 90 In the Rip sworn an oath before in his life, not to my knowledge. " Now, when he said that to Seth Kim- ball," went on the Captain, musingly, " he must have hated him like a pizen snake ; he must have refused to take his money just to make him feel bad. Leastways, I thought so then, and sometimes I think so now. But inaybe it wa n t that at all ; maybe it was just the old natural Adam in him that was doin the talkin , and he might have been sorry for Seth, right then and there, only ashamed to own it. Anyhow, he sat there lookin at Seth, and Seth at him, and Seth was fin- gerin his wallet, and I tell you both men seemed pretty old. " I don t know but we might have been sittin there yet if it hadn t been for Seth s lawyer. He spoke up after a while, and says he, * Square Bainbridge, it seems to me that my client and yours can settle this be tween em without us/ " Perhaps so, says Square Bainbridge, rather doubtful; but Kimball s lawyer got up and took his hat, and says, Good-after noon, gentlemen ; and Square Bainbridge 9 1 In the Rip followed him outside, and they went across to the Square s office. That parlor was a kind o creepy place for me to stay in, so I got up, too, pretty quiet, and went out by the sittin -room door. Mother was out in the kitchen, all hunched up on the settee, and there we sat and sat till milkm -time, and still father and Seth Kimball stayed in that front parlor. Well, I went and milked the cow father wa n t keepin but one then and when I came up from the pasture, father was standin at the back door, lookin at the weather. Seth Kimball had gone. Coin* to be a lowery day to-morrow, ain t it ? says he ; and his voice sounded cheerful, just as it used to when we d fin ished hayin and there wa n t a cock but was under cover. " Looks like it, says I ; and there was mother, right behind him, motionin to me as if father was out of his head. But he wa n t ; not the least bit in the world. " Do you suppose, says he, that it ll be too dark after supper for you to go up to the woods and cut me a fish-pole? The trout ought to be bitin first-rate to-morrow, and 92 In the Rip Seth Kimball and I thought we d try the South Branch. There ain t either of us that s been fishin for ten years, and we used to try it together every spring. " Are you crazy, Dan ? screamed mother. She couldn t hold in any longer. " No/ says he ; I ve come pretty near it, but we ll let that lay. I m just goin to have a little fun once more, and so s Seth. We ain t either of us got any plantin to do to speak of, and we re gettin to be old men. We might just as well go fishin as not/ "And the next day they went, sure enough; and along in the afternoon they brought back a good mess of trout, and di vided em on our back stoop, just as they used to when they were boys. That fishin was town talk, I can tell you." The Captain hauled on the main-sheet suddenly, and peered off under the boom at the lights that were twinkling in the hotel on Fishers Island. The hotel was beginning to make out from the Race Light, and the tumult of the Rip was lessening, though we were almost upon it. 93 In the Rip " Did your father live longer than the man he went fishing with? " demanded the boy. " He caught his death o cold at Seth Kimball s funeral," replied the Captain. " The other bearers all kept their hats on, and he didn t. Foolish custom, ain t it? I don t know but we re goin to make it." And even as he spoke, the noise of the churning tideway seemed all at once behind us, and the big cat-boat heeled over joyfully on the port tack for the run home, with the water slap-slapping to a new tune beneath her bows. " Take this tiller a minute while I get at my tobacco," said the Captain. " We re all right now, but you might as well roll up your lines. You won t get any more blue- fish. Say, that Rip is a queer thing, ain t it ? It stands up there and fights with itself, and God Almighty can t make it stop till it gets ready; and then it all softens down and smooths out before you know it. There must be somethin down underneath there that we don t understand. A little like folks, 94 In the Rip I guess, after all. Ain t you goin to light up, yourself? " The last foam of the Rip was already far astern, and in the northwest, against the wooded shore and quiet evening sky, gleamed the New London Light. 95 By the Committee By the Committee town of Whiteridge, N. H., was cursed with a benefactress. She was a little old non-resident widow with gran ite insides, a native of Whiteridge, married early to a Boston merchant, and now desir ous of linking her name perpetually with that of her birthplace. She had presented the township with the Martha J. Torring- ford town-hall, the village with the Martha J. Torringford drinking-fountain, and the Congregational Church with the Martha J. Torringford parsonage, all upon conditions stated by herself. The hall was fine to look upon, but the use of tobacco was forbidden in or about the building, with the result that the voters of Whiteridge seriously thought of holding the March meeting, as usual, in the old hall above Alvah Bayley s general store, where the genial sawdust covered the floor at town-meeting time, and the women- 99 By the Committee folks had nothing to say about anything. The drinking-fountain was just too low for a horse, unless he were unchecked the donor took this means of combating the per nicious check-rein and just too high for a dog. However, this was immaterial, as the town had refused to bond itself for a water system, and the dust of two summers lay thick in the great marble bowl. The Congregational parsonage was the earliest and the most immediately useful of the Widow Torringford s gifts, but it was far too large, even for the Rev. Mr. Chip pendale s family, and there was no fund for furnishing it, or for paying the running ex penses. It was a broad, low building, of yellow, glazed brick, with plate-glass win dows, and two outside chimneys, and a cast- iron stag in the front yard. The farmers from miles around stopped their teams in the middle of the street to gaze at it. When Mr. Chippendale first entered the parsonage he rubbed his hands with delight on observ ing the big hot-air registers. Born in India, he had been dreading the New Hampshire winters. It was in September. The min- 100 By the Committee ister and his sharp-faced wife nailed their " God-bless-our-home " motto to the Lin- crusta-Walton wall of the sitting-room, draped some pressed palm-leaves from India along the brocaded frieze of the dining- room, and decided to leave the parlor unfur nished for the present. Their happiness seemed complete. Early in October Mr. Chippendale in quired the price of coal. Whiteridge was six miles up-hill from the railroad, and Al- vah Bayley informed him that, seeing it was for the parsonage, his coal would be eight dollars and a quarter a ton. The minister ordered ten tons, and figured out the cost thoughtfully as he walked home. That win ter was singularly mild, for Whiteridge, but before spring he ordered eight tons more. Daily, while he shovelled the precious stuff with his own hands into that yawning hot- air furnace, his figuring became more inter esting. His salary was thirteen hundred dollars. The next winter there was another Chippendale baby, and the necessity of keep ing the nursery at seventy meant twenty- one tons of coal ordered from Alvah Bayley 101 By the Committee between October and May. That winter was considered mild, also, by the weather- wise, but what with the baby, and clothes for the three older children, and the cost of hiring a cutter for calls in the out-districts, and a few necessary books, the spring found an unpaid account of a hundred dollars upon Alvah Bayley s ledger. It worried Mr. Chippendale, but autumn came, and he had not been able to pay it off. Winter settled it self upon Whiteridge with an iron grip early in November, and before January was over the furnace of the Martha J. Torringford parsonage had eaten another hundred dol lars worth of coal at nine dollars a ton and there was the rest of January, February, March, and April still to come. Mr. Chippendale s blond hair grew gray that winter, though Alvira Bayley, who sat directly behind him in the front seat of the choir, was the only person besides Mrs. Chippendale to notice it. Alvira admired Mr. Chippendale more than any minister she had ever heard, and the far-away look in his blue eyes as if he were addressing a very remote gallery thrilled her to a kind IO2 By the Committee of ecstasy. She was sure that Mrs. Chip pendale did not quite appreciate him. Once she ventured timidly to address her father upon the subject of Mr. Chippendale s sal ary, Alvah Bayley being chairman of the parish committee, though not a member of the church. " Father," she said, as Alvah was warm ing his feet against the side of the great soapstone stove in the Bayley sitting- room, preparatory to going to bed, " don t you suppose the parish would raise Mr. Chippendale s salary, if you favored it ? " The store-keeper snorted angrily, and his lower jaw closed. There was a fringe of beard all along the under edges of it, like sea-weed clinging to a rock. " I guess not ! We re paying two hundred more now than we ever paid before." " But he s worth more than any minister we ever had," retorted the daughter. " He s a real saintly man. And I believe they find it hard work to get along. His Sunday coat is getting terribly shiny ; you can t help but see it when you sit in the choir." " Guess his coat s as good as mine," 103 By the Committee growled Alvah. " It ain t any harder for him to get along than for other folks; or oughtn t to be. He ain t a saver that s what s the matter with him he ain t a saver." " I should like to know how a minister can save anything in that great big house," persisted the girl. " They don t pretend to use the parlor, as it is. Folks say the fur nace takes an awful sight of coal ; it s some new kind, that you can t burn wood in. And you say we can t afford to burn coal." She glanced toward the closed parlor door, meaningly. There was a bright, new base-burner in there, and she would have so liked to light it for the nights when Orton Ranney, the cashier of the Whiteridge bank, and for years a patient admirer of hers, came to call upon her. But her father would not allow the extravagance, and Orton al ways had to sit by the soapstone stove in the sitting-room, constrained and chafing in Al- vah s presence. Yet he had told Alvira once that her father was the richest man in town ! "And we can t," affirmed the store-keeper, 104 By the Committee doggedly, as he rose and started for his bed room. " I hope we ain t going to have that parlor stove all over again to-night, Alviry." " No, father," said the girl. But tears of vexation started to her eyes. Alvah Bayley was reminded of this con versation the next day, when the minister entered the store and made his way to the back corner, where Mr. Bayley sat over his day-book. The store-keeper nodded, not appearing to notice Mr. Chippendale s half- outstretched hand. In fact, he disliked shaking hands with anybody. Natives of Whiteridge understood his peculiarities, and his face was not of a kind to tempt strangers into demonstrations of regard. But Mr. Chippendale felt a trifle discon certed. " Cold enough for you ? " inquired Alvah. He had put this query to every customer that morning, and the minister felt that it was somewhat depersonalized. Nevertheless, he answered with a brave jocoseness that he could stand a few more degrees of heat. The store-keeper gazed at him impassively. Mr. Chippendale fidgeted. " In fact," he con- 105 By the Committee tinued, weakening, " I came in to see about some more coal." " Humph ! " muttered Alvah, turning to his ledger. " All out so soon, eh ? " He ran his pencil down a line of figures. " Oc tober loth, twelve tons. How many more will take you through ? " " Ten, I hope," said Mr. Chippendale. He had made this calculation in the night watches. Alvah wrote down the order. Then he looked up suddenly, with a glance that seemed to penetrate quite through the min ister. He lowered his voice a little. " You ain t going to make it go, are you ? " he de manded, brusquely. Mr. Chippendale divined his meaning, and flushed. But he was talking to the chair man of the parish committee, and he remem bered the sharp-faced wife and the babies. " No," he said, " on thirteen hundred dol lars, and obliged as I am to live in that expen sive parsonage,I m afraid I can t make it go." Alvah nodded grimly. " I thought so." " I was told when I came here," continued the minister, flushing more deeply still, 106 By the Committee " that Mrs. Torringford contemplated set ting apart a fund to defray the necessary ex pense of taking care of such a large house. If it were not for the heating " Alvah broke in savagely. " That s her business. She s changed her mind. She s always changing her mind. She s worried the life out of us over that town hall. But that ain t the point, Mr. Chippendale. The point is, we re afraid you ain t a saver. We can t have a minister here who don t pay his bills." The blood went out of Mr. Chippendale s face. He turned up the collar of his worn ulster. " How much do I owe you, Mr. Bayley ? " he inquired, dryly. The store-keeper took a newly written bill from a pile. " $284.30," he answered, as if quite unconscious of the wound he had given to the shabbily dressed gentleman be fore him. " That don t include this last or der for coal." " You may make that order one ton in stead of ten," said the minister. " Just as you say," replied Alvah. " That ll be $293.30, then. Coal has come up again." 107 By the Committee Mr. Chippendale turned on his heel and went out. He felt a trifle faint, and was glad, for once, of the stinging, January wind. Of course, they must leave Whiteridge ; that was what Alvah Bayley, as chairman of the parish committee, had meant him to under stand. But how could they go? And whither could they go? And what would Mrs. Chippendale say? He found the thin-faced wife crying, as often, with the babies playing unconcernedly around her, but this time the tears were from pure joy. She had opened her husband s mail ; and the unhoped-for " call " had come hinted at months before, then given up, just as the Chippendales had given up so many things, but now indubitably at hand a call to a church in southern California, where the salary was two thousand dollars and the temperature averaged 68 Fahren heit every month in the year! She thrust the letter into his hand, and caught it from him half read, to wave it frantically in the air. Then she pretended to kiss away every gray hair he had. She made the babies join hands and dance to a waltz which she 1 08 By the Committee dashed somehow out of the wheezy little parsonage melodeon. Thereupon, she be gan all over again, by kissing Mr. Chippen dale, and it is to be said for him, that by this time he was looking very much less far away than usual. Before the celebration was over Alvah Bayley s hired man drove up with the ton of coal. " Twon t last long, in this spell of weather," he volunteered, but Mr. Chippen dale answered, " Long enough," with a reck lessness that surprised himself. Before night he had placed his resignation in the hands of the chairman of the parish com mittee, and he even left the furnace drafts open when he went to bed. The next morning, however, he began to think of the $293.30. That must be paid before he left Whiteridge. The California church had offered to reimburse him for the expense of moving, but he could not take that money to pay Alvah Bayley, and even if he did there would be nothing left with which to buy tickets for California. Again and again he took account of the financial standing of all his relations, but, so far back 109 By the Committee as he could remember, there had never been a Chippendale who had at any one time $300 to lend. He thought once, timorously, of applying to Mrs. Martha J. Torring- ford, but recalled the fact that she was spend ing that winter on the Nile. A week went by. Alvah Bayley issued the call for a par ish meeting to act upon the minister s resig nation, and Mr. Chippendale began work upon his farewell sermon, but day and night, in spite of his happy prospect for the future, he was burdened and harassed by the thought of that unpaid bill. He was not alone in his anxiety. Alvah Bayley ruminated nightly over the $293.30, as he sat warming his stockings against the soapstone stove in his sitting-room. Alvira wondered what ailed him, but the close- fisted old store-keeper was not in the habit of taking counsel with her, or with anyone. No one in Whiteridge knew of Mr. Chip pendale s debt ; Alvah had spoken simply for himself when he had mentioned the public dissatisfaction with a minister who was not a saver. Though the pastor had never been altogether liked by the out-districts not no By the Committee having enough " natural how d ye do " about him, it was thought the announcement of his resignation was received with genuine regret in the village. The choir was cast down, and Alvira Bayley in particular alter nated in her feelings, from deep wrath against the California church for stealing away her pastor, to a self-sacrificing joy that he was going to a milder climate and a greater income. She agitated herself by schemes for a farewell oyster-supper and donation-party for the Chippendales, and hesitated to propose it only because she feared her father s disapproval. Yet her af fection for the departing minister grew with every hour, and one night she had opened her lips flutteringly, to propose her plan, when Alvah brought all four legs of his chair down with a thump, and stuck his feet into his slippers with pleasurable animation. He had just thought of a way to get hold of that $293.30. Alvira looked up inquiringly. " What s the matter, father?" " Nothing," said the store-keeper. " Ex cept that I was just thinking about the min- iii By the Committee ister. Seems to me twould look better if Whiteridge folks gave him a kind of send- off, you know, just to show that there ain t any hard feelings on either side." Alvira s breath quickened. She bent lower over the splasher she was embroider ing for the Chippendales best bed-room set. "A sort of donation-party, father?" she ventured. " No ! " he exclaimed. " Land sakes, no ! They don t want a lot of cord-wood and maple sugar to take with em. What Mr. Chippendale needs is spot cash." " I think so, too," cried Alvira, boldly. " The question is," said Alvah, medita tively, running his fingers through his fringe of beard, " what s the quickest and best way to raise it ? Someone ought to start a sub scription paper. Suppose you take the cut ter and old Tom to-morrow and try the out- districts, and I ll take the Street. We can do this a good deal better ourselves, Alviry, than to get a lot more into it. I ll draw up a couple of subscription papers now." He shuffled over to the desk in the corner of the sitting-room, and for some minutes 112 By the Committee Alvira listened in a tumult of pleasure to the scratching of his pen. She even half for gave him for that matter of the parlor base- burner. When he handed one of the papers to her, she gave a little cry of delight. Al- vah Bayley s name headed each list with a subscription of $25. "Father!" she exclaimed. "Why, father!" Alvah busied himself with putting a huge rock-maple log into the soapstone stove, to last through the night. He seemed to make more noise about it than usual. " How much money do you think we can raise ? " asked his daughter, folding up the splasher, as if it had suddenly become a thing of no value. " Well," said Alvah, " that depends. But I should think we d ought to raise close on to three hundred dollars." " My ! " said the girl, " wouldn t that be nice!" " I guess it would ! " replied Alvah Bay- ley. At noon upon the second day thereafter the canvass of the town was completed. By "3 By the Committee dint of his position as chairman of the parish committee, his own generous subscription, and his intimate knowledge of the financial status of each member of the congregation, the store-keeper secured more money in the Street than anyone else would have thought possible, though it fell a trifle short of his own calculations. But the out-districts more than made up the deficiency. Under the spell of Alvira s enthusiasm, the " spot cash " slipped out of tea-pots and secret " high-boy " drawers with magical readi ness, and the donors gazed after the girl s disappearing cutter in stupid wonder at their unwonted affection for the Chippendales. Only one thing occurred to mar Alvira s unthinking pleasure in her mission. At the very last house upon the list, Aunt Lindy Waters, gazing at her suspiciously as the girl wrote " Miss Belinda Waters, fifty cents," asked for a receipt. Alvira wrote one, signing it " By the Committee," and drew on her mittens. " I s pose it s all right," said Aunt Lindy, concessively ; " I didn t know but the minis ter might be owing your father a little some thing that was all." 114 By the Committee Alvira colored. " That s a real mean thing to say, Aunt Lindy. You can have your fifty cents back again, there ! " But Belinda scornfully refused. All the way home that little arrow of the spinster rankled in Alvira s innocent bosom. Shamefully mean had it been to say it, and yet . She hung her head. Was it really this, after all, that had put the idea of the collection into her father s mind? If it were, she could never hold up her face in Whiteridge any more. To think of sitting in the front seat of the choir Sunday after Sunday, confronting those stern, reproach ful farmer-folk from the out-districts, whose slowly won money she had begged from them, only to make her father richer than before ! Half a dozen times during the noon-meal her lips parted to ask Alvah the question whose answer she dreaded to hear, but each time her courage failed her. Alvah was in high spirits over the completion of their self- appointed task, and after dinner father and daughter sat down to count the money. The desk was quite covered with the crumpled "5 By the Committee bills: fives and twos and ones and a great deal of silver. Alvira s fingers shook as she sorted and counted. " Well," announced the store-keeper, finally, "it s $271.74. I guess I might as well make it seventy-five." He took a penny from his pocket, and added it to the pile be fore him. " I struck it pretty close, didn t I ? " he added, reflectively. " How do the subscription papers foot up, Alviry ? " " Three hundred and twenty-one dollars and seventy-four cents," she replied. " Why, there ought to be fifty dollars more." He ran his eye over the columns, and handed them back with a hard chuckle. " You ve counted my subscription twice, Alviry, that s all." " But it ought anyway to be there once, father," she said, nervously. " It s going to be," answered Alvah, and opening the drawer where the receipt blanks were kept, took out one and began to fill in the name of Rev. Enoch Chippendale upon the upper left-hand corner. " Father," demanded Alvira, " does Mr. Chippendale owe you any money ? " 116 By the Committee He wrote on without heeding her. " Alvah Bayley," cried the girl, " how much does he owe you ? " She seized his right hand, making his pen sprawl. " It isn t much, is it ? " she added, plaintively, frightened at her own temerity. He shook off her hand angrily, and wrote : " Received payment, Alvah Bay- ley" " He owes me that," he said, dog gedly, pushing the receipt toward her. " Two hundred and ninety-three dollars and thirty cents. We make him a present of it. That counts in my twenty-five dollars and leaves him three dollars and forty-five cents over, in cash. If it wa n t for you and me, he couldn t have got a cent of it." The girl s face grew white. " But what do you suppose folks ll say about us ? " she exclaimed. " It seems to me it would kill me, father. You can afford to let him have that money just as well as not. It isn t right." " You set down and stop shaking ! " thun dered Alvah. " There ! Now you set still. This is my money, every cent on t, except three dollars and forty-five cents. I could 117 By the Committee have the law on to the minister to-day for it, if I was a mind to. Don t you say another word. I m going in there now to give him this receipt and the balance in cash, and he ll be glad enough to get it, too. You set still." But she leaped to her feet again, in spite of his command. For six years, ever since she was nineteen, she had kept house for her father and had never dared to assert herself against his wishes until now. But her af fection for her pastor, and pride in the Bay- ley good name, swept her out of herself. " I won t sit down, Alvah Bayley," she flashed back, " unless I want to ! " The moment she had said it she felt clear headed and cool, for all her white heat of anger. He caught a look in her eye that reminded him somewhat uncomfortably of her mother. " It may be right, and it may be wrong," she went on, bitterly, " but, whichever it is, it s mean. I didn t believe you would do such a thing, father. And you re not going to do such a thing, either ! " " I ain t, am I ? " shouted the store-keeper. 118 By the Committee " I guess we ll see about that this very min ute ! " He snatched three one dollar bills from the pile before him, and forty-five cents in silver. Then he grasped his hat, and stamped out noisily, without looking at his daughter, who stood motionless by the desk. The Chippendales lived only two doors away, and in a moment he was standing on the elaborate porch of the Martha J. Tor- ringford parsonage, pressing the electric bell. An untidy maid-of-all-work ushered him through the big, barren hall unheated, for economy s sake and into the family sitting-room. There was no one there but two of the babies, who toddled over to show the stranger their picture-books, but drew off again upon a nearer view. The dining- room door was ajar, and from the appear ance of the uncleared table the Chippen dales could not have had an elaborate meal. Already the store-keeper wished the inter view well over. A door opened, and Mr. Chippendale hurried in from his farewell sermon, not having taken time to change his frayed study gown. His eyes looked 119 By the Committee anxious, and his heart sank as he gazed upon Alvah Bayley s immovable lower jaw. " Good-afternoon, Mr. Bayley," he ex claimed, as hospitably as he could. " I I hope you are enjoying good health." " Tol able," replied the store-keeper, ab sently. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out the receipt. Mr. Chippendale took it for the bill, and began to grow crim son. " The fact is, Mr. Chippendale," said Al vah, " folks up and down the Street and in the out-districts have kind of wanted to give you a testimonial before you left town. The committee in charge thought you might be feeling a little worried about that bill with me, and so we arranged to make you a pres ent of this receipted bill and the balance of the subscription in cash." He peered up at the minister s face as he held out the receipt. Mr. Chippendale s lips were moving, but his emotion was such that no sound escaped them. Bayley fum bled in his pocket for the pitiful little bal ance in cash, but his courage failed him. His nerves had been more shaken by the scene 120 By the Committee with Alvira than he had supposed. He fingered the money a moment, and then blurted out : " That balance, Mr. Chippen dale we ll, you ll find that deposited to your credit at the bank. That ll do just as well," he added, mainly to himself. The minister put out both hands raptur ously; the revulsion of feeling was still so strong that he could not trust himself to speak. But Alvah Bayley made no re sponse to this mute demonstration of grati tude. He simply reached for his hat and got out of the house as best he could. It had been an uncomfortable five min utes for him, but he had put the thing through. Some people up and down the Street might call it rather sharp, perhaps, and, of course, Alviry would feel sore about it, but it was every man s duty to look out for himself. Charity began at home, every time! He was tempted, nevertheless, to keep straight on to the store, and to let Al vira cool off a little before he faced her. But he had rushed out without his overcoat, and was already shivering. So he turned in at his own gate, and went around to the side- 121 By the Committee door, as usual, and entered the sitting-room. He determined to get the first word, if there was to be any further argument, and his mouth was open to pronounce it when he became aware that the room was empty. The desk was swept bare of its bills and sil ver, and Alvira was nowhere to be found. " Alviry ! " he screamed. " Alviry ! " But there was no answer. Her cloak and hat were gone from the hook in the hall. Had he so angered her that she had left him ? Her mother had threatened to do that once. Fear and shame overmastered him, and he ran out to the barn, hatless, to hitch up the cutter and old Tom. She had stood by the desk, with her eyes closed, until the door had slammed behind him. Then she glanced desperately at the money. It was the minister s, every penny of it! Her father and she would be dis graced forever, if people found out what he had done. He had no right to take it, and what was more, she had collected fully half of it herself! What could she do with it? 122 By the Committee Suddenly she thought of Orton Ranney. Orton would help her, if he dared, she knew. And she would make him dare ! Catching a napkin from the table, she swept into it the silver and the piles of bills. Then she flung on her cloak and hat, and hurried down to the bank. She would have run if she had not known that people were watching her from their windows. Orton Ranney, a mild-eyed, pink-faced, bashful lit tle man of forty, posting his books all alone in the tiny bank building, happened to catch sight of her, as she crossed the street toward him. His bachelor heart fluttered a little, as usual, but he did not dream of her com ing in. " Orton Ranney," she panted, as she en tered, " do you want to help me more than anyone ever helped me yet ? " Her eyes were flashing with excitement. The flattered cashier rubbed his hands. " I guess I do, Alvira," he murmured, gal lantly. " Come right in here." He opened the iron gate and let her in behind his own desk. " What is it, Alvira ? " he asked, astonished at his own boldness with her. 123 By the Committee " It s this," she exclaimed, untying a nap kin, and spreading out the money on the desk. " Father and I have raised all this money for Mr. Chippendale. There s pretty nearly three hundred dollars." The cashier nodded. He had given five dollars himself, all for the sake of getting on the right side of the girl s father. " Well ? " he smiled. " Well, I want Mr. Chippendale to have it," she cried, with a bitter energy that amazed him. " It s his by rights, but he owes father two hundred and ninety-three dollars, and father has gone over to give him a receipt for that, and is going to keep this himself. He took out three dollars and forty-five cents to give Mr. Chippendale, and that was every cent there was left. I helped count it." The cashier whistled softly. " Don t you ever say a word," she com manded. " Nobody in Whiteridge knows that he owes father anything like that. Now I want you to give this money to the minis ter right away. Will you ? " 124 By the Committee " But what will your father say, Alvira? " he ventured, cautiously. She turned on him. " Orton Ranney, if you want to choose between Alvah Bayley and Alvira Bayley, you can t choose any too quick. I expect father ll be here any min ute." Her face was within a foot of his own, and it would have fired a less susceptible man than her admirer into heroic rashness. " If it comes to that, Alvira," he gasped, choking a little, " why, I guess you know where to find me. Don t you, Alvira ? " " Then what s the best way to get this to the minister? " she demanded, inexorably. " You might deposit it to his credit," he suggested, trying to call back his routed in stinct for business. " Then nobody else could touch it, and he could come and get it when he wanted to." " Of course ! " she cried. " I don t know why I didn t think of that. I just thought of coming here to to you." It was Al- vira s turn to look embarrassed. " How much did you say it was ? " he asked. " Two hundred and seventy-one dollars 125 By the Committee and seventy-five cents, less three dollars and forty-five cents." He reached for a deposit blank and filled it out. " You sign it," said he. "How? AlviraBayley?" " Oh, any way. By the Committee/ I guess. Now let me count that cash." " I ll help you," she volunteered. Side by side they stood at the desk, sort ing the bills and putting the silver in little piles. Never had it taken the cashier so long to count that amount of money, and when the task was completed he wondered why he had not been bright enough to make a mistake, so as to have the delicious pleas ure of counting it all over again. Reluct antly he turned away, and posted the $268.30 to the minister s credit. Mr. Chip pendale s previous status at the Whiteridge bank had been represented by an overdrawn account of forty-five cents, which sum the tender-hearted cashier, unwilling to remind the minister of his insolvency, had himself placed to Mr. Chippendale s credit in order to balance the books. He returned to Alvira, who still stood 126 By the Committee leaning against the desk. Now that her great object was accomplished, she began to be fearful again, and to wonder if she had not seemed too forward. " Orton," she said, playing with one of his pens, " I don t know what you ll think of me, coming in like this." " Don t you, Alvira?" he questioned, in his softest second-tenor notes. For how many years had those tones entranced her, as she and Orton had stood up together in the choir ! They seemed now to wrap them selves about her heart. " Don t you really know what I think of you ? " His right hand slipped off the desk, fell innocently to his side, and then began to rise surrepti tiously, tremblingly, toward her waist. I_I guess, Alvira " " Sh /"said the girl. The bank-door opened. Alvira faced around toward it with a sudden defiance. But it was not her father; it was only the Rev. Enoch Chippendale. His overcoat was unbuttoned, and the frayed study gown showed beneath it. In marked agitation he advanced to the 127 By the Committee cashier s grated window; then he caught sight of Alvira Bayley, and took off his hat. Her presence seemed to disconcert him. " A most unexpected occurrence has just taken place, Mr. Ranney," he began. " A most undeserved and yet a most welcome generosity has been evinced toward us. If I understood your father aright, Miss Alvira and yet Mrs. Chippendale was sure there must be some mistake you know Mrs. Chippendale is not very well, and is there fore somewhat over-inclined to be appre hensive and to tell the truth I was not alto gether sure that I understood your father myself but " here he hesitated and pulled out the receipt which Alvah Bayley had signed " he conveyed the impression that the good-will of the parish had suc ceeded in liquidating my indebtedness to him, and that there was a balance credited to me here besides, Mr. Ranney. That is what I scarcely can believe. It seems such unprecedented " " It s all right," interrupted the cashier, blandly. " Yes, it s all right," echoed Alvira. 128 By the Committee " May may I ask how much it is, Mr. Ranney ? " The cashier stepped gravely over to his books. " Two hundred and sixty-eight dol lars and thirty cents," he replied. " Will you have that in cash, Mr. Chippendale ? " The minister drew a long, astonished breath. " Is it possible ! " he cried. " Why, yes, I think it would please Mrs. Chippen dale if I were to take it in cash." His eyes were wet. " Kindly draw a check for it, then," sug gested the cashier, pushing a blank check through the window, and swiftly counting out the bills. " I believe you were at the bottom of this, Miss Alvira," hazarded the minister, affec tionately, as he buttoned his study gown carefully over his undreamed-of wealth. " She was on the committee," said the cashier, proudly. At that instant a cutter was pulled up out side, and the alarmed features of Alvah Bay- ley appeared in the doorway. He was ac companied by the postmaster, who was cer tain that he had seen Alvira enter the bank, 129 By the Committee and was at a loss to understand the reason for Alvah s agitated inquiries about her. No sooner did Mr. Chippendale catch sight of the store-keeper, than he made a rush for him, with beatific face and outstretched hands. " You see, Mr. Bayley," he cried, " we were so delighted that we could scarcely wait, and so I hurried right down here for the balance." " To be sure," stammered the store keeper, in confusion. " You got ahead of me a little. Here it is." He drew out the three dollars and forty-five cents shame facedly, and presented it to the minister. As he did so his eyes met Alvira s ; the bronzed grating of the cashier s desk was between them, but the girl s look seemed to scorch him ; she was at that moment the very image of her mother, the one person before whose slowly roused intensity of passion his own will-power had been as tow to fire. For a minute father and daughter faced each other. Then she saw his eyes quail and sink, and she knew who was master. The Rev. Mr. Chippendale gazed in per- 130 By the Committee plexity at the latest addition to his earthly treasures. " I don t understand this," he exclaimed ; " Mr. Ranney has already given me two hundred and sixty-eight dollars and thirty cents. There must be some mistake." " No, there isn t," interrupted the clear, crisp tones of Alvira Bayley, as distinctly as if she were giving out the number of a hymn at prayer-meeting. " It s all right. Father means to make you a present of that re ceipted bill he spoke of, and the committee raised two hundred and seventy-one dollars and seventy-five cents besides. We de posited it all here except three dollars and forty-five cents, that father had in his pocket. You mustn t say another word ; I wish twas twice as much as it is. But don t you think we ve done pretty well, Mr. John son ? " The postmaster had been glancing stealth ily from father to daughter, conscious of some mystery which baffled his omniscience. But he betrayed no curiosity, as he an swered, with a cheerful alacrity, " Strikes me it s a pretty slick job, Miss Alviry, all By the Committee around. Credit to everybody concerned. It ain t going to be a secret, is it ? " " Oh, no ! " exclaimed the girl. " I want everyone to know it. Be sure you get the figures just right, Mr. Johnson." The minister was wringing Alvah Bay- ley s nerveless hand. " I can never forget your thoughtfulness, never ! " he murmured. " Are you going home, father? " said Al- vira, coolly, while the blushing cashier held the iron gate wide open for her. " I guess I ll go along with you in the cutter. Mr. Chippendale, tell Mrs. Chippendale I m coming in to see her right away. Oh, by the way, Orton, we ought to practise those hymns to-night. I ll have the coal fire started in the parlor, so that we can use the piano. It ll be real comfortable in there; will you come ? " 132 Madame Annalena Madame Annalena T COASTED down the long hill into Slab * City just at sundown, the brook roaring at my right, and the sudden coolness of the valley bathing my face and aching wrists like water. As I dismounted at Dakin s post-office, general store, and tavern all in one the cyclometer ticked off its fortieth mile since noon. Over Green Mountain roads that means rather steady pedalling. Dakin himself, smooth-shaven and loose- lipped, sauntered out of the L part, in his shirt-sleeves, and looked first at the wheel, then at me. " Pretty light," he volunteered. " There was a feller through here last week on one of that make. Stands up all right, does she?" " First rate," said I. " Can you take care of me for the night?" " I guess so. Seems to me you d oughter Madame Annalena have a brake, though," he continued, judi cially, as I unstrapped my bundle. " We put up a consid able few wheelmen here, week in and week out, and I ain t hardly seen a brake all summer." He was still shaking his gray, close-cropped head, as he led me up-stairs. At supper I enjoyed a most amiable con versation with Amanda Dakin, who waited on the table, and afterwards I stood in the doorway a while, surveying Slab City. At the right of Dakin s was a blacksmith s shop of rickety brick; at the left a dozen story- and-a-half white houses were scattered along the road before it dipped again into the forest ; opposite lay a dam and saw-mill, and above the dam, on the steep hillside, was a square frame-house, with a Mansard roof. That was all, except the encompassing mountains, the plangent voice of the brook, and the darkening green of the August sky. Dakin came out of the L with his coat on, and seated himself communicably upon the long steps before the door. " Gettin along toward mail time," he re marked, and at that I joined him. 136 Madame Annalena " Do you handle much mail here? " I in quired. " Well, no. No great sight ; but more n you d think for. There s a good many folks drive in here for their mail two or three times a week, and then there s most always some letters for Slab City. Dunham " he waved his hand toward the saw-mill and the slope above it " he takes two daily papers, but he don t scarcely ever get a letter." " Is that Dunham s place ? " I asked, glancing up at the house with the Mansard roof. Dakin nodded. " Consid able of a house, ain t it?" The conversation flagged. Presently the blacksmith, a handsome fellow of thirty, joined us, and then three or four old men hobbled up the road from the tiny houses, and greeting Dakin noiselessly, took their accustomed places on the steps. The black smith and I exchanged some observations on the state of the roads, the distance to the Junction, and the approaching end of the trout season. Then we relapsed into silence, and the crickets began to chirp in 137 Madame Annalena the grass around the mill-dam. It seemed like fall. All at once a lamp gleamed from an un curtained window of the square house upon the hillside ; then another, in a room appar ently across the hall ; and a moment later a man s figure, as I thought, passed from one chamber-window to another, leaving a lamp in each. "Jabez is lightin up," piped one of the wizened old loungers. " Time for the mail now." " Lightin up for Annerlener," said Da- kin, jocosely, glancing at me as if he half ex pected to be questioned. " He s spiled a sight of kerosene, first n last," commented the octogenarian, severe ly. " And no one to wash up them lamps for him, either." " Who is she ? " I ventured, with a stran ger s privilege of impertinence. "Ain t you never heard of her?" de manded Dakin. " She s a singer kind of perfessional opery singer, they say. I guess she s about as high-priced as they make em, too. Down to Boston, a spell ago, they 138 Madame Annalena say she was drawin her thousand dollars a night right along, whether she sung or not." " You don t mean " I exclaimed, and at that instant I recalled some obscure news paper paragraph or was it a gossip at the club? about the birthplace of the prima donna. " You mean that Madame Anna lena " " Belonged right here in Slab City," ex claimed Dakin, with ill-concealed local pride. " And does yet, I guess, cordin to law. That s her legal husband, puttin them lamps in the windows now." As he spoke the solitary figure appeared for an in stant at the tiny windows in the Mansard roof, leaving a lamp upon each sill. " He s been doin that for nigh on to ten years, regular." " Awful sight of oil," repeated the octo genarian, " for a man as close as Jabez." I was on my feet, I think, gesticulating. For Madame Annalena is simply the great est soprano now alive, save Patti. For twenty years ever since her debut in Lon don as Marguerite all that the world can offer to a prima donna has been hers. Four Madame Annalena times, at least, has she announced her fare well season, yet her full-orbed voice has seemed to grow more glorious with every year. She has never lingered long in America, and I had fancied, for some reason or other, that she was Welsh. And to come upon her traces here, in the heart of the Green Mountains ! " Ever see her? " demanded Dakin. "Twenty times!" I cried. "Not five months ago, the last time." And I felt as if it were not five minutes ago. She had sung in oratorio, after the close of the opera sea son, and in a hall crowded to the stairway I had stood on tiptoe to watch her as she came in to sing her first aria. The grim conductor had smiled for once, as he led her past the front of the applauding chorus, and the first violin moved his chair to make room for the long folds of her ermine wrap the gift, it was said, of a Grand Duke and the audience quite forgot they were listen ing to the " Creation," and stormed as they always do when Madame Annalena comes on in " Tannhauser." "Well," said Dakin, deliberately, "for 140 Madame Annalena bosses and church-singin the Green Moun tains claim to beat the world." " Not for hosses," put in the blacksmith, who was not a native. " I want to know the rest of it," said I, facing around to Dakin. " Where did she get her name ? " " Annerlener ? Ann Ellen see ? Ann Ellen Darby was her maiden name, and now, by rights, it s Ann Ellen Dunham Mis Dunham." " Mis Jabez Dunham that s right," said the octogenarian. " But how did she ever come here, in the first place ? " I demanded. " And how did she ever get to London, and how in the world did she ever marry Dunham ? " " Well, she got to London or Boston - in the first place, because she did marry Dunham. I guess that s the how of it. She went on his money, and what s more, he told her to go. She was raised up here in the Hollow : one of Sam Darby s girls they re all moved away now. And Ann was the liveliest of em, I tell you ! She up n mar ried Jabez all of a sudden, when there was 141 Madame Annalena two other fellers payin attention to her. I dunno but there might a been some spite in it, and then, again, I dunno as there might. Anyhow, she up n married him, for all he was a good ten years older n she/ " Jabez allus was old," interrupted the oc togenarian. " He was born old. There wa n t no boy to him." " Used to work hard all day, and read nights," explained Dakin. " Couldn t hard ly get him to go to cattle-show. Well, Ann Ellen married him, and they took a trip to Niagry Falls, and put up at the best hotel. They hadn t been back more n a week be fore I see Jabez a settin on a log over there at the mill one mornin , and the log was clamped on the carriage, and Jabez was travellin straight toward that six-foot cir cular saw and never moved. I hollered, and run over, and he got up, just in the nick of time. She s goin to Boston for a while to study singin , says he, kind o foolish, for I hadn t said nothin about Ann Ellen. And I m kind o favorin it, Dakin, says he. She ll be more contented after she s tried it. She s a young thing, you know, says he, 142 Madame Annalena and after she s kind o had her fling in Bos ton she ll settle down and like Slab City first-rate. " " No, Mr. Dakin," put in the old man, querulously, " that wa n t quite it. When I ve had my turn, Jabez, I ll come back. That s what Annerlener said." " You ve got it all mixed up, deacon," re plied Dakin, commiseratingly. That s what Jabez said in here to the store, the next day. I m talkin about what he said over to the saw-mill." The octogenarian grumbled, but was silenced. " And, of course, she has never come back," said I. " Once," said Dakin, " sure, and maybe twice. For over-night, that s all." " Curious critters," said the blacksmith ; "ain t they?" I sat looking at the flaring windows of the solitary house on the hillside, " The first time she came back," Dakin went on, " she d been gone well on to three years. Been livin in Boston, they say I guess that must a been before she went to 143 Madame Annalena Europe and some say she got good pay, and some say she didn t. Anyhow Orrin Waterman brought her up from the Junc tion one night on the stage that was old Orrin, father to this one and left her up to Jabez s house. The next mornin he see her take the Boston train, down to the Junc tion, but there didn t no one bring her down. She must a walked it. Guess she found she couldn t go Jabez, after all." " And the other time ? " I asked. "Well," said Dakin, "the other time wa n t more n ten years ago. We didn t know nothin about Annerlener s bein home, but young Orrin s boy was prowlin round Jabez s house after pears one night, and said he saw a black-haired woman, with diamonds on, settin on Jabez s lap." "That boy of Orrin s," chirped the deacon, excitedly, " he s dead now, but when he was alive he d lie the bark off a tree. Why, the minister at the Hollow wa n t scarcely willin to preach his funeral sermon ! There can t nobody make me think Anner- lener d come back twice, without stayin a spell." 144 Madame Annalena " She could come to the Junction in one of those parlor-cars," argued the black smith, " and get some feller to drive her over here and back by the Hollow road. Who d know anything about it ? " " The curi s thing is," continued Dakin, ignoring the blacksmith s query, " that just about that time Jabez got this trick of light- in up the house an hour after the express is due down to the Junction. That looks to me as if she had come after all, and it had kind o turned the cuss s head, after waitin so long, so that now he expects her every night. You notice how he ll be dressed when he comes down for his mail. Orrin s late to-night, ain t he, Marcus ? " The blacksmith pulled out his watch. " No," he drawled. " Guess that s Orrin now." There was a clatter upon the bridge above the mill-dam, and a Concord buggy swung up to the rail in front of Dakin s. The big black horse began to gnaw the rail the in stant the reins were flung upon his back. Orrin Waterman pulled the mail-bag from under the seat. No one spoke to him until Madame Annalena he had pitched it on to the steps for Dakin to pick it up ; then the interchange of greet ings grew active. The postmaster disap peared to sort out the mail for the Hollow, and Orrin went behind the counter and helped himself to a five-cent cigar. Then he sat down with us to wait. " Jabez is well lighted up to-night," he ob served to the blacksmith. " Yes," said the latter, nodding toward me, " we ve been telling this gentleman about Jabez." Orrin Waterman pulled away at his cigar. " What did you think of that liniment? " he inquired. "Well, Orrin, it ain t no sure cure for spavin, but then, what is ? " " A bullet in the head," said Orrin, gloom ily, whereat the deacon tittered. I wanted to hear more about Jabez Dun ham. " I suppose nobody ever says anything to Dunham about about this ? " I asked. An oath that sounded almost solemn es caped from under Orrin s morose mustache. " I guess not ! Why, there was a Canuck once, workin for Jabez, who gave him a lit- 146 Madame Annalena tie lip about it, just for a joke, and Jabez grabbed a cold-chisel and come at him like a cat. Came d n near killin him. No, we don t none of us say nothin* to Jabez. It s kind o mean, you know, and he ain t just right." He lifted his cigar toward his forehead. " Sort of a learned cuss, too," he went on, " for a man who runs a saw-mill. Takes a New York and Boston paper right along, and they say he cuts out everything he finds on Annerlener." " Sh ! " said the blacksmith. A black-clothed figure was crossing the bridge and turning toward us. " Good-evening, Mr. Dunham," chir ruped the octogenarian. No one else spoke. The husband of Madame Annalena stopped in front of us, with a quick glance at the de livery window of the post-office. He was a smallish man of fifty odd, scrupulously dressed, with clean-shaven upper lip, long grayish beard, drooping mouth, and gentle blue eyes that shifted uncannily in their sockets. " Good-evening, gentlemen," he said. His voice was slightly husky. The intona- Madame Annalena tions were those of a man of refinement, but they had that curious detachment which is sometimes to be noticed in the voices of the insane. I was rather glad, for one, to hear the delivery-window rattle, and, as by a common instinct, we all rose and filed in side. " Much to-night ? " inquired the deacon. " Well, no," said Dakin, tossing the mail- bag for the Hollow over the counter to Or- rin Waterman. I guess Mary Wither- bee s got another letter from that Bellows Falls feller. Likely feller, too. And Sam s got a postal from that mower J n reaper drummer sayin he ll be round next week. You hear that, Marcus? You want to see him, too, don t you ? Hold on, Orrin ; throw out Mis Bennett s Sunday-school paper as you go by, will you ? She wants it to-nighf. And here s that fish-hook for the Trow boy. It s one cent ; make him pay you." The black horse and the Concord buggy disappeared into the dusk. " Here s your papers, Mr. Dunham," said the postmaster. "Is there perhaps a foreign letter?" 148 Madame Annalena inquired Dunham. The blacksmith nudged me, cautiously. " Not to-night, Jabez," was the kindly answer. Three or four Slab City girls came in, glanced at the mail boxes, then at me, and went out giggling. Jabez Dunham unfolded one of his papers, and his eye ran furtively over two or three columns, by the light of the one kerosene lamp. The loungers pretended not to watch him. " I observe that the St. Louis has made a very quick westward passage," he remarked, turning to me with a bow. " Yes ? " I replied. " The St. Louis is a good boat." " She brought over a large number of well-known people," he continued, letting his eye traverse the column once more. " Literary and musical celebrities ; not the most distinguished, perhaps, but still well- known people. You are interested in such things, sir? " " Very much." " Oh, you are? I am glad to make your 149 Madame Annalena acquaintance, sir. You anticipate a brilliant winter in New York ? I notice there will be Italian opera, and German opera besides." " I believe so," said I. " I should like to see that big opera-house since it was renovated. How do you think," he asked, tentatively, almost confidentially, " it compares with the one in Paris ? " " The exterior," said I, " is not so impos ing, but there are some people who prefer it for other reasons." " Indeed," he replied. " So I have read, And at Berlin ; how is it there ? Could you tell me?" I told him, and we went on to Milan, while the crowd watched us dispassionately. " I suppose," he said at last, " you have been at St. Petersburg? " " No," said I ; " not at St. Petersburg." He looked disappointed. " I have never seen a man who has attended the opera in St. Petersburg. I should like to, very much indeed." " Do you travel yourself ? " I asked. " Oh, no ! " he exclaimed, with a sort of fright in his voice. " I went to western New Madame Annalena York once, when I was a young man, but since then it has been very important that I should be here every day. I have no one to leave my house with, you see," he added, cunningly. I nodded. " I must bid you good-night, sir," said he. " It has given me pleasure to make your ac quaintance. We have common interests, sir. Do you remain long in Slab City ? " " Only till morning." " Perhaps I may see you. I should like to leave you my card. Good-evening, gen tlemen." And he folded his papers, but toned his black coat carefully, and walked out. " I swan ! " ejaculated the blacksmith, " he was great on language to-night ! " " When Annerlener gets back, " quoted one of the loungers coarsely, and I inferred that the phrase had grown proverbial at Slab City. " Half-past eight, gents," announced Da- kin, succinctly, beginning to empty the change from the counter drawers into his trousers pockets. The loungers rose re- Madame Annalena luctantly- As I stood on the steps watch ing them disappear into the shadows of the maples, my arm was clutched by the octo genarian deacon. " Dakin kind o shut me up," he whis pered, eagerly, " but I know what Anner- lener said, just as well as he does. * When I ve had my turn, Jabez, I ll come back/ That s what she said, and Dakin knows it. It wa n t what Jabez said ; she said it herself. It was a promise. And that s what makes me think she ll come, some day, when she gets sick o singin . Jabez could give her a good home. Just look at that big house up there, and not a soul in it but Jabez. She ll come back. Why, it ain t right for her to stay away nigh on to twenty-two years ! Don t you think a real woman, now, would want to come back ? Ann Ellen used to be a likely girl wild as a hawk, but fond of her folks, and I allus held to it she was fond of Jabez. Little ashamed of the saw-mill, most likely, when she found out how much money she was makin , but kind o sneakin fond, just the same. She wouldn t never have come back that once, if she hadn t been. And Madame Annalena I m sayin that when she gets tired o singin kind o makes her farewell tower, you know she ll be back here ; don t you think so?" He moved off, still shaking his cane em phatically, as Dakin locked the L door. " When Annerlener gets back/ " echoed an ironic repartee of one of the loungers, far down among the maple shadows. I went up to my room in time to watch the lamps extinguished, one by one, in the big house beyond the mill-dam, and another night settle down solemnly upon that lonely hollow in the hills. Would she ever come back? Could she? Could the Madame Annalena who had queened it for so long, the artist finished to the finger-tips, come back to Slab City and to Jabez Dunham, af ter all? She had come once, it seemed. Perhaps she had come twice. Would the woman in her be deeper than the prima donna, at the end? And I fell asleep, still wondering over it, with two or three of her notes in " Fidelio " chiming in my ears like some great golden-hearted bell. The next morning, as I was strapping my 153 Madame Annalena bundle to the handle-bar, preparatory to starting, Dunham crossed over from the saw-mill. He wore overalls and a flannel shirt, and there was sawdust caught in his gray beard. His manner was less excited than it had been the night before, but in his eyes there was the unchanged, unworldly light, the same persistent hallucination. " You are the young gentleman I con versed with last evening? I am sorry you are to leave us. This is a beautiful section of country. I would like, sir, to give you my card." He took one out of the pocket of his over alls. On it was printed, JABEZ DUNHAM. SAWING. SLABS AND SHINGLES. TERMS STRICTLY CASH. " Possibly you understand," he said, with a cunning shift of his eyes into mine, " that all this " he waved his hand deprecatingly toward the saw-mill " is a temporary occu pation only temporary. Some day, possi bly any day, I expect to enjoy the pleasures of life. Meantime," he added, his eyes fall- Madame Annalena ing to the ground, " I saw wood. Terms strictly cash." " We are all in that business more or less," said I. He looked up swiftly, almost joyously, and nodded. 155 The Incident of the British Ambassador The Incident of the British Ambassador \17 ITH certain aspects of the famous inci dent that brought England and the United States to the very verge of war in the closing year of the nineteenth century, the public is already familiar. The cooler heads, on both sides of the Atlantic, had long perceived that a crisis was approaching. Our new policy of territorial expansion, the attitude of the Administration toward Japan, the correspondence with Germany over her interference with South American repub lics, had all tended to inflame international jealousies. The discovery of gold in Alaska had aroused the old question of the Northwest Boundary, and our irrita tion against Great Britain was greatly in creased by that unlucky after-dinner speech of Lord Rawlins, the British Ambassador, Incident of the British Ambassador on the subject of seals. Americans were thoroughly angered, and, though it was shown the next day that his lordship had been misreported, there were newspapers from one end of the country to the other that openly talked war. England at first refused to believe that the United States was seriously bent upon hostilities, but day by day the outlook grew more ominous, until at last she was startled by the intel ligence, cabled from New York early one October morning, that the British Ambas sador had been subjected to gross personal indignity during a visit to one of the fore most American universities. What ensued is well known, but very few have known hitherto the real cause of that dangerous and almost fatal imbroglio. It began in the office of the New York Orbit. The managing editor, standing at a desk in his shirt-sleeves, and, dashing his pencil across some verbose " copy," had said, irritably, without looking up, " Did you get that story, Andrews ? " " No," replied dejectedly the tall young fellow at his elbow. " I went way over 160 Incident of the British Ambassador there, but she was another sort of woman altogether. I judged that it wouldn t do." " You judged it wouldn t do ! " burst out the " old man." He was doing the night city editor s work for him, and was out of temper already. " The Orbit doesn t want your judgment; it wants the news. Your week is up Friday, Andrews, and then you can walk. You came here with a repu tation as a hustler, and you re no good, ex cept on that football column. We want men who can gather news. See ? " " Suppose there isn t any ? " said An drews, sulkily. " Then, blank it, make news ! " The editor snatched at a handful of Asso ciated Press dispatches, and forgot the new reporter utterly. The latter turned away with a rather pitiable effort at nonchalance, and walked down the room between the long rows of desks. The electric lights wavered everywhere before his eyes. He felt a trifle sick. For two years, ever since he began to serve as college correspondent for The Orbit, it had been his ambition to secure a 161 Incident of the British Ambassador position upon its staff. They had liked the stuff he sent them, and in the football and baseball seasons he had cleared enough from The Orbit to pay all his college ex penses. And now, in the October after graduation, to lose the post he had so long desired simply because he failed to furnish a sensation where there was obviously no sen sation at all ! It made him feel that a liveli hood was a terribly insecure matter. To think that he, Jerry Andrews, a great man in his university only four months before, should be dismissed like a scrub woman ! He trudged uptown to his boarding- house, to save car fare, and his bedtime pipe was a gloomy one. Thanks to superb health and a naturally reckless temper, how ever, he slept like a schoolboy, and it was only after his late breakfast that the gravity of his situation forced itself upon him. There were but two days in which to re trieve himself with The Orbit. He re ported at the office an hour earlier than usual, but there was nothing assigned to him. He consulted a half-dozen of his fel- 162 Incident of the British Ambassador low reporters, but, though they swore sym pathetically at the " old man," they had no suggestions as to space work, which seemed his only resource. By two o clock he felt that he was losing his nerve. That reminded him of the repu tation for nerve which he had enjoyed as an undergraduate, and this, in turn, suggested the scheme of running out to the old place on the two-thirty, taking a look at the team, and perhaps coaching it a little, and at any rate getting enough football gossip to make a half-column for The Orbit the next morn ing. His spirits rose the instant he boarded the train. The brakeman nodded to him, and the conductor asked after his health. Whatever might be his fate in New York, Jerry Andrews was a hero still in his old haunts, and it thrilled him to recognize it once more. As the train slowed up at the dear old sta tion, he was already upon the steps of the car, his cap on the back of his head, his eyes shining with pleasure. Of the four or five hundred undergraduates who, to his sur- 163 Incident of the British Ambassador prise, were crowded upon the platform, only the freshmen failed to recognize him. " D ye see that man ? " said a kindly dis posed junior to one of these last, as Andrews swung himself from the steps. " That s Jerry Andrews, of Ninety-Blank: the tall, stoop-shouldered fellow with a Roman nose. Doesn t look much like an athlete, does he ? He s the best all-round man we ever had, though. Cool! why, he used to go to sleep on the way up to the big games ! And, oh ! how he can do a song-and-dance, and you ought to see him run a mass-meeting ! He s coming this way. Oh, hullo, Jerry ! " " What s up ? " said Andrews to a dozen admirers at once, while the football captain was shouldering his way toward him through the crowd to secure him for the coaching, and the freshmen stared. " Don t you know ? Why; Lord Cuthbert Rawlins is coming on the next train to visit Tommy." " The British Ambassador? " " Sure. Tommy met him at Newport, and asked him to visit Ossian, and we re here to see Tommy do the international act. 164 Incident of the British Ambassador He s sitting over in his carriage now, rattled already. Oh, it ll be great ! " Andrews grinned. He had given the President of the University many an uncom fortable quarter of an hour, in his day, and, to tell the truth, Tommy, assisted by an ad miring faculty, had more than once made matters rather unpleasant for Jerry An drews. " And what do you suppose the alumni will say ? " cried a shrill, familiar voice near him, in the centre of a pushing mob of un dergraduates. It was Kilpatrick Tiernan, Ossian s celebrated short-stop, out of train ing in the autumn months and making the most of his privileges. " Oh, what will the alumni say," he pleaded, waving his pipe pathetically around his ears, " when they learn that you fellows have given the Ossian yell for Lord Cuthbert Rawlins ? " He pro longed the three final words with masterly irony. " He has publicly insulted this coun try, only last week, and to give him the Os sian yell the Ossian yell, think of it ! is a disgrace to every true-born American ! " " Right you are, Patsy ! " cried a class- 165 Incident of the British Ambassador mate, encouragingly. Most of the crowd laughed. " Oh, you can laugh," put in Patsy, com- miseratingly, " but when the iron heel of England is once more upon your necks, you ll wish you had hissed, as Fm going to ! Patriots, this way ! " But the Washington train whistled at the crossing, and Tiernan s impassioned appeal failed to hold his audience. There was a general scramble for the front of the plat form, and in the melee the short-stop man aged, to his huge satisfaction, to have some one push him violently against Tommy, who received his profuse apologies with a suavity as artistic, in its way, as Tiernan s rudeness. There was a backward sway of the strug gling mass as the train darkened the plat form. " There he is," whispered a hundred stu dents at once, as a stately, eagle-nosed gen tleman with white side-whiskers appeared at the door of the Pullman car. At that mo ment he was the most hated man in America, partly because of the arrogant frankness with which he had apparently played his 166 Incident of the British Ambassador diplomatic game throughout, partly because of that unlucky misreported speech about the seals, but largely, in reality, because cir cumstances had placed him in a delicate po sition, where he could make no explanations without betraying the fact which everyone recognizes now that the game he seemed to be playing was not the real one, and that Germany, and not the United States, was the object of England s inexplicable moves upon the international chess-board. He gazed at the crowd quietly, but with some amused curiosity upon his face. It was his first sight of American undergraduates. " By Jupiter, Jerry," whispered the foot ball captain to Andrews, " he looks enough like you to be your father." " Thank you for nothing," said Andrews, and at the same moment he reached across the shoulders of three or four men and tapped the regular college correspondent of The Orbit. " I m down as a special/ Richmond," he said, with a smile that would have persuaded more obstinate fellows than the junior he was addressing ; " I want you to let me have 167 Incident of the British Ambassador this." His voice was drowned by the col lege yell, which some irresponsible fellow proposed, in defiance of Patsy Tiernan, and which the Ossian boys made it a point of honor to give well, whoever started it. But as a whole the crowd was ready for mischief, and a few men were crying " Seals ! Seals ! " as the President of the University made his way to the steps of the car. He was terribly anxious at bottom for the conduct of his boys, knowing their capacity for spontane ous deviltry, and the sudden unpopularity of Lord Cuthbert Rawlins, but he wore his jauntiest manner on the surface, and the elaborateness of his greeting to his guest caught the mercurial fancy of the crowd. " Give em the long yell," screamed some one, and the favorite long yell was given, on general principles. Tommy smiled with gratitude as he escorted the Ambassador down the shifting lane of undergraduates to his carriage. " Speech ! Speech ! " shouted a hundred voices, but the President shook his head ceremoniously, and pretended not to hear the cries of " Seals ! Seals ! " " Burn him in 1 68 Incident of the British Ambassador effigy ! " which Kilpatrick Tiernan was hoarsely raising in the rear of the crowd, to the joy of the hackmen and the dismay of the more seriously inclined. The carriage door closed sharply, and the " international act " was apparently over. " That s good for a column," thought An drews to himself, as the football captain marched him off to the field, following the drifting crowd. " And I wonder if the old man wouldn t like me to try for an inter view with Lord Cuthbert Rawlins ? Even a fake interview might be better than noth ing." But his reportorial duties were forgotten the instant he reached the field and donned a sweater. For a long happy hour he coached the new half-back in particular and the rest of the team in general, while about half the university crowded over the side lines and called it the snappiest practice of the year. Then he got his bath, and a rub-down from the affectionate hands of his old trainer, and it was nearly six when he reached the campus again. He had declined the train ing-table dinner and a half-dozen other invi- 169 Incident of the British Ambassador tations, in the hope of catching the British Ambassador at Tommy s, for the moment the excitement of coaching was over his uneasiness at his status with The Orbit came back again. One lucky stroke might make his fortune with the " old man " yet. As he cut across the lawn toward the President s house the older members of the faculty, frock-coated and gloved, were com ing away in solemn, awkward couples. That meant a reception, and it was probably just over. Lester, Tommy s man-of-all-work, was on duty at the door. Many a quarter of a dollar had he taken from Jerry Andrews, in return for items of interest to the readers of The Orbit, but he shook his head with great importance when Jerry asked if there was any chance of getting Lord Cuthbert Rawlins s ear for a moment. " Senator Martin is going to entertain his lordship at Belmartin, at dinner," Lester volunteered, nodding toward a United States senator who was pacing the great hallway. " They ll be driving over right away." It was a dozen miles to the Senator s 170 Incident of the British Ambassador famous stock-farm, and his dinners were even more celebrated than his brood mares. " Then Lord Cuthbert Rawlins won t be back till late, I suppose," hazarded Andrews. " No, sir." Now, if Andrews had been a little longer in the profession, he would have bagged the Ambassador then and there, and a sen ator into the bargain ; but as it was he suf fered Lester to close the door behind him, and he was half-way across the campus be fore he realized his mistake. He hesitated and turned back, but at that instant the Sen ator s carriage drove up to Tommy s door and Lord Cuthbert Rawlins entered it. He had lost his chance. Ruefully he turned toward the telegraph office, to send his story of the Ambassador s arrival at the Ossian station that afternoon. It was something, of course, but the situa tion had promised something better yet, if he had not been so stupid. He stopped suddenly, his hands deep in his trousers pockets, his eyes glued to the ground, a queer look upon his face. Was it a chance remark made to him at the station, or the 171 Incident of the British Ambassador subtle influence of the old campus the campus where he had a crowd of worship pers, where he was safe, as in a sort of Al- satia, from outside interference, and where, as a graduate now, he was beyond the juris diction of the faculty ? Was it a journalistic instinct, or simply the real devil-may-care Jerry Andrews-ism flashing out once more ? At any rate, if the arch-imp himself had prompted the scheme, no finer instrument for its accomplishment could have been de vised than Kilpatrick Tiernan, who with a couple of satellites was leisurely crossing the campus on his way to dinner when he caught sight of his old crony, Jerry An drews, standing there with his hands in his pockets and that peculiar inventive smile upon his handsome face. It was rumored upon the campus, directly after dinner, that the undergraduate body was to serenade Lord Cuthbert Rawlins at the President s at eight o clock. Some men even reported that Tommy had specially re quested that tribute to his guest, though this was doubted by the more astute, who knew Tommy s general aversion to student mobs, 172 Incident of the British Ambassador even though they did not know that he had actually accepted Senator Martin s invita tion on purpose to avoid this particular one. Debate ran high until Kilpatrick Tiernan of fered to ascertain Tommy s wishes in per son; and, leaving his unruly escort at the gate, he decorously rang the President s bell. His followers could not hear his con versation with Lester, but this was his re port, delivered from the top of the gate post : " Fellows, Lord Cuthbert Rawlins is din ing now and Tommy doesn t wish him dis turbed." (Groans.) " But he understands that there is to be a bonfire on the campus to-night, to celebrate Saturday s game, and he will bring his guest over, to show him a characteristic Ossian scene." (Rapturous applause.) " Now everyone give a long yell for the characteristic scene ! " But before the cheer had subsided, Tier- nan himself, to the amazement of most of his friends, had managed to escape from view. He did not reappear for half an hour. By that time the bonfire, prepared the preced ing Saturday, but postponed because of rain, was blazing merrily, and nearly a thousand 173 Incident of the British Ambassador undergraduates were singing, cheering, and skylarking around it. The pet soloist of the glee club gave his newest song, the foot ball captain made a speech, followed by the manager and the bow-legged guard who had made the touch-down ; one or two alumni who happened to be in town exhorted the undergraduates to uphold the ancient tradi tions of Ossian ; and there were calls from every side for " Andrews, Ninety-Blank ! " But Andrews, Ninety-Blank, the genius of so many scenes like this, could not be dis covered, and after another song, a group of seniors demanded in concert : " We - want - Patsy - Ticrnan! We-want- Patsy-Tiernan!" The crowd clapped, and Tiernan, who had just made his way into the circle, took off his cap and faced the firelight. He was the idol of the baser sort, and the spoiled child of the others. "Fellows," he began impressively, "Lord- Cuthbert-Rawlins has said " he paused in the long upward drawl for mock emphasis " I repeat, Lord-Cuthbert-Rawlins has said " and he quoted the most unfortunate 174 Incident of the British Ambassador of those sentences that the reporters had put into his lordship s mouth a week before. A growl, topped by hisses, ran around the loop of firelit faces. The orator raised his hand majestically. " I would not for the world arouse your righteous wrath." A chorus of whistles and approving howls greeted this pious declaration. " No, not for both worlds ! " Patsy added, in a deep pathos that convulsed his intimates and thrilled the under-classmen. " But Lord- Cuthbert-Rawlins conies to-night to visit us upon this historic ground." (Cheers.) " I would suggest no indecorum " (this with a long, leering pause) ; " but shall his slur upon America s fair name go unchallenged here ? What say you, sons of old Ossian ? " There was a smashing chorus of big- lunged exclamations, and some sophomores craftily tossed a couple of cannon-crackers into the freshman segment of the great cir cle. " Silence ! " shrieked Tiernan. " Silence, Americans ! Shall a British envoy stand upon our campus and repeat his insults to our face ? I pause for a reply." 175 Incident of the British Ambassador He scanned the outskirts of the audience, as if in reality awaiting a response. At that moment, from the rear of the crowd, came a shrill cat-call. The orator rose to his full est height, and whirled around with out stretched finger and gleaming eyes. " Fel lows ! " he hissed melodramatically, " there is Lord-Cuthbert-Rawlins now!" On the steps of the dormitory nearest the President s house stood a tall, Roman- nosed, white-side-whiskered personage in evening dress, blinking benignantly at the scene before him. He must have heard every word of Tiernan s speech, but he smiled down in superior fashion at the crowd that swept toward him so tumultuously. A few hisses were mingled with the applause that greeted him, but there were many in the throng who evidently felt that Tiernan had gone too far and were desirous of maintain ing Ossian s reputation for impartial hos pitality. But friends and foes united in a trampling chorus of " Speech! Speech! We want a speech!" The British Ambassador drew a monocle from his waistcoat pocket, adjusted it lei- 176 Incident of the British Ambassador surely, hemmed two or three times, and then, in an odd, falsetto voice that sharpened every word and sent it uncomfortably home, delivered himself of a most singular speech indeed. It was an explanation, he declared, of the misapprehensions under which his young friend who had just addressed this audience was evidently laboring, and he pro ceeded to tell what he had really meant to say at that historic dinner the week before. But his explanation made matters infinitely worse ; at every turn he let slip phrases that betrayed his contempt for the United States ; it would have been absurd, if it had not been so outrageous, to listen to those supercilious sentences, delivered in a style that out- heroded even the check-suited Englishman of the variety stage. At first the crowd had been decorous enough, but from moment to moment it was obviously escaping from the control of the sober-minded, and soon it be came openly derisive. The Ambassador now seemed to lose his temper likewise, and his maladroit compliments turned into thin ly disguised vituperation. His audience be came a surging mob. In vain did Lord 177 Incident of the British Ambassador Cuthbert Rawlins wave his angular arms, or strike attitudes of defiant, monocled pa tience. When Patsy Tiernan yelled " Down with him ! " the spark touched the powder. A dozen hot-heads actually rushed the steps and laid hands upon Her Majesty s accred ited representative. Then came the worst of all. " The rail ! The rail! Where s the Lincoln rail?" shouted Tiernan, as if beside himself with fury. Forth from its resting-place in one of the dormitories was dragged that precious relic of the 1860 Presidential campaign : a fence-rail reputed to have been split by the hands of the martyr President. " Put him on a sealskin ! " yelled some one. " Oh, ride him on a sealskin, sure enough ! " As if by magic a skin rug, snatched from somebody s floor, was tossed over the sharp corners of the rail. Twenty reckless satel lites of Patsy Tiernan lifted the Ambassador from his feet. He made the best of an un speakably bad matter, shrugged his aristo- 178 Incident of the British Ambassador cratic shoulders, and flung his leg over the rail. It was hoisted to the shoulders of the maddened young patriots, and three times did the frantic procession circle the huge bonfire, amid the rapturous cheers of half the university, and the silent apprehensions or awe-stricken exclamations of the other half. Then it vanished toward Tommy s house, just as the university proctor had fought his way to within a hand s grasp of the rail. At this instant one of the very knowing freshmen nudged a classmate and whis pered, " Ain t you on to it, Atkins ? I am. Those upper-classmen are trying to play horse with us. That ain t Lord Cuthbert Rawlins at all. That s Andrews, Ninety- Blank ! " On the other side of the bonfire, at the same moment, an idea suggested itself to a sallow youth with glasses. He edged away circumspectly, and then dashed off to the telegraph office. "This will be hot stuff for The Enter prise" he murmured, and he glanced over his shoulder as he ran, to make sure 179 Incident of the British Ambassador that The Unspeakable s correspondent had not taken a hint from his own departure. It was 9.20. The Ossian office closed at 9.30, unless there were dispatches waiting to be sent ; and the heart of The Enterprise correspondent was tuneful as he discovered that there was nobody ahead of him and that the operator was still at his desk. He scribbled the first sheet of his story, and pushed it under the wire screen toward the operator. " Here, Fred," said he, " I want you to rush this. I ll have some more ready in a minute, and to-night I ll try to keep ahead of you." He laughed gleefully at the thought of his beat. But the operator shook his head, without so much as glancing at him. " You ll have to wait," he remarked. " Mr. Andrews has the wire just now ; " and he clicked away with irritating composure. A five-dollar bill reposing just then in his trousers pocket may have aided his philosophy. He was telegraphing page after page of the Uni versity Catalogue, in order to hold the wire, while the editor of The Orbit, opening his 180 Incident of the British Ambassador eyes as sheet after sheet of that valuable matter was brought him, perceived a jour nalistic feat, and hazarded the opinion that perhaps young Andrews was not after all an irremediable fool. Meantime The Enterprise man paced the office anxiously, and before long The Un- speakablc s correspondent came panting in. The latter s face fell as he recognized his rival. " How long ll I have to wait, Fred? " he demanded. " No idea," said Fred, looking up from the catalogue with a yawn. He seemed mightily indifferent. Just then Andrews, Ninety-Blank, saun tered into the office, a bit of lamb s wool still sticking to his cheek and the powder only half out of his hair. He nodded cor dially to the correspondents, and marched straight around to the inner inclosure, where he seated himself comfortably by the oper ator, and began to sharpen a lead pencil. " Could you tell me how soon you ll be through, Mr. Andrews?" ventured The Enterprise youth. He was only a soph- 181 Incident of the British Ambassador omore ; last year a nod from Jerry Andrews would have made him supremely happy. " Possibly by twelve," replied Andrews courteously, " but I wouldn t like to prom ise." " I suppose not ! " said the sophomore, in dignified irony, and he strolled to the door with as much indifference as he could assume. The Enterprise went to press at midnight. The only other telegraph office within possible reach, at that hour, was ten miles away. If he had a wheel, though, he might make it in time, and prevent The Orbit s beat. And, behold, there was The Unspeakable s fellow s wheel at the very curbstone, with even the lantern lighted. He took one look at the owner, who was arguing hotly with Fred, swung his leg over the saddle, and pedalled off, under the clear October starlight. Five miles out of town he narrowly es caped collision with a closed carriage, in which were seated the President of the Uni versity and Lord Cuthbert Rawlins, driving homeward in great peacefulness of heart and chatting confidentially, as it happened, about 182 Incident of the British Ambassador the unfortunate antagonism to Great Britain which is sometimes exhibited in unculti vated American society. RIOT AT OSSIAN. RIDDEN ON A RAIL!! ABE LINCOLN SPLIT IT ; LORD CUTHBERT RAW- LINS RODE IT, WITH A SEALSKIN SADDLE ! BRITISH AMBASSADOR LEARNS THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN COLLEGE BOYS. QUERY: WILL THE LION ROAR? These were the headlines of the " exclu sive " intelligence which the New York Orbit spread before its readers the next morning. The beat was the talk of News paper Row, for the scanty version of the affair telegraphed to The Enterprise from a town ten miles away from the scene of the riot was scarcely worth considering as news, though it confirmed the most startling feat ures of the incident. The other morning papers issued later editions, embodying The Orbit s story, for there was no mis taking the popular excitement, or the tem per of the crowds that surrounded the bul- 183 Incident of the British Ambassador letin boards. Some were incredulous, ready to recognize a colossal American joke, though not quite convinced that it was a joke. More were grave, knowing the ten sion that already existed between the two countries, and that the slightest strain might cause irrevocable disaster. The real crisis, however, was not in New York, as everybody knows, but in Lon don. The New York correspondent of the London Times lost his head for once, and cabled The Orbit s account of the Os- sian incident entire. The Times extras were flung upon the streets shortly after two o clock. If New York had rocked like a ship in a storm at the news of the insult to Lord Cuthbert Rawlins, London was like the sea itself. American securities went down, down, and out of sight. But nobody cared. The Ossian incident had been the lightning flash that revealed how far apart the two nations had drifted. Better war now than another week of heart-breaking anxiety. Let it come ! When the House of Commons convened that afternoon, the members had to fight 184 Incident of the British Ambassador their way through a mob a hundred thou sand strong that besieged the Palace Yard. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was late in taking his seat, and when he strolled for ward to his place on the government bench, his careless manner was strangely at vari ance with the drawn lines around his mouth and his haggard eyes. For three hours he had been cabling to Washington and to the British consul at New York for confirma tion of the news about Lord Cuthbert Raw- lins, but, beyond the bare fact that the Brit ish ambassador had gone to Ossian the day before, no tidings of him were obtainable. He had disappeared from the sight of the Foreign Office as completely as if the rail split by Abe Lincoln had borne him off the planet, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs was in despair. And where was Lord Cuthbert Rawlins? He was on the golf links at Ossian, playing the game of his life. While the President of the University was waiting for his distin guished guest to appear at breakfast, his secretary had handed him The Orbit. A 185 Incident of the British Ambassador thousand copies had been rushed into town by the early train ; every student had seen one ; and four reporters were already in the front hall to interview his lordship. In the face of this annoyance, the result, no doubt, of the silliness of some new correspondent, Tommy exhibited that astuteness in which Ossian found a perpetual delight. He in vited the reporters to come again in an hour, got The Orbit out of sight, and told his best stories at the breakfast table until the chapel bell had long stopped ringing for morning prayers. Then he looked at his watch, declared it was so late that he would abandon his intention of taking his guest to morning chapel did he not know that an ecstatic crowd of collegians were awaiting the arrival of the British envoy ! and pro posed that instead of looking over the uni versity buildings they spend the morning on the links. Lord Cuthbert Rawlins was a famous player, as everybody knew, and Tommy s son was then the holder of the in tercollegiate championship. To the links the party drove then, by a circuitous road, the wise Tommy leaving no hint of their 1 86 Incident of the British Ambassador destination. Hour after hour, through that long forenoon, reporters and callers and telegrams and cablegrams accumulated in the President s mansion, while Lord Raw- lins, in total ignorance of any international excitement, went over the eighteen-hole course like a boy of twenty, and at the end of the match had the champion three down. At lunch-time, and not before, he was told in Tommy s inimitable style of the news paper joke that had been practised upon the public at his expense. His lordship dis creetly chose to consider it a deliciously characteristic example of American humor. He even smiled at the cablegrams which had been forwarded to him from Washington, though his smile by this time was decidedly a diplomatic one. Yet he sent a semi- jocular dispatch to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and then devoted himself to the ex cellent luncheon, which was attended by the heads of the departments of the university, all eager to atone for the silly action of some unknown correspondent of a sensational newspaper. They laughed at all of his lord ship s anecdotes, and talked solemnly to him 187 Incident of the British Ambassador about the brotherhood of educated men on both sides of the Atlantic. And at that very instant, making due time allowance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, white-faced and sick at heart, was trying to explain to an angry House that it had been impossible to communicate directly with the Ambassador to the United States, but that there was no reasonable doubt that the Os- sian incident was largely exaggerated, and that, in any case, Her Majesty s government could be relied on to take such steps as were necessary to preserve the national honor. Friendship with the United States, it was needless to say, was too important to be lightly thrust aside, and so forth and so forth. It was useless. The House would have none of his phrases. Fifty members were on their feet at once, shouting and gesticu lating at the Speaker. A London Socialist got the floor, as it chanced, and threatened the Government with a resolution of lack of confidence. It was an ill wind that would blow his coterie no good, and this was a whirlwind. For a moment it looked as if 1 88 Incident of the British Ambassador the Government was doomed, but the leader of the House got the floor by a trick, and in a masterly little speech moved a war budget of ten million pounds. To that appeal to British patriotism there could be but one re sponse. The budget was rushed from read ing to reading without a single dissenting voice ; the alarming intelligence was flashed to every corner of the wide world ; and just then the Minister of Foreign Affairs re ceived his dispatch from Lord Cuthbert Rawlins, written during lunch in the dining-room of the President s mansion at Ossian, United States of America. He consulted a moment with his col leagues, and then read it to the House. It is famous now, and, indeed, it is said that Earl Rawlins s present political station is due to the singular popularity which that dispatch brought him. It ran : "Rumor of insult groundless. Newspaper joke. Entire courtesy everyzvhere. Have just beaten American champion at golf, breaking all American records." The House came down from the sublime with a bump. A pompous gentleman of the 189 Incident of the British Ambassador Opposition who began a sarcastic speech about the American conception of a joke was laughed off his feet, as wave after wave of merriment rolled heavily over the surface of the House. There were cheers for Lord Cuthbert Rawlins, cheers for the golf cham pionship, cheers for Her Majesty, cheers galore ; and thus ended, as far as Parliament was concerned, the incident of the British Ambassador. When Jerry Andrews reported for duty that afternoon, the crowd was jostling yet around The Orbit s bulletin boards. That enterprising sheet was still throwing off ex tra after extra to exploit its journalistic feat, treating the whole affair with the cheer ful cynicism which The Orbit prided itself upon maintaining in every exigency. Its editor leaned on his elbows blandly as Jerry walked up to his desk. " You found some news over there, I judge," he remarked. " Or made some," replied Andrews, de murely, catching his eye. " Humph ! " said the editor with Delphic ambiguity ; but for the first time in the tradi- 190 Incident of the British Ambassador tions of the paper, he offered the reporter a cigar. That cigar is hanging over Mr. An- drews s desk, in The Orbit office, at this moment. 191 The Fish- Warden of Madrid The Fish- Warden of Madrid TT was universally remarked in Madrid Madrid, Vermont that the death of Beriah Tate was a loss to the town. Even the time of his departure was inconvenient, being only a week after the March meeting in which, for the tenth year in succession, he had been elected first selectman, road-mas ter, overseer of the poor, and constable. In order to fill these various positions it was necessary to call a special town meeting. The orthodox church, likewise, was forced to choose a deacon in Beriah s stead, and a new representative on the committee of the County Bible Society. Of all the offices in church and state which the departed had filled so acceptably, there was but one that now went begging. It was that of fish- warden. The fish and game laws had never been 195 The Fish -Warden of Madrid taken very seriously by the natives of Madrid. Beriah had been induced to accept the post simply because the Tate place lay upon the hill-top above the junction of the East and West Branches, and the fish-com missioner argued that the city fellows who came up on Sundays and out of season to catch four-inch trout would be frightened off if they knew that the deacon was a war den. And so they were, but the warden let his own summer boarders fish as they liked, without asking them any questions for con science sake. He nailed a synopsis of the fish and game laws, printed on white cotton cloth, to the horse-barn door, next to the ad vertisement of Bowker s fertilizers ; and his personal responsibility for his boarders ended here. It was because of Beriah Tate s long experience with human nature that he was such a loss to the town. A month after his death one of the fish- commissioners drove into the yard of the Tate place. Alonzo Robbins, the hired man, was raking up the chips left from the winter s wood-pile, under the close super vision of Beriah s widow. 196 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Expecting your boarders soon, Mis Tate? " inquired the commissioner. " Not till July," replied the widow, plain tively. " But he was always slow about hav ing the yard cleaned up, and so I thought that this year I d be a little forehanded. You left a chip there, Alonzo." " Beriah s a great loss," volunteered the commissioner. " He was kind of handy to talk to the boarders after supper," assented Mrs. Tate, " and to keep em feeling good right along. I don t know what we re going to do with out him." " Mis Tate, that cake ought to come out of the oven ! " called a clear young voice from the kitchen window. " You ll have to excuse me," exclaimed the widow. " Won t you come in ? " The commissioner shook his head, and the kitchen door slammed behind Beriah s sad-voiced but efficient relict. The hired man glanced up at the commis sioner. An indolent deviltry lurked in his black eyes, but his olive face was otherwise expressionless and rather stupid. The com- 197 The Fish -Warden of Madrid missioner coughed queerly, and the two men grinned. "Guess you ll have to take it this summer," commented the commissioner. " When s your year up ? " " Next January," said Alonzo. The commissioner scrutinized his broad, easy-hung shoulders, and the slouching, tireless fashion in which he was pushing the rake. " I suppose we ve got to have another fish-warden," he said, abruptly, " and it ought to be somebody in this district. Will you try it, Lonzo ? " The hired man reflected. " He didn t make out much with it," he drawled. " Just was fish-warden. It didn t amount to noth- in ." " You can make it amount to something, if you want to." Alonzo pushed the rake a trifle more de liberately. " I ain t office-seekin , I guess." " How about hog-reeve? " suggested the commissioner. The shot told. " Well," said Alonzo, de fiantly, " I s pose they elected me hog-reeve 198 The Fish -Warden of Madrid at March meetin just because they thought it would be smart, along toward the end of the afternoon. They think that the Rob- binses ain t clever enough for that, not scarcely. Just let any of Alf Raymond s pigs get through the fence this summer, and I ll show em, my gorry ! " " That s right ! " cried the commissioner. Alonzo kicked vindictively at a deeply buried chip. " There ain t any money in bein fish-warden, is there? " " You get half the fine if you catch any body violating the law. Still, if you don t want it " " What do you do with em if you do catch em?" " Why, arrest them. Then you drive the fellow over to Warwick to the justice of the peace, and he collects the fine. That part of it is easy enough. I ll give you a little book that explains everything. Still, if you don t want to try it, I don t know but Alf Raymond would take it." It was the com missioner s trump card, but he played it with a fine carelessness. " I might think it over for a few days," 199 The Fish -Warden of Madrid drawled the hired man. " I dun no but I ll take it, and then again I dun no as I will." " Oh, well," said the commissioner, pick ing up his reins, " I can t come way over here again. I guess that s Alf coming now, ain t it ? " He chirruped to the horse. " My gorry ! I ve got half a mind to try it," asseverated Alonzo. " Very well, then," said the commissioner, promptly thrusting the landing net, as it were, under his captive. "I ll have the papers made out right away. Got a middle name?" HP " T. ? " queried the commissioner. " Alonzo Turnham Robbins," explained the hired man, stiffly, beginning to rake again. " Oh ! " said the commissioner. The Turnhams were considered " mean blood " in Madrid ; at least half of them were " on the town." He cramped his. buggy. " Hen rietta going to stay along this summer?" he inquired, casually, nodding toward Mrs. Tate s kitchen. 200 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Yes, I guess she s goin to stay along," repeated the hired man, indifferently. " Makes a nice girl for Mis Tate," said the commissioner. " Well, Beriah was a great loss. G long ! " II AFTER supper the hired man seated him self upon the chopping-block, facing the door of the horse-barn, and began to spell out the fine print upon the Fish and Game League s poster. The seriousness of his mental attitude was indicated by the fact that he was smoking a Pittsburg stogy, a rite which he ordinarily performed only on Sunday afternoons. The April dusk was closing in, and down by the brook the frogs were calling. The scent of coming spring was in the air. " Fish when not to be taken, " Alonzo repeated, slowly. " Black Bass Between Jan. ist and June 1 5th. Penalty $5 each. " Wall-eyed Pike, or Pike-Perch, White Perch, or Muskallonge " some of these 201 The Fish -Warden of Madrid words were hard reading " Between April i ^th and June i$th $5 each. " Trout, Land-locked Salmon, Salmon- Trout, or Longe Between Sept. ist and May ist not more than $10 each. " Trout, Land-locked Salmon, and Sal mon-Trout, when taken less than six inches in length, must be immediately returned, with least possible injury, to waters from which taken> not more than $10 each/ " " That s it ! " murmured the hired man, solemnly. " That s the law my gorry ! When taken less than six inches in length, must be immediately returned with least possible injury to waters from which taken/ You can t get around that." " Reading the Bible out here, Lonzo ? " inquired a cool, chaffing voice at his shoul der. " I thought it must be Sunday, from that cigar. Phew ! " He turned, shamefacedly, but pulled ob stinately at the stogy. " Don t you like it, Henrietta ? " he said, with a foolish smile. Henrietta ignored him. She had been bending over the sink, doing up the supper dishes, and now she patted her disarranged 202 The Fish -Warden of Madrid curls into place again, with lithe, coquettish movements of her bare, rosy arms, as if the door of the horse-barn were a mirror. He watched her, his black eyes glistening. There was something provoking in the girl s slight, delicious figure, faint color, and the blue eyes that commonly glanced at him with dainty contempt. She was eighteen ; " hired help " for the time being, but still the niece of a member of the Legislature and cousin to a home missionary. She looked down upon Alonzo as a dullard, as related to those Turnhams who were always coming upon the town. In spite of the in timacy forced upon them as members of the same household, she was secretly afraid of him. She thought his eyes were wicked; she grew restless when he stared at her in stupid admiration ; and she would not have let him know it for the world. "Don t you like it, Henrietta?" he re peated, stolidly, balancing the stogy be tween his fingers. She bent toward him suddenly and snatched it, tossing it over the barn-yard fence before he recovered from his surprise. 203 The Fish -Warden of Madrid Then she pretended she had burned her hand. He leaped up to examine it, where upon she hid her bare arms behind her back with a gesture infinitely challenging. But she knew beforehand that he would not dare. Confused, admiring, helpless, he stared at her. She faced him like a triumphant god dess, serenely taunting. " What on earth are you doing? " she de manded. " I was settin here mindin my own busi ness," he drawled. " What business have you with the game laws? Going fishing?" And she began to run over some of the unfamiliar names upon the poster Mitskallonge Longe and lower down, Capercailzie Black Game Ptarmigan. She had missed a spelling prize once on that last word. "Maybe I m goin fishin . And then, again, maybe not." She shrugged her shoulders. " I know who ll clean em, if you do." "You won t, eh? Well, maybe I ain t goin ," he confided, cunningly. " Don t be smart," she advised. 204 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Maybe I ll let the other fellows catch the fish, and I ll catch them, my gorry ! " "What?" " Fish-warden," he confessed, with an embarrassed smile. She laughed in his face. " You a fish- warden? You can t catch anybody. You don t move fast enough." "I don t?" he cried, provoked to un wonted daring, and he lunged toward her with outstretched arms. His fingers touched her waist, but she dodged him and stood panting. " No, you don t, Lonzo Robbins," she said, coolly. " Don t you wish you could ? " He breathed heavily, too, but made no answer. The croaking of the frogs down by the East Branch seemed of a sudden strangely loud to the girl. " I guess I must go in," she remarked, in a quieter mood. But she kept her eyes on him. " Don t tell Mis Tate," he entreated. "Tell what?" " Bout my bein fish-warden." "Oh!" 205 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " She might not like it, long as twas one of his offices, you know. And she might think I wa n t tendin to business. You won t, will you ? " " Not if you behave yourself, Alonzo Robbins," she replied, meaningly. He did not answer, and they sauntered toward the house, side by side, in the falling dusk. The hired man did not again betray any open interest in the synopsis of the fish and game laws. But, when a fresh poster was sent him the following week, together with his papers as fish-warden, he carried the weather-beaten one up to his chamber un der the eaves of the kitchen roof, and studied it doggedly, night after night, until he knew its provisions by heart. Ill THERE was high water in all the Madrid brooks that spring, and the fishing was late. The men who had formerly driven into town Sunday mornings, leaving their buggies hitched among the willows at the bridge, appeared but rarely, and never stayed long 206 The Fish -Warden of Madrid enough to allow Alonzo a look at their baskets. The early boarders at the Tate place were mostly maiden ladies with liter ary proclivities, and the only fisherman that appeared among them was an expert with the fly, who scorned to bring home anything less than quarter-pounders. June passed and July came, and still the hired man had had no opportunity to prove his efficiency as an officer of the law. Henrietta had kept his secret, though her ambiguous remarks to him in Mrs. Tate s presence had been upon the point of exposing him a dozen times. Whenever they happened to be alone to gether, she rallied him upon his lack of offi cial energy, until he was thoroughly piqued. " My gorry," he used to say to himself at night, as the tattered poster caught his black Turnham eyes " my gorry, I ll show her ! " And it stuck in his head that it would be a fine revenge upon her to take her down to Warwick to hear a band concert, or perhaps to the cattle show in September provided she would go with him upon the money that he proposed to get as his share of the fines. 207 The Fish -Warden of Madrid One morning in the second week of July Mrs. Tate received a telegram from Hart ford, signed Benj. F. Dupree, requesting her to reserve a room for him, and to send someone to meet him at the Madrid station at four-thirty that afternoon. The tele graph office was three miles away, and the delivery of the message cost Mrs. Tate a dol lar and a half, which she thoughtfully added to the price of the room that was set in or der for the stranger. It was in the height of the haying season, and Henrietta, the only person who could be spared in mid-after noon, put the mare into the Concord wagon and drove down to meet Mr. Dupree. Alonzo happened to be in the yard, un loading hay, when she returned, just as, doubtless, Mrs. Tate happened to be look ing through her bedroom blinds, and all the boarders happened to be grouped upon the front piazza. As the mare swung around into the shadow of the maples, Alonzo s eye was the first to detect that Henrietta was not driving. She was sitting on the extreme end of the seat, watching, apparently, the trail of the 208 The Fish -Warden of Madrid front wheel upon the dusty road. The mo ment the wagon halted she sprang out with out a word, and marched, red-faced and straight-shouldered, toward the kitchen door, leaving the hired man to do the hon ors of the Tate place for the new arrival. Mr. Benj. F. Dupree tossed the reins to him, and leisurely descended ; then scruti nized the mare s fore legs a moment, passed one hand judiciously over the off knee it had been slightly sprained the summer be fore and uttered just one word of Green Mountain freemasonry : "Ham letonian?" "Yes, sir," drawled the delighted hired man. " Straight as a string. Dr. Johnson out of Lem Payson s Susie." The new-comer nodded respectfully, and stood by in silence while Alonzo pulled his suit-case from under the seat of the wagon. He was anywhere from twenty-five to forty, slight of stature, smooth-shaven and merry- eyed, and the youthfulness of his appearance was increased by the latest fashion in colored shirt and white collar, and a marked-down golf suit. 209 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Look out for that rod," he said, briskly, as Alonzo lifted a bundle made up of walk ing-stick, umbrella, and rod-case, where upon the fish-warden laid the bundle very cautiously upon the grass. Mrs. Beriah appeared at this juncture, and plaintively presented herself, Mr. Du- pree attending her to the front door and up stairs to his room with elaborate ceremonial. He came to supper in his golf suit, shortly thereafter, and his conversation with the maiden ladies was commendably versatile. He was a broker, they learned, and was just removing from Hartford to New York. They quite counted upon him to enliven their after-supper session upon the front piazza, but after a few moments of desultory admiration of the view, Mr. Dupree disap pointed them by filling a bull-dog pipe and sauntering around the corner of the house. He found Alonzo seated on the kitchen porch, whistling to the tame crow. Henri etta had been there, too, but she disappeared promptly when she saw the broker ap proaching. The hired man refused a prof fered cigar principally because he was too 210 The Fish -Warden of Madrid surprised to accept it but Mr. Dupree proved himself companionable, and it was quite dark when their exchange of views upon Vermont horses and Connecticut leaf tobacco and the pleasures of country life was terminated. As Alonzo went up to bed, he paused a moment in the kitchen, where Henrietta sat alone over the county paper. " Real smart feller," volunteered the hired man, with a nod of his head toward the front of the house. Henrietta read on in silence. " Guess he s something of a fisherman," persisted Alonzo. " Wants me to try the West Branch with him to-morrow, if it s too wet to mow." "He s an awful fool," said Henrietta, curtly. The hired man stared. Then his slow wits recalled the fact that she had seemed out of temper when she drove in with the stranger from the depot. " Why, what you got against him, Henri etta?" He had that foolish smile which the girl detested. 211 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Oh, he s horrid ! " she burst out, with feminine conclusiveness. Whereupon she folded the paper with unnecessary precision, and proceeded to wind the kitchen clock noisily. The baffled hired man, quite used, alas! to being ignored, shook his head and grinned, and tiptoed up the creaking back stairs to his tiny room. Before he un dressed he put his head out of the window for one more guess at the weather probabili ties, and then, impelled by some vagrant fancy, he pulled the weather-beaten poster of the fish and game laws out of his pocket, and read it through again. IV THE next morning, however, dawned bright and hot, and Alonzo spent the day upon the seat of the mowing-machine. In the middle of the forenoon, Mr. Dupree strolled down through the meadow, rod in hand, and carrying a new fish-basket 212 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " I suppose it s rather too clear for good fishing," he remarked, cheerfully, as Alonzo reined in his horses. " Well, it s consid able clear," Alonzo ad mitted. " Will you tell me once more how to get to that Porter brook?" Alonzo repeated his directions, and watched with some envy the alert figure of the broker striding away over the meadow. Mr. Dupree had slung his basket around his neck in a curious fashion, but the hired man supposed it was the latest style. He clucked regretfully to the horses, gave a pull at the handle-bar, and the machine clattered for ward again upon its monotonous round. Dupree did not return to dinner, but late in the afternoon the hired man saw him tramping home through the upper pasture. " Did that feller from Hartford get any trout?" he inquired carelessly of Mis Beriah, as he was washing up for supper by the back door. " Seems to me he did get a few," replied the widow. " Henrietta thought they were most too small to clean." 213 The Fish -Warden of Madrid The fish-warden dried his face thought fully. After supper he seated himself upon the side porch, and lighting a stogy, so as not to seem dependent upon Mr. Dupree, he awaited the latter s coming. But the broker lingered upon the front piazza. A niece of one of the maiden ladies had arrived that afternoon from Kansas City, and Mr. Du pree was occupied with the congenial task of pointing out to her those very charms of the evening landscape which twenty-four hours before he had himself forsaken for a pipe. The girl from Kansas City seemed to have a large fund of sympathetic apprecia tion. The hired man, therefore, was left to his solitary smoke. By and by Henrietta came out, bringing a rocking-chair from the sit ting-room. Apparently she was intending to stay there. " Ain t you kind o fixed up ? " demanded Alonzo, admiringly, gazing at her freshly starched shirt-waist and jaunty white tie. " I don t know," she replied, in a tone cal culated to discourage conversation. 214 The Fish -Warden of Madrid Alonzo waited tranquilly and then tried again : " Got a new boarder, ain t we ? What does she look like?" " She s dreadful citified," said the country beauty. " And she s making a fool of her self out there with that Hartford man this very minute. But, then, I don t care if she does," she added, smoothing out her skirts. Alonzo thought this lofty indifference to the foibles of the Kansas City girl very be coming; but it was too complex a subject for his conversational powers. He attempted something easier. "Where s Mis Beriah?" " Out there," Henrietta sighed scorn fully, with a toss of her head toward the front of the house. " If city boarders want to see us, they know where to find us quick enough, without our traipsing round after them." " That s so," approved Alonzo. " I kind o thought Mr. Dupree d be round here again to-night, to tell me what luck he had fishin ." " He ain t any fisherman," declared the 215 The Fish -Warden of Madrid girl. " I don t believe he ever saw a trout before, to hear him talk about em." " Wa n t they good ones ? " asked the war den, cunningly. Bout so long," she said, contemptuous ly, marking off some three inches upon her pink forefinger. " Lemme see," and Alonzo laid his big brown finger against hers. To his surprise, she did not withdraw her hand, and he meas ured with painstaking deliberation. " I don t suppose you d want to swear to that, would you, Henrietta ? " he ventured, with a suppressed excitement that betrayed itself only in his eyes. They were shining in the twilight. She caught their expression, and snatched her finger from his grasp. " I don t know whether I would or not," she declared, put ting her hands behind her head, and begin ning to rock vigorously. "Sh!" warned Alonzo. A procession of boarders, headed by Du- pree and the Kansas City maiden, streamed volubly around the corner of the house and across the back yard, halting at last by the 216 The Fish -Warden of Madrid pasture bars to watch the moon rise over Bald Head. The discovery of this interest ing method of killing time on summer even ings was due to the genius of the lamented Beriah. Nobody paid any attention to the hired man and hired girl upon the side porch. The procession irritated Henrietta. She still resented Mr. Dupree s playful familiar ity toward her when he took away the reins while she was driving him from the depot ; she resented the fact that to-night, when she felt quite able to hold her own with him, he was giving her no opportunity to exhibit her resentment ; half unconsciously, also, she re sented his golf suit and his shiny collars and cuffs, while her own stupid admirer sat here at her feet in sour workaday clothes and she knew she hated the girl from Kansas City. An unreasoning antagonism to these " city folks " took possession of her. " Why wouldn t you swear to it ? " per sisted Alonzo. " Catch him yourself ! " she said, low- voiced. " It ain t any of my business." He giggled foolishly. 217 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " You ll never catch him by sitting here and laughing," she broke in, bitterly. "And you ain t quick enough, anyway. These city fellows are too smart for you, Lonzo. They re too smart for any of us, I guess ! " " If I ll catch him," proposed Alonzo, " will you go down to Warwick to a band concert with me, on the money ? " " In a minute ! " exclaimed the girl, reck lessly. Then her conscience misgave her, and she tried to hedge. " Come to think, though, it don t seem quite right to take ad vantage of one of our own boarders. And, anyway, I don t believe Mis Tate would want to have me go to Warwick, and " But, to her amazement, the hired man had leaped to his feet, and was crossing the yard to intercept the returning procession of boarders. " Good-evenin , Mr. Dupree," she heard him drawl. " You don t want to go fishin to-morrow mornin , do you ? " 218 The Fish -Warden of Madrid V THERE was a delicious morning coolness in the shadow of the alders along the tiny brook that crept drowsily through the home meadow of the Tate place. The dew was heavy on the rank grass, and Dupree s golf hose were drenched to the knee. But he was happy in the sportsmanlike sensation, and busy, besides, for the brook had been posted for a couple of years, and was full of fierce little fingerlings. Alonzo stood a trifle back of the broker, advising him how to bait his hook, to shorten his line, to keep out of sight, and various other brotherly ad monitions. Dupree was over-anxious, but naturally light-handed, and trout after trout became his prey. Once, upon basketing a particularly small one^ he glanced question- ingly at Alonzo, but the hired man made no comment. The next fish was even smaller a wriggling, red-bellied wretch, some three inches and a half long. Dupree un hooked it, laid it across the palm of his hand hesitatingly, and then let it slide irretriev ably into the basket. 219 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " They don t enforce that six-inch law up here, do they ? " " Not generally," said Alonzo, with so little exhibition of interest that the good- natured broker thought he was getting bored. " You needn t stay, Alonzo," he sug gested, " if you don t want to. I m all right now. I wish you had brought a rod, too." " I might just as well stay, I guess," was the laconic reply. " It s more exciting than mowing grass, anyway ! " assented Dupree, in a buoyant whisper. And he jerked a tiny trout thirty or forty feet into the meadow, and went on to the next hole, while the warden consid erately tramped through the grass after the flapping fish. In this brotherly fashion did the two men traverse the entire meadow, until they reached the swamp. " I don t know whether to push on or not," said the broker. " I ve got enough to amount to something already." " They ll amount to somethin consid - 220 The Fish -Warden of Madrid able," remarked the hired man, cordially. " I wouldn t go any further, if I was you. Why not count em ? " Mr. Dupree emptied the basket on the grass, lined the bottom artistically with ferns, and put back the trout affectionately, one by one, while the warden kept faithful tally. There were twenty-three, and pre cisely fourteen of them, as Alonzo reckoned, rendered Mr. Dupree liable to a fine, " not to exceed ten dollars apiece." It was time to act. The warden coughed slightly, and opened his mouth to pronounce the fateful sentence. Then he remembered something in his yel low-covered book of instructions about the unlawfulness of taking a basket while it was on the fisherman s person, and the advan tage of having a witness. Perhaps, too, his conscience pricked him for the contemplated disloyalty to a boarder. At any rate, the words merely bubbled in his throat. " What did you say ? " asked Dupree, busy in tying up his rod. " I ain t said anything," exclaimed Alonzo, hastily. 221 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " I m under the greatest obligations to you," remarked the broker. " Oh, I dun no bout that," replied Alon- zo, deprecatingly. The two men tramped back to the house in silence. The warden s heart pounded against his ribs ; to arrest a man took more courage than he had thought, for all his twenty-three years and his bull strength. They entered the kitchen side by side. Mrs. Tate had driven a boarder to the early train, and Henrietta was alone, struggling impa tiently with the breakfast dishes, and won dering whether Alonzo would really dare to arrest the broker. She turned her head as the men entered, and flushed a trifle, drying her pink arms with the dish-towel. " See what I ve caught ! " cried Dupree, jubilantly, unslinging the basket from his shoulder and depositing it upon the table. His triumphant air was assurance enough that the warden had held his peace. The girl stole a glance at Alonzo ; he could not tell whether it was amusement or contempt or fright that made her blue eyes dilate, but at that look he took the bit in his teeth. 222 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Take notice, Henrietta, that he admits bavin catched the trout ! " he broke out. " They ain t on his person any longer, and fourteen of em are under the law. Mr. Du- pree, I ve got to arrest you, in the name of the State of Vermont." The amazed broker faced around. " You arrest me! " he exclaimed. " Certain ; I m the fish-warden of this town, and I ve got to see that the law is en forced." Henrietta s face was white. " Don t have any trouble," she moaned. " Why, you took me down to the brook yourself ! " cried Dupree. " You stood by and encouraged me right along " and he stopped, aghast at the thought of his com panion s duplicity. " That wa n t official," explained Alonzo, stolidly. " It wa n t any of my business if you chose to break the law, but I ve got to take official notice of it now." " What do you want of me ? " demanded the broker, with as much show of dignity as he could muster. 223 The Fish -Warden of Madrid * I want you to drive over to Warwick with me to a justice of the peace." " Suppose I don t choose to go ? " The hired man gazed at Dupree s diminu tive figure, bristling as it was with impotent fury. He burst into a big contemptuous laugh. " My gorry," he cried, stretching out his tanned thumb and forefinger, " I d squash you like a potato-bug if you acted foolish ! But I guess you ll go along without any fuss, won t you ? " " Don t, don t ! " sobbed Henrietta. " It s my fault." But neither of the men heeded her. " You dirty country loafer," began Du- pree, in concentrated passion; and then he gave way to a torrent of expletives not the ingenious euphemisms which occasionally pass for profanity in rural districts, but gen uine objurgations which would have done credit to any English-speaking seaport in the world. Henrietta ran out of the room in terror, and one of the maiden-lady boarders, coming innocently to the kitchen for a drink of water, returned to the front 224 The Fish -Warden of Madrid piazza with a tale that wounded the broker s reputation beyond surgery. VI TEN minutes later, the warden and his captive drove out of the yard. Dupree had agreed to go without any " foolishness," and had stood quietly by while Alonzo hitched the colt on to the buckboard. In vain, however, did the hired man call up the back stairs for his witness. Henrietta had disappeared, and Alonzo was forced to go without her. The six-mile drive to War wick the one village in Madrid township was passed in unbroken silence, except for a single episode. As the warden let the colt breathe for a moment at the top of the long est hill, Dupree turned to him with a rather ineffective laugh. " Look here," said he ; " you ve got me, I guess, and we won t say anything now about the squareness of it. You ve gone into this thing for the money in it, of course. May I make you a proposition ? " 225 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " Propositions don t cost nothing" drawled Alonzo. " I ll give you twenty dollars to turn the colt around." " Git ap ! " called the warden, virtuously. The colt sprang forward, and not another word was spoken on either side. The justice of the peace was alone in his tiny, white-painted office, adjoining the gen eral store. He was tipped back comfort ably in his chair, his feet resting upon some legislative reports, leisurely digging a sliver out of his finger with a jack-knife. He looked up amiably as Alonzo entered, the confiscated fish-basket in hand, followed by the broker. Dupree took off his hat as he came in. " What is it, Lonzo ? " coughed the jus tice, from the depths of his huge chest. " This feller s been violatin the fish V game laws," began the warden. " He s catched fourteen trout that are under length. I see him catch em, but I ve got a witness besides, only she ran upstairs, and, gorry! I didn t know how to get hold on her." " That ll do for now," remarked the jus- 226 The Fish -Warden of Madrid tice, shutting up his jack-knife. " You ad mit the facts, Mr. ? " " In one sense, yes," said the broker ; " but there are extenuating circumstances " "What s that?" " Extenuating circumstances," repeated Dupree, very distinctly. " Oh ! " said the justice. " Well, there has to be a complaint sworn to before the grand-juror first. Henry ! " There was a door from the back of the justice s office into the store, and in response to the summons the grand-juror of the town ship, who was wrapping up a cake of soap for a child, made his appearance. " Fish case," explained the justice, suc cinctly. " Tell Orville to come in, if he s got the mail distributed. You d just as lief wait a few minutes if he hain t ? " The broker assented. " Lemme see those fish," remarked the justice ; and he poked them gravely with his forefinger while the clerk of the court fin ished distributing the mail. " Fish with a worm ? " he inquired, in cavernous tones. 227 The Fish -Warden of Madrid Dupree nodded. That seemed to make his guilt all the deeper. The grand-juror and clerk of the court made their official entrance at this point, and the trial began. It was less spectacular than Dupree expected mainly a filling out of papers, and a lifting of Alonzo s brawny right hand in response to certain mumbled formulae, and the hateful story of the morn ing s fishing narrated in detail. Then came Dupree s turn. His gentlemanly bearing, his plea that it was a first offence, and Alon zo s manifest trickiness, were evidently in his favor. When he had finished his re marks, the grand-juror and the clerk of the court exchanged approving nods. But the justice turned over the pages of the Revised Statutes imperturbably. There was a long silence, save for the rustle of the slowly turned leaves. Alonzo mopped his face. This was harder work than mowing. " Twenty dollars," pronounced the justice at last, " taking into consideration the ex- teneratin circumstances of the case. Half 228 The Fish -Warden of Madrid the fine goes to the warden, don t it, Or- ville?" The clerk nodded. A smothered excla mation of disappointment escaped from Alonzo. Had it not been for his official in tegrity, he could have made more money than this by turning the colt around on the top of that last hill. " Your honor," said Mr. Dupree, " if that fine seems just to you, I have nothing more to say. But we left Mrs. Tate s in such un seemly haste that I find I have only a couple of dollars of change with me. What can I do?" The justice seemed nonplussed. But the grand-juror, fertile in resources, whispered to the clerk of the court. " How about a check ? " he suggested. Dupree turned to him, gratefully. " Why, of course ! " he said. " Thank you. I think I must have a blank check somewhere." And he began to search his pocket-book. " Good enough ! " he exclaimed, pulling out a tiny oblong of buff paper. " Well, see here," coughed the justice, " you re boarding up to Tate s, and it s all 229 The Fish -Warden of Madrid right, of course, only Lonzo s name had bet ter go on there, too, to identify you." " Certainly," agreed Dupree, and he drew a check for twenty dollars on the Asbestos Bank of Hartford, to the order of Alonzo T. Robbins, which the hired man clumsily in dorsed, and passed over to the clerk of the court, who gave him in return a ten-dollar bill. " That completes the transaction, I in fer? " inquired Dupree. " Guess that s all there is to it," replied the justice genially, pulling out his jack- knife, and beginning to examine his finger once more. " Will you have some bottled soda, gen tlemen ? " asked the grand-juror ; and the five men stalked into the general store and drank their soda from the original packages. Dupree had framed some choice sentences expressive of his opinion of Vermont law and Vermont courts and Vermonters in gen eral, which he had expected to deliver on the sidewalk. But the generosity of the grand- juror quite disarmed him, and he even went through the pretence of shaking hands all 230 The Fish -Warden of Madrid around except with the warden before stepping into the buckboard by Alonzo s side. On the way back to Madrid, however, he made up for his temporary abstinence. He told Alonzo exactly what he thought of him, painting with hot adjectives his ancestry, his career to the present hour, the probable fort unes of his posterity, and the sure fate that awaited him hereafter. It was a masterpiece of imprecatory eloquence, but the only ef fect it produced upon the stolid hired man was to bring to his face that expressionless grin which had proved so irritating to Hen rietta. " I ve got the ten dollars," reflected Alon zo ; " I can afford to let him do a little talk- in ." When they drove into the yard of the Tate place the boarders were at dinner, but Mrs. Tate, arrayed in her best black mohair, was pacing nervously back and forth upon the piazza. The buckboard halted there, and Dupree sprang out. But the widow had the first word. " Mr. Dupree," she declared, with shak- 231 The Fish -Warden of Madrid ing voice, " you ll find some dinner up in your room. This is an awful thing that s come upon us. I ve kep boarders for sev enteen years last June, and never had a pro fane swearer in my house before. Sh! Now, I don t want one word from you. The stage will be along here in half an hour, and it s going to stop to take you to the depot. I sha n t charge a penny for your board for these three days not one penny though, if you want to pay me the dollar and a half on that telegram, you can. Sh! I know all about it. If it wa n t right in the middle of the haying, I d send Alonzo off for playin a trick on a boarder ; but it s dreadful hard to get hired help, and I ll have to let him stay. But I ll stop the fish-warden business right away. Lonzo Robbins, you drive that colt over to the horse-barn! If Beriah hadn t up and died last spring, this wouldn t have happened. Mercy me ! " And putting her fingers in her ears, to shut out any contaminating sounds that might escape the broker s lips, she retreated to her bedroom. Nor did she reappear to claim the dollar and fifty cents when Mr. 232 The Fish -Warden of Madrid Benj. F. Dupree, suit-case and rod in hand, climbed aboard the stage and lifted his hat in grim farewell to the Kansas City girl, who was the only boarder with moral courage enough to appear upon the front piazza. VII FOR a whole week thereafter the arrest and departure of the unfortunate broker was the sole topic of conversation at Beriah Tate s. Alonzo found himself in disgrace. The boarders looked the other way when they saw him coming, and after supper he had no one to talk to except the tame crow. Henrietta, his temptress to the deed which had discredited him, treated him with osten tatious contempt. Once he barred her way as she was hurrying through the wood-shed. " You said you d go to the band concert with me, Henrietta," he pleaded. " Did I say when, Alonzo Robbins ? " she demanded, scornfully ; and he was forced to let fall his arms and allow her to pass. Day after day went by, but she did not relax, and he began to realize how deeply he had sinned 233 The Fish -Warden of Madrid against the unwritten laws of hospitality. In her revolt from him, Henrietta even went so far as to strike up a belated friendship with Miss Formand, the girl from Kansas City. One evening, as Alonzo sat alone on the side porch, chirruping dejectedly to the broken-winged crow, a team from Warwick trotted sharply into the yard. His late ac quaintance the grand-juror was driving, and the corpulent justice of the peace filled out the remainder of the seat. "Has that fellow gone?" coughed the justice, almost before the horses were brought to a stand-still. " He s gone," replied Alonzo, sulkily. The justice looked around at the grand- juror. " He didn t leave any address ? " inquired the latter. " Not as I know of," said Alonzo. " He went pretty quick, toward the last." " Humph ! " exclaimed the justice, com prehensively. The grand- juror looked at Alonzo with a peculiar expression that roused the hired man s sluggish curiosity. 234 The Fish -Warden of Madrid " What did you want of him ? " he drawled. The grand-juror nudged the justice. " Well, Alonzo," began the latter, " come to collect that check, it wa n t good for noth- in . The Asbestos Bank of Hartford broke down, it seems, more n a year ago. Seems to me I remember reading about it in some newspaper or other at the time. This fellow was kind o mad, I guess, and happened to have that blank check in his pocket, and filled it out. Little too smart for us, I guess." " If we could only git him," put in the grand-juror, confidently. " Yes, but how to git him, Henry," com plained the justice. " He s out of the State long afore this, and the Montpelier Bank is making a fuss about that twenty dollars. The fact is, Alonzo, it looks as if that twenty dollars would have to come out of you, as long as you indorsed the fellow s check for him." " My gorry ! " cried Alonzo, stubbornly, " how do you make that out ? " They made it out for him, first in one way 235 The Fish -Warden of Madrid and then in another, until he was thoroughly frightened. " I ve got the ten dollars you gave me," he owned at last. " I was goin to break it last Saturday night down to the band con cert, but I didn t go down. I ll go up stairs and get that for you, but I can t raise another cent, not if I have to go to jail for it!" Tears of chagrin were in his eyes as he stumbled up the back stairs to his room. On the landing he met Henrietta. " Here," she whispered, hurriedly. " I was up in Miss Formand s room, and we heard every word. She s lent me five dol lars, and here s five that I had. You take it, and you can pay me by and by. You ve got. to take it, Alonzo Robbins. I put you up to it, in the first place, out of wickedness. And I might have known that Mr. Dupree would do something horrid. Miss Formand thinks about him just as I do, now. Go right along!" He went down and paid over the money like a man, and like a man he came back to the narrow, dimly lighted landing. The 236 The Fish -Warden of Madrid girl had been of a dozen minds about run ning away, but she was still there. " I m awfully sorry," she said, remorse fully, " that I got you into trouble." " That s all right," declared Alonzo. " I was kind o set on that trip to the concert, but I don t suppose you d want to go now ? " Henrietta was silent. Her hand was upon the door of her own room. " I sha n t have any money till the end of next month," he said gloomily. His contrition touched the girl. " About going to Warwick," she ventured, " hearing the band is the main thing, and that don t cost anything. You don t have to have ice cream." " Then you would go? " he cried. The clumsiness slipped from his powerful figure for the moment, and the girl caught the eagerness in his black eyes. i_ m ight," she owned, half pleased, half startled. He stole a step nearer in the dusk. " Perhaps Miss Formand would like to go, too," she added, hastily. " That wouldn t be quite the same thing," 237 The Fish -Warden of Madrid said the poor fellow. " But I ll take her if you want to have her along." The girl opened the door of her room with an affectation of carelessness, but without taking her eyes from him. " Come to think," she said, with indifference, " I don t know but that buckboard seat would be rather narrow for three." And before he could show his transport she closed the door lazily, sleepily, behind her. 238 Jepson s Third Adjective Jepson s Third Adjective \A/E used to say in college that Jepson was a good fellow enough when he wasn t bothering us with questions. It was not that he asked so many, but that those he did ask were so difficult to answer. Looking back at it now, I suppose the boy had a rest less mind, with a turn for analysis that made him dissatisfied with our ready-made con clusions. We had, for instance, the easiest way in the world of disposing of our class mates. We ranked them early in the course as either trumps or fools and never troubled ourselves with a new inventory. But Jep son insisted upon asking, " Why is Jones a fool?" and when we succinctly replied, " Because he is," he used to smile in an irri- tatingly superior fashion. He had a passion for distinctions. He recognized a dozen varieties of trumps and had at least fifty dif ferent pigeon-holes for fools, and, what was 241 Jepson s Third Adjective worst of all, he was forever making cross references and new assortments. None of us felt quite safe with him, and yet we liked to have him around. For one thing, he tormented the profess ors a good deal more than he did us. He used to ply them with all sorts of queries that carried them helplessly out of their depart ments. The scientific professors thought him too literary, and the literary ones called him hopelessly scientific, but " Synonym " Jepson managed to be a thorn in the sides of both. Whether he would ultimately turn to literature or to science none of us could guess. We were always expecting great things from Jepson in the way of contribu tions to the college magazine, but he in variably tore up his verse and prose, in some secret dissatisfaction with his own phrases. On the whole, we were not surprised at the end of the course when he decided to study medicine. For two or three years I lost sight of the man entirely. One of the fellows ran across him somewhere and reported that Synonym Jepson had grown a beard and was worse 242 Jepson s Third Adjective than ever. When pressed for an explanation he informed me that Jepson had been putter ing with philosophy, in addition to his professional studies, and had developed a new phase of the question-posing mania. No longer contented, it seemed, with draw ing distinctions, he now concerned himself with general concepts, with wholes instead of parts, with abstractions in place of par ticulars, and nevertheless he could not quite get over his old habits, and accordingly tried to nail the absolute with single words and to pin down the airiest abstraction with an epithet. I listened to these remarks without much enthusiasm, but was reminded of them two or three months later when Jepson and I happened to drift together in New York. He already had a hospital appointment, I believe, but he was free that evening, and we dined together and talked over old times and went to the theatre. There was a new Juliet who was the talk of the town just then, and Jepson insisted on our going around to see her. We went in late, I re member, and the only seats obtainable were 243 Jepson s Third Adjective two in the extreme front of the orchestra chairs, at the right, with nothing but an iron rail between us and the man who played the cymbals. I noticed that Jepson nodded to this individual after the first act, and he explained that the cymbalist was the land lord of his boarding house. I paid no further attention to him, for the excitement of the town over the new Juliet was quite justified, and the eyes of any young fellow in his senses belonged that night upon the stage. The mounting of the play was perfect and the heroine was mar vellously fitted for her role. Even the members of the orchestra, hardened as they might have been after a three weeks run, stayed in their seats to see the girl go through the balcony scene, so singular and irresistible was her charm. People all over the house sat breathless while she played that scene, and I was extremely provoked in the middle of it to feel my elbows sharply jogged by Synonym Jepson. His restless black eyes were fastened upon the man of cymbals, and following his gaze I, too, for a moment forgot the spectacle upon the 244 Jepson s Third Adjective stage. The cymbalist, alone among the musicians, was oblivious of the actress. He was bending by his tiny gas jet, the beads of perspiration glistening upon his bald head, his fat, wrinkled face pursed into a comical intentness, his spectacled eyes por ing over a letter. His lips moved slowly and, as I thought, with a somewhat silly smile as he read and re-read the lines. "Let me tell you something by and by," whispered Jepson, and my eyes went back to Juliet s balcony. When the play was over and we were crowding out through the lobby, the praises of the Juliet echoing all around us, Jepson turned to me with all his old eager look. "I was going to tell you about my landlord," he laughed. "I wouldn t have missed that sight for a good deal. What do you suppose that was which he was reading? Guess." "I don t know," I remarked, rather peev ishly. "You made me lose the best lines in that play over it." "Never mind that. We had a bit of the genuine thing there all to ourselves. It s better than acting. Think of it ! " he went 245 Jepson s Third Adjective on; "isn t it queer? There was the whole house going wild over a feigned love pas sage, pairs of lovers listening in the galler ies, young girls dreaming in the boxes, older people smiling, or sighing, or smiling at themselves for sighing who knows? and all the while that pudgy cymbalist sits quite unconcerned by his gas jet and reads what do you imagine? Why, a letter from his third wife, who s gone to Chicago to spend a month with her grown-up daughter and writes him every day! They ve been married five years. She has as much mind as an oyster, about as much figure as a doughnut, and it s my private belief that she is as bald as he. Yet he would rather read her letter than look at Juliet ! If that fellow with the French horn had only moved to let him pass, I suppose he might have had the grace to read it off underneath the stage somewhere, instead of there in the face of gods and men." "In the face of Synonym Jepson," I in terpolated. "Nobody but you would have noticed him." We were out on Broadway now, under the 246 Jepson s Third Adjective flaring cluster of lamps that marked the theatre entrance. "Well, perhaps not," smiled Jepson. "But it gave me my money s worth. It struck me queerly. Say, life is queer, isn t it?" We stood in silence a moment, the strangely assorted theatre throng jostling past us. "If you could sum up life in one word," broke in Jepson, "why wouldn t it be the word queer ? No, that isn t quite the ad jective; let s see, odd, strange no, the word is droll. That s just it, isn t it? Life is droll" "You re the same old Jepson," said I. " Nevertheless, I think you have your hands full when you try to describe life with a sin gle adjective." "You are quite right!" cried Jepson, with an intonation that made me feel I had given utterance to a profound idea. " It would take more than one. Two, perhaps ? No, three would be better ; that would give a sort of triple unity, wouldn t it? Four would simply spoil everything. But the first shall be droll. " 247 Jepson s Third Adjective "Good luck to you," said I. "You have plenty of dictionaries, I suppose? Or have you all the possible words in your head ?" " That isn t the place to have them," re plied Jepson, absently. " And the diction aries would be no help either. You ve got to experience a word before you can use it in that fashion. You must live it." "Very likely," said I. "All that isn t exactly in my line. Well, here s my car coming. We must get together again some time this winter, old fellow. Good-by. All success to you and your adjectives !" And we parted as if we were freshmen once more. For a day or two the thought of Jepson and his favorite passion was often in my mind, and then I forgot all about him. Late the next spring it occurred to me to look him up, and I went around to the hospital where he had been house surgeon. I learned that his term had not yet expired, and after a tedious hour in the waiting-room, down he came. He looked fagged, and as soon as he had taken me up to his room he dropped up on the sofa. "Yes," he admitted, "I am about played out. We ve been working 248 Jepson s Third Adjective some twenty hours, off and on, the whole staff of us, over a peculiar case a Polish Jew who tried to kill himself with insect powder. And he did, sure enough, though we thought a half dozen times that we had pulled him through. Rather humiliating, wasn t it? It was one of these patent powders, and the composition of it fooled us. Well, how are you ? " " First rate," said I, gazing with a sort of fascination at the man who had just come from the struggle for life or death. " Why did he kill himself?" " That was the singular part of it. He was a box maker on the East Side, and out of work. They generally are. He had a wife and three children ; that number, though, is something under the average. But he was down in the mouth, and got it into his Jew head that it would be a fine scheme to take out some life insurance for the benefit of his family and then commit suicide. He had nerve enough to carry it through, too." I exclaimed something about the tragic nobility of the motive. 249 Jepson s Third Adjective " Nonsense," interrupted Jepson, impa tiently. " You can t say that when you think what a wretched mess the man made of it. He tried to trick the company, that s plain enough ; but there was a lot of fine print on the back of his policy that he didn t read, or couldn t read it was in his pocket and we ve all been reading it over and his family won t get a cent ! And do you know, the fellow actually tried to beat down the druggist on the price of the insect powder. You can t make high tragedy out of it. It s just a case of shabby, sordid pitifulness." Something in the deliberate way he se lected his epithets reminded me of the night when we had stood in front of the theatre. Perhaps Jepson was thinking of the same thing. " Let s see," he said, " we haven t met since we saw Romeo and Juliet." " No," I replied, with a sudden curiosity, " and you were going to try to describe life with three adjectives. Do you remember? Droll was one ; have you got the others ? " " I have the second one," he answered. " I hit upon it this very afternoon, Pitiful ; how does it strike you? Life is droll and 250 Jepson s Third Adjective pitiful." The words fell slowly from his lips, like heavy stamped coins. He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly ; I fancied he was trying to get rid of the image of the Polish Jew. " But you weren t going to stop with two/ I suggested. " I can t get but one at a time," he re plied, " and the one I ve discovered to-day would crowd out any other. Come, tell me something cheerful." I tried a half-dozen topics, but Jepson s weariness and depression were so evident that I thought it more the part of friendship to come away and let him go to bed. This time, however, the man and his choice of terms ran in my head persistently. Evidently he was living his adjectives, as he had said, and I found myself wondering, sometimes in moments that should have been the busiest, what the third one would be. Droll and pitiful and what ? In spec ulating over the word I often forgot Jepson entirely. I found myself trying to work out the problem independently, to fasten upon that final epithet which, when 251 Jepson s Third Adjective applied to myself and the rest of the world, would crown the desired phrase and fitly de scribe the indefinable. If any of our old friends had known what was passing within me they would certainly have called me as far gone as Synonym Jepson himself. It was only the other day that I saw Jep son again. I was on the lower deck of a ferryboat coming into the Cortlandt Street slip. A keen north wind blew down the river and most of the passengers stayed in side, but a few of us were standing in the extreme bow of the boat watching a bare legged little Italian, who was tossing peanut shucks into the mouth of a one-eyed Skye terrier. They were both in front of the gate, and as the big boat crunched her way along the swaying piles toward the head of the slip, the terrier, leaping to catch the last shuck, lost his balance somehow and slipped overboard. His owner, with a shrill cry, sprang to catch him, and failing, dropped after him straight over the bow of the boat. It was the sheerest folly I ever saw. Two or three yards only of churning green water between the vertical, slippery planks ahead 252 Jepson s Third Adjective and the huge oncoming Cincinnati. It made me sick. I caught a glimpse of a couple of frantic strokes down there in the oily foam, heard the terrier s piercing bark, and saw a whitefaced ferryhouse gateman spring down a sort of ladder in the corner of the slip, where there was a tiny angle just out of reach of the pitiless curve of the Cin cinnati s bow. Someone behind us screamed as the boat ground against the planking. The line of men in the ferryhouse had broken over the gate and rushed forward, only to stand looking into our faces, much, I fancy, as we must have looked into theirs. And then, crawling up the half-submerged lad der, for all the world as a man might crawl out of a well, emerged the gateman, shak ing the water out of his eyes and dragging after him the sobbing little Italian, whose right ringers were twisted in the collar of his shivering dog. We shouted, but quieted suddenly as we noticed that the boy s arm hung limp and that his left hand was an object no one would care to look at twice. It was at that moment that I recognized Jepson. He must have been somewhere 253 Jepson s Third Adjective among the crowd from the ferryhouse. For the first time in my life I would have liked to be a surgeon myself. The way Synonym Jepson ordered that crowd around and got the Italian into the waiting-room and sent for an ambulance and wrapped the crushed fingers with handkerchiefs he had fifty of fered him, from Brussels point to greasy bandannas was a pleasure to behold. I stayed with him until the little fellow was safely packed off for the hospital, and then Jepson pulled out his watch. " I ve lost the Philadelphia train," he said. " but it s no matter. I ll go to-morrow. Come and lunch with me, will you ? " We walked up Cortlandt Street and he made me tell him how the accident hap pened. He seemed very excited over it for a man whose demeanor at the ferry had been so thoroughly professional. " The little devil did that for a dog ! " he exclaimed. " You and I wouldn t have risked it for an heiress." " I should say not," I confessed. " The chances were a hundred to one against him. I suppose he didn t stop to think." 254 Jepson s Third Adjective " Exactly ! " cried Jepson. " That s just what I like about it. He wasn t sophisti cated enough to hesitate. He followed his instinct. Now where did he get that in stinct; that s what I should like to know. What do you say ? " We were standing at the Sixth Avenue crossing as he spoke, waiting for a surface car. The sharp autumn wind put color and \igor into the faces of the tramping throng upon the pavement ; it brightened Jepson s eyes as he turned to me with his question. He had never seemed so alert, forceful. " Hold on," said he, " you needn t an swer that. We ought to know well enough, both of us. And by the way, there s my third adjective. I wanted three, you remember * droll and pitiful, and " " What is it ? " I asked. I think he had no idea how eager I was. " Divine" said Jepson. 255 The White Blackbird The White Blackbird JWl ID - AFTERNOON in August ; a scarcely perceptible haze over the line of hills that marched northward into the St. Lawrence valley; and here, under the fir balsams back of the great dingy Morraway Hotel, coolness and quiet. Through the lower boughs of the balsams gleamed the lake, blue-black, unsounded, reticent. Be hind their slender cone-darkened tops glistened the bare shoulders of Morraway Mountain in full sunlight ; and overhead hung one of those caressing, taunting, weather-breeding skies that mark the turn ing point of the brief northern summer. Curled up at one end of a broken rus tic seat under the shadow of the balsams was a strenuous little woman of thirty-five, conscientiously endeavoring to relax. The habitual distress of her forehead was miti- 259 The White Blackbird gated by a negligent, young-girlish manner of doing up her hair; she was carelessly dressed, too, and as she read aloud to her companion from The Journal of American Folklore she kept swinging one foot over the edge of the seat until the boot-lacings were dangling. The printed label upon the cover of the Journal bore the name of Miss Jane Rodman, Ph.D. Miss Rodman s niece was stretched on the brown, fragrant, needle-covered slope, pretending to listen. Her face was turned dreamily toward the lake. Her head rested upon her left hand, which was long, sun burned, and bare of rings. In the palm of her right hand she balanced from time to time a little silver penknife, and then with a flash of her wrist buried the point in the balsam-needles, in a solitary and aimless game of mumble-the-peg. She was not par ticularly attracted by what her learned aunt was reading to her about the marriage rites of the Bannock Indians. In fact she buried the knife with a trifle more spirit than usual when the article came to an end. Miss Rodman pencilled some ethnolog- 260 The White Blackbird ical notes upon the margin of the Journal. " There s another valuable article here, Olivia," she said, tentatively. " It s upon Blackfeet superstitions. Don t you think I d better read that too ? " The younger woman nodded assent, with out looking up. She was gloriously in nocent of any scientific interest, and yet grateful for her aunt s endeavor to entertain her. Miss Rodman began eagerly, and Olivia Lane silently shifted her position and tried to play mumble-the-peg with her left hand. Ten minutes passed. " Then there s a footnote," Miss Rodman was saying, mechanically. " Compare the Basque legend about the white blackbird whose singing restores sight to the blind. " The girl looked up suddenly. " What was that ? " she asked. " The white blackbird whose singing re stores the sight to the blind/ " repeated Miss Rodman, in a softer voice. Olivia moved restlessly and then sat up with fingers clasped about her knees. There was a red tinge upon her round sun- browned cheek, where it had nestled in the 261 The White Blackbird palm of her hand. " A white black bird ? " she inquired, with the incredulous inflection of a child. The elder woman nodded that kindly pitying nod with which a science-trained generation recognizes and, even in recogniz ing, classifies, the old poetic superstitions of the race. But her pity was really for the tall, supple, low-voiced girl at her feet ; this brave, beautiful creature who was slowly growing blind. Olivia glanced at her, with great brown eyes that betrayed no sign of the fatal web that nature was steadily weaving in their depths. There was a slight smile upon her lips. Each of the women knew what was in the other s mind. Miss Rodman laid down the Journal. " I shouldn t have read it, dear," she said, at last. " I didn t know what was coming." " But it is such a pretty fancy ! " ex claimed Olivia. " I shall be looking for white blackbirds under every bush, Auntie." She drew a long breath too long, alas ! for a girl of twenty and then with a sort of unconscious feminine instinct patted her 262 The White Blackbird heavy hair more closely into place and be gan to brush the balsam-needles from the folds of her walking-skirt. Miss Rodman made no answer. There seemed to be nothing to say. In this matter of Olivia s eyes nature was playing one of her countless petty tragedies; science, the counter-player, stood helpless on the stage, and Olivia herself was outwardly one of the coolest of the few spectators. She had done all that could be done. Dr. Sands, the rising specialist, an intimate friend of the Lanes and the Rodmans, had sent her to London to consult Watson, and Watson s verdict was not reassuring. Then he had sent her to Forget, at Paris, and For get had shaken his head. Finally Dr. Sands had advised her to come here to the Mor- raway region for the air and the perfect quiet. Once a month he dropped everything in New York and came up himself to make an examination and give his brief report. At the end of June he had told Miss Rodman that Olivia had perhaps one chance in five of keeping her eyesight. A month later he pronounced it one chance in fifty. Dr. Sands 263 The White Blackbird stayed three days at the Morraway Hotel that time, before giving his opinion, and a more difficult professional duty he had never had to perform. If she were only some girl who walked into his office and out again, like the hundreds of others, it would have been different, but to tell Olivia Lane seemed as brutal as it would have been to strike her. And on this August evening he had promised to come again. By and by Miss Rodman slipped down from the rustic bench and seated herself by her niece. The girl stroked her aunt s shoulder lightly. Everything that could be said had been said already, when the horror of that great darkness had not drawn quite so near. And yet there was one question which Olivia longed to ask, though she feared the answer; trembling either way, as a child that asks whether she may run to snatch a glistening shell upon the beach even while another wave is racing to engulf it. Olivia s blindness was that black, all-engulfing wave. And the treasure which she might catch to her bosom, child-like, ere the dark wave fell ? 264 The White Blackbird " Auntie," demanded Miss Lane, ab ruptly, " have you told Mr. Allan about my eyes?" Miss Rodman hesitated a moment. " Yes, dear," she replied; and she added, with an aunt s prerogative, " Why ? " " I wished him to know," answered Olivia, simply. " And I preferred not to speak of it myself. I am glad you told him." Miss Rodman flushed a little. She was about to speak, apparently, but her niece interrupted her. " He s coming to take us over to the Pines before supper, if he finishes his map. It seems to me that a government geologist has a very easy time, Auntie, Or isn t Mr. Allan a serious-minded geologist ? " Her tone was deliciously quizzical ; she was conscious of a secret happiness that made her words come fast and sure. " I should think the field work would al ways be interesting," replied Miss Rodman, with more literalness than was demanded by the occasion. " The preparation of the map seems to me purely mechanical drudgery. 265 The White Blackbird If the Survey had a respectable appropria tion, Dr. Allan would be left free for other things. Some of his work has been very brilliant." The girl laughed. It always amused her to hear Miss Rodman, Ph.D., give Elbridge Allan his Munich title. It was like that old story of the Roman augurs bowing solemn ly to each other with a twinkle in the eye. " Hoho! hahei! hoho!" sang a big, boyish voice from the direction of the Morraway Hotel. "Hoho! hahei! Hahei! hoho!" Olivia turned and waved her hand toward the voice. " He doesn t get the intervals of that Sword-song exactly according to Wag ner," she commented. " But what a Sieg fried he would make for size ! " He came striding down the woodland path, shouting out the Sword-song and wav ing his pipe; a superb, tan-faced fellow of twenty-five, clean-built, clean-shaven, clear- eyed. His heavy hob-nailed field shoes were noiseless upon the moss. The loose, gray golf suit with coat unbuttoned showed every line of his athlete s figure, as he kept 266 The White Blackbird time to the rhythm of that splendid chant. When he neared the ladies, he lifted his cap, and all the sunlight that strayed through the balsam branches seemed to fall upon his face. Miss Rodman gazed at him admiringly. " Isn t he magnificent ! " she murmured. Olivia did not hear her. " He knows ! " she kept saying to herself. " And yet he is coming! " " Hail ! " cried Allan, waving cap and pipe together. " O ye idle women ! " " But we ve been reading," explained Miss Rodman. He picked up the Journal of Folklore and flung it down again. " Worse yet ! " he insisted. " You ought to be tramping. Come, let s go over to the Pines." " Is the map finished ? " asked Olivia. " Done, and despatched to an ungrateful government. I m going to strike work for two days, to celebrate ; then we begin trian- gulations on the north side of the lake. Well, aren t you coming?" He put out his hand and swung Miss Rod man to her feet. Olivia had risen without 267 The White Blackbird assistance and was looking around for her hat. Allan handed it to her. " I have some letters to write," said Miss Rodman. " I believe I won t go." The geologist s face expressed polite re gret. Olivia was busied with her hatpins. " But Miss Lane may go," continued her aunt. " You might take Dr. Allan over in the canoe, Olivia. That would save time." The girl nodded, outwardly demure, in wardly dancing toward that bright, wave- thrown shell. " Very well," she said, " if Mr. Allan will trust himself again to the Water-Witch." " Either of us could swim ashore with the Water- Witch in our teeth," laughed the geologist. " Come ahead ! " They started down the steep, shadowy path to the lake, the two tall lithe figures swaying away from each other, toward each other, as they wound in and out among the trees. Miss Rodman felt a trifle uncomfortable. She had not been altogether honest when Olivia asked her if Mr. Allan knew about her eyes. In fact she realized that she had 268 The White Blackbird been rather dishonest. She had indeed told the geologist what he might have guessed for himself that Miss Lane s eyes gave her serious trouble, and that she had been for bidden to use them. But she had not told him that Olivia was going blind. It was ob vious that he liked the girl, and Miss Rod man shrank from letting the tragic shadow of Olivia s future darken these summer months unnecessarily. She recognized in stinctively that the geologist s attitude tow ard her ward might be altered if he were con scious of the coming catastrophe. She wanted yes, she owned to herself that she wanted to have Elbridge Allan so deeply in love with Olivia that even if the worst came true he would but love her the better for her blindness. But to tell him prema turely might have spoiled everything. So reasoned Miss Rodman, Ph.D. Yet as she stood watching the disappear ing pair, she was conscious of a certain ir ritation. If only he had not come singing through the woods at just the moment when she was about to explain to Olivia that she had not told him the worst ! For she felt 269 The White Blackbird sure, now, that she would have explained, if they had not been interrupted. Well, she would confess to Olivia after supper ! And Miss Rodman gathered up the Journal of Folklore and the other reviews, and sauntered back to the hotel. Ethics, after all, had been only her minor subject when she took her doctor s degree; she felt strongest in eth nology. Meanwhile old Felix, at the boat-house, sponged out the tiny birch canoe, and scowled as Allan stepped carelessly into the bow with his big hob-nailed shoes. Miss Lane tucked up the cuffs of her shirt-waist to keep them from the drip of the paddle, and Allan pocketed her sleeve-buttons. Then old Felix pushed them off. He had rented boats there for thirty years, ever since those first grand seasons of the Morraway Hotel, when the Concord coaches ran, and before the railroad had gone up the other valley, and left the Morraway region to a mild de cay. Thirty years ; but he had never seen a girl whom he fancied as much as Olivia Lane. He had pushed so many couples off from the old wharf in his time, and never a 270 The White Blackbird finer pair than this, yet he liked Olivia bet ter alone. He did not know why he disliked the geologist, except that Allan had broken an oar in June and had forgotten to pay for it. The pair in the Water-Witch grew rather silent, as the canoe crept over the deep, mountain-shadowed water. Allan smoked his pipe vigorously, his eyes upon Miss Lane ; she seemed wholly occupied with her paddling. As they neared the shore he warned her once or twice when the canoe grazed the sharp edges of protruding basalt ; but each time she avoided them with what appeared to him extraordinary skill. In reality she could not see them, and thought he understood. She gave him her hand as she stepped ashore, and was conscious that he retained it a moment longer than mere courtesy de manded. He kept close to her side as they breasted the steep mountain-path. When ever they stopped to rest, each could hear the other s breathing. Now and then, at a rock-strewn rise, he placed his fingers be neath her elbow, to steady her. He had never done it before. 271 The White Blackbird " He knows ! " she kept saying to herself, deep down below all words. " He knows ! And he wants me to feel that it makes no dif ference ! " It thrilled her like great music. Let the dark wave break, if it must; it could not rob her of the shining treasure. She could yet be loved, like other women. The darkness without would not be so dreadful, if all those lamps that Heaven meant to be lighted in a woman s soul were glowing ! They reached the crest of the knoll, where a dozen ragged white pines towered. Be neath them curved the lake, growing darker already as the western sky began to blaze. Olivia seated herself against one of the pines, and, removing her hat, leaned back con tentedly. It was so good to breathe deep and free, to feel the breeze at her temples, to have the man who loved her reclining at her feet. All this could yet be hers, whatever happened ! And all at once, upon one of the lower branches of the pine, she was aware of a white blackbird. The utter surprise sent the color from her face ; then it came flooding 272 The White Blackbird back again. In a tumult of unreasoning joy, of girlish superstition, she bent forward and caught Allan by the shoulder, pointing stealthily at the startled bird. " The white blackbird ! " she whispered, rapturously. He glanced upward indifferently, wonder ing at Miss Lane s ecstatic face. He did not know that she cared particularly for birds. "It s an albino," he remarked. "I ve seen him three or four times this summer. They have one in the museum at St. Johns- bury." " Hush ! " exclaimed Olivia, with a low, intense utterance that almost awed him. " It may sing ! " But the bird fluttered its cream-white wings, and disappeared into the upper branches of the pine. " It s too late," said the geologist. " Black birds don t sing after midsummer." " Oh, you don t understand ! " she cried, half starting from her seat and peering up ward into the dusky, breeze-swept canopy. 273 The White Blackbird "The white blackbird is the Restorer of Sight I" He looked puzzled. " There s a legend ! " she exclaimed. " Auntie and I learned it this very afternoon. The singing of a white blackbird restores sight to the blind ! " " Well," he said, carelessly, rapping the ashes out of his pipe, " what of that ? " And he looked up in her face again, thinking that her luminous brown eyes had never been so lovely. He saw them change and grow piteous, even as he spoke. "Didn t Auntie tell you?" she de manded. He shook his head. She grew white, and a moan escaped her lips. The truth dawned, clear and pitiless. Aunt Jane had failed to tell him plainly, and Elbridge Allan her lover, as she had be lieved was yet in ignorance of her fate. But the girl had had a long training in courage, and she spoke instantly. " Mr. Allan, I am in all probability going to be ab solutely blind. They said that in Paris and 274 The White Blackbird London last summer, and they gave me a year. Dr. Sands told me a month ago that I had but one chance in fifty." Her voice was quiet and even, but she did not trust herself to look at Elbridge Allan. She gazed out over the gloomy lake toward the sun-tipped peak of Morraway Mountain, and waited. She would know, now. So many times had she waited, like this, for a verdict from the doctors, but her heart had never seemed to stop quite still before. She heard him make a surprised movement, but he did not speak. " I knew Billy Sands in college," he said awkwardly at last. " He was too lazy then to walk across the yard when the bell rang." " He is an old friend of ours," she replied, in swift loyalty. " No one could have been more kind " She stopped, realizing that he was em barrassed. " Miss Lane," he broke out, " it s terrible ! I had no idea it was as serious as that. I m sorrier than I can say. Is Billy Sands really the best man to go to ? There used to be a wonderful oculist in Munich. By Jupiter, 275 The White Blackbird it s too bad ! Do you know, I think you re immensely brave. I I wish I might be of some service." Slowly she turned her eyes from the mountain-top, and looked straight into his face. It was a handsome face, full of boy ish trouble, of genuine sympathy, of ten derness, even. And that was all there was there. His eyes fell. The stillness was so great that she could hear overhead the sleepy flutter and chirp of the white black bird, the Restorer of Sight. And she was blind no longer ; she comprehended, in that one instant, that he did not love her. " I am so sorry " he began again. " I am sure of that, Mr. Allan," she in terrupted. " But it is really better not to talk about it. It cannot be helped. And Auntie and I seldom speak of it." She wished to be loyal to her aunt, through all. Allan nodded his head. He was thinking that it was a little unfair in Miss Rodman to let a young fellow go on well, yes, liking a girl without telling him that she was liable to be blind. 276 The White Blackbird Olivia found herself trembling. Oh, if he would only go away ! She could bear it, if she were alone! If he only would not lie there and look regretful and pathetic ! From far up the valley to the southward floated the faint whistle of the evening ex press. " Mr. Allan," said Olivia suddenly, " you can do me a great service. Dr. Sands is coming on that train, and I promised Auntie to have a carriage sent for him. I forgot it. Would you mind attending to it ? You might take the footpath down to Swayne s, and telephone, and I ll bring over the canoe." Allan rose, with a look of relief which he could not quite disguise. " You re sure you don t mind going back alone ? " he asked. " Not at all." With a long troubled look at the girl s downcast face he turned away and hurried down the slope toward Swayne s. His own dream-castle was in ruins, too ; for a month past he had begun to picture Olivia s tall charming figure in the castle entrance. She had all that he could possibly have desired in a woman : beauty, grace, humor, wealth 277 The White Blackbird and she had seemed to like him and now she was going blind ! It was too bad too bad. He felt very hard hit. He stopped to light his pipe, and then strode on, discon tentedly. Olivia threw herself face downward upon the soft sun-warmed pine-needles, and lay there sobbing. It was hard to give him up ; harder still to feel that he had never loved her at all. She had simply been mistaken. Childlike, she had fancied it was the sea- shell that was singing, when in reality the music was only the echo from her own pulse- beats. Wave after wave of maidenly shame throbbed to her cheeks and throat. She had wanted to be loved, before that pall was flung over her life, and while she could still be to her lover as other women were to theirs. But she had had no right no right ! Moment by moment her girlhood seemed to slip away from her, like some bright vision that flees at day-break. She felt already the terrible helplessness of her doom, the loneli ness of a blind woman who is growing old. High overhead the solitary, mateless white blackbird smoothed his creamy wings and 278 The White Blackbird settled himself to rest among the soughing branches. Morraway Mountain grew gray and distant. The mist began to rise from the swarthy lake. Between the trunks of the ancient pines the sunset glowed more and more faintly. The wind began to whisper solemnly in the woods. And still the girl lay prostrate between the roots of the great pine, praying to be forgiven for her selfish ness. It was quite dusk when she arose. With some difficulty she found the path and hur ried downward, stumbling often and once falling. But her courage rose with the very play of her muscles. She had to grope with her hands to find the canoe, so thickly hung the mist already above the lake. There were lights moving at old Felix s boat-house, but Olivia could not see them. She seated her self in the Water- Witch, took her bearing from the vague masses of mountain shadow, and began to paddle with long, firm strokes. As the canoe shot into deep water, she was conscious that something scraped its frail side. In another moment the water was 279 The White Blackbird pouring over her ankles and knees. She stopped paddling to feel for the leak, and in stantly the canoe began to settle. With a powerful effort the girl freed her self from it as it sank, although she went under once and lost her hold upon the pad dle. But she was a practised swimmer, and though the water chilled her through and through she struck out in what she fancied was the right direction. After a dozen strokes the shore seemed farther away, and she swam back in growing fear to the spot where she thought the canoe had sunk, in the hope of picking up the paddle. Round and round she swam, with a slow side-stroke, trying to find it, but it had drifted away. She was getting bewildered in the mist, and the huge shadows that loomed above the lake seemed all alike. She called once or twice, and then remembered that Felix had probably gone home, and that no one could possibly hear her at the hotel. She turned on her back and floated awhile, to collect herself, and then, keeping her eyes on a certain shadowy outline in the fog, she struck out again with desperate coolness. 280 The White Blackbird Even if she were quite wrong, the lake was only half a mile wide here, and she had made a half mile so often. If only her clothing did not pull her down so terribly ! She had to turn over and float, in order to rest, and in so doing she lost her wavering landmark. A cry of terror escaped her, and with that the water slapped over her face for the first time. She shook it out of her nostrils and began to swim in a circle, peering vainly through the curtain of fog. The shadows had all melted again into one vast shadow. Her strength was going now ; every stroke was an agony. She called not knowing that she did so all the life- passion of youth vibrating in the clear voice ; then she turned on her back to float once more, making a gallant, lonely, losing fight of it to the very last. She felt quite warm now, and all of a sudden she ceased to have any fear. This was the way God was taking to keep her from growing blind ; she had been as brave as she could, but now that nightmare of life long helplessness was over. It was not to be Blindness, after all. Death, beautiful, 281 The White Blackbird silent-footed, soft-voiced Death had out stripped Blindness, and was enfolding her murmuring to her murmuring And as she closed her eyes contentedly, old Felix, swearing tremulously, leaned out of his boat and drew her in. But it was the two men in the other boat who carried Miss Lane up to the Morra- way Hotel. One of them was Elbridge Allan, pale and disconcerted ; the other a dark, quick-eyed, square-lipped man, who dismissed the geologist rather abruptly, after Olivia had been taken to Miss Rod man s room. " But she s my friend, Dr. Sands," he pleaded. " And mine. And my patient besides, Mr. Allan," pronounced Dr. Sands. " Then Doctor," said Allan, nervously, " you must let me ask you a question. Miss Lane told me three hours ago that she was going blind. I was I don t mind saying very much upset by it. Is it true ? " " Miss Lane s eyes are in a very serious condition," replied Dr. Sands, in his slight- 282 The White Blackbird ly bored professional voice, while he meas ured the other man from head to foot. " There is no chance ? " " I would not say that," was the brusque answer. " There is always a chance. You will of course pardon me for not discussing my patient ? " There was a quiet finality about this query which did not invite conversation, and Allan turned irresolutely away. It was in the middle of the next forenoon before Dr. Sands allowed Olivia to talk. She lay on the couch in her aunt s room, a fire of maple logs roaring on the hearth, a cold, fine rain whistling against the shaking windows. The turn of the year had come. Miss Rodman had gone off to get some sleep. The famous young oculist was pok ing determinedly at the fire and calling him self hard names. He might have known that that handsome geologist would make him self obnoxious to Olivia Lane ! " Doctor," spoke Olivia. " Yes, Miss Lane." He was at her side in a moment. " Do you know," she said, " I saw a white 283 The White Blackbird blackbird yesterday, just as clearly ! It re stores sight by its singing, only it was too late in the year for it to sing." There was a gentle irony in her voice, like the echo of her old bravery. " Was it you who took me out of the water? " she asked, after a pause. He shook his head. " I wasn t lucky enough. It was Felix." " Last night," said Miss Lane, slowly, " I didn t want to be taken out. The water seemed just the place for me. But this morn ing I feel very much stronger Oh, very strong indeed ! " She lifted one hand, to show how powerful she was, but it fell back upon the rug that covered her. The doctor nodded. He was wondering about Elbridge Allan. " I can bear anything," she went on. " You see I have had to think it all through. You are going to tell me that there is no chance, are you not ? There was but one in fifty, you said." It was not hope, but only a great patience, that shone softly in her eyes. " If you have held your own for the last month, we ll call it one in forty-nine," he 284 The White Blackbird replied. " But you see I don t know yet whether you have held your own. I don t know anything to-day, Olivia, except that I love you. I have loved you ever since I sent you to London." She moved her head wearily, as if she could not comprehend. " Of course it s very stupid in me to say so this morning," he exclaimed, ruefully. " But I have waited too long already." He was still thinking of Elbridge Allan. " But I am going blind ! " she cried, fling ing out her hands. "Very likely, dear," he replied. "Yet that has nothing to do with this." She gave him a long, long look, the tears starting. " It is you that I am in love with," he said slowly. " But of course we will keep on making a good fight for the eyes." " I can t think," cried Olivia. And indeed she seemed to be back in the un sounded water again, shrouded by shadowy forms, surrendering herself helplessly to a power mightier than her own. Only it was not Death that was murmuring now ; it was 285 The White Blackbird Life, gallant, high-hearted, all-conquering Life, whose most secret name is Love. And as in that other supreme moment it was awe that the girl felt rather than fear. " Not now/ she whispered. " Not yet. I can t think." "Well, don t!" he exclaimed, eagerly. " I don t wish you to think. If you stop to think, you ll refuse me." Olivia smiled faintly. " I want you to go to sleep again," he de clared. In an instant he had drawn down the shades and placed the screen before the fire. " And when you wake up," he con tinued, " I shall be right here, Olivia ; and always right here. I think that s about what I want to say," he added, with a curious husky little laugh. The room was too dark for him to see the delicate color surge into Olivia s pale face. But her eyelids closed slowly, obediently, and he went softly out. 286 aul EJder&Cd