m^ THE 
 NORTHERNER 
 
 NORAH DAVIS

 
 THE NORTHERNER
 
 THE 
 
 NORTHERNER 
 
 By 
 
 NORAH DAVIS 
 
 "Yea, though we sinned and our rulers went from righteousness 
 Deep in all dishonor though we stained our garments' hem : 
 Oh, be ye not dismayed, 
 Though we stumbled and we strayed, 
 We were led by evil counselors the Lord shall deal with them.* 
 
 " The Seven Seas." Kipling. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, 1905, bj 
 THE CENTURY C. 
 
 Published October, 1905
 
 3507 
 
 DEDICATED WITH CORDIAL REGAR 
 TO MY BROTHER-IN-LAW 
 
 JUDGE DAVID D. SHELBY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN ... 3 
 
 II. A WOMAN AND A WALTZ ... 25 
 
 III. THE DARK THREAD IN THE WOOF . . 36 
 
 IV. "WHERE Is WOMAN'S FANCY BRED?" . 45 
 V. THIS THING You CALL COMPLEXION GOES 
 
 TO THE BONE 65 
 
 VI. "Is HE NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?" 73 
 
 VII. IN THE PRIMROSE PATH . . . .83 
 
 VIII. A BATTLE OF THE STRONG ... 96 
 
 IX. AN HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING AMONG 
 
 GENTLEMEN ! 105 
 
 X. THOU SHALT NOT 116 
 
 XI. ALIEN! 138 
 
 XII. WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY . .163 
 
 XIII. THE CURSE OF DIXIE . . . .176 
 
 XIV. !N MY LADY'S CHAMBER" . . .193 
 
 XV. THE STRANGER WITHIN THEIR GATES . 202 
 
 XVI. THE VERDICT 213 
 
 XVII. THE MOB 220 
 
 XVIII. A LIFE FOR A LIFE 233 
 
 XIX. HE OR I CHOOSE ! 245 
 
 XX. UNCLE CAD'S WIFE 255 
 
 XXI. THE MOOD OF WOMAN WHO CAN TELL ? 266 
 
 vli
 
 vin 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIU. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT . 
 LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY 
 A WOMAN'S VERDICT 
 "Mr LOVE IN DIXIE" 
 
 PAOK 
 
 '283 
 294 
 301 
 311
 
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 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 
 
 WHAT is this you are letting me in for to-night^ 
 Hallett? Had you not better give me points? I 
 don't know that I am altogether up in the form required 
 by an entertainment given to the ' noble dead/ " said Falls, 
 as he and Hallett were making their leisurely way out to 
 Hillcrest. They had left the town and were climbing the 
 steep, rocky street leading to Judge Adair's house upon 
 the foot-hills just outside of town. 
 
 In front of them, across the dip of the valley, lay 
 the long, low ranges of the Cumberland Mountains, fold 
 upon fold, as though the horizon were rucked at its 
 edges; at their right, and between them and the open 
 fields, was a hedge of Cherokee roses a wall of glistening 
 foliage starred with flat, white velvet blossoms set thickly 
 with sharp thorns; and about them glowed the subdued 
 brilliance of the newly fallen night. 
 
 Both men wore immaculate evening dress, Falls 
 wearing his with the unconsciousness of the man to whom 
 
 3
 
 4 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 perfect and correct dress is the result of long habit 
 of precision in such matters, while Hallett's elaborate 
 grooming betrayed something of the effort which it un 
 doubtedly had cost him. He was adjusting a rose, from 
 the hedge &l his side, in his buttonhole; and he finished 
 its arrangement, critically viewing the effect against his 
 black coat, before he answered Falls. 
 
 "It is hard to say just what it is, exactly; so much 
 is in the point of view. To you, for instance, it is an 
 opportunity, and a capital one, of meeting in a social way 
 all the best people in Adairville; that is really why I 
 asked Miss Adair for the invitation. To me, it is an 
 insufferable bore. In its more serious aspect the way 
 in which the people who are doing it, you know, take it 
 
 it is a sacred tribute to the heroes of what they call ' The 
 Lost Cause/ meaning the under dog in the * late unpleas 
 antness ' I To the spectators there will be quite a few, 
 Hillcrest is a charming house, and there is some talk of 
 a dance after the business of the evening " 
 
 " Dance ! " echoed Falls, a trifle scandalized, " is that 
 also a part of the sacred tribute?" 
 
 "The dance will come on later, after the tribute has 
 been disposed of. Oh, yes; well, to be explicit, The 
 Daughters of the Confederacy, the local chapter, are to 
 present what they call ' The Southern Cross of Honor/ >: 
 
 he broke off with a short laugh, " it has ' Deo Vindice * 
 on its reverse! to the veterans of the Eeb George! 
 What a slip ! I 'm glad no one was by ! I mean, the Con 
 federate army. . . . And you '11 hear Watson speak." 
 
 "What else will there be besides old soldiers and old 
 women?" pursued Falls, unappeased by the social feast 
 which Hallett was spreading for his delectation.
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 5 
 
 " Moonlight " Hallett took a long, silent pull at his 
 cigar, " and roses, and Betty Archer ! " 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " All ? For heaven's sake, man, what more do you want ? 
 June in Dixie moonlight and Betty Archer ! Do 
 you waltz, Falls?" 
 
 " No ; that is, I hardly know ; it has been a good 
 many years since I had time to waltz." 
 
 They smoked, for a space, in silence, which Hallett 
 broke abruptly: 
 
 " This is hardly the time for business, but " he 
 paused, tentatively, his glance rather keenly fixed upon 
 his companion. 
 
 Falls's eyes were fixed upon the dark bulwark of the 
 mountain rising against the star-spangled scroll of the 
 sky, in a long abstracted gaze full of keen speculation, as 
 he paused upon his answer. 
 
 " Yes," he said at last, quietly, " it goes." 
 
 After an instant, in which he strove successfully to 
 cover his keen triumph at the consummation of the deal, 
 Hallett turned to his companion with an interest frankly 
 stimulated by his decision. They had paused beside an 
 opening in the hedge, and Hallett ran his eye over Falls's 
 handsome figure, leaning upon the rail beside him in a 
 poise of easy strength, with a glance which mentally ap 
 praised him. 
 
 " Soldier of Fortune," he had summed Falls up, when he 
 had met him a week before at the station in Adairville, 
 "plus brains and devil! Well, he '11 need J em both 
 before he 's done with the Power and Passenger Com 
 pany and its er complications ! " 
 
 His first impression of the man had been of his force-
 
 6 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 fulness, and after a week of intercourse he found the 
 initial impression unmodified. Falls was the typical 
 American man of affairs. Tall, broad of shoulder, and 
 thin of flank and in the full flush of superb maturity, 
 he had the long-limbed ease of motion and the absolute 
 stillness in repose which only the possession of muscles 
 like great smooth bands of elastic steel could give to a 
 man of his height and build. He leaned upon the rail, 
 his hat in his hand, his steady eyes upon the undulating 
 line of the mountain, unconscious of the other man's 
 glance, which weighed him against a situation undreamed 
 of, as yet, in Falls's philosophy. 
 
 The lucid moonlight showed to Hallett his profile from 
 the parting, exactly above his brow, in his thick dark 
 hair, to his clean-shaven unsmiling mouth, which, with 
 the chin below it, seemed cast in a mould of inflexible 
 decision. The bold sweep of his brows, bent sharply in 
 at their juncture, lent an expression of gloom to eyes 
 which in themselves established Falls's only claim to 
 beauty. For the rest, every line and contour in the harsh, 
 authoritative face expressed an assured, almost an arrogant, 
 confidence in its owner's will to dare and power to do. 
 
 During the week just past, it had afforded Hallett keen, 
 though discreetly suppressed amusement, to note the effect 
 of the man's personality upon the town. 
 
 Under a gold vulture's wings on the peak of a Viking's 
 helmet, his hand hard on the tiller, with the boat scud 
 ding along in an angry sea, the north wind in his nostrils 
 and the black billows under his feet, Falls would have been 
 magnificent, and quite in character. But against Adair- 
 ville as a background, clad in a suit of Merwin tweeds, 
 in the first hot days in June, it cannot be denied that
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 7 
 
 Falls had seemed a bit strenuous, or that Adairville had 
 found him so ! 
 
 Hallett smiled mentally now, as a fragment of a 
 street scene witnessed the day before floated through his 
 mind. In some inexplicable way 'Dairville had accepted 
 Falls personally! His energy, his tweeds, his accent 
 seemed, collectively and severally, a personal affront; his 
 strenuousness got on the nerves of the loungers upon the 
 flags in front of the Adair Hotel the one spot in the 
 whole town where aristocracy of caste was merged into 
 democracy of opinion and as he passed among their 
 serried ranks, eyes from beneath tipped-down hat-brims 
 and behind the flaccid sheets of local dailies followed him 
 in silent challenge. 
 
 " Who 's he ? " asked Berkley Kane, as he joined a group, 
 extending his hand impartially to the first man he en 
 countered, who promptly placed therein a plug of 
 tobacco. 
 
 " 'Lectric light man." 
 
 " Not another one er them same " 
 
 "Naw; this here 's er a new deal. Falls that 's 
 him he 's the whole push, so they tell me. He 's It ! " 
 
 Falls had added nothing to his almost monosyllabic 
 reply, frankly leaving the amenities of the occasion, if 
 there were to be any, to the other man. Hallett promptly 
 assumed them; and gliding easily from a business to a 
 social basis, proffered suave congratulations and genial 
 assurances. 
 
 " Personally, you know, Falls, and, er for the town 
 as well." Falls met his civic courtesies with a flat indif 
 ference which had the rather disconcerting effect of
 
 8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 making them seem mere meretriciousness. His austere 
 personality had often this disconcerting effect upon men 
 more often men than women ; women found the frank 
 indifference, which was to men a flat rebuff, piquant 
 and always to Falls's grave surprise. 
 
 " I am heartily glad of your decision, Mr. Falls," Hal- 
 lett persisted, refusing to be rebuffed by his companion's 
 lack of responsiveness. " We will be glad to have you 
 settle here permanently; I know the sentiment of the 
 town toward Northern immigration. The truth is, we 
 need men of precisely your sort. Need them badly. The 
 town is somewhat overstocked with Northern capital," he 
 paused to annotate this statement with a smile of sunny 
 significance, "but what the town does need is the men 
 themselves. Northern push and vigor are the very things 
 to carry through all sorts of local enterprises." 
 
 "Who takes care of their own enterprises, while they 
 are pushing local affairs ? " asked Falls carelessly. 
 
 Hallett turned a casual glance upon him as he answered : 
 
 " Oh, it is all one ; you push your own interests by 
 pushing the town's." 
 
 " I never engage in cooperative financiering," said Falls ; 
 " I seek, frankly, my own interest in coming here. Adair- 
 ville may go to the devil for all I care ! " 
 
 Hallett laughed his musical, unamused laugh, without 
 further comment; but he had forever settled in his own 
 mind the question of Falls's adequacy to deal with the 
 " situation." 
 
 " Aye," he said to himself as they strode on, " they 11 
 crucify his pride and break his heart if he has brought 
 it here with him, and I think he has and absorb his 
 capital, and refer him to the devil for his damages.
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 9 
 
 That 'B Dixie all over ; but it 's the best country on God's 
 green earth for all that ; and I wouldn't go back to Massa 
 chusetts if they 'd make me governor." 
 
 "This is the house," he said a moment later as they 
 came abreast of a mass of dark shrubbery, overtopped by 
 waving branches, black against the sky, "Judge Adair's 
 house, Hillcreet; this is the side entrance, the low gate, 
 they call it; the house fronts the hill above us." 
 
 Falls paused in frank admiration of the stately old house 
 which crowned the rounded hilltop above the street where 
 they stood. It was a wide Colonial house, built of the 
 creamy-buff sandstone found in the Cumberland Moun 
 tains, and seen, as Falls saw it now for the first time, 
 bathed from cornice to door-stone in a flood of moonlight, 
 it seemed fashioned of alabaster. It was surrounded by a 
 mantle of verdure which trailed downward to the very 
 street below. 
 
 Wide colonnades, whose heavy cornices were supported 
 upon groups of pillars, surrounded it on three sides; on 
 the fourth, the side which faced the two young men in 
 the street below, the hill fell sharply away in a succession 
 of terraces. Through the dusk as they looked upward, 
 flight after flight of broken marble stairs gleamed pallidty, 
 leading upward seven, eight, nine, ten terraces to the rose- 
 hung gallery above. 
 
 " ' Befo' de wah,' " said Hallett, dryly, as Falls whistled 
 softly, counting the terraces, "this girl's great-grand 
 father, old Admiral Adair old buccaneer! built this 
 house and dug those terraces with his own slaves ; he owned 
 no end of them on plantations in the Mississippi- Yazoo 
 Delta, and he brought them here in droves and worked 
 them "
 
 io THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " To good purpose, I must say ! " cried Falls. " Your 
 new South, Hallett, is a beggar maid indeed, beside 
 Dixie !" 
 
 Hallett made no answer, but opened a little gate set 
 in the privet hedge, and together they made their way up 
 two of the lower terraces to where they had a clear view 
 of the airy gallery above, hung with a tapestry of roses. 
 Under the dense shade of the trees the air was damp and 
 almost cold, and saturated with the pungent perfume of 
 honeysuckle, which hung in great, pendent masses from 
 every wall and trellis. 
 
 Hallett, groping his way in advance, paused suddenly, 
 and, turning back, laid his hand upon Falls's arm and 
 pointed silently upward to the terraces just above them,, 
 upon the farther end of which a high-arched arbor rose 
 against the moonlit spaces of the sky. A cascade of bloom 
 flowed over it, draping its openings with curtains of pale 
 purple wistaria. In the arch of the farther opening a 
 woman's delicate figure seemed poised upon air. Her 
 floating draperies melted into the gloom about her feet, 
 but her graceful head and shoulders were as clearly cut 
 as a cameo against the pale amethyst sky behind her. A 
 man's form emerged from the darkness at her feet, half- 
 kneeling, half-sitting, upon the step below her, with one 
 arm about her, his massive head thrown back against her 
 in seemingly impassioned appeal. 
 
 As they gazed in silence, the picture, set in its frame of 
 living bud and blossom, changed; the man rose, and 
 Falls heard a smothered exclamation at his side. 
 
 " "Watson, by all that 's great ! " 
 
 They saw him lift the girl's hanging hands and knew 
 that he kissed their palms; he raised them to his neck,
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN n 
 
 the two forms blotted into one, the man's head bent down 
 ward to the head upon his breast. " Come, Hallett," said 
 Falls roughly, " let 'a get out of this ! This is actionable 
 why, it 's indecent, spying upon a man like this! 
 Who was the woman ? " he asked, as they made their way to 
 the entrance above. 
 
 " Betty Archer and the man was Watson." 
 
 Falls passed his hand over his eyes, pushing back the 
 short hair from his brow where beads of sweat were cling 
 ing. " It was like a scene from an opera ; exquisitely set, 
 exquisitely rendered! I cannot get away from it; it 
 clings like a perfume ! " 
 
 " I don't want to get shut of it," declared Hallett with 
 energetic decision; Hallett occasionally allowed himself 
 one of his boyhood's colloquialisms in moments of excite 
 ment. " I would not take five hundred dollars for having 
 seen it ! " 
 
 " You set a high value upon a bit of experience which 
 in honor can never be mentioned ! " said Falls. 
 
 " It 's something, even to have seen another man kiss 
 as pretty a woman as Betty Archer! I shall enjoy it 
 er vicariously, you know, in the lonely watches of the 
 night! I used to be decidedly gone on the lovely Betty 
 myself, when I first came to Alabama; but there 's metal 
 more attractive ' ; 
 
 He gave Falls a side glance from under his drooped 
 lid, but Falls was busied in self-congratulation that none 
 of his own private experiences graced the walls of Mr. 
 Hallett's mental picture-gallery, and did not perceive the 
 covert look. 
 
 When the two young men reached the entrance to Hill- 
 crest, the impetuous Southern night had fallen some time
 
 12 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 before. The sward of the great, fan-shaped lawns was 
 frosted with moonlight, and patched with black velvet 
 shadows of elms and cedars scattered about its level 
 expanse. 
 
 The air was filled with a steady hum of talk, punctuated 
 by ecstatic shrieks of women's laughter rising above the 
 deeper resonance of masculine voices. 
 
 " Did you say something about dropping a tear, Hal- 
 lett, on this solemn occasion ? " inquired Falls, with a grin, 
 as they skirted the lawn on their way to the house. " Are 
 you sure it will be in order ? " 
 
 " The tears will be in order when Watson speaks the 
 women always cry when he speaks. This is between the 
 acts!" 
 
 The house was not lighted from within, the moon high 
 in the dark blue field of the sky bravely doing link-boy 
 duty for the whole affair, which was distinctly al fresco 
 in character. Chairs were scattered about the pavements 
 of the colonnades for the older people, those to whom dew- 
 wet grass and dew-chilled air had lost their charm twenty 
 years before; many of the chairs were already occupied, 
 and on the steps to the colonnades, which were one soft 
 dazzle of moonlight, groups of friends and kinsfolk 
 lingered in laughing talk, parted, and reunited for one 
 more word of soft-voiced, drawling jesting, touched now 
 and then with a quiet note of sadness in a half-spoken, 
 half-withdrawn word of remembrance when the speaker 
 was a woman, or of stern bitterness from the lips of a 
 man. 
 
 Bareheaded women walked about the lawns, holding their 
 white skirts gathered high in one hand, like great white 
 carnations. The air was filled with calls, greetings, scraps
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 13 
 
 of war talk ; the words " Dixie " and " th' Confederacy n 
 fell constantly from lips which spoke them as carelessly 
 as they said " Alabama " and " Holmes County." 
 
 Here and there men in rough jeans and limp cotton 
 shirts, their hats held awkwardly in their hands, stood 
 about, with keen eyes alert for some old commander, some 
 well-loved " Captain " or " Colonel " whose set face they 
 had last seen, perhaps, as they had followed him through 
 the smoke of battle for the sake of what they now reverently 
 called " th' Lost Cause." 
 
 "Why, howdy, Cur'nel ya'as, fum Sa-a-nd Mountain 
 . . . crapping yit ! " . . . " Are the veterans all coining ? 
 Will they wear their uniforms? Oh, so much more 
 romantic, you know !"..." Romantic ! Gawd A'mighty ! 
 Well, it may seem romantic now !"..." Who 's going to 
 pin on the Crosses?" . . . "Oh, Betty Archer! Why 
 Betty ?"..." Why, Clem Archer, you know ! He and his 
 son Betty's father, Ben Archer went to the wah to 
 gether. Ben was only sixteen years old ; he and his father 
 fought side by side the boy buried him, there on the 
 battle-field, after the Seven Days' fight " "I he'ped him 
 do it ! " said a grave voice from the shadows, where a tall 
 mountaineer stood shyly lost in the shadow of a cedar, " an* 
 I ain't never seed 'im fum that day to this'n! . . . You 
 doan't say ? I 'd sho' love to see 'im ! " 
 
 "Ain't that Gen'rul Armstrong er standin' over there 
 er talkin' to that lady? Ain't he th' one as was goin' 
 t' drink all th' blood shed in th' wah?" 
 
 " Ya'as, I b'lieve so, but 's fur 's ever I seen, he ain't 
 never drank nothen' but old Bourbon! He 's ben 'lected 
 to Cawngrees over 'n* over on his wah record, so I s'pose 
 he must er got one somewheres else than on th' field!
 
 H THE NORTHERNER 
 
 I ain't never know'd of him doin' no fightin' 'cepten on! 
 the stump ! " 
 
 Chains and garlands of half-grown girls flashed and 
 darted among the older people, with a winnowing of short 
 skirts and a soft thudding of heel-less shoes. 
 
 As Hallett and his companion paused at the foot of 
 the steps to give way before a bevy of girls, in full flight 
 before some unseen pursuer, they came full upon Watson, 
 who it then transpired was the one in pursuit. 
 
 He abandoned his prey with a laughing challenge to a 
 future engagement, and turned at once to Falls, with a 
 word of apology to Hallett over his shoulder. 
 
 " Excuse me, Hallett ; I 've a fancy for making Mr. 
 Falls's acquaintance unassisted/' 
 
 He offered his hand to Falls as he spoke with a cordial 
 smile which vivified his stolid face into a winning sweet 
 ness unexpected and delightful. He held Falls's hand 
 in a strong unyielding grasp as he spoke again to Hallett 
 over his shoulder. " Here is Joan ! " But Hallett, with 
 a controlled eagerness not lost upon Falls, had gone for 
 ward to meet the girl advancing toward them. 
 
 Falls's eyes were caught by her buoyant grace as she 
 crossed the gallery, walking with a step longer and freer 
 than is usual with a Southern-born woman ; he noted, too, 
 the admirable lack of consciousness with which her level 
 glance met his, frankly including him in her greeting, as 
 she bowed with a serene composure that she wore as it 
 were a graceful mantle, draping, but not concealing, the 
 girlish spontaneity beneath. 
 
 His careless glance detected none of the languid grace, 
 the subtile charm, with which poetic fancy has clothed the 
 daughters of Dixie. The west wind flattening fields of
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 15 
 
 daffodils under an April sky is not more crisply, buoyantly 
 alive than was the girl upon whom his eyes were resting. 
 The poise of her elastic figure, the resilience of her motion, 
 the clear radiance of her eyes, the smile of her soft 
 flexuous mouth whose contours had still the indefiniteness 
 of childhood, spoke an exquisite zest of life which woke 
 an answering thrill in Falls. 
 
 When she spoke in answer to Hallett's greeting there 
 was, to Falls, a piquant unexpectedness, a quaint and 
 charming inconsistency, it seemed to him in those first 
 moments, between the studied finish of her appearance 
 and manner, and her voice. In every line of her gracious 
 figure, the poise of her head upon the straight throat, 
 her tip-tilted chin curved like the petal of a Nephetos 
 rose, he read consciousness of race, breeding; but, in 
 place of the insolent droop of an eyelid, and a disdainful 
 lip, which would have seemed in character, her gray eyes 
 met his own squarely, full of a warm, impersonal friend 
 liness. 
 
 " It is sheer, sheer recklessness in you to be here at all," 
 she was saying to Hallett in the soft drawl to which 
 Falls's ear had grown accustomed in the past week, and 
 in the most delightful voice that he had ever heard, " and 
 if Mrs. Eldridge-Jones " 
 
 " I had rather counted upon your protection here to 
 night, Miss Adair, for Falls and me two helpless 
 strangers within your gates! " said Hallett, with a critical 
 eye on Falls as he made his bow. 
 
 " Oh, stay stay by all manner of means ! If Mrs. 
 Eldridge-Jones does not want you she will be delighted 
 to tell you so ! " She turned to leave them. " Mr. 
 Falle " Falls bent his head eagerly " don't let Mr.
 
 16 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Hallett impose upon you about your accent! You can 
 safely talk New England, if you like, just so you refrain 
 from incendiary references to the * late Rebellion ! ' " 
 
 The evening was half-sped when Joan, going lightly 
 about her duties as hostess, encountered Falls, who was 
 strolling in bored abstraction about the grounds. 
 
 "Mr. Hallett charged me," she said, pausing in the 
 moonlight, " to introduce you " 
 
 "Of course he did ! " answered Falls, with smiling 
 exasperation. " I have never known any one so deeply 
 imbued with the national vice of introducing people 
 as Hallett! Platform oratory has lost a star in Hal 
 lett ! " 
 
 The girl laughed lightly. She was about to step upon 
 the lawn where each close set spear of grass was beaded 
 with a drop of dew like hoarfrost. Falls gently restrained 
 her. 
 
 "Your shoe would be soaking wet in a moment. Let 
 us keep to the gravel to this gravel, and see where 
 this subterranean passage will lead us; into what un 
 known lands where men do wear their heads beneath their 
 shoulders " 
 
 "Ah, but I have sailed these seas before! I know 
 exactly where we should come out at the steps to the 
 terraced garden. I am sorry to disappoint you." 
 
 They had been strolling slowly along the dim path 
 which showed a white streak under the gloria-mundi 
 hedges, their steps falling noiselessly upon the sand, and as 
 Joan was speaking they emerged in the open space at 
 the head of the steps leading downward to the dew- 
 drenched tangle of the lower lawns. The tree-tops swayed 
 sleepily in the crooning wind, a wave of freshness laden
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 17 
 
 with the heady odor of the white-star jasmine rose from 
 the cool depths, all around them the ceaseless antiphonal 
 of the katydids beat the air in a brazen symphony. 
 
 Falls turned to the stairs, and, standing below Joan, on 
 the steps, held up his hand to aid her in their descent. 
 
 " Oh," she said a little hurriedly, " not to-night, I 
 think, Mr. Falls; some other time I will show you the 
 rose garden, with pleasure." 
 
 " The rose garden ! " echoed Falls, a superb disdain in 
 his voice. " I do not care a fig for the rose garden ! It is 
 the wistaria arbor upon which I have set my heart. I 
 had just a glimpse of it as we came up to-night. Those 
 masses of pale purple bloom must be divine with the 
 moonlight upon them." 
 
 He stood below her, bareheaded, awaiting calmly the 
 moment when she should see fit to accept his uplifted hand 
 and descend. 
 
 " The wistaria arbor ! Ei-d-i-culous ! Prep-o-sterous ! 
 . . . Ab-s-u-rd ! " Joan uttered the words in her softest 
 drawl, and Falls laughed with sheer delight. 
 
 " Those are unanswerable arguments ! " he exclaimed 
 gaily, "but oddly unconvincing! I offer all this " he 
 waved his hand to the night " in rebuttal ! " 
 
 "Why, it is much, mu-ch farther than the rose gar 
 den ! " Joan swept her skirts into one hand, and, stand 
 ing poised upon the steps, interrogated the sweet-scented 
 bosky gloom below with suspicious eyes. " It is dewy 
 down there/' she declared, and made one step toward the 
 outstretched hand, "and briery," another step, "and 
 earwiggy ! " 
 
 She laid her rosy palm in Falls's broad one, which closed 
 upon it and transferred it to his arm. Her sweet, averted
 
 i8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 eyes still lingered upon the gloom below. Falls laughed 
 softly : 
 
 "And snakey, if I 'm any judge! But you may count 
 on the last drop of my blood being shed in your defense 
 against the dangers which beset our path ! I will engage 
 in single combat any earwig which lurks in this garden; 
 and should the fierce and deadly snail leap upon us from 
 its lair I have I think I have my trusty envelope- 
 opener ! " 
 
 " You are almost as absurd as Hugh," said Joan. " I 
 am not in the least afraid of that sort of thing. The 
 reason I hesitated was because " 
 
 There was so much of finality in the pause that Falls 
 decided he had been answered by a bit of the hereditary 
 logic of her sex, until she finished the sentence, suavely: 
 " of malaria." 
 
 The arches of the arbor opened four-square to the 
 night, and the June moonlight painted with faithful pencil 
 upon its tiled floor a delicate tracery of half-opened leaf 
 and curling tendril; curtains of pale purple bloom shut 
 out the world; the summer night encompassed them. 
 The south wind, warmed by the June sun, magnetized by 
 the Gulf Stream, fraught with the perfume of leagues of 
 roses and acres of jasmine, thrilling with the pulse of this 
 passionate land, warm from the heart of Dixie the 
 south wind caught them to its bosom. 
 
 It grasped Joan's filmy skirts and wrapped them in 
 clinging folds about Falls; it dashed the froth of her 
 laces on his bosom, the floating tendrils of her hair across 
 his cheek. 
 
 With cunning fingers it parted the roof of bloom and 
 coaxed a moonbeam through to linger upon the curve of
 
 Joan's cheek, the ivory column of her throat, downward 
 to where it melted into the soft swell of her bosom, dimly 
 visible under the gauzy folds of her gown. 
 
 Falls, glancing about in the dusk within, seized upon 
 an ancient garden-seat which had retired from the garish 
 light of day, conscious of its many infirmities, and haled 
 it forth with triumph. 
 
 " Unblushing usurper ! " protested Joan, from the steps, 
 and watching Falls with laughing eyes, as he propped the 
 ancient seat for Her reception. 
 
 " By what right do you lay claim to my hereditary goods 
 and chattels ? " she demanded. 
 
 " I have some hereditary rights myself," said Falls, 
 groping in the gloom for bricks; "the right of might is 
 the one I am exercising just now." 
 
 " What would my great-grandfather Adair say if he 
 could hear you ! He put that bench there " 
 
 " If what I have heard of him is at all authentic he 
 would say it was c a damned poor specimen of a bench, 
 sur ! ' " said Falls calmly, and striking the key-note of the 
 old Admiral's habitual profanity so neatly, that Joan had 
 a sharp struggle to preserve her gravity and with it her 
 sense of loyalty to the old life of which this crumbling 
 remnant was a fragment. 
 
 " It was quite a handsome bench in its day," she pro 
 tested staunchly, " it was er quite unique ! " 
 
 " Ah, so it must have been ! " murmured Falls with 
 gentle sarcasm, "fine old Southern stock, sur neither 
 back nor legs ! " 
 
 "It had a back and legs but the Yankee soldiers 
 during the wah "a dead pause ; even in the moon 
 light Falls could see the blush.
 
 20 THE NORTHERNER' 
 
 " Come in, Aurora ! " he called to her ; " I think I 
 have persuaded the last of your ancestral earwigs that he 
 has an engagement elsewhere, and he has hurried off 
 like a veritable Southern gentleman, an hour late, to 
 keep it!" 
 
 Joan's eyes as she came in were a trifle speculative, and 
 warm with hidden laughter. 
 
 "You look like a convolvulus after the sun has kissed 
 it, with your petals all folded up like that/' Falls told her, 
 as she came daintily in still holding her skirts tightly 
 sheathed about her. 
 
 " I 'm a moon-flower," she cried gaily, " and it 's time to 
 open ! " Releasing her soft, frilled skirts with a gay 
 whirl, she sank upon the old bench, which groaned its 
 protest. 
 
 " Gently, gently," Falls admonished her, as he steadied 
 the rickety seat, " you 're worse than the Federal troops ! 
 You '11 lay low this monument which my alien hand has 
 just erected in honor of Dixie ! " They sat facing the 
 long dip of valley land which lay wrapped in its robe of 
 blue-gray shadows, almost at their feet. Across the valley 
 to the north the mountains lay, like crouching beasts. 
 
 "Tell me," he said softly to the girl beside him, his 
 eyes still on the horizon guarded by those dim, watching 
 forms, " what is this Dixie ? I asked Hallett, but I could 
 get nothing from him but maundering! He quoted 
 Eudyard Kipling, he raved of the noble dead, and of 
 noble dividends in a breath, he I 'm not sure but he 
 wept ! " 
 
 " Over the dividends ! But Is this authentic ? Mr. 
 Hallett and sentiment? I thought Mr. Hallett was 
 of the New South ; I did not know he knew Dixie ! "
 
 AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 21 
 
 " No more he does ! That much I gathered from his 
 wanderings ; he opines that no one does ; he confessed that 
 he could not interpret for me; that he could not, even 
 yet, speak the mother tongue. He only - ah, feels it ! " 
 
 " Mr. Hallett ! " so much of keen incredulity spoke in 
 the girl's tone, that Falls laughed softly in the gloom. 
 
 " Is not Hallett a man like any other ? Do you deny 
 him any human susceptibility ? " 
 
 " No," she said serenely ; " I accord him the most 
 human! A very human and a very keen susceptibility 
 as to what he can make out of Dixie." 
 
 " You hit hard ! " said Falls under his breath. " But 
 But you said 'her'^ do you, then, think of Dixie as a 
 woman ? " 
 
 "Do not you?" 
 
 " I ? I do not know what to think ! I am not yet even 
 of the New South. I am of Wall Street. You are her 
 daughter, are you not? You were cradled upon Dixie's 
 bosom; you speak the mother language. Will you not be 
 my interpreter ? " 
 
 "How can I ptit into language that which has neither 
 speech nor language of its own ? I could not define Dixie 
 any more than I could explain nostalgia! I could not 
 even tell you, as Mr. Hallett did, that it extends from the 
 Ohio River to the Gulf for it does not! There are 
 great tracts within that area which are just simply 
 Florida and Texas Georgia not Dixie at all ! Dixie 
 is a feeling, you know a belief, a sentiment. Like the 
 German Vaterland. And where those currents of feeling 
 set strongest and swiftest, in the Sargasso seas of feeling, 
 as it were, there there is Dixie! This," she flung her 
 hand out to the dim land about her, to the white stars
 
 22 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 overhead, to the perfumed air, " this, is the very heart 
 of Dixie ! " 
 
 " Is it all as fair as this ? " asked Falls, his slow pulses 
 thrilling under the charm of her voice, his eyes upon 
 her rapt face. 
 
 " N-o," said she slowly and a little coldly ; " Sargasso 
 seas or so they told me at school harbor all sorts of 
 flotsam and jetsam of the oceans; whirlpools of feeling 
 obey the same laws ! But we must be going up, must we 
 not ? We want to hear Hugh speak ! " 
 
 " Aye," said Falls heartily, " we do ! " And mentally 
 he added just as heartily, " Confound Watson ! " 
 
 " Joan," said Hugh, leaning across Falls to speak under 
 cover of the jubilant strains of " Dixie," as the evening 
 drew to its close, " what is this I hear about a dance ? 
 There are a lot of fellows over there on the end of the 
 colonnade, who never walked out here to sing ' Dixie ' I 
 It took more than patriotism to pull Hale up that hill; 
 and Jemmy 's got his glad rags on! They 've come 
 to dance ; that 's patent. What did you say, Joan 
 
 * Father ' ? . . . Joan, my child, try not thy futile arts 
 of dissimulation upon me, exercise your infant wiles upon 
 Falls's innocence! Don't I know that the first strain of 
 
 * Dixie ' sends Uncle John up-stairs ? He goes up there 
 and hugs his old sword and cusses," he added in an ex 
 planatory aside to Falls. 
 
 " Hugh ! What will Mr. Falls think ! Father ne-ver ! 
 Yes, Challie, I see him ; kt 's go across." 
 
 Judge Adair gave Falls his hand with courteous ease 
 which recalled his daughter's manner, accompanied by a 
 glance which classified, appraised, and dismissed him in
 
 23 
 
 a breath. Falls had met many of the men present, and the 
 greeting of the rest was for the most part a replica of Judge 
 Adair's manner perhaps a trifle colder and with 
 more hostile scrutiny. 
 
 In the group about the hall door, talk of the dance went 
 on with liveliest interest. 
 
 " It is debatable ground, boys/' said Judge Adair, " dis 
 tinctly debatable ground. We have met here to render 
 a tribute to the Confederate dead " 
 
 " Well " said Jemmy Page, driven to a desperate 
 expedient in the way of argument, "if they 're half the 
 men I 've been led to believe all my life, they 'd be the last 
 sort to want to cut us out of any fun ! " 
 
 " Eeally, Uncle John," said Hugh, " I see no impropriety 
 in the occasion and the occasion is over, besides ! " 
 
 Judge Adair visibly wavered. " I do not sanction it, 
 you know I er only allow it ; and, Hugh, you 
 will explain to the ladies of the Confederacy ? " 
 
 Hugh fixed the older man with a glance of keen amuse 
 ment. " The chicken-heartedness of the Confederate 
 veteran under fire surprises me! The 49th Alabama 
 would not own you to see you quail before Mrs. Jones! 
 But thank God, there 's life in the old land yet! I '11 
 engage her I '11 dance with her, bloody shirt and all! 
 You may go to bed, Uncle John, I '11 look after things." 
 
 " Challie," said the old man, and beckoned Hugh aside, 
 " who is this new man this Falls whom Joan is lead 
 ing about like a lamb on a ribbon ? " 
 
 Watson's smile broadened. " Of all the inapposite 
 If you had said a unicorn! I think Falls is the moat 
 nnlamblike individual I have ever met! Hallett brought 
 him here."
 
 24 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 "Hallett?" 
 
 " It is all right, I think, Uncle John; Joan met Hallett 
 with Falls down-town and invited them or rather let 
 Hallett invite himself to come out. I 'm rather taken 
 with Falls he does not impress me as being of the type 
 of our usual Northern contingent. Hallett tells me he has 
 bought the old Power and Passenger Company means 
 to run it himself. I always did like a man with gall! 
 . . . What do you think?" 
 
 " I think a fool and his money are soon parted. Good 
 night, Challie."
 
 II 
 
 A WOMAN AND A WALTZ 
 
 " "\TTE dance up-stairs, Mr. Falls/' said Joan, sending 
 
 T V Falls a smile from the landing as she went about 
 her duties of hostess, collecting the scattered guests and 
 marshaling them up-stairs. 
 
 " Jemmy/' she waved her escort gaily toward Falls, 
 "I think I can find my way about the house by this 
 time! Won't you show Mr. Falls the way?" 
 
 " I perceive that you are on detail duty, Mr. Page/' 
 said Falls, smiling gravely upon the lad, "but do not let 
 me spoil the evening for you. I was just admiring this fine 
 old hall!" 
 
 " Is n't it fine ? I believe Hillcrest is considered the best 
 of the ante-bellum houses left us, now. Egypt that 's 
 our place just out of town used to be this sort; but 
 father father is rather progressive had it torn down 
 and a decent house put up, with steam heat, where one 
 can be comfortable, you know " 
 
 " Is n't it a good deal of a pity, though ? " asked Falls 
 idly. 
 
 " No," said the boy, sturdily, " the quicker we get rid of 
 the old regime the better it will be for us ! ' Forward, 
 forward, let us range ! ' " 
 
 25
 
 26 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " I see you are of the New South ! " 
 
 " Indeed I am ! I do not hold with the Bourbon creed 
 that never learns and never forgets! Do you care to 
 dance, Mr. Falls? I will introduce you to any of the 
 girls You have met Betty but Hugh would not stand 
 that! There *s Miss Comer she 's a new girl the 
 very topmost straw on the swim in New Orleans ! " 
 
 " They are all new to me," said Falls, laughing ; " later, 
 Mr. Page, if you will be so kind?" And his detail de 
 parted to seek his own young pleasure. 
 
 The ballroom was in the third story, its windows opening 
 to the floor upon a wide, deck-like gallery, with a sky 
 light flung open to the starlit reaches of the summer night. 
 It was bare of furniture except for a row of dark por 
 traits which paneled the wall-spaces between the windows, 
 and a huge chandelier from whose many branches hung 
 tinkling, ice-like prisms. The floor was of polished wood, 
 ideal for dancing, and was comfortably filled with 
 dancers when Falls and young Page entered. 
 
 Falls watched the scene from the gallery, bored, but 
 lingering he knew not why. Watson passed him in 
 animated talk with a woman on his arm whom Falls 
 instantly decided must be Mrs. Eldridge-Jones. He 
 looked at her critically, striving to analyze the feeling 
 of dislike and antagonism which had taken instant pos 
 session of his mind as his eyes rested upon her. 
 
 She was a tall woman, almost as tall as Hugh himself, 
 and of imposing presence. She was clad to-night in sweep 
 ing robes of some airy black which swam about her as 
 she moved, and from her bosom came a flash-light of 
 jewels, a great cross of diamonds, suspended just below 
 a loose and pendent fold of flesh which depended from
 
 A WOMAN AND A WALTZ 27 
 
 her wrinkled throat; her abundant white hair was turned 
 back in a full roll from her bold, angular face a face 
 whose shrewd capableness was weakened and marred by 
 an expression of egotism, bred in her, doubtless, by the 
 narrow life of a local celebrity; arrogance, an over 
 weening personal conceit, spoke in her manner, which 
 sought, under the elaborate mannerisms of a bygone 
 generation, to conceal a conscious insolence of caste. She 
 walked beside Hugh with teetering footsteps and airy 
 graces, her bold eyes, under languishing lids, sweeping 
 the room keenly, with the glance of a general upon the 
 battle-field. 
 
 Joan was waltzing with a veteran whose white head 
 towered above that of every other man in the room except 
 Falls. Gay groups passed and repassed him upon the gal 
 lery, while from within came the wailing of the violins, the 
 soft hiss of gliding feet upon the polished floor, the flut 
 ter of light gowns, soft laughter, the sweet familiar give 
 and take of people who met at ease in genial intercourse. 
 
 " I seem to have strayed into some family reunion," 
 thought Falls. " One turn I '11 go after I 've had it." 
 
 Joan was beaming a farewell smile upon her veteran 
 when Falls bent his tall head beside her. 
 
 " Will you risk a partner who has not waltzed for ten 
 years, Miss Adair?" 
 
 She rose at once, and they paused to catch the time. 
 
 "I never refuse your sort of maa as a partner/' she 
 told him. 
 
 Falls swept her out upon the current of the music with 
 a strong glide, and Joan caught her breath with sheer 
 delight in the cadenced motion. They had almost com 
 pleted the circuit of the room before Falls spoke.
 
 28 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " What sort of man is my sort ? " 
 
 " Strong, you know and all that ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " smiled Falls, " that ! Any navvy can have 
 muscle ! " he murmured, ungratefully, after a minute. 
 Glancing down he could see one rosy ear, the curve of a 
 delicate cheek and a length of dreaming lashes; but it 
 is doubtful if he was conscious of a single detail of her 
 loveliness. Like a strong swimmer upon a sun-warmed sea, 
 Falls was letting himself drift, deliberately letting the 
 current of the moment sweep him on ; he would turn back 
 soon, to the workaday world. He felt the buoyant soft 
 ness of Joan's form within his arm, saw the billows of 
 her skirts about his feet with a reflex consciousness only. 
 
 Joan, with a momentary congratulation that her partner 
 did not care to talk, abandoned herself to the pleasure of 
 the waltz. The floor was perfect ; the air, cooling toward 
 midnight, swept downward from the mountain-tops in 
 great sighing breaths; she could feel the smooth play of 
 Falls's muscles supporting her, and close to her was the 
 black shoulder of his coat. 
 
 Lulled by the motion she abandoned herself dreamily 
 to a childish memory which had assailed her after the 
 first of Falls's long, smooth glides. 
 
 " This is the North Wind's hair, black and drooping, 
 which is about me," she thought dreamily ; " this is his 
 strong arm holding me; we are far out upon the dark 
 blue billows of the air ! " She knew that Falls's eyes 
 were just above her, that if she lifted her own she would 
 look straight into the black depths of his, and she wished 
 that she might do so. 
 
 She longed to break through that strong quiet of his; 
 to know what lay behind his grave, restrained glance. Was
 
 A WOMAN AND A WALTZ 29 
 
 it indifference? The thought but skimmed the surface 
 of her mind, dipping downward, as a swallow might, to 
 touch a memory here and there. No, it was not indif 
 ference, A curtain dropped between the man's proud, 
 reserved soul and the world? It might be. Fatima-like, 
 Joan longed to lift its edge ! " Suppose," she dallied with 
 her girlish fancy, " suppose I tilted back my head and 
 looked at him and said, like this : * Dear North Wind, I am 
 frightened; the roofs of the great city are so far below 
 us ! ' What would happen, I wonder ? " 
 
 On the cheek beneath Falls's abstracted eyes a dimple 
 glanced, and vanished. 
 
 " What is it ? " he said instantly. " What amuses you ? " 
 
 She started, and the smile flashed fully out. 
 
 " Nothing you would not find it amusing ! " 
 
 " I 'm not nearly so dull as I look ! If it is not very 
 metaphysical I could make a stagger at it! I understood 
 the dimple quite well ! " 
 
 " Some day " she lightly evaded him. 
 
 " ' Many things by season, seasoned are/ " he reminded 
 her. 
 
 He had an instant's glimpse of eyes which laughed. 
 
 " The present would add rather too much pungency," 
 she said frankly. 
 
 " When, then ? " 
 
 " In a year and a day " 
 
 " Is n't that rather a Delphic promise ? " 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 " Where did Joan get this man, Hugh ? " asked Mrs. 
 Eldridge-Jones, indicating with a skilled turn of her eye 
 Falls's tall figure waltzing within, his grave face as still
 
 30 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 as though cast in bronze, with steady eyes upon his part 
 ner's charming profile. 
 
 " I think Joan had him made in New York to go 
 with her Redfern gown that Uncle John gave her on her 
 birthday the other week ! " replied Hugh, his tone of care 
 ful precision implying that, while his information might 
 be a trifle inaccurate, it was, for all practical purposes, 
 reliable. 
 
 " Ah " she said with acrid complacency, " I had 
 decided that he was a New Yorker, he is coarse-grained 
 as all New Yorkers are! Who is he to whom did he 
 bring letters here, that he is received at Hillcrest ? " 
 
 Watson turned an eye of speculative amusement upon 
 her, from the security of the dark gallery. " His name is 
 Falls; that is, I think, all that can be predicated of him 
 thus far; except that he has bought the old Power and 
 Passenger plant " 
 
 Her great fan of dusky feathers hung suspended, as 
 she turned toward Watson in the semigloom of the gallery, 
 the diamond cross upon her bosom shaking out a dazzle of 
 indignant, scintillant sparks to match the angry sparkle 
 of her eyes. 
 
 " An electric light man ! Waltzing here with Jack 
 Adair^s daughter ? What what are we coming to ! " 
 
 There was real feeling in her tones; a passion of regret 
 shook them into sincerity as she went on : 
 
 "Of what use for the few of us to struggle to main 
 tain the old customs, the old order of things? I have set 
 my face from the first against this new system of things, 
 but what use? If John Adair ! I told Colonel Jones 
 only the other day when he asked me again to invite this 
 Mr. Hallett to dine "
 
 A WOMAN AND A WALTZ 31 
 
 " Why, the Colonel and Hallett are as chummy as pos 
 sible/' began Hugh. 
 
 " Ah, that is another matter ! That is business ; men 
 meet each other on a different plane in business. Why, 
 even befo' the wah men were associated in business with 
 others of quite a different stamp. Our overseers when they 
 came up on business were always kindly treated. But 
 this 'new element/ as it calls itself! Never, as I told 
 Colonel Jones, never will my doors open to one of them ! " 
 
 11 Are we never to grow any, Mrs. Jones ? Never learn 
 to forget?" 
 
 " Never ! " she made firm answer, her handsome, vin 
 dictive old face rigid with anger. " My growing days 
 are over, Hugh, and I learned more than I shall ever 
 forget in those four years! Remember, boy, what I lost 
 before you talk to me of forgetting: my husband a 
 Senator of his State my lovely sons, my magnificent 
 plantations my negroes, even my jewels ! " Her hard 
 tones trembled into tenderness, and Watson smiled again, 
 thankful for the darkness which hid his amusement at her 
 anticlimax. 
 
 In the silence which lasted a moment, they saw Falls 
 bend to speak to his partner, saw the smile, the glance, 
 with which she answered him. 
 
 " The question with me is, Hugh/' she resumed with a 
 slow significance, her eyes still bitterly following Falls's 
 handsome figure, "the question with me is how does the 
 admission of these people constitute growth? To me it 
 seems dissolution disintegration! We do not really 
 assimilate them ; and the result is conflict friction : 
 where if we merely decline to admit them go our way 
 let them go theirs ! "
 
 3 2 
 
 " Yes/' said Watson slowly ; " it does mean disinte 
 gration; and it is disintegration that we want! The old 
 South, the Sonth that you knew and loved, is dead, Mrs. 
 Jones! We cannot reanimate dry bones; disintegration 
 precedes growth always. ' The grain is not quickened, 
 except it die/ And why should Falls be difficult of 
 assimilation ? " 
 
 " He is a Yankee " 
 
 Watson turned his brilliant glance upon her, full of 
 ironical chiding. " Tut ! " said he in a tone which made 
 of the word a caress. " Tut, Mrs. Jones, bury your old 
 squirrel gun ! ' Weep no more, my lady, weep no more ! ' 
 Accept the inevitable with the courage with which you 
 accepted the war. Betaliate upon the past by the con 
 quest of the future. We are coming out ahead in this 
 new war of capital ! And about Falls I 'm going to 
 introduce him ; he has n't any women ! " he added with 
 a smile. 
 
 " That is certainly in his favor ; the men are bad 
 enough, but the women ! . . . No, no, Hugh, no introduc 
 tions for me ! " 
 
 "That hint is not quite pointed enough, Betty," said 
 Hugh, as Betty stepped inside her own gate and clicked 
 it together after her, " I 'm coming in ! " 
 
 " It is very late, Hugh ; had you better ? " 
 
 " It is for you to say whether I had better ! But, I 
 think it only fair to warn you, in the event I do not I 
 shall kiss you out here ! " 
 
 " Hugh, the hill is full of people ! " 
 
 She swung the gate open and stepped aside, but Wat 
 son did not move.
 
 A WOMAN AND A WALTZ 33 
 
 "You will have to invite me, now; I am offended. 
 You have wantonly injured my tenderest " 
 
 " Challie ! " in agonized remonstrance, " Mrs. Eldridge- 
 Jones and the Colonel are coming down the hill ! " 
 
 " Good night, Mrs. Jones," said Watson, urbanely, 
 ignoring her piercing glance at Betty's shrinking figure 
 endeavoring to conceal itself behind the slender iron post 
 of the gate. " Howdy, Colonel . . . Well, Miss Archer, 
 since you insist " this in the bored tone of a guest 
 being detained against his will, with laughing eyes of cruel 
 fun upon the girl, " why er I will come in a moment 
 to see the night-blooming cereus " He followed Betty 
 to the quaint hooded porch draped with Banksia roses into 
 whose depths she had vanished. Watson made one or 
 two cautious, stumbling, near-sighted steps into the gloom 
 and found himself in Betty's hostile grasp. 
 
 " My darling, this is assault and battery ! " 
 
 " Oh, Challie ! " cried the girl, pounding him viciously 
 with soft fists, " why on earth did you ever think of saying 
 that idiotic thing where she could hear you? Did I 
 ever, ever ( insist ' in my life, on a man's coming in ? " 
 
 " Betty darling, don't be tragic ! " 
 
 He drew her softly to him, and in his strong embrace 
 she grew happy again and was so quiet that he fancied 
 she had forgotten the little rift, until she raised her head 
 at last with a happy, exasperated sigh. 
 
 " But you know, Hughie, you are simply, simply un 
 speakable ! " 
 
 " I 'm glad I am with you ; you are just the one 
 person on earth with whom I prefer to be inarticulate. 
 I think the sign language is far nicer between us, don't 
 you ? " He laid his cheek against hers and gathered her
 
 34 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 closer into his arms, until he felt the hurried beating of her 
 heart upon his own, and was silent. So silent that the 
 interested audience of earwigs and granddaddies and hairy 
 worms that lived in Betty's porch, and knew to a shade 
 the exact standing of each of Betty's suitors, retired 
 disappointed to humdrum domesticity in their cracks and 
 crannies, and to unromantic slumbers. 
 
 " Challie, do you really, really love me ? " murmured 
 Betty, the old doubt, the old question, old as love, old as 
 life, in her voice. 
 
 Watson, disdaining speech, preferring the sign language, 
 found her mouth in the darkness and softly closed it 
 with his own. 
 
 " Best, I mean and only ? " 
 
 " Best, and only, Betty ! " 
 
 " Did you never never even fancy ? " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 The girl nestled closer, with a happy, contented sigh. 
 But Watson sat as though carved in stone, his cheek 
 against Betty's soft love-locks, his wide eyes, blankly upon 
 the moonlit spaces of the garden, filled with a memory as 
 bitter as a curse. 
 
 " You know, Hugh," Betty went on after a moment 
 of this silence, " I always thought it silly for a woman 
 to try to claim her lover's past, and and I do not! 
 But I was just thinking, how lucky I am ! We 've known 
 each other all our lives; and if there had ever been 
 I 'd be certain to have heard about it, would n't I, Challie ? 
 Why, I can remember back, when you first came home 
 from college and lived at Judge Adair's when your 
 Aunt Felicia was living I was only a little girl, then, 
 never d-r-e-a-ming that you would ever ever ! . . . Did
 
 A WOMAN AND A WALTZ 35 
 
 you love me in those days ? Yes ? How delightful ! How 
 dear of you! And when I consider " 
 
 " Your own string of scalps ! " put in Hugh gravely, 
 rousing himself. " Let 's leave the past alone, Betty, shall 
 we? We have the present, and the future, please God! 
 Who burns a light, so late?" he went on to turn her 
 from the subject. 
 
 " Rose," she answered carelessly ; " she will wait up for 
 me. She is my maid now." 
 
 "Kose? What Rose? I don't remember " 
 
 " Rosebud, you know. But papa thought it improper 
 for a servant to be called Rosebud; and I think it is 
 just as well," finished Betty with a pretty primness. 
 
 " Is Rosebud here ? " asked Hugh. Rising, he put 
 Betty's hands away from his neck and stepped beyond 
 the porch as though to gain a moment's breathing space 
 from something which oppressed him. 
 
 "Yes," said Betty, "she wanted to come, and father 
 let me have her. She makes a splendid servant I'm 
 going to say good night now, Hughie" . . .
 
 Ill 
 
 THE DARK THREAD IN THE WOOF 
 
 rose-gallery at Hillcrest was Joan's special pet 
 JL and pride and the favorite resort for family and 
 guests during the hot months of summer, which Joan 
 and her father were spending this year in town, with 
 brief visits to Judge Adair's mountain house in the heart 
 of the blue-green mountains that overlooked the valley 
 behind Hillcrest. 
 
 On a morning late in August, Joan lay in her rose- 
 red hammock behind the curtain of vines, tapestried with 
 ten thousand roses, through which the light filtered in 
 a dim green shade, admiring her own slim feet, very 
 much in evidence, several inches higher than the golden 
 crown which was slipping down her shoulders. 
 
 Joan cast a handful of rose and gold and scarlet petals 
 to a baby wind to make fairy boats of, and watched them 
 careen across the polished floor of the gallery, but her 
 thoughts were all of wedding-clothes, and her talk, not 
 of the sunsets which trailed their gorgeous banners be 
 hind the purple peaks, but of hemstitching, of herring- 
 boning, of hand-made lingerie, couched in terms of edgings 
 and insertions, and of mystic numbers which made " sets " 
 of such and such. 
 
 36
 
 THE DARK THREAD 37 
 
 For Betty's wedding-clothes were in progress, and Betty 
 herself was present, emerging like another, and more 
 domestic, Aphrodite from a pile of fluffy stuff which 
 trailed upon the gallery floor, and which Betty's slim 
 fingers crimped and pinched and tugged at most un 
 kindly. Within the cavern of the black hall, Joan's prime 
 minister, Milly Ann, presided at a sewing-machine, from 
 which she evoked long writhing strips of the same fluffy 
 stuff, and which presently Betty would take in hand. 
 
 Farther within the cavern stood the girl Rosebud, now 
 primly pruned to " Rose," who cut, with shining shears 
 and a skilled hand, length after length of the same 
 diaphanous white which clung, writhing and fluttering, 
 to the shears as though in pain, or in anticipation of the 
 time when it, too, must pass beneath that keen needle 
 under Betty's caressing fingers. 
 
 And all of this that Betty might tread that straight 
 and narrow pass which leads from maidenhood to wife- 
 hood, fortified with the strength which comes to a bride 
 only with the knowledge of hand-made lingerie! 
 
 The houses of Adair and Archer had allied themselves 
 until such time as Betty might deem herself sufficiently 
 equipped to progress to the end of the block in which she 
 had spent her life, and begin life anew among the same 
 people whom she had regularly subjugated each season, 
 since she had been out of short frocks, with one-fourth 
 the costumes which now seemed necessary to carry on 
 her conquests as Mrs. Hugh Chalmers Watson. 
 
 " Rosebud er I mean Rose," said Joan kindly, to 
 the girl who had come out to speak to Betty, " don't you 
 think you had better give up this idea of going off to 
 college, and stop here and be Miss Betty's housemaid after
 
 38 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 she is married? And then the wedding, you '11 miss it 
 all! And what 's the use of being educated? You are 
 much nicer as you are. I can't st-a-nd those educated 
 darkies, with note-books in their hands and eye-glasses! 
 They b-o-re me to death ! " 
 
 " Yes," placidly joined in Betty " Put it over my 
 shoulder, Rosie; is it long enough? Yes, I have been 
 talking to Eose about this foolish idea; it is simply 
 silly! She can read and write, can't you, Rosie? And 
 that is enough ! " 
 
 " M-o-re than enough," chimed in Joan heartily ; " I 
 would not have an educated nigger " She caught the 
 flush which rose to the girl's clear, golden cheek, and 
 added in eager deprecation of her careless speech, " Xot 
 that Rose could ever be like the ones I mean." 
 
 Rosebud had not spoken, beyond a smile to Joan and a 
 gentle glance at Betty. 
 
 " Where are you going, Rosebud ? " asked Joan with 
 a kindly interest, intended to make amends for her care 
 less speech. 
 
 " I 'm going to Oberlin, Ohio, to the college there," 
 replied the girl. 
 
 Both Joan and Betty started, and in the glance which 
 both bent upon the girl, sewing quietly, there was aston 
 ishment; in Betty's, suspicion, as well. Rosebud's misty 
 dark eyes with their puzzling likeness to some one a 
 likeness which always eluded Joan just when she thought 
 she knew met their own with impenetrable frankness. 
 The same question met her in the eyes of both Betty 
 and Joan. It began upon Joan's lip, faltered, died ; before 
 the gentle reticence of that quiet glance it had seemed 
 an impertinence. Where had she encountered, before, the
 
 THE DARK THREAD 39 
 
 courteous challenge of that glance? Somehow, oddly, 
 Joan seemed a little child again, restrained, controlled 
 by it ! Oh, what where had she known it ? Betty 
 persevered, unwarned by the glance which had repulsed 
 Joan, holding her long white neck a little straighter, and 
 with a veiled suspicion in her childlike eyes, but in a 
 rather guarded tone; for the girl was not in the ordinary 
 sense her servant. Upon Eosebud's part it was a voluntary 
 service, and upon Betty's the protection which her home 
 and her influence over the girl afforded. It was not, 
 therefore, the reprimand of a mistress to a servant, which 
 had brought the worried frown to Betty's fair face, so 
 much as the responsibility she felt for the girl's welfare. 
 And Eosebud understood. 
 
 There was amusement, reassurance, gratitude, adora 
 tion almost, in the glance she turned upon Betty; and 
 something more: a restrained dignity, as of one who 
 suffered in silence an injury from a loved hand, refrain 
 ing from speech which might wound. 
 
 " But, Eose," she persisted, " it costs a great deal of 
 money to go so far away ; and then such a college ! Why, 
 where can you find the money, child ? " 
 
 Eosebud's eyes met Betty's with the same frank re 
 serve. " I 've been teaching some," she said, " and I shall 
 work at the college. I 'm a good hand in the laundry." 
 
 Betty drew a sigh of relief. "Of course that ! Well, 
 if you will go, Eosie, I 'm going to miss you ! I '11 make 
 Milly Ann send you a piece of my wedding-cake." 
 
 "Thank you, Miss Betty," said Eosebud, gently; and, 
 was it tears in those soft, inscrutable eyes? 
 
 " Eosie," said Joan, as she and Betty passed within, 
 leaving the two girls at their task, "come to my room
 
 40 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 before you go to-day. My things used just to fit you; 
 and I 've a good many last winter things for you. If 
 you are going to Ohio you must be fixed up." 
 
 There was always this dainty practicality about Joan. 
 Betty patted the head of the ragged urchin who came 
 to sell blackberries or, it might be, a mocking-bird in 
 a cigar-box, and smiled her delicious smile upon him, 
 but Joan's invariable formula for such occasions was, 
 " Eun to the kitchen, honey, and tell Liddy to give you 
 some cake ! " 
 
 The library into which the two girls turned was 
 a spacious room, as were all the old-fashioned rooms 
 at Hillcrest, with high, frescoed ceiling, and a floor 
 polished with what Watson declared to be "homicidal 
 intent." Joan was a notable housekeeper, and no spot 
 in all Adairville was so attractive during the long summers 
 as were the dim, cool rooms at Hillcrest. There seemed 
 always a breeze just outside the long windows waiting to 
 sway the curtains softly to and fro; the glare of the 
 brazen noons was tempered to cool, green shade by rose- 
 hung galleries and Venetian blinds. 
 
 Within was the coolness of polished wood, hushed to 
 silence by deep rugs, and the cold gleam of stately marble 
 mantels and hearths. The touch of the gay young chat 
 elaine was visible everywhere, softening the old-time state- 
 liness of the spacious rooms, while leaving untouched the 
 dignity of their simple lines and wide, cool spaces. There 
 were low cane chairs lined with Joan's favorite rose-red 
 cushions, and low cane couches piled with them; big 
 Nankeen bowls of roses filled the air with sweetness, and 
 tall, draped lamps stood about in corners and at night 
 assisted the gloom.
 
 THE DARK THREAD 41 
 
 " Here are two of them ! " cried Betty, standing by 
 the table in the hall with two bits of pasteboard in her 
 hand. 
 
 " Two visiting-cards ' Mr. Gregory Falls/ I like 
 his boldness ! " she added as she tossed the cards back 
 into the tray. 
 
 " So do I," said Joan with suspicious mildness ; " that 's 
 what I have always liked in Mr. Falls his manliness." 
 
 " I said boldness/' persisted Betty, ignoring the quiet 
 challenge conveyed in Joan's level-voiced reply ; " to call 
 here twice, an electric light man! When did he call, 
 Joan?" 
 
 " Some time ago ; soon after he was here that night, 
 you remember? He called both times in the afternoon, 
 and I was out, both times, I regret to say," she added 
 firmly. " I liked what I saw of him very much." 
 
 Joan's tone was careless; not too careless, however, for 
 Betty's gentian blue eyes were not to be trifled with upon 
 occasions. 
 
 " Hugh likes Mr. Falls " she added tentatively, curl 
 ing herself comfortably among the cushions of a couch 
 and lifting a tiny jet-black kitten from the floor to share 
 it with her. 
 
 " Oh, that 's business ! Hugh is Mr. Falls's lawyer, he 
 has to go with him some; but socially, Hugh would 
 not dream of such a thing! You see, he has never 
 brought him to call on me." 
 
 " Perhaps " began Joan, and paused with a little 
 flush. Betty laughed lightly; she was too thoroughly in 
 love with Hugh, and too absolutely content with his love 
 for her, to be nettled by the meaning implied in the hiatus. 
 
 "Maybe not," lightly, "but," with smiling malice, "I
 
 42 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 think it is far more probable that by this time Mr. Gregory 
 Falls of New York, New York, has been too pointedly 
 instructed that, in Adairville, electric light men don't go 
 into society, to say nothing of Yankees and nigger-loving 
 Republicans ! " 
 
 Joan started up among her cushions, holding the kitten 
 curled into a sulky comma in her hand, and facing Betty 
 with horrified, angry eyes. 
 
 "Betty," she cried, "how unjust! How, how out 
 rageous ! How dare you say such dreadful things ? " 
 
 "You need n't be angry with me, Jo," pleaded Betty 
 pacifically, somewhat awed by Joan's fire ; " it 's not me 
 any more than every one ! Everybody is talking about 
 it!" 
 
 " About what ? " cried Joan, sitting very erect among 
 her cushions, unconsciously waving the limp kitten in 
 angry protest. " What has Mr. Falls done to have the 
 whole of Adairville down upon him? Mr. Falls is noth 
 ing to me, of course, but I hate simply hate injustice 
 and narrow-mindedness, and this petty, this despicable 
 sectional prejudice ! " 
 
 " But Joan, you Tcnow Mr. Falls is a Yankee ! " 
 
 "Of course I know that he is from somewhere in New 
 England. But what e-a-rthly difference does it make?" 
 
 " He *s a Republican ; and all Republicans believe in 
 negro equality ! " 
 
 " Pooh ! " in quick scorn, " how p-e-r-fectly r-i-diculous ! 
 That sort of talk is what Hugh calls ' sedge-field Democ 
 racy/ I 'd be ashamed to own it ! " 
 
 "I 'd be ashamed to defend a man who would put negroes 
 over the heads of white men ! The whole town is furious 
 about it! Mr. Falls took off Joe Bowers you know
 
 THE DARK THREAD 43 
 
 Joe Bowers? I had him in my Sunday-school class 
 and put a nigger, a b-l-a-ck nigger, in his place to run 
 cars for white people ! " 
 
 A troubled frown crossed Joan's brow. 
 
 " I had not heard," she said slowly ; " but it is only 
 a mistake, Betty! He does not understand, that is all! 
 I suppose Joe was no good he is not, you know, Betty ! 
 Joe Bowers is the most trifling creature on earth; there 
 is not a respectable negro in town that is not better ! Mr. 
 Falls saw negroes driving all sorts of things, carriages 
 with ladies, and all that. And really, Betty, what is the 
 difference? Don't you and I drive out every day with 
 negro drivers? Why, lots of times I sit right on the 
 seat beside Zeke Zeke puts me on my Kitchie every 
 time I ride ! " 
 
 " It 's different," declared Betty. " The way Zeke puts 
 you on your horse is just as if he was a step-ladder 
 or a mounting-block ! " 
 
 " Not at all ! I like Zeke ; he is a human being. I 
 know he feels kindly to me, and I 'm glad he does! 
 I value his respect; I would not knowingly do any 
 thing to forfeit it. And I do not so regard the step- 
 ladder!" 
 
 " How can you defend him, Joan ? " cried Betty hotly, 
 " a man who associates with negroes ! Would you receive 
 him if you knew he went with negroes?" 
 
 " Betty, you will give me nervous prostration with your 
 folly your wicked folly ! You know in your heart you 
 no more believe Gregory Falls associates with negroes than 
 you believe it of Hugh! What is all this about him, 
 Betty ? Tell me what your father says ? " 
 
 "He 's dreadfully unpopular "
 
 44 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 "Unpopular? Pooh! You cannot pick a flaw in 
 him ! " 
 
 " I cannot in his clothes, I grant that, Joan ! I 1-o-v-e 
 the way he dresses ! He 's the best groomed man in town. 
 And I like the way he parts his hair " 
 
 " Diogenes, scratch Betty ! " cried Joan to the tiny cat 
 lying upon her arm blinking at her with the jeweled eyes 
 of an Eastern idol. 
 
 "But he is so big and gloomy; and he stands about 
 and takes up so much room ! And then, you know, negro 
 equality, that's awful, Joan ! " 
 
 " Big ! " cried Joan. " That sounds well from you, 
 Betty Archer ! A woman who will have to give Hugh 
 Watson house-room for the rest of her life! Diogenes, 
 scratch Betty, hard!"
 
 IV 
 
 "WHERE is WOMAN'S FANCY BRED?" 
 
 " ijlATHER," called Joan from where she knelt upon 
 
 J_ the grassy border of the lawn, transplanting chrys 
 anthemums for the winter garden, " father, what is all 
 this about Mr. Falls?" 
 
 " What ? " asked Judge Adair, his voice coming from, 
 the rustling caverns of his daily paper. 
 
 " This," explained Joan lucidly, waving the flabby sheet 
 which she had found a moment before in the dewy grass. 
 
 " Why not read it, dear ? " inquired her father kindly 
 and provokingly; secretly hoping to be left in peace 
 about a matter of which he really knew little and which 
 he did not care at all to discuss. 
 
 "I am I mean I have; but it is rather odd, is n't 
 it, father? I do not seem to be able to understand it." 
 
 " No more can I no more can any one ! " replied 
 Judge Adair succinctly, and raised his paper an inch 
 higher. 
 
 Silence reigned for five minutes ; unbroken save for the 
 blue jays, who screamed their joyous maledictions across 
 the sunny air, and the rustle of Judge Adair's paper as 
 he waded more and more deeply into the current of repor- 
 torial imaginings. 
 
 45
 
 46 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " But, father ! " Once more the sweet, insistent voice 
 dragged the reluctant Judge Adair remorselessly from 
 those enticing columns. " I thought Mr. Falls owned the 
 electric light plant, and the cars and everything " 
 
 " So he does, I think." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 Perceiving that the end was not yet, Judge Adair 
 laid down his paper definitely; and, unconsciously adopt 
 ing the tone of bored resignation which men use in 
 elucidating the mysteries of business complications to 
 women, he said, " The affair, as I understand it, amounts 
 to this : Falls who is a most unpopular man bought 
 this electric light and power business from the old com 
 pany, that had formerly owned and failed to operate it 
 successfully here, under the impression that he could in 
 some way do what they had failed to do, under exactly 
 the same conditions. That is all, really, that there is to it." 
 
 "It seems to me," said the girl, prodding deep little 
 wells in the soft mould with the handle of her trowel, 
 "that they are more bitter against Mr. Falls than they 
 were toward the old company. Is it so, do you think, 
 father ? And, what has he done ? " 
 
 " Well, yes ; the town is very bitter against Falls ; it is 
 a difficult matter to explain. It has its roots deep down 
 among the ineradicables ; it is sectional prejudice, of 
 course, but daughter, I do not say this out in town, you 
 know as long as you have asked me, Falls has done 
 nothing, really; thought he could run his business to 
 suit himself, and by the same methods which he would 
 use, say, in Manchester, or California, or New England, 
 without taking cognizance of Frazier and the City Fathers 
 generally. Then that street-car business the negro
 
 'WOMAN'S FANCY' 47 
 
 motorman; that has aroused most bitter feeling. Falls's 
 methods are not what are called conciliatory, I believe." 
 
 " Can any one prevent a man from running his business 
 to suit himself?" inquired Joan, a new light as to busi 
 ness procedure breaking in upon her mind, and astonish 
 ment and indignation mingling in her voice. 
 
 " That seems to be the question before Adairville just 
 now." Judge Adair waved his hand toward the paper 
 which she still held. "Is it Falls's business or is it the 
 town's? Falls owns the plant and pays its expenses, and 
 undoubtedly he thinks he can run it to suit himself, for 
 he is doing it ! " A gentle laugh gleamed in the old man's 
 eyes. " I cannot help admiring what Hugh calls his 
 ' sand/ But, unfortunately, Adairville is his partner 
 whether he likes it or no, and if that partner pulls out ! M 
 
 " I think it was rather fine in Mr. Falls to put Will- 
 Henry back after he had received the notice from the city, 
 don't you, father ? " 
 
 " Yes," said he slowly ; " why, yes, child, it was fine, 
 in the abstract ! It was as fine a bit of real, tough, wrong- 
 headed manliness as I have ever known. But it was crassly 
 impolitic. And Adairville is not going to put up with it ! " 
 
 Joan flung the trowel from her and, leaving her plants 
 to wither upon the ground, came upon the gallery and 
 seated herself upon the broad arm of her father's chair. 
 
 " Father " with her lovely head upon one side Joan 
 subjected Judge Adair to a critically absent-minded in 
 spection, adjusting his tie, with deft fingers, patting it 
 softly into place as though it had been a bonnet-string 
 " father, this is only a mistake that Mr. Falls is making, 
 don't you think so? But it will get him into trouble, 
 will it not?"
 
 48 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " I think he is in a fair way to have trouble yes ! " 
 
 " Why does not some one tell him, explain about things 
 here?" 
 
 "Falls is not a boy in roundabouts, Joan, playing 
 marbles. He is a hard, shrewd man of the world, and he 
 plays his game as such; he must take what the world 
 has for him. It is no one's business ; he would not thank 
 any one to interfere would not put up with it ! " 
 
 "I thought Challie " 
 
 "Hugh is his lawyer and, I think, his friend. If 
 there is any one in the place who could influence Falls 
 it would be Hugh; but in matters like this, the way he 
 runs his business the stand he chooses to take to the 
 town those matters are not in Hugh's jurisdiction." 
 
 "Not as a lawyer, perhaps, but as his friend, don't 
 you think, father ? " 
 
 Joan was still pursuing her rigidly absent-minded in 
 spection; she blew a fleck of dust off her father's coat, 
 touched his thick, silvery hair, smoothed a wrinkle out 
 of his handsome, firm old cheek with one rosy forefinger. 
 "I never could bear old Mr. Jim Frazier, could you, 
 father ? And what has he to do with Mr. Falls, anyhow ? " 
 
 " Frazier is a member of the City Council, and he has 
 what the negroes call "fluence,' big 'fluence, in business 
 circles here. He and Falls differed about the privileges, 
 I understand." 
 
 " Privileges ? " with a straight furrow in her white brow 
 over perplexed eyes. 
 
 " It had been the custom," went on Judge Adair calmly, 
 but with an eye in which a twinkle lurked, deep down, 
 fixed upon his daughter's interested face, "it had been 
 the usual custom at least, the other company did it
 
 'WOMAN'S FANCY ' 49 
 
 to allow the members of the City Council all sorts of 
 perquisites: free lighting of homes and offices, passes the 
 year round on the cars and all that ; but Falls unlucky 
 devil ! cut it off ; and even " he paused to laugh with 
 keen enjoyment " even had the gall to send in bills ! 
 No-o! It is only business, I believe. . . . Well, perhaps 
 not ; but I am not a business man ! " 
 
 The paper had been abandoned; the old man's shrewd, 
 tender smile rested upon the girl as, with roused and 
 indignant partisanship, she argued the question of Falls' s 
 abstract rights in a matter where abstract right entered 
 as little as analytical chemistry, as Judge Adair very 
 thoroughly understood; and whose issues were fixed, as 
 he believed, past all interference by a very concrete human 
 selfishness. 
 
 He had seen Joan thus, many times; he delighted in 
 the clear-headed acumen with which she would get at the 
 rights of the matter, and the instantaneous decision with 
 which she would range herself upon the side of right, no 
 matter how forlorn a hope that side might be. 
 
 The girl's vigorous mentality found little scope in the 
 peaceful routine of her life here in Adairville, and Judge 
 Adair realized the necessity for a wider field than books 
 alone could give her; he knew the quality of her mind, 
 and that it needed the friction of contact with other living 
 minds and wills, to strike the flash of fire he so loved 
 to see. He had made a companion of the girl even in 
 her madcap days, when she had been more like a happy, 
 vigorous boy than a girl and had talked life and men, 
 politics and finance, to her as he would not have done to 
 many men. He had included her always in all that 
 interested himself and Hugh, tacitly assuming both her
 
 50 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 interest and her comprehension in his work in the Courts. 
 He and Watson had always accorded her her point of 
 view upon every question, from the Federal Judiciary to 
 the fluffy chickens upon the mountain farm. Under 
 this system of training, which undoubtedly had its faults, 
 Joan had developed an untrammeled mind and a mental 
 poise unusual in a woman. She had what Watson called 
 a " sort of man-sense " which she had acquired from con 
 stant companionship with himself and Judge Adair; they 
 hoth loved her with an adoring affection, but they had 
 not petted her even as a child, and had shrewdly made 
 her fit herself and her feminine standards to the calm 
 logic of their man-sense. She was as absolutely unspoiled 
 as it is possible for a beautiful and spirited girl to be; 
 natural, and frankly loving; and as frankly disconcerting 
 to her women friends, whom she measured according to 
 the scale of her father's calm judicial standards, and 
 Hugh's shrewd insight into men. 
 
 Judge Adair thought now, with a smile, of what thia 
 fight between the city and Falls would afford her, and 
 almost wished that he was not himself upon the same 
 side, that he might the more fully enjoy her. To Falls 
 himself, or to the possibility of any other interest than 
 that which he had seen her show so many times coloring 
 her partisanship, he gave not a thought. 
 
 He thought instead, sitting in the sunlight with the 
 girl upon his knee, for the thousandth time, that if she 
 had only been a boy, what a lawyer, what a statesman, he 
 would have made of her! 
 
 " There is Hugh," the old man thought a little sadly ; 
 "yes, yes, Hugh is what I have made him almost! 
 The boy is a lawyer and a gentleman; but/' with a
 
 "WOMAN'S FANCY' 51 
 
 plaintive sigh, "he is so d humorous! I did not do 
 
 that! That is the Watson strain, and the Watson strain 
 may be deeper in him than I know; it may in time undo 
 all that I have done; cross strains of blood may work 
 the devil in a man! But a mind like Joan's will work 
 out like a mathematical problem clearly from cause to 
 effect. There is but one uncertain quality in her her 
 sex!" 
 
 Yet, Judge Adair, shrewd jurist that he was, failed to 
 take cognizance of the personal element in this new in 
 terest, as well as the woman's imagination which thrilled 
 and warmed behind Joan's clear, strong brain, infusing 
 her interest in Falls's concerns with a dangerous human 
 warmth. He forgot for the moment that this Joan, who 
 should have been John but was not, was alive and thrilling 
 to her fingers' ends with a subtle response to those triple 
 chords of youth and sex and self which Falls's magnetic 
 virility had swept into a soundless music ; felt, not heard ; 
 hearkened to, not yet comprehended. 
 
 " Father," she said as Judge Adair was leaving, " you 
 knew that Mr. Falls had called here, twice?" 
 
 " I saw the cards. What is it, Joan ? Are you about 
 to consult me for the first time in your life, about one 
 of your suitors ? " 
 
 " Xo ! " she laughed lightly. " I do not require the aid 
 of the Federal Judiciary in such matters, thank you, 
 father. When it comes to suitors, I prefer military dis 
 cipline. And, father, there are no suitors nowadays ! Men 
 do not come to sue any more; they come to argue and 
 browbeat, and lay down the law! What I mean is, Betty 
 says Mr. Falls is a Republican and that all Republicans 
 believe in negro equality."
 
 52 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Humph, Betty seems to have inherited old Ben Arch 
 er's politics! Betty was the president or secretary or 
 a director of one of those insolvent clubs or guilds that 
 Falls sent bills to, was she not?" 
 
 " Yes ; and you think I might be nice to Mr. Falls, 
 negro equality and all?" 
 
 " That is a matter entirely within your own jurisdiction, 
 child! You may 'be nice' to any man on God's earth 
 whom your own good sense and good taste tell you is 
 worthy of that distinction. Your decision in such a 
 matter carries my endorsement with it, as a matter of 
 course. For the rest why, Falls must look out for 
 himself when it comes to the exhibition of the 'nice- 
 ness ' ! " 
 
 Joan had not seen Falls to speak to him since the June 
 night six months before. An occasional bow on the street 
 and a gravely lifted hat in return had been all. 
 
 There had been all summer a slow stirring of dislike 
 to Falls which, originating in the business circles down 
 town, had widened and widened until its outer edge had 
 touched even Joan's remote life. The oppressive heat had 
 kept women indoors, and society languished; it was too 
 early for " fall cotton " to start its annual ripple upon 
 the stagnant surface of both business and society; and 
 Falls, his attitude toward Adairville (which was defined 
 somewhat oddly, with a bitter reminiscence of the hardly 
 skinned-over wounds of Reconstruction times, as " op 
 pressive"), his uncompromising business methods, and his 
 determination to thrust negro equality upon the town by 
 putting negroes upon the cars, were the accepted topics 
 of conversation. Upon vine-shaded porticos, where Adair-
 
 'WOMAN'S FANCY' 53 
 
 ville's four hundred spent the short hot evenings, women 
 spoke with bated breath of Falls's incendiary attempt to 
 establish negro equality, hinting vague calumnies 
 women who had never heard his voice in their lives, and 
 whose only knowledge of him was a glimpse of his tall 
 figure in the street, or a careless glance from his grave 
 eyes in passing. Men were grimly silent; but none the 
 less society's edict went forth. Adairville's doors were for 
 ever closed, nay, hermetically sealed, to any man who 
 believed in negro equality. 
 
 With the cooler weather, when society mounted its 
 rather slow coach, the ripple, which had been a catspaw 
 of gossip, culminated in one great gust of indignant 
 dismay. 
 
 Falls's manager had sent in bills to the various guilds 
 and church societies for lighting the churches and club- 
 rooms and meeting-halls of all kinds; and as the bills 
 were already months in arrears, payment was likely to 
 wreck the bank-accounts of the various societies! 
 
 Indignation meetings were held daily at the different 
 houses of the officials of the societies and guilds; frappe 
 was served, and the members with great display of business 
 promptitude resolved themselves into committees to " see 
 this Mr. Falls his name was Falls, was n't it ? and 
 just tell him, right out, what they thought of him and 
 his ways of doing business! He did not know, certainly, 
 what had always, always been the custom here! He was 
 from the North oh, dear, yes! Would n't anybody 
 know, by the way he acted ! Why, who ev-er h-e-a-r-d of 
 charging the churches, and sending bills to ladies ! " 
 
 It was finally decided that Mrs. Eldridge-Jones, the 
 senior president of all the societies and clubs, should, as a
 
 54 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 committee of one, approach this Mr. Falls, and make, 
 so to speak, a test case of her particular societies. 
 
 "I must say," confided Mrs. Eldridge- Jones to old 
 Jerry, who had been her coachman before the war, and had 
 known her in her days of pride when, as the wife of " the 
 Senator," she had been one of the most distinguished 
 women in " the Confederacy " ; and later, when shorn 
 of her grandeur, she had, with the shrewd sense which 
 distinguished her, annexed with a hyphen Colonel Jones 
 and his rubber-tired carriages "I must say, I have lived 
 in Adairville all my life, befo' the wah and during th' 
 wah and since the wah, but this is the first time I ever was 
 in this part of town ! Can we get through, Jerry ? " 
 
 "Lawd, Miss Liza, dere is de plain street! Coursen 
 we kin git throu'." 
 
 " Well, drive to that door, and, no you need not 
 get down, he will come out when he sees who it is ! " 
 
 But minute after minute passed, and the door opening 
 into Falls's office had remained closed; neither did the 
 planks show any signs of shriveling beneath the lady's 
 scorching glances; for, as ill-luck directed, Falls sat in 
 full view of Mrs. Eldridge-Jones, calmly dictating letters 
 without a glance toward the waiting carriage ; and worse, 
 when at last, in answer to Jerry's knock, the door had 
 been opened, Mrs. Eldridge-Jones had distinctly heard 
 Falls's careless, " See what she wants, Cunimings ! " 
 
 " She ! " Mrs. Eldridge-Jones ! Miss Winter that was, 
 and the belle of the Confederacy! 
 
 At last, furious but determined, her beautiful old hands 
 "with delicate, pointed fingers trembling with passion, she 
 made Falls's stenographer understand that it was Falls 
 himself, Falls in person, whom she demanded to see!
 
 "WOMAN'S FANCY ' 55 
 
 "Ask the lady to come in," said he calmly; but Cum- 
 mings's dubious glance at the floor of the rough, tem 
 porary office and backward to the voluminous folds of the 
 lady's silken gown sent Falls lazily toward the door. He 
 made the concession as he would have lifted a kitten across 
 a mud-puddle to save its dainty paws. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge- Jones had never encountered Falls since 
 the night when she had seen him waltzing with Joan ; to 
 her obstinate prejudice he was the " electric light man," 
 as was the man who read her meter, and the man in blue 
 overalls who put up wires in front of her house; and it 
 was in his character as a workman that she intended to 
 have her interview with Falls. She did not recognize the 
 possibility of his having any other personality. True, 
 she had heard that he associated with negroes advocated 
 negro supremacy, but for the moment that could go. She 
 had rehearsed her speech as she came down, not without a 
 certain malicious pleasure. Jack Adair might let his 
 daughter dance with the offscourings of the Xorth, but she, 
 Mrs. Eldridge-Jones, was true to the old standards with 
 her last drop of blood! This man should learn what was 
 due to the women of the Southern Confederacy! 
 
 The speech had opened in conciliatory wise : " My good 
 man, surely you are not going to charge the Ladies of the 
 Confederacy " but even if her anger at what she deemed 
 sheerest insolence in Falls had not swept all thought of 
 condescension from her mind, Falls's appearance and 
 manner as he stood beside her carriage bareheaded, with 
 patient courtesy, would have been sufficient to effect a 
 change of policy. She was too shrewd a tactician not to 
 understand perfectly that her attack as she had planned 
 it would rebound from the armor of this man as a puerile
 
 56 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 impertinence. Impertinence was a familiar weapon, but 
 puerility gave her sturdy insolence pause. Not for sixty 
 years had her arrogant eyes measured men and manners 
 to fail now to recognize a caste which, if not her own 
 nothing short of the old Charlestonians, and the angels 
 right next the throne were included within that sacred 
 pale was nevertheless unmistakable. With coldest cour 
 tesy she tendered Falls several notes, together with the 
 bill his manager had sent in to her as president of half 
 a dozen societies and clubs. Falls glanced with surprise 
 toward them as the reason for her call broke dimly upon 
 his mind. 
 
 " Do you wish/' he inquired with gentle deference, 
 which enraged her afresh, seeing as she did that the defer 
 ence was accorded not to the erstwhile belle of the Con 
 federacy, but to the old woman of seventy years who 
 sat before him, " do you wish to pay a bill here ? " 
 
 " Where else ? " she replied with withering emphasis. 
 
 A smile just glimmered in Falls's eyes she marked 
 their beauty, and the glimmer as, marveling at the 
 temper sparkling in her vindictive glance, he made reply, 
 "You have come by mistake to my private office." 
 
 " Ah ? Just be so kind as to receipt these bills in 
 full up to date " vague fragments of business for 
 mulae floating back to her. 
 
 Falls's smile deepened; he did not even glance toward 
 the notes, though he duly admired the beautiful wrinkled 
 hand so imperiously extended toward him; stooping, he 
 gently withdrew the folds of her skirt and closed the 
 carriage door. 
 
 " Take Mrs. er Jones to the up-town office ; there 
 will be some one there to wait on her," he said quietly
 
 "WOMAN'S FANCY' 57 
 
 to the coachman, and with a bow left her, speechless, ifl 
 her carriage. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge-Jones leaned back in her cushions, her 
 eyes, still strong and bright amid the puckered folds of 
 their once languishing lids, stern with resolve, and bright 
 with the angry activity of the brain behind them. 
 
 Against the man in the blue overalls she would have 
 been unarmed and helpless; but against this man who 
 had just put her in her place with gentle ease, and had 
 kept her there nay, had dismissed her against this 
 man, then, there was a shining weapon within the armory 
 of her mind whose use she understood to the degree of 
 perfection. Social ostracism could be made to mean all 
 to this man that his bitterest enemy would have it mean; 
 the level glance of cold avoidance, which does not accuse 
 but shrinks from its victim; the blighting whisper, dis 
 seminated like the breath of the upas in the air, before 
 which a man's reputation languishes and dies; the subtle 
 innuendo settling like dry-rot upon the mind of the inno 
 cent and trusting how well she understood it all ! 
 
 Weaving her web backward, she wove into it Falls's 
 face as she had seen it while he waltzed with Joan 
 Joan's as she lifted her smiling eyes to his. She had 
 been a beautiful woman for forty years, and by the light 
 of that past she read him without trouble. 
 
 " He would never stoop to sue for explanations ; his sort 
 never do ! He will eat his heart out with longing, but he 
 would not bend that high head an inch to Joan, nor to 
 Jack Adair, if I know aught of men " She laughed 
 suddenly, with angry humor. " Drive home, Jerry ; I 'm 
 able to give my own orders yet awhile in spite of Mr. 
 Gregory Falls, of New York ! "
 
 58 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 She was too clever a tactician to risk delay; before the 
 advent of " fall cotton " the crop of dragons' teeth had 
 sprung full-armed to life. That word of dread which 
 had echoed in the ears of the South during the unquiet 
 times of the Keconstruction lifted its head again : " Equal 
 ity of the races, negro supremacy," the banshee of the 
 Southern press, the lash of the Southern demagogue ! 
 
 Joan took silent issue with the town; her generous 
 heart and untrammeled mind ranged themselves silently 
 upon Falls's side. Again and again had she been tempted 
 to throw the weight of her own popularity, backed by 
 the aegis of her father's name, into the scale on Falls's 
 side; but always what Watson called her "man-sense" 
 had restrained her the thought of what Falls himself 
 might think of her championship. He had given her no 
 right to think he valued her partisanship; had not 
 called again after these first times; had given no sign 
 of interest except that his dark eyes sought her own 
 when they met, with frank pleasure. 
 
 The power-house lay just beyond the hill upon which 
 Judge Adair's house was built, and Joan often saw Falls 
 on his way back and forth. It was a long, hard walk 
 to town over the hills, but, as Falls told himself with 
 grave mendacity, he needed exercise he hated a crowded, 
 stuffy car! 
 
 Joan saw him now as she was resuming operations upon 
 the winter garden, after her father had left her. 
 
 Her glow of indignation still lingered and, it may be, 
 tipped her usually level judgment; but be that as it may, 
 it is certain that, as Falls came opposite to her across the 
 privet hedge, Joan looked up from her low seat upon the 
 grassy border and spoke to him, her voice carrying easily
 
 "WOMAN'S FANCY' 59 
 
 in the quiet air across the lawn, vibrating with a warm, 
 personal note, and her eyes met his full of friendliness 
 across the hedge of stiff waxy foliage. 
 
 Falls paused a moment involuntarily, as he lifted hi8 
 hat, and after another instant of grim counsel with him 
 self opened the gate and crossed the space between them. 
 
 " Is n't it late for gardening ? " he asked, taking in 
 his firm clasp the hand she reached him from her low seat. 
 He retained it a moment as she rose, lifting her strongly 
 to her feet. The clinging warmth of the girl's hand stole 
 through his frame like wine. 
 
 " I am not really gardening," she answered. " I am 
 only putting out some mere chrysanthemums, and thin 
 ning the violets to make them bloom." 
 
 She stood before him in her simple home gown, like 
 the incarnate spirit of the warm, crisp winter day. The 
 sun on her bare head turned the love-locks on her brow 
 to gold, and Falls noted that her eyes were precisely the 
 color of the purple-gray mist lying in the sunlighted 
 valleys. 
 
 To her surprise, he seemed interested when she spoke 
 of the violets, and asked, looking keenly about among 
 the taller shrubs, where the violets were; adding that 
 he had never seen them. 
 
 " Have you never seen a violet ? " echoed she, with so 
 sorrowful a dismay that Falls, laughing, had to admit 
 that he had seen them in flower-stalls. 
 
 " In bunches, you know ; but certainly not growing 
 out like this in December ! " 
 
 He stooped beside her and parted the dew-drenched 
 leaves as she gathered a dozen long-stemmed, sturdy 
 blooms of the kind found in sunny banks in old gardens,
 
 60 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 which here lined every winding walk and carpeted the 
 hedgerows. 
 
 He divined that they were for him, and had a quick 
 vision of her little wet, rather muddy hands fumbling 
 at his buttonhole of that dainty presence close beside 
 him. 
 
 But no; young as Joan seemed beside Falls's strong 
 maturity, she was a past master in a school whose portals 
 he had yet to cross. She shook the wet, clinging blooms 
 serenely upon the sheets of the Adairville Daily Enter 
 prise, spread tablewise upon the flat-topped box row bor 
 dering the walks, and bent to gather them in a bunch 
 with the ones which Falls added from time to time. 
 
 Falls came to her aid finally, his expert fingers per 
 forming the light task with a dexterity which made his 
 bunch grow apace. As the rival bunches grew the contest 
 for the few remaining blossoms grew warm, and Falls 
 found himself grasping the stem of a violet whose head 
 was firmly locked and twisted into that of another held 
 with equal tenacity by Miss Adair. He looked up with 
 a smile to find, to his amazement, the stern joy of combat 
 painted upon her face. 
 
 " We '11 fight them ! " she cried joyously ; " who is 
 yours ? " 
 
 "Fight them?" echoed Falls. 
 
 " Violets always fight when they are thrown into a pile 
 like this ; and it is always a duel to the death ; no quarter 
 asked or given ! " 
 
 " We must name them ? " 
 
 " Yes ; who will yours be ? " 
 
 Falls thought for a moment. "The Adairville Power 
 and Passenger Company," he said grimly.
 
 ".WOMAN'S FANCY" 61 
 
 " But that is my sido too/' expostulated Joan ; " I 
 could only put up a sham fight ! " 
 
 Falls bent eagerly toward her, his somber eyes alight. 
 " On the company's side ? On my side ? " 
 
 For the moment the fight was off. " You will never 
 know, I could not tell you if I might, how I prize your 
 friendship, Miss Adair," Falls said earnestly. 
 
 And Joan, ruthlessly incriminating Judge Adair, re 
 plied: "Father and I were just speaking of it; we 
 think, we both think, all this/' with a vague wave toward 
 the brazen headlines of the newspaper, " is such a perfect 
 shame ! " 
 
 " In that case," smiled Falls, " in that very delightful 
 case, these belligerents had better be parted," and he 
 gently essayed to separate the little locked heads, which 
 resisted firmly. 
 
 " They cannot be," said Joan gravely ; " once they are 
 locked like that they will behead themselves before they 
 will give in." 
 
 " Shall we, then, just in a spirit of prophecy, fight it 
 out?" 
 
 "Yes; and I will be who shall I be?" lifting eyes 
 of gravest counsel to Falls's own. 
 
 "Whoever is behind that rot, there; Adairville, I sup 
 pose." 
 
 "Yes," she gently acquiesced, "Adairville." 
 
 The fight was on. The arena, strewn with violets in 
 stead of sand, rocked with the combat. The smooth stems 
 glided back and forth, darting like tongues of purple 
 flame, clutching and twisting in sinuous curves, striving 
 each to bend the other back, back until the slender neck, 
 bent at too sharp an angle to the stem, should snap off.
 
 62 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Joan's fingers were agile with long practice in this mode 
 of warfare, and she shortly had Falls at her mercy, though 
 his superior strength and suppleness of wrist had told 
 heavily against her ; but she pressed him hard, and finally, 
 at the end of a fierce sortie, with a skilful upward jerk, 
 her violet clinched his antagonist in a death-grip, there 
 was a silent moment of grim struggle during which 
 Joan's breath came short, and the tip of a rose-leaf tongue 
 showed between her parted lips in tense excitement 
 and it was over, leaving in Falls's hand the mutilated 
 stalk! He stooped for the little slaughtered head, and, 
 holding it in his broad palm, looked unsmilingly down 
 upon it. 
 
 " So ? " he said gently. " I am to be worsted, am I ? " 
 
 Joan, too, was oddly serious over the bit of fun. She 
 cast the little conqueror back to obscurity, and, gathering 
 up the bunch, offered them all to Falls. 
 
 " See," she said gravely, " he is yours with all his 
 honors on his head ! " 
 
 " Which is he ? " asked Falls, searching the little faces 
 as though for a familiar one. 
 
 " This, I th-i-nk," said Joan ; laying a slender fore 
 finger beneath her warrior's head, she raised his drooping 
 face to Falls, who, suddenly stooping, kissed the little 
 warrior and the slim finger-tip. 
 
 " I surrender," he said, " to my conqueror." 
 
 He lingered at the gate, admiring the beautiful old 
 house, with its great fan-shaped lawns bordered with box 
 as green as it had been in June. The December sun shone 
 warm, bringing out the racy odors of the box; the blue 
 jays, their dispute settled at last, now shouted a brazen 
 jubilate from the silver poplars which crowded to the
 
 'WOMAN'S FANCY' 63 
 
 borders of the lawn like " woodland beggars clad in silver 
 rags," shivering in the spicy air. 
 
 As she talked to him idly and brightly, meeting frankly 
 the controlled eagerness of his glance, Joan was arguing 
 within herself strenuously a question of social etiquette. 
 Should she or not ask Falls to call? Her father had 
 said she could be nice to him; did nice imply as much 
 as a call? She knew that, uninvited, Falls would not 
 repeat his call; she knew why he would not do so. 
 
 As he lingered, letting Joan see frankly his pleasure 
 in the chance encounter, her ear caught the note of wist- 
 fulness which his polished reticence before the world 
 so rigidly concealed, so arrogantly denied. And she 
 thought with a rush of indignant pity of all she had 
 heard of his life in Adairville; of the wall of silent 
 antagonism which shut him out from the genial warmth 
 of the social atmosphere; of the purposeful isolation 
 meted out to him. She wondered anew how much it 
 meant to him. He was so strong, so capable, so self- 
 sufficing. 
 
 Joan was herself thoroughly a part of the social life 
 of Adairville; she was bound by a million ties of asso 
 ciation to the town and its people ties as impalpable as 
 ether and as closely encompassing. For generations her 
 place here had been kept warm for her by some Grand 
 mother Adair, or Grandmother Courtney, who had been 
 a part of the gay, stately life of the old regime, as she 
 was to-day of the easy, cordial life about her. Ostracism 
 from this life meant more, naturally, to her than it 
 could possibly mean to Falls, indifferent, as she told 
 herself, alike to the town, its people, its customs, its 
 society.
 
 64 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 But a moment later, when he left her, the invitation 
 had heen shyly proffered, and, after a second of silent 
 musing, accepted frankly; and Falls had gone his way 
 with the violets in his coat-pocket, as Joan noted with a 
 silent stare of consternation, which melted into laughter 
 as she saw him, a moment later, draw his pipe from 
 the same pocket 1
 
 THIS THING YOU CALL COMPLEXION GOES TO THE BONE 
 
 " IjlALLS," said Watson, pushing a pile of papers across 
 JL to him, "have you a first name? If such an old 
 Spartan would acknowledge to the soft impeachment of 
 a Christian name ! " 
 
 " No," answered Falls lazily ; " or if I have I have 
 mislaid it. I never need it." 
 
 " What do women call you ? " 
 
 " ' Mr. Falls/ as a rule." 
 
 " What does the exception call you ? " 
 
 " The exception," with a quick smile, " if there was 
 one, would have no occasion to call me. I 'd be right 
 there all the time ! " 
 
 " Sign these papers while you are here ; no need to 
 read them. My clients are not allowed to read papers. 
 Ah, ha, ' Gregory ' ! I might have known it. Like a 
 mouthful of iron filings ! " 
 
 " I think it is rather an improvement on ' Challie/ * 
 grinned Falls behind the short pipe he was smoking. 
 
 " Who the devil Joan, of course ! I 've told her a 
 thousand times . . . My middle name is Chalmers. These 
 papers, Falls, these, you see? These go to Hallett; you 
 had better take them to him yourself and go over them 
 with him." 
 
 65
 
 66 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 There had come into Hugh's genial voice the hardening 
 that of late the mention of Hallett's name always brought 
 there. 
 
 " Sure," said Falls, " I '11 take them now." 
 
 " You 're not going, Falls ? " 
 
 " No ; I rather wanted to talk, if you 're not busy ? " 
 
 " Not at all ! I 'd let most anything go by me, in 
 favor of such an unprecedented occasion as your ' want 
 ing to talk.' " 
 
 Falls sat at his ease in the big swivel-chair, his knee 
 propped against the desk; he smoked in silence for a 
 minute, and when he spoke at last there was a restrained 
 coldness in his voice, which in a man less grave and with 
 less poise would have been diffidence. 
 
 " It 's about this infernal matter here ; these negroes. 
 Have you heard?" 
 
 Watson turned his stolid face with eyes of keen amuse 
 ment upon his companion. 
 
 " Where do you suppose I 've been, man wandering 
 upon India's coral strand ? " He laughed a little, bluntly. 
 " Have n't you seen the morning papers, Falls ? " He 
 was reaching a long arm for them, when Falls stopped 
 him with a curt gesture of the pipe he held in his palm. 
 
 " I never read them," he said briefly ; " tell it me 
 if it is necessary that I should know." 
 
 "It is hardly that " said Hugh. "It is only that 
 blatant fool, Montgomery. He has a column of rot about 
 the negro motormen. He thinks or he thinks he thinks ; 
 he has nothing to think with, you know; it 's only 
 ganglionic action; he has no brains; he does his think 
 ing with his spinal cord, like the rhizopods and the other 
 creepers ! Well, anyhow, his spinal cord is of the opinion
 
 IT GOES TO THE BONE 67 
 
 that you have endangered the ' Caucasian supremacy of 
 the White Hosts of the American continent' by your 
 * incendiary action in crossing the color-line/ Alec 's 
 strong on the color-line! He makes copy of it whenever 
 he is short of locals." 
 
 Falls had wheeled about to face Watson, his somber 
 eyes aglow with wrath, but Hugh was carefully building 
 a pyramid of the small furniture of the desk, and he 
 did not meet the other's angry eyes. 
 
 " How the devil have I crossed any color-line ? " de 
 manded Falls. 
 
 " Put niggers on the cars as motormen to run 'em for 
 white people," said Watson quietly. 
 
 " There are as many negro passengers, almost, as 
 white " 
 
 " That 's aside from the point ; if there were more it 
 would still be aside from the point ! " Watson threw 
 himself back in his chair, meeting the other man's eyes 
 with a keen glance, absolutely grave and compelling. 
 " Before we go any further, Falls, I want to ask you a 
 question rather a brutal one, but necessary : Was this 
 thing this putting those fool niggers in uniform and 
 putting 'em on the cars done in retaliation, or was it a 
 blunder?" 
 
 Falls's grave eyes met his own in frank surprise. 
 
 " Retaliation ? Upon whom ? For what ? " 
 
 " I knew it ! " cried Watson. " I knew Joan was 
 right!" 
 
 " ( Joan ' ? " echoed Falls, a streak of red showing iii 
 his dark cheek. " What was Miss Adair right about ? 
 You 're very enigmatical, Watson! I 'm all in the 
 dark "
 
 68 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Joan wrote me she was writing about another mat 
 ter," lied Hugh, not just certain as to how Joan would 
 take his breach of confidence " and she mentioned this 
 trouble here. She called it a mistake. She did not believe 
 it retaliation ; nor did I ! " 
 
 " Retaliation oh ! So the town thinks I put the niggers 
 on for spite! What blasted rot! As a matter of fact, 
 Hugh, I put them on because they were all I could get. 
 But, do you know, Watson," Falls went on, " I rather 
 fancy the beggars! They 're quick to learn, and er 
 pleasant to have about," vaguely, " good strong chaps in 
 case of an accident. And what the deuce does it matter 
 what color they are? It 's the first time in my life I 
 ever heard of a man's complexion cutting any figure when 
 it came to taking a car along a track ! " 
 
 " This is n't a question of complexion ; it goes to the 
 bone ! " said Watson, staring past Falls with a hard gaze. 
 " Where did you tell me you were born, Falls ? " 
 
 " Westover, Massachusetts." 
 
 "And raised there?" 
 
 "Thereabouts, and in England. My father used to 
 take me with him rather than leave me, a lonely little 
 shaver, in America. He 'd put me in school for a term 
 while he went about, and then we 'd come back." 
 
 Watson roused himself. " That explains it," he said 
 slowly. "You simply do not understand this thing that 
 you call 'complexion/ Race antagonism is like certain 
 dangerous chemicals; innocuous so long as they are un 
 disturbed, but under friction force, they become ex 
 plosives." 
 
 " I do understand ! " cried Falls hotly. " No man living 
 is keener for racial purity than I, no matter where it
 
 IT GOES TO THE BONE 69 
 
 may exist ! But I confess I do not understand the mani 
 festation of racial prejudice as it is exhibited here in 
 Adairville no, no! I shall not run amuck of local 
 institutions! But I want to thrash this out for once 
 and all! We '11 leave out, if you like, the question of 
 domestic service though the South strains at a gnat 
 and swallows a camel, in that! Still, let us leave out 
 the 'black mammies/ and the old-time ' body-servants,,' 
 and the thousand capacities in which the negro is to-day 
 woven into the social fabric of the South, and there yet 
 remains the business relation. White people buy and 
 sell side by side with negroes in shops, serve them at 
 counters, ride in the same cars with them, are served 
 by them m all sorts of governmental positions " 
 
 Watson raised his hand impressively. 
 
 "You lack the point of view, Falls; they do these 
 things upon a recognized lower plane, the plane of an 
 inferior race. The motif of the South's attitude toward 
 the descendants of the old slave race is,' that the negro 
 race is not only the inferior, but the subordinate, race. 
 Anything which tends to tip the balance the other way ! 
 That is where the shoe pinches Adairville in the matter 
 of the negro motormen ; they had a semblance of equality 
 in the position you give them ! " 
 
 " Bosh ! " cried Falls, but his stern lips curved into 
 a smile. " Since you think it best, Hugh, I '"11 let the 
 beggars go. I '11 have men here on that midnight train." 
 
 " I think it is expedient ; I don't go any further than 
 that, Falls." 
 
 Falls had risen to go, but he paused, stood silent a 
 moment, then abruptly : " Watson, what did you say Miss 
 Adair said about this matter?"
 
 70 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Hugh drew a sheaf of papers from his pocket and 
 without looking at Falls, who paused alertly by his side, 
 deftly sifted them. 
 
 " Here," he selected a small gray envelope and tossed 
 it to Falls. 
 
 "May I? Thanks." 
 
 A dozen hasty lines were inscribed within in Joan's 
 bold, even writing. 
 
 "DEAR HUGH : You had better come home and look after 
 Mr. Falls. He does not understand things here in the least. I 
 inclose Alec Montgomery's article from the morning paper. He 
 is a cad father says so, too ! 
 
 Mr. Falls is simply making a mistake any one can see 
 that; but in view of this other talk about negro equality so 
 hateful of them ! Still, it is unfortunate. 
 
 " Let Mr. Bellew's case go ; he has plenty of money, anyhow, 
 and come back at once and look after Mr. Falls. 
 
 " Of course, Will-Henry must go ; but I cannot well discuss it 
 with Mr. Falls, even if he gave me the chance, and he does not. 
 But, as he has nobody but us two, you must come. 
 
 " Lovingly, JOAN ADAIR." 
 
 In one corner of the sheet was scribbled a small ellipse. 
 When Falls reached it the eyes of the two men met 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Joan has not kissed me since she put on long dresses, 
 you know; but she always adds a kiss like that at the 
 end of her letters." 
 
 " You enjoy some very enviable perquisites, Hugh," 
 said Falls as he tendered the note rather wistfully to 
 Watson. " Just what relation are you of the Adairs ? " 
 
 Hugh waved it back. " You may have it. No relation/* 
 he went on, his heavy face softening. " It } s heart-kin,
 
 IT GOES TO THE BONE 71 
 
 you know. Oh, well yes, there is a fiction: Judge 
 Adair's first wife Mollie Calhoun was my step 
 mother's sister; you can work out the consanguinity at 
 your leisure." 
 
 Falls had thrust the little letter into his inside pocket; 
 his grave eyes as he looked down upon Watson were a 
 trifle warmer than they were wont to be. " I cannot tell 
 you, Hugh, how much I value this proof of Miss Adair's 
 interest in a stranger. Barring your own, it is, I think, 
 the first bit of thoughtful kindness that I have received 
 since I came to live in Alabama." 
 
 There was no resentment in his tone, a quiet state 
 ment of a fact, that was all; and Hugh found himself 
 wondering, as Joan had done, how much Falls knew of 
 the feeling toward him in the town, and how far he cared. 
 
 " Miss Adair mentioned negro equality ; what did she 
 mean ? " asked Falls, his eyes narrowing sternly. 
 
 Watson evaded the issue, cleverly : " Do you go into 
 politics at all, Falls?" 
 
 " Very slightly ; have politics to do with her note ? " 
 
 " It touches it at one point, yes. As a Eepublican, you 
 know, Falls, you are up against one of the holiest tenets 
 in the Democratic creed ! " 
 
 "How does it read, this creed?" 
 
 " Ah, well," murmured Hugh complacently, " I don't 
 mind doing a little proselyting now and then, for the 
 political ' Lost Cause ' ! " 
 
 He joined his scholarly white hands behind his head 
 and, lying back in his chair, recited with solemn fervor: 
 " I believe in one Thomas Jefferson, the Maker and Giver 
 of Democracy; and in all things visible and invisible 
 which tend to the maintenance of his stultifying policies
 
 72 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 and principles. I believe in the supremacy of the Cau 
 casian race, and in the divine right of the Democratic 
 party to disfranchise the negro. I believe that all Ke- 
 publicans desire to establish the equality of the races. I 
 look for the resurrection of Democracy and the rescinding 
 of the fifteenth amendment. Amen." 
 
 Falls grinned his appreciation of Hugh's cynicism wit a 
 a flash of white teeth that lighted up his grave face with 
 sudden boyishness. " When your Democratic constituency 
 gets ready to hang you, Hugh, out there in the court-house 
 yard, I '11 be on hand to cut you down ! " 
 
 He laughed as he ran down the steps to the street 
 on his way to Hallett's office.
 
 VI 
 
 "IS HE NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?" 
 
 HALLETT was not in his offices when Falls reached 
 them, and he put the papers into his pocket with 
 a scornful glance about Hallett's too luxurious quarters. 
 
 As he emerged from Hallett's doorway he saw his car 
 in the distance and crossed the street to await it. He 
 noted indifferently that some event of more than usual 
 interest appeared to he animating the streets. 
 
 " A circus/' Falls muttered, " or a baptizing ! " Yet 
 it struck him at the moment that the aspect of the crowd 
 which filled the streets differentiated it from any which 
 he had yet seen ; the groups about the corners and crowd 
 ing the pavement in front of the hotel were for the most 
 part silent, expectant; men constantly arrived from de 
 serted shops and offices, joined the shifting stream, asked 
 a question, squared themselves toward the open street, and 
 took on the expectant attitude of the others. 
 
 "What the devil are they at?" Falls wondered curi 
 ously, but his car was close upon him and he turned to 
 meet it, and as he did so perceived that it bore the colored 
 motonnan, Will-Henry, whose selection for the post had 
 raised the temperature of the town to boiling point. 
 
 Something it may have been the bracing winter air, 
 or the stiff folds of the little note which Falls could feel 
 
 73
 
 74 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 with every breath he drew, against his bosom some 
 thing had raised Falls's spirits ; the worried line his 
 brow had worn for days had disappeared; and for the 
 first time he was inclined to see the undoubted humor 
 of the situation, resulting from his innocent blunder, and 
 the commotion it had caused in the town. 
 
 He noted with keen amusement the air of importance 
 with which the negro was bringing the car along the track, 
 with a glance to right and left, whose childlike fatuousness 
 seemed to claim the earth as a stage for the exhibition of 
 his supreme importance. 
 
 Will-Henry was a slight, well-made negro of thirty-five, 
 perhaps; a tan-colored mulatto, with the suavely in 
 gratiating manners of his type. He had been a porter at 
 the hotel where Falls lived, and was very much of a 
 favorite with every one about the place. 
 
 He had approached Falls soon after he arrived at the 
 hotel with a wide grin of friendliness and the genial in 
 quiry, "Doan't you want me fur yo' nigger, Mist'r 
 Falls?" 
 
 "I don't need a valet, thank you, Will," Falls had 
 told him. 
 
 Nothing daunted by Falls's refusal, Will-Henry had 
 serenely assumed charge of him, jealously guarding him 
 from the approach of any other aspirant for the position 
 which he had decided to fill; and, as time passed, he 
 became, without dispute or comment, " Mist'r Falls's 
 nigger." 
 
 Falls looked at him, now, with a pleasant smile of 
 liking as the car came down the wind. Will-Henry stood 
 haughtily erect, his new uniform very fresh and natty, 
 bis cap set jauntily upon one side, gratified vanity radiating
 
 "A MAN AND A BROTHER" 75 
 
 from every pore of his vacant, good-natured face. Some 
 one hailed him upon the corner above Falls, and he 
 brought the car up with as much of a swagger as it could 
 be made to yield ! 
 
 Several men boarded the car at the rear; there was 
 laughing, and shoving, then a sudden commotion that 
 caused Falls to raise his head alertly, but he was a block 
 away, and the negro made no sign; he did not even turn 
 his head toward his unruly passengers, but gave his at 
 tention to his work. Falls saw him as he loosed the lever, 
 and at the same instant a dozen men stepped upon the 
 platform and snatched the bar from his hand. With a 
 sudden premonition of what it meant Falls started toward 
 the car with long strides. But he saw he would be too 
 late. A dozen hands grasped the struggling negro and 
 bore him backward into the car. Falls caught a confused 
 vision of struggling forms, of tossing arms, of men's heads 
 and hats. There was a roar of cheers and laughter from 
 the packed sidewalks, as Will-Henry's form, in the jaunty 
 uniform, shot from the rear of the car and struck the 
 ground a dozen yards away, rolling over and over amid 
 the loose gravel and sand of the road-bed. 
 
 The car had been brought to a stand upon the crest of 
 a steep incline, and under the impetus of the sling which 
 had sent the negro off, as well as the rush of the men 
 who left it in a scramble for the pavements, it moved 
 gently forward, gaining headway every second as it ad 
 vanced toward Falls. 
 
 It took him a few seconds to reverse it, and as the 
 terrified negro, now upon his feet mopping the dirt from 
 his face, which was cut and bleeding, saw the car move 
 slowly in his direction, he gave one scream of terror, and,
 
 76 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 snatching his cap from his head, ran for his life, straight 
 up the track! He was followed by a continuous roar of 
 laughter, by cheers, hooting, and whistling from the 
 crowded streets, that seemed to lend wings to his heels as 
 he fled blindly up the steep hill, straining to outrun the 
 car which Falls was taking slowly up the track almost 
 at the frightened creature's heels, calling to him to 
 stop. 
 
 In vain ! Will-Henry sped on, panting, desperate, until 
 with an inspiration of insane terror he doubled madly 
 back, slipped upon the rail, and went down almost under 
 the wheels. 
 
 Falls stopped the car short, leaped down, and, dragging 
 him to his feet, shook him, as a terrier would shake a rat, 
 in keen exasperation. 
 
 " You blasted idiot ! I came within an ace of killing 
 you. Get back on your car ! " 
 
 But Will-Henry was past getting back, past doing any 
 thing but to grovel amid the sand and gravel at Falls's 
 feet, a pitiful, abject creature. 
 
 "Gawd A'mighty, Mist'r Falls," he gasped in the ex 
 tremity of his terror, "lem'me go, sah! Doan't put me 
 back on that ar car no mo', sah! I 'd ur sight ruther 
 black boots. I I '11 run arrands ! I '11 do anything, 
 ruther 'n be hung up by ur mob ! " 
 
 He cringed under Falls's hand like a beaten hound, and 
 Falls shook him again fiercely. 
 
 " Get back ! You 're going to run this car through 
 those cursed ruffians if I have to kill you to make you 
 do it!" 
 
 " Lem'me go ! " he wailed. " I ain't nuthen but ur nig 
 ger "
 
 "A MAN AND A BROTHER" 77 
 
 "You are/' said Falls in grim disgust, "you are the 
 damnedest coward I ever saw ! Get back on the car ! " 
 
 He thrust him upon the platform, and, still grasping 
 him firmly, took him through the car and bade him take 
 hold. 
 
 " Gawd, Mist'r Falls, dey '11 hang me shore 's I 'm 
 bawnded ! " he almost wept ; but Falls was relentless. 
 
 " I '11 shake the life out of you if you don't stand up 
 there and run this car as I tell you! You infernal 
 cur!" 
 
 Falls was standing beside the trembling negro, who had 
 scarcely strength to handle the lever, as the car came 
 smoothly on down the steep hill toward the corner where 
 the silent throngs packed the street from the buildings 
 to the tracks on either side. Not a sound broke the 
 silence but the rumble of the car; there were no cheers, 
 no laughter; a grim malignity of hate held the spectators 
 rigid, with hostile eyes on Falls and the miserable Will- 
 Henry, who fairly swooned as he stood. 
 
 Falls was smoking. His soft hat, thrust back in his 
 struggle with the negro, showed his grave face to the 
 crowds which pressed upon the tracks, almost brushing the 
 wheels; his eyes were narrowed against the smoke of his 
 cigar which the motion of the car blew backward, and 
 not a line of his cold face altered as he faced the ominous 
 quiet of that waiting mob. 
 
 The car reached the crossing where it had been stopped 
 before, and a gentleman stepped quietly from the crowd 
 and raised his hand to hail it as coolly as if the street 
 had been empty. Falls slowed the car down, and Watson 
 stepped on board, with his customary stumble. He came 
 on through the car to the forward platform, and stand-
 
 78 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 ing behind Falls between him and the street put his 
 long arm about his shoulders, looking into his eyes with 
 his own full of laughter and quizzical admiration. 
 
 " You old sand-pump ! " he murmured. 
 
 Falls answered the pressure of his arm upon his shoul 
 der with a smile of fine irony, but he did not speak, and 
 neither he nor Hugh turned a glance upon the menacing 
 crowds, whose hostile eyes were fixed upon Watson in 
 thwarted anger, as the car rolled on unmolested. It made 
 the return trip still carrying the three, Falls grimly 
 silent, Watson's arm still about his neck, and the abject 
 Will-Henry clinging to the handle-bar. The streets slowly 
 emptied of the throngs of spectators, and presently Falls 
 got off the car at his office. 
 
 " I think," said Falls, quietly, " I think I will let Pope 
 go, he is not much good, and keep Will-Henry on for a 
 spell." 
 
 " Aye," said Watson, grimly ; " but if you keep Will- 
 Henry you '11 have to chain him to the platform ! Do you 
 know that cane-brake out Lintonia way, Falls ? Well, send 
 out there for your car in an hour or two; that 's where 
 Will-Henry will jump her ! Billy is a cane-brake nigger ; 
 he '11 take to the sticks like a duck to water when he 's 
 scared won't you, Will-Henry ? " 
 
 " Naw, sah ! " 
 
 "You liar," said Watson, pleasantly, and from the 
 wreck of his prideful post of one short hour ago, Will- 
 Henry fished up a melancholy grin. 
 
 As Falls was crossing the court-house yard he en 
 countered Hallett, and, remembering the papers, turned 
 him to a seat under the big water-oak in the center
 
 "A MAN AND A BROTHER" 79 
 
 of the square. As they neared the tree some one glided 
 around it and away. 
 
 "Are we driving some one off?" asked Falls, hesi 
 tating. 
 
 " It was only a colored girl, and she has gone/' 
 
 " It seems to me, Hallett," said Falls, " that your local 
 color is not so deep as you would have us believe; I 
 notice that you never say * nigger ' like the other natives ! " 
 
 " There was no occasion to say it here/' replied Hallett, 
 with rather more of a rasp in his even tones than Falls 
 had expected to bring there ; " that was not a a negro ; 
 that was Rosebud, Miss Archer's Rosebud." 
 
 " This Rosebud," said Falls, meditatively, "I sup 
 pose there is a parent bush somewhere to have produced 
 so sturdy a blossom ? Since special creations are out of 
 date?" 
 
 " The bush that produced that rosebud has its roots 
 in some of the best soil in Dixie, or I am much mistaken ! 
 But it would be dangerous work to go grubbing for 
 them." 
 
 " I have not much turn for grubbing," said Falls, care 
 lessly, " and I learned long ago that, by the time you 
 get down to the roots, men are alike the world over." 
 
 " Aye " assented Hallett, cynically, and the subject 
 dropped. The papers were taken up, gone into, disposed 
 of, and Falls was in the act of tying the packet when 
 Hallett stooped and, picking a paper from the grass, 
 silently proffered it to Falls, who mechanically included 
 it in the packet on his knee. He slipped the tape 
 under the packet without disturbing its compact form, 
 and was drawing it taut, when the paper which Hallett 
 had placed upon the top arrested his attention; though
 
 8o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 it agreed in shape, it had not the appearance of a legal 
 paper, nor was it endorsed, the only writing showing upon 
 the outside being a line of writing parallel with the fold. 
 
 He bent closer, still holding the tape taut, and read in 
 the same clear, small writing in which the papers were 
 endorsed, the two words, " Your father," written as the 
 signature of a letter is written. 
 
 " What is that ? " asked Hallett, and without waiting 
 for a reply plucked it nimbly from the packet and 
 opened it. 
 
 " Where did this come from ? " he asked carelessly. 
 
 " You handed it to me by mistake ; it seems to be one 
 of your private papers." 
 
 In the midst of his absorption Hallett found time to 
 glance aside at his companion with incredulous scorn. 
 
 " Nixie my private papers ! " he retorted briefly ; 
 " when you catch one lying about let me know, will 
 
 you?" 
 
 " Sure," said Falls, calmly, returning to his own packet, 
 " that is what I should naturally do ! " 
 
 He was still busy with the papers on his knee when 
 something, some inexplicable change in Hallett, arrested 
 him. It was like the sudden stiffening of a game dog 
 when he scents a covey. He did not speak or move, but 
 he grew rigid as he sat, and the paper in his hand slightly 
 rustled. 
 
 Falls's strong eyes saw that it was covered with the 
 same small, clear writing set close together in a way he 
 seemed to know, the lines short, leaving a wide margin 
 on the page. 
 
 A sudden qualm passed through him. Whose writing 
 this ? What hidden meaning was there in this simple
 
 "A MAN AND A BROTHER" 81 
 
 sheet, which had dashed the clear red from Hallett's hand 
 some face? 
 
 Leaning forward in his seat, Falls read with Hallett in 
 the fast waning light, in Watson's unmistakable writing, 
 what seemed to be a letter. 
 
 "Mr CHILD: You will find herein instructions for your 
 journey, with a list of your probable expenses, together with 
 such advice, as to your future, as I am able to offer. 
 
 " I have made every arrangement to ensure your safety and 
 comfort ; I do not say happiness, for that lies not in my power, 
 Rosebud, and it may be not in your own. But I have met every 
 condition which in my judgment will lead to contentment for 
 you in the present. I believe you to be a good girl, in spite of 
 this folly for which I am sending you away from this place. 
 There will come a day, quickly too, when you will see that, in 
 putting you beyond the temptations of your present associations, 
 I am saving you from a fate of which you can have no concep 
 tion. 
 
 " In this new life which I have mapped out for you, you will 
 find contentment and independence. I wish you to remember 
 that I recognize your claim upon me in the present and in the 
 future, as in the past ; my part of our agreement will be kept 
 to the letter, and I shall expect you on your part to meet the 
 conditions fully. I repeat them here to impress them more 
 firmly upon you; remember, Rosebud, what they are ! 
 
 " You will never return south of the Ohio River without my 
 permission; you will never seek to communicate with me or any 
 member of my family, and you will hold no communication with 
 this man whose name I need not mention, neither in Adairville nor 
 at any other place. All is now said that needs to be said between 
 us. May God bless you, and show me further and always my 
 duty to you. 
 
 "YouB FATHER."
 
 82 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Falls leaned back in the corner of the bench; it was 
 quite dark in the shadow of the tree, but outside the light 
 still lingered. Neither he nor Hallett spoke. The gloom 
 hid Hallett's face from Falls. It was black with sullen 
 rage, the lower lip held between his teeth in savage tension. 
 
 Falls lighted a cigar with mechanical precision, watch 
 ing the flame creep up the stump until it reached his 
 fingers. He did not look at Hallett, but pointed across 
 the square to where a girl's light figure flitted hither and 
 thither, with uncertain movement, as of one who seeks 
 for some object upon the ground. 
 
 " She is coming for her letter," he said. 
 
 Hallett started up. " I will take it to her," he said, 
 and, rising, went toward Eosebud. Falls saw him meet 
 her, linger a moment in talk, and pass on. Rosebud hur 
 ried away, but Falls sat on and on, in the darkening 
 square. 
 
 An hour had passed ere he roused himself as from a 
 sleep, and he must have been asleep and dreaming; for 
 a tiny piccaninny, stealing near to get the cigar Hallett 
 had left upon the seat, started back and stood trembling 
 while the big white man stretched himself and said out 
 loud: 
 
 " God ! Our pleasant vices ! What whips they are to 
 scourge us ! " 
 
 The piccaninny waited for no more, but incontinently 
 fled. The white man's talk in his sleep bore a suspicious 
 resemblance to mammy's waking accents. True, she called 
 it " whup " but the piccaninny knew !
 
 VII 
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 
 
 ANIGHT or two after the street-car episode, Falls 
 found himself facing the keen cold of the winter 
 evening, on the long walk to Judge Adair's house on 
 the hilltop. As he swung strongly along, his teeth hard 
 on his cigar, his eyes narrowed against the biting wind, 
 a smile that was half-tender, half-ironical, quivered on 
 his lips. 
 
 He was thinking out this new situation, as he walked, 
 it was time to do so, he had decided, and he took it 
 up, as he would have taken up any other problem of life 
 or business, sanely and bravely. 
 
 Falls's life had always been a busy one, full to over 
 flowing of work, of strenuous enterprise; he had breathed 
 always the stimulating ozone of action. There had never 
 been a time since his boyhood, when to pause, to dally, 
 to smile upon a face no matter how fair, but would have 
 meant to loosen, in a measure, his close, wrestler's grip 
 on life. Yet, with that grip unrelaxed, with his muscles 
 taut in the fight, he had found time to dream of the prim 
 rose path of love. He realized now, as he swung along 
 through the frosted brilliance of the winter night, that 
 the turning in the path had been made. 
 
 "I 'm done with pretense," he told himself. "I 'm. 
 
 83
 
 84 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 done playing the churl and the coward! I love Joan 
 love her! And if the ghost of every rebel that fell in 
 that insane struggle should rise from where he sleeps to 
 keep her from me, I should fight my way naked-handed 
 to her, and make her tell me with her own lips that she 
 does not love me, or that she does ! " And a warm, virile 
 gladness filled Falls that his love had come to him in 
 his strong maturity and not in his callow youth. 
 
 The world knew Falls as cold, self-contained, and he 
 had acquiesced in its verdict, carelessly; but he could 
 have laughed aloud at the swift breaking up of those polar 
 snows about his heart before the warm flood which was 
 pouring through every fiber of his being. 
 
 He was not thinking definitely of Joan, as every step 
 bore him toward her; he was adjusting himself to the 
 wonderful phase through which he was passing; was get 
 ting his bearings, thinking out the situation in its varied 
 aspects. He was conscious of Joan only as the spark 
 which had made vital this whole exquisite scheme of things. 
 Heretofore, when he had thought of her, it had been in 
 detail: of her rough, bright hair against the cream of 
 her throat; of the curve of her frank mouth; the warm, 
 magnetic glance of her gray eyes; the rise and fall of 
 her soft bosom. And she had interpreted woman to him. 
 Now she spelled life and love; she was the definition of 
 his present, the index to his future. 
 
 He roused himself resolutely, after a moment of this 
 yielding, and took up with his clear reasonableness the 
 question of his love, his hope of winning Joan, from the 
 aspect of his relationship to the town his position and 
 prospects there; which meant to him, in this new possi 
 bility, so much more than it had ever meant before.
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 85 
 
 " Confound Adairville ! " he said by way of preamble, 
 and bent his mind to the solution of the problem which 
 had taxed Hallett's politic astuteness to elucidate to the 
 stockholders of the old Power and Passenger Company. 
 
 For weeks Falls had been conscious of a change about 
 him. For weeks he had been groping his way through 
 the familiar routine of his life amid a chilling mist, which 
 faded before reason and common sense only to close upon 
 him from another side. In the club, at his hotel, upon 
 the streets, in his own yards and barns and among his 
 employees, this impalpable thing was between him and 
 others ; it chilled men's glances in the act of meeting his ; 
 it lay upon casual faces like a scowl; it spoke in voices 
 which uttered civil words; it showed itself in the lurch 
 of slow-moving workmen who dared not disobey. 
 
 From her note to Watson he perceived that Joan had 
 full knowledge, which she shared with Hugh, of this 
 elusive something which he, himself, could not grasp in 
 his relation to the town. The very writing of the note, 
 as Falls saw it now, implied a knowledge of something 
 regarding him of which he himself knew nothing. 
 
 Since the finding of Eosebud's letter, which had cast 
 so black a shadow upon Hugh's own past, Falls had 
 avoided even the slightest allusion to the absurd charge 
 referred to in Joan's note as to negro equality; but he 
 had brooded over it with amazed indignation that was 
 not without its note of grim humor. 
 
 " Negro equality the devil ! " he mused. " What 
 name, if it may please them, do they give their own 
 affiliations? Pah!" 
 
 The second clue had been given him by the attitude 
 of the men whom he met in business, and socially, at the
 
 86 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 club and hotel. Falls was conscious, after the street-car 
 incident, that these men watched him, the gentlemen 
 covertly, the rougher men openly, for some sign ; and when, 
 the cold serenity of his usual manner failed to betray 
 even his consciousness of their scrutiny, the passive cold 
 ness of the gentlemen took on a cutting edge of rancor, 
 and the elaborate, ostentatious avoidance of him grew 
 daily more and more personal. 
 
 In this long, starlit walk in the keen open air, Falls was, 
 for the first time, deliberately threshing this thing out 
 to its ultimate conclusion. He threw up his head, as he 
 walked, in an indignant protest against the whole affair, 
 the puzzling uncertainty, the injustice and then stopped 
 short in the dark path with a laugh of grim helplessness. 
 
 " Let us go over the counts in the indictment and see 
 if I can grasp the thing from their own point of view. 
 Well, then, first, I am a Yankee; guilty on that count. 
 And so is Hallett, but never mind. Second, I am a 
 Republican; guilty on that count, also. I believe in 
 negro equality? Not guilty, and not a shred of proof 
 to sustain them. It is preposterous damnable ! I 
 live an open life here no man in the place is more in 
 evidence. That, then, is an absurdity; it is more, it is 
 a stalking-horse for something else. What? That '& the 
 crux of the whole. For heaven's sake, what are they driv 
 ing at?" 
 
 He paused by the gate at Hillcrest, looking blankly off 
 into the night. 
 
 "Does Hugh know? Does Joan?" 
 
 As he turned from that long gaze across the valley, and 
 clicked the gate to behind him, Joan stood at his elbow. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Falls ? " she said with the same
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 87 
 
 warm note of comradeship, the same bewitching mantle 
 of delicious matter-of-factness about her that she had 
 worn when Falls had met her first. 
 
 " I came down with father and then I waited for 
 you. Father decided at the last minute to go to his office, 
 where he can have his stenographer. Come in to the fire ! " 
 
 She offered him a chill little hand and turned toward 
 the house. Falls drew the hand she had given him silently 
 to his arm, and together they walked toward the house, 
 their steps ringing sharply upon the hard, packed sand 
 of the walks. 
 
 " Which one of your gods were you invoking, Mr. Falls, 
 in that trancelike gaze across the valley?" asked Joan, 
 lightly. 
 
 Falls started. " It was a goddess," he said simply. 
 
 Joan broke into a delicious laugh. "You did well to 
 invoke her outside of the gate ! I do not allow any stray 
 goddesses trespassing upon my preserves; I am an un 
 scrupulous monopolist ! " 
 
 It was a charming room into which she ushered him; 
 and to Falls, who had never known a home even of the 
 simplest, inexpressibly charming. Joan led him about, 
 telling him of the battle she had waged, before the stately 
 dignity of the old-fashioned room had yielded to her 
 vandalism in the way of rose-colored pillows; giddy little 
 tables which held nothing, and were not made to hold 
 anything, and would not have known how to hold any 
 thing had they been unexpectedly requested to do so; 
 big, soft chairs shamelessly comfortable, and how the old- 
 time furniture had worn an air of such scorn, and made 
 everything so uncomfortable with its superior airs, and 
 had so oppressed the new things with a sense of being
 
 88 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 vulgar interlopers, that she had at last given up any hope 
 of their ever becoming reconciled to each other and had 
 banished the old furniture to the garret. 
 
 "Where it can sulk all it likes and make no one un 
 comfortable," she wound up. 
 
 Falls followed her back to the hearth at last, silently, as 
 he had been following her about the room, conscious that 
 she was finding him distinctly difficult, but powerless to 
 break the spell that held him. He seemed to be breathing 
 the south wind, charged with the perfume of the white 
 star jasmime, piquant and heady, and it quickened the 
 pace of life to where speech seemed a puerile encum 
 brance. 
 
 And Joan was finding him difficult. The more so, that 
 with this strange, new divination she was able to read his 
 mood nay, to feel a dangerous kinship to it! 
 
 She thought regretfully of her childish privilege, when 
 she might draw a stool in front of a favored guest, and, 
 propping her rosy chin upon her palm, simply and frankly 
 stare, and stare until she had dreamed out her dreams. 
 
 Falls's austere personality, his lonely life, had touched 
 her imagination, piqued her interest; she was conscious 
 of a keen, intellectual curiosity regarding this new tremu- 
 lousness which seized her at the touch of his firm hand, 
 the glance of his grave eyes. With an innocent adroitness 
 she seated Falls, as one forces a card upon a trusting 
 victim, just where the only light in the dusky room fell 
 upon him, seating herself opposite, with only the red glow 
 of the hearth to show Falls a dim picture of her in the 
 low cane chair. 
 
 Other men had sat thus under that clear-eyed scrutiny, 
 had been appreciated admired and each had gone his
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 89 
 
 way, safe from enchantment, leaving it to Falls and fate 
 to bring into those clear eyes the softness which had turned 
 them from stars to violets. 
 
 How strong he was, and how calm! How hand 
 some? Yes, with his cold face thus relaxed and dream 
 ing, Falls had a virile beauty she had not dreamed he 
 possessed; she had thought him plain looking, though 
 she admired his forcefulness. 
 
 After a while he roused himself and, smiling, turned full 
 toward her with a laughing consciousness of her critical 
 examination of him, and began to talk to her of his work, 
 his impressions of Adairville, his acquaintances at the 
 hotel all with a genial cleverness, without a shade of 
 bitterness, yet streaked with an acrid humor that made 
 the girl wince. 
 
 When Falls rose to go Joan walked with him to the 
 hall, to Falls's secret surprise. As she stood beside him, 
 while he got his coat, he wondered if this sweet attend 
 ance was a part of what he had come to call bitterly " the 
 program." 
 
 She paused upon the threshold to give him her hand, 
 and the question slipped from his lips: 
 
 " Do you go to the door with other men other callers, 
 I mean ? " 
 
 This was not an occasion for the exercise of what Hugh 
 called Joan's " man-sense." Her feminine wits were quite 
 sufficient to divine the wistful jealousy that underlay 
 Falls's deliberation. 
 
 "Yes," she told him inexorably, "that is nearly all 
 of them. Father sees his own company out, but my own 
 callers why, yes, I do ! But " Falls's big simplicity 
 made coquetry impossible, unworthy "but it is only a
 
 90 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 custom! You see, in old times there were servants about 
 to attend guests; but now" a little laugh escaped her 
 " Milly Ann has her own young man to look after, 
 I have n't the heart to expect her to leave him to look 
 after mine ! " 
 
 "Oh," said Falls, "another 'old Southern custom'! 
 When shall I ever have mastered them all?" 
 
 " Don't you like it ? " asked Joan, a little wistfulness 
 in her own voice. 
 
 " Like it ! " She saw that he did not affect to mis 
 understand. " I should think I did like it ! Do you 
 know, Miss Adair," he went on earnestly, " I have been 
 to all sorts of places where men go, at home and abroad, 
 but I have never seen any place that for sheer, actual 
 charm the charm of the place, you know can touch 
 Dixie! It takes hold of a man like a possession! If I 
 could talk poetry like Hallett, I should tell you the fancy 
 I 've had about the place ever since I have known it: 
 Dixie lies here hidden away in the Appalachian Mountains, 
 like a very Frau Venus of lands, drawing men's hearts 
 to her and filling them with longing unappeased long 
 ing! Did you really credit me with the bad taste not to 
 like Dixie ? " 
 
 Under his deep gaze Joan faltered. How much did he 
 know, how far did he understand? 
 
 " I thought," she began gently, but going on more 
 firmly, " I fancied feared, I mean that you did not 
 care for the place the people; and I, why, I regretted 
 it because these are the people I know and love ! " she 
 wound up desperately. 
 
 Night's velvet, sweeping round them, cut them off from 
 the world. Joan seemed wonderfully near to him, all
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 91 
 
 else wonderfully far away and absolutely futile. Falls 
 was at the turning of that way, that dim, sweet way which 
 had always heen just ahead; here, close at his side, was 
 the warm, living presence whose form he had seen so 
 often in the primrose path just ahead. 
 
 For months the girl had been so near in thought that 
 no barriers remained between them. Xot a rag of reserve 
 hampered him as he told her, in the terse, trenchant speech 
 of his every-day life, of the network of intangible diffi 
 culties that beset him. In his harsh voice, broken by 
 pauses of sheer exasperation, she read the struggle which 
 he had made against a foe unknown, uncomprehended ; 
 worse unassailable ! 
 
 " Antagonism ? " he cried. " Sure ! But why ? In 
 God's name, why should there be antagonism to me? 
 Besides, I see see clearly enough now they must have 
 fought the syndicate the same way! That would explain 
 their willingness to sell. The Tennessee Valley Improve 
 ment sacrificed the plant, you know. But is the town mad ? 
 Will they always make war upon enterprise in this way? 
 When I came here to look into this deal everything was 
 so fair, so plausible." 
 
 Joan stood beside him in silence. How was she to in 
 terpret for him, how far dared she go? Her face, as she 
 pondered, grew wonderfully like her father's. She grasped 
 the points in Falls's broken recital, full as it was of terms 
 which she but vaguely understood, with the clear-headed 
 acumen that so delighted the old statesman and lawyer, 
 reading each hiatus in Falls's broken narrative with a 
 woman's intuitive perception. Joan saw, through that 
 marvelous medium which holds suspended in its ethe- 
 realized solution the elements of both reason and logic,
 
 92 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 but which operates independently of either, the inward 
 meaning of the situation so meaningless to Falls. But 
 how could she make him understand? 
 
 " Do you think, Mr. Falls," she said at last, haltingly, 
 "do you think there is an organized effort to break you 
 down force you out ? " 
 
 " There is not a doubt of it ! " with a short laugh. " But 
 who? You see, Miss Adair, in business, motives are not 
 at all complex; shades of meaning do not trouble business 
 men. The tape-line which we apply to men's motives, in 
 business, has on it but one word, * self-interest,' and it is 
 usually ample and always fits always until this case. 
 Here I am at sea because I have lost my chart. So far 
 as I can see, the element of self-interest does not enter 
 here. Suppose I fail here, who would be benefited? One 
 of two things would happen: I should be forced to sell 
 at a tremendous sacrifice, or allow the plant to revert to 
 the syndicate, losing all I had put in. I should be ruined 
 that 's easily on the cards. If Adairville was a man, 
 as I am, the personal equation must needs be reckoned 
 with; but a town a corporation ? It is impossible to 
 conceive of malice toward me, with the thing ! " 
 
 " Have you seen no evidences of personal malice ? " 
 
 " Plenty," he said shortly, " but they grew out of this 
 - er this other thing, which I cannot divine." 
 
 "But suppose, Mr. Falls, just suppose that a home 
 company Adairville men were to organize a company 
 of their own with local capital, local interest " 
 
 " I see," said Falls ; " it would be a good scheme. I 
 have wondered it has not been done! But they are timid 
 here and, forgive me, lazy ! The climate, I suppose. There 
 really seems to be a constitutional inability to endure the
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 93 
 
 long, hard strain such as men in the Northern and Eastern 
 States are under, year after year; practically, business 
 is suspended here in the hot months. I really don't 
 wonder! I suppose by the time I have been here ten 
 years I shall wear white linen and smoke cigarettes all 
 day as Hallett does ! " 
 
 " Is not Mr. Hallett a good business man ? I thought 
 he was tireless ! " 
 
 "Hallett is a schemer a promoter, you know; he 
 drew me into this you knew that? Then why, if a 
 home company wanted the power company, did they not 
 take it up ? It had been on the market quite a bit before 
 Wheatley nabbed me! Why did they not organize 
 then?" 
 
 " It is better for them this way can't you see ? You 
 have done so much, put it all in such good shape; it 
 was all er messy before, was n't it? Now, if they 
 can squeeze you it was ' squeeze ' you called it, was n't 
 it? well, it will be just what was it you said? 
 pie ? pie for them, won't it ? " 
 
 Falls looked down at the head so near his sleeve in 
 amazement. That sweet, drawling voice, with the halting 
 phrases of a child, was coolly presenting in a dozen sen 
 tences a scheme of fraud and dishonesty that he, hard 
 man of the world, had not even dreamed. And it all 
 hung together; it offered a solution to many puzzling 
 aspects of the matter. Yet, could it be? 
 
 Falls was silent; he gazed straight ahead at the dark 
 lawn while he tested the chain of reason, of probability. 
 Then he laughed the tender laugh of reluctant incredu 
 lity with which a man declares against a woman's point 
 of view, when the woman is herself his point of view!
 
 94 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Is that the way you do business, Miss Adair ? " 
 
 " No/' she said a little shyly ; " but then, you see, I 
 belong here ; no one would collogue is it collogue ? 
 against me. It is like my family circle " 
 
 " Ah ! And I am the stranger within your gates ! I 
 see!" 
 
 "Yes," said she softly, with a glance which mitigated 
 the words, " yes ; the stranger within their gates ! " 
 
 Falls, plunged anew into thought, lingered, and Joan 
 hurried him laughingly. 
 
 " You must go ! " she said. " It is late so late they 
 have put out the lights ! " 
 
 Falls's bent brows went up in a smile almost boyishly 
 teasing. " Is this a sample of the way you keep up with 
 local matters? Do you think I put the town lights out 
 when I go to bed ? " 
 
 Joan was taking a moment off, and did not answer 
 instantly. " How charming he is like that ! " she was 
 thinking in silent amazement. " Why, he looks like a 
 boy when he grins, and shows those big white teeth ! " 
 
 " But they are out," she said. 
 
 Falls did not raise his eyes from her face as he an 
 swered. He was drawing heavily upon the moments as 
 they sped by; he must go in a moment. 
 
 "The belt has slipped; they will come on in a mo 
 ment." 
 
 " But the engines would be running " 
 
 He was listening now for the distant pounding which 
 should have been audible from across the hill; but all 
 was silent. 
 
 " George ! " he muttered ; but he lingered yet a mo 
 ment, bending his tall head down to Joan. The night
 
 IN THE PRIMROSE PATH 95 
 
 wind, passing, boldly threw a shining tendril of her hair 
 across his head. 
 
 " In this fight that is coming, do I count you on my 
 side?" he asked hurriedly, holding her eyes with his own 
 strong gaze. 
 
 " Yes ; I am always for What is the English battle- 
 cry?" 
 
 " ( God and St. George ! ' " said Falls, laughing back 
 as he ran down the steps. 
 
 " No, no ! I mean the modern one ! ' Tommy Atkins's/ 
 you know ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " Falls ran back up the steps, crossed the space 
 with a stride, and held out his hand ; as she laid her own 
 within it, he said eagerly: " Do you mean, ' Fair play and 
 the best man ' Yes ? " 
 
 He hesitated, raising his bent brows in smiling entreaty ; 
 then touched the hand he held softly with his lips. 
 
 " Thank you ; good night ! "
 
 VIII 
 
 A BATTLE OF THE STRONG 
 
 FALLS turned from Judge Adair's gate and struck 
 across the outskirts of the town to the power-house. 
 Adairville is built upon the foot-hills which nestle at the 
 base of the long spur of the Cumberlands, whose dim, 
 blue ramparts keep watch and ward down the length of 
 the lovely Tennessee Valley. The resident portion of the 
 town had climbed these round hilltops, and, spreading its 
 foliage-trimmed skirts about it, looked back with well- 
 bred exclusiveness upon its humbler neighbors in the cup- 
 like valley at its feet. 
 
 Falls came out at the high gate on the hilltop, and the 
 town lay at his feet wrapped in gloom. A stratum of dif 
 fused light from the stars hung overhead, well up above 
 the lines of inky foliage which defined the streets. His 
 eye swept the darkness from point to point, where the 
 arc-lights were wont to shine bravely forth, only to be 
 met by darkness at every point; from where he stood he 
 should have been able to see the glowworm lights of the 
 cars, passing and repassing, in a tangled dance, but the 
 coverlid of blackest night was unpierced by a ray. 
 
 Premonition of disaster had become certainty by this 
 time; but nothing real, no matter how disastrous, ever 
 found Falls inadequate. He met opposition of this kind 
 
 96
 
 A BATTLE OF THE STRONG 97 
 
 witn an absolutely unshakable, unassailable belief in his 
 own power to overcome it. There was no emotion in this 
 feeling; it had nothing to do with the high courage and 
 dauntless daring which carries a man across the open to 
 storm a battery; it was more the sure knowledge of what 
 he might expect of himself, given such and such condi 
 tions, which an engineer has when he sets himself to 
 change the face of nature, to tunnel a mountain or turn 
 a river from its course. 
 
 Within the last three hours Falls had covered a wide 
 range of emotional experience. His nerves, which three 
 hours ago had thrilled in the clear heat of a strong man's 
 first passion, now were strung taut; he was ready for 
 instant action. 
 
 He went rapidly, but before he reached the power-house 
 every possible phase of the accident, as he conceived it 
 to be, had been methodically considered and disposed of. 
 
 As he dashed into the yards in the direction of the 
 engine-rooms, a jarring discord broke with appalling sig 
 nificance upon his ear. In an instant he had recognized 
 the beat and swing, the rush and crash, the resistless jar 
 of machinery out of control, and for a second a very 
 paralysis of will seemed to fall upon him, striking him 
 motionless where he stood. 
 
 In that stark instant Falls saw himself confronted by 
 a blind, disorganized energy, non-human, yet made vital 
 with a maniacal intelligence, animated by a mad will 
 of its own to a very lust of power ! 
 
 Darkness met him everywhere ; the yards were deserted, 
 and in the intervals of the splitting crash and roar which 
 came intermittently, Falls called vainly : " McCormack ! 
 Martin!"
 
 98 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 His foot struck a lantern dropped from some fleeing 
 hand, and in a moment a feeble light was contending with 
 the masses of huddled shadows; as Falls swung the lan 
 tern back and forth, gaunt arms and queer, contorted 
 shapes, retreating and advancing with giant strides, 
 threatened to engulf him. The wide doors of the engine- 
 room stood open, the forward part in pitchy blackness 
 the end open to the starlit sky without, against which 
 a jagged mass of broken timbers shook and trembled with 
 the pounding of the great engines below. 
 
 Falls's ear was attuned to the uproar by this time; 
 he read the discord as a musician reads a familiar opera. 
 He followed, as though with his eye, what was happening 
 in that black cave of turmoil; he knew that slithering 
 rush across the floor, like the treading of great beasts, 
 was the writhing body of the broken belt imprisoned by 
 the falling timbers and tortured among the madly whir 
 ring wheels. 
 
 Falls was a clever machinist; he knew as he knew the 
 fingers of his right hand these great engines; he knew 
 each bolt and bar, each rod and piston ; knew whence came 
 this mad energy, this delirium of power. He could fit 
 together their uttermost parts; they were his creatures, 
 he loved them, and he felt an odd sympathy in their brief 
 escape from thraldom. 
 
 Setting the lantern upon the floor behind him, he threw 
 off his long coat and stood in his evening dress. Hat, 
 coat, vest, and even collar followed; he stripped as a 
 gladiator for the combat; and he looked not unlike one 
 with his arms bare, the arch of his great chest showing 
 through the thin dress shirt. 
 
 He stepped into the shadowy cave, whose walls rang
 
 A BATTLE OF THE STRONG 99 
 
 with the resonance of the whirring machinery. A stride 
 from the engines he paused, and waited for that rush along 
 the floor to announce to him the one second when he 
 might spring forward to the valve, and back to safety. 
 
 It came ; the great, gray form weirdly undulating along 
 the floor like the dun form of some antediluvian monster. 
 It had a moment of fierce wrestling with the imprisoning 
 timbers, and then the sinuous body reared itself aloft in 
 a mad duel with the centrifugal force tending to fling 
 it from the wheel, back upon itself. That was Falls's 
 moment; while these Titans wrestled, he sprang forward 
 to the valve. A moment of deft handling, a quick turn 
 of his practised wrist, a backward spring to safety; then, 
 with a mighty blow the belt swung round more slowly 
 under the lessening impulse of the slowing engines. A 
 few convulsive quivers, a shivering sob from the engines, 
 and the inert mass sank into lax, gray immobility. 
 
 As Falls turned to pick up his coat, he found the lan 
 tern in the hand of one of his workmen, a heavy-set 
 young Scotchman whom Falls had befriended years be 
 fore when a stranger and penniless; the lad was about 
 to go down in the maelstrom of the streets of New York, 
 and he had brought him with him to the South. 
 
 The lad was a clever machinist, with all of the brute 
 courage which so often accompanies phlegmatic nerve in 
 men of his type. Falls had never seen it falter before; 
 that it should have failed him thus seemed too incredible 
 for belief. He took the lantern from the boy's hand, 
 lifting it to look keenly at him. 
 
 " Get me some whiskey, McCormack, will you ? " he 
 said at last to the lad, who had not yet spoken, not even 
 to ask the cause of the tumult, or, more significant, to
 
 ioo THE NORTHERNER 
 
 explain his own unaccustomed presence at this hour. 
 Falls drank the whiskey when it came, and, as he returned 
 the glass to McCormack, he gave him an odd word of 
 thanks. 
 
 " Damn you ! " he said, with cold fury, and in a level 
 tone which cut like a file upon raw flesh, " I'll settle with 
 you in the morning ! " 
 
 The Adairville Power and Passenger Company had been 
 one of the many investments of an Eastern syndicate, 
 whose local habitation was an office in Wall Street, and 
 whose shibboleth was " The Tennessee Valley Improvement 
 Company." 
 
 In the early da} r s of the new South this syndicate had 
 poured out its capital by millions into the green valleys 
 and along the still waters of the lovely Tennessee Elver. 
 It had been among the foremost in the campaign of cap 
 ital which had followed the relaxing grasp of the iron 
 hand of reconstruction upon the South; it had led the 
 van when the second army of invasion came down in 
 Pullman cars to wage a new war of conquest in this 
 lovely land of their desire. 
 
 Seen from car windows, and by eyes focussed to East 
 ern vision, Alabama in the early eighties had seemed a 
 land of financial promise beyond the utmost dreams of 
 dividends a land whose fields lay fallow in inglorious 
 ease, awaiting only the Midas touch of Eastern capital to 
 stagger under a golden harvest. And Eastern capitalists 
 had been quick to read the South's sad astrology in the 
 silent market-places of her battered towns, her empty 
 fields, her undeveloped mineral lands. The Tennessee 
 Valley Improvement Company had bought with insatia-
 
 A BATTLE OF THE STRONG 101 
 
 ble greed fields, and streams, and mountainsides, aa 
 unconscious of the incorporeal hereditaments appurtenant 
 thereto as of the transient colors which flushed the long, 
 green mountain ranges. 
 
 They came like the spirit of progress moving upon the 
 face of the waters to the Valley of the Tennessee, which 
 lay like the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, dumb in a 
 trance of despair, and waked it with the kiss of gold 
 to life and purpose ; they set afloat throughout its length 
 a current of enterprise upon which the Adairville Power 
 and Passenger Company was but a straw, casting forth, 
 with unhesitating conviction, upon the stagnant streams 
 of Southern industry and commerce, blind seemingly to 
 the undertow which, instead of floating them dividends, 
 might in time suck down*their fleets! 
 
 This was all in that halcyon time in the early eighties, 
 when the East was playing " King Cophetua " to the 
 South's " Beggar Maid." Thirty years lay between Lin 
 coln's Emancipation and the South's own emancipation; 
 her own arm, grown sturdy with toil, struck off the last 
 shackles of slavery when regret was cast behind. Then 
 the New South was born: first-fruit of the union of 
 the East and South. And that lusty infant, wasting no 
 time over the gory annals of the past, kicked the swad 
 dling-clothes from its vigorous limbs and held out stren 
 uous hands to the East, and the East hastened to fill 
 them with gold. 
 
 Then the Tennessee Valley Improvement Company be 
 stirred itself; and with its faith in its own perspicuity a 
 little frayed, perhaps, sent down an agent to Alabama 
 " an all-round good man, plenty capable " with definite 
 instructions to start those sluggish streams of dividends
 
 102 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 in the direction of the Wall Street offices, and to promote 
 its interest all along the line of its investments in Ala 
 bama. Hallett stayed for twelve months in Alabama, 
 looking into the syndicate's concerns, and at the end of 
 that time advised among other retrenchments the sale 
 of the Power and Passenger plant. The stockholders mut 
 tered; the investment was a sound one; Adairville was 
 a growing town. 
 
 Hallett, though a trifle reticent as to his reasons, 
 stuck inflexibly to his position. It was not that his ex 
 planations lacked frankness or his language lucidity; it 
 was, as he stated, that his audience lacked the viewpoint 
 which would enable them fully to appreciate the cogency 
 of his argument. At this some of the stockholders had 
 laughed, and swore as they laughed. 
 
 There had followed a puzzled resume" of the situation 
 and resources, and further keen questioning of Hallett 
 as to his reasons for the sale of the plant. Finally the 
 unwieldy corporation decided that, hampered by a multi 
 tude of interests, it could not investigate, but it could 
 sell. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Falls had found the affairs of the 
 Power and Passenger Company in good shape; all was 
 fair, open, perfectly regular; every condition met, every 
 explanation given in Hallett's lucid speech to every sordid 
 detail, to which his clear-cut New England accent seemed 
 to add a refining touch. 
 
 Yet, from the very first, Falls had been conscious, 
 dimly, of some intangible obstacle in the way of his in 
 vestigation into the conditions which formed the environ 
 ment of the Power and Passenger Company's plant. It 
 was an impalpable thing, which all of Falls's perspicacity
 
 A BATTLE OF THE STRONG 103 
 
 failed to reduce to definiteness of perception. His senses 
 took cognizance of it, it is true, but too vaguely to afford 
 him a distinct mental impression. It eluded him at 
 every point. To his mind, seeking to grasp it, define 
 it, fix its limits, it was what a floating film of silvery 
 spider's web is to the senses. It is only visible in a chance 
 beam of light ; it is scarcely more palpable to the touch 
 than is the beam of light itself, yet one knows that it 
 is there. 
 
 The Power and Passenger Company was a big deal to 
 handle alone; all that Falls had, all that he was, was 
 in it. He stood alone to confront the situation, as a 
 duellist his opponent, with a nerve so flawless and a res 
 olution so unbending as to put him upon a plane almost 
 equal to that of the inorganio* forces with which he had 
 to deal. Falls was the type of -man from which is drawn 
 the great Captains of Industry who have changed the 
 face of the commercial world; nature had set his mind 
 to the broad gage of continental thought; he had spent 
 his life in the grea&jnarket-places of the world, had ac 
 quired his perspective from the heights of an impersonal 
 vision that measured life and men and business in their 
 relation to the world of men, rather than by the inch- 
 rule of their relation to him as an individual. 
 
 To Falls, " the South " meant the southern part of 
 the United States of America; and, barring climatic and 
 geographical conditions, which had their equivalents else 
 where, it was as the rest of the world is. 
 
 The social element had not entered at all into Falls's 
 analysis of the situation, though in a dim, reflex way he 
 had been conscious all along of the natural charm of the 
 place and the surrounding country. The beautiful valley
 
 104 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 of the Tennessee, walled by its ramparts of mountains, 
 as blue as the autumn distance, delighted him; the wide, 
 white streets, muffled in deep dust, whose double line of 
 arching elms made dim green tunnels of them even in 
 the blazing days of June, when he had first seen them, 
 pleased him ; the easy, social life of club and hotel seemed 
 to Falls's unaccustomed mind to have almost the charm 
 of a family circle. 
 
 After the rush and grind of his more strenuous life, 
 Falls had rested, unconsciously soothed, by the platitudes 
 of this simpler life. 
 
 His awakening, it seemed, was at hand, when Falls 
 was to struggle, a lion amid the toils, in the meshes which 
 this " simpler life " had woven about his feet.
 
 IX 
 
 AN HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING AMONG GENTLEMEN 
 
 AS though by prearrangement with Falls's evil genius 
 under the direct, personal supervision of that dig 
 nitary indeed a week of December rain and storm fol 
 lowed upon the accident to the power plant. 
 
 Short days, which scarcely got their weeping eyes half- 
 open, were shortened by low nimbus clouds, from whose 
 black under-surfaces trailed a curtain of clammy mist 
 beaded with sleety rain. Nights of persistent blackness 
 succeeded each other in ominous procession of gloom, 
 while from mills and factories, stores and offices, nay, 
 from the town as from one throat, rose anathemas loud 
 and deep against the crippled plant. 
 
 In business circles but one topic obtained; not Falls 
 and his disabled plant, however, as might have been 
 expected. Falls was for the moment ignored in favor 
 of the more grateful subject of municipal shortcom 
 ings. 
 
 About the dripping street-corners, in the lobbies of 
 the hotels and the Dixie Club, at meetings of church soci 
 eties and guilds, the incredible, the shameful, "the p-e-r- 
 f ectly d-i-sgraceful " state of municipal matters, was dis 
 cussed with animation by the committees of ladies who 
 
 105
 
 io6 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 had in charge the " civic " department of Adairville's 
 progress. 
 
 The city council, sullen, but secretly anxious to placate 
 the town, held meeting after meeting, at which speeches 
 were made, resolutions adopted, looking to the rescinding 
 of the city's contracts with Falls should the works fail 
 to be in operation within the two weeks' time limit, which 
 formed a clause in the contracts. 
 
 An election was decided upon and hurriedly held, put 
 ting before the town the question of a bond issue for the 
 erection of a municipal plant. Adairville returned a solid 
 vote in favor of the bond issue, and Adairville's city 
 council, secure in its long suit, waited the lead with smil 
 ing complacency. 
 
 To consider the " lead " which was now before the 
 town, a small, very select coterie met at Hallett's offices 
 upon a night about a week after the plant had suspended 
 operations. The city council was well represented at the 
 meeting, which was " entirely of a private character," 
 the remainder of the select circle being local capitalists 
 and one or two " outsiders," of whom Hallett was one 
 and the Honorable Anthony Cruikshanks, the newly ap 
 pointed judge of the newly organized Tenth Judicial Cir 
 cuit, embracing Holmes County, was the other. The meet 
 ing had been quietly called together to discuss the erec 
 tion of a municipal plant; but, oddly enough, its dis 
 cussion seemed to involve much low-voiced consultation 
 as to the reorganization of the insolvent Mount Ely Gas 
 Company, whose affairs, it developed, were being most 
 opportunely wound up by its receiver in the Honorable 
 Anthony Cruikshanks's court, sitting in chancery. 
 
 The Honorable Anthony Cruikshanks, who was known
 
 HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING 107 
 
 throughout the length and breadth of his circuit as well 
 as to the town as " Tony," was, it had been more than 
 hinted by grateful constituents, the most " useful " mem 
 ber of Adairville's body politic. 
 
 Cruikshanks was a man of many and varied attain 
 ments. A clever lawyer, temperate and cool of counsel, 
 Tony was possessed of every qualification necessary to 
 make him a boon companion, except such as would have 
 disqualified him for the position of ready, efficient, and 
 supremely discreet tool of the men who used him, not 
 without misgiving as to a time in the future when Tony 
 might in his turn use them. He was easily the most 
 popular man in business in Adairville, with a left-handed 
 popularity which included him in the business affairs but 
 ignored him in the pleasures of the men with whom he 
 went. 
 
 Hallett was speaking " informally," but with a very 
 businesslike keenness and directness, to the group of men 
 scattered about his office. 
 
 " Now, gentlemen," he said in his clear, resonant voice, 
 " we understand fully, do we, that we organize the Cum 
 berland Gas Company at the instance of Adairville's city 
 council, to enable them to ah to tide over the exi 
 gencies of the situation here, resulting from the practical 
 failure of the electric ' Power and Passenger ' company 
 to fill its contracts? and that we have the the city's 
 and county's contracts also? That is correct, eh, Mr. 
 Greer? Oh, of course! Until the city has its own plant 
 in operation." A somewhat constrained silence followed 
 upon the cessation of Hallett's pleat>nt voice. He was 
 carrying matters with too high a hanc* to suit some of 
 his audience.
 
 io8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 A smile flickered in the eyes of the lounging circle, 
 and like summer lightning died, without having touched 
 the quiet faces of Hallett's audience. 
 
 Neely, the tough fibre of whose mind was as little con 
 scious of social tension as his body of atmospheric pres 
 sure, rose at last, his bull-like presence seeming to over 
 ride opposition by mere preponderance of bulk. 
 
 " No company will be organized unless that is distinctly 
 understood," he said sullenly, and dropped his soft bulk 
 skilfully back into the exact spot whence he had risen. 
 
 Hallett's unruffled voice, brisk and invigorating, cleared 
 the atmosphere of murkiness. 
 
 " Carmichael, what news have you of Mr. Falls ? Car- 
 michael," he added in bland explanation, " is Falls's up 
 town manager, and has his affairs generally in charge 
 during his absence " 
 
 A little laugh, gentle and lazy, went the rounds of the 
 circle, in which Carmichael himself joined, though his 
 eyes busy with his untidy cigarette were grave. 
 
 "Aye," said General Evert dryly, "we've met Jimmy 
 before, thank you, Hallett. When '11 Falls git back, son ? " 
 
 " Mr. Falls," said " son " with guarded precision, " is 
 in Cincinnati having machinery recast to replace his 
 emash-up " 
 
 "What he 's doing don't cut any special figure! 
 When '11 he be back, boy?" 
 
 " This week les'n his foot slips ! " 
 
 " I suppose this sale is 'bliged to be advertised eh, 
 Tony?" 
 
 " 'Bliged to be, Mr. Frazier ! ' The law awards it, and 
 the Court '" 
 
 " Git out ! I 've known the law, and the courts, too,
 
 HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING 109 
 
 for twice as long nearly as you *ve been born, Tony! 
 Don't you come here telling me what the law awards! 
 It } s the rottenest, old sifter-bottom " 
 
 " The law," said Tony, in his newly found judicial man 
 ner, fixing his brilliant goggled eyes behind their gold- 
 rimmed glasses upon the irate old man, " ' the law is a 
 cobweb where the big flies break through, and the little 
 ones stick ! ' You 've been a big fly hereabouts always, 
 Mr. Frazier. It holds the little flies fast enough ! " 
 
 " When is this sale set for, Tony ? " asked Hallett. 
 
 " Tenth of January, twelve o'clock, noon," answered 
 Tony with brief exactness. 
 
 " And Falls will not be he-re on that date, you say, 
 Jimmy ? " 
 
 " Yep," said Jimmy, his grave eyes still on his cigar 
 ette. 
 
 " Well ? Say on, can't you, Jimmy. We want to get 
 away fum here sometime to-night ! " 
 
 " In case he is not here and he won't be Watson 
 
 will bid for him ; and he 's to double up any d little 
 
 local concern twice over, if it comes to that." 
 
 This last was so plainly a quotation, and Neely turned 
 so furious a face upon Falls's luckless up-town manager, 
 that that easy-going gentleman turned sideways upon 
 Halletf s desk and laughed long and silently amid the 
 wreck of Hallett's elegant appointments. 
 
 " I '11 be there when local concerns begin to be doubled 
 up ! " cried Neely with fierce acrimony ; and Carmichael 
 laughed again his hearty, ringing laugh that made men 
 like him, in spite of their better judgment. 
 
 "Then you '11 beat me, Neely," he said, as he rose to 
 follow the dispersing company. "I 'm going to take the
 
 no THE NORTHERNER 
 
 boys down on Injin creek nutting; don't you wanter 
 come erlong? It 's goin' to be clear by then." 
 
 " Here, you fellows, I want to say a word before this 
 meeting breaks up " 
 
 "Well, well, Boiling, shorely; but won't next week 
 do the week after? I 'm fur home now; the Madam 
 will be asking why I 'm out so late " 
 
 " Git out, Uncle Milt," said Boiling with amiable dis 
 respect, " Aunt Matilda won't begin to look for you be 
 fore daylight! You 'd as well sit down; I 'm going to 
 talk now." 
 
 Boiling spoke in a rapid, blundering way, yet with 
 the air of a man accustomed to be listened to; and he was 
 listened to. Not a man present lost a word of his dis 
 course clipped, broken, stumbling, but forcibly impres 
 sive, the speech of a man who never spoke when he could 
 avoid it, never failed to say exactly what he meant, and 
 never revoked a word once spoken. 
 
 " I 'm chairman of this infernal board of control 
 much control we have! But, well, I 've found out that 
 Falls has about got his matters in shape. He '11 have 
 his machinery here inside the time limit; the works out 
 there will be in full blast before this week is out. Now, 
 unless we want litigation in the Federal courts, too 
 we 'd best go easy in this talk about the contracts yet 
 awhile. The city's contracts are going to stop where they 
 are Greer will do as he likes ; but 'Dairville is not going 
 to butt into Watson and the Federal court as long as 
 I have anything to do with her and I think I have " 
 Boiling was struggling into his coat now, and he made 
 no further attempt to end his blunt speech; it seemed 
 to require neither conclusion nor comment.
 
 HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING m 
 
 "Boiling," said Neely sullenly, as the two made their 
 way along the unlighted streets, " I like your standing 
 up for that d Yankee erginst ow' own folks ! " 
 
 " I 'm glad you 're pleased, Neely," said Boiling se 
 renely, and Neely relapsed into fresh gloom. 
 
 " Why don't you resign ? " he inquired hopefully, a 
 moment later. 
 
 " I rather thought I 'd see this thing through first ; 
 I may then. Look there ! " Boiling pointed to where a 
 candle stuck in a bottle glimmered absurdly at each corner 
 of the Court-house Square amid the engulfing darkness. 
 " That sort of thing is enough to make any man resign 
 anything ! I tell you, Neely, this is undignified this 
 is regular hazing ! Are we boys playing marbles or 
 is this a city administration ? " went on Boiling in furious 
 recitative. 
 
 Neely laughed and laughed again ; but his words, when 
 he spoke, bore a grim significance. 
 
 " Naw," he said ponderously ; " naw, we 're not playing 
 marbles, Johnny. And nobody ain't making no fool of 
 your precious board of control, neither. God A'mighty 
 'tended to that Hisse'f ! " 
 
 " Well," remarked Boiling simply, " I was a great hand 
 at marbles when I was a kid; used to just rake 'em in! 
 Breeches pockets always loaded big box at home ! " 
 He stopped to indulge in a graceless, reminiscent chuckle 
 at his infantile gambling. " But," he went on, " I did n't 
 fudge then and I don't somehow take to it now! Yes, 
 I '11 see this contract business through, Neely, Yankee or 
 no Yankee, nigger-lover or nigger-hater I'm white my 
 self ! Oh, naw, no offence. Good night." 
 
 " Come in, General," said Hallett, as he and General
 
 ii2 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Evert reached his chambers over the First National Bank ; 
 and with a strange oblivion to the Madam's possible 
 remarks the General accepted Hallett's invitation. 
 
 " Gad, sir, you 're well fixed up here ! " he remarked 
 with envious admiration of the young bachelor's freedom. 
 
 " Well/' Hallett asked after an interval, " what 's do 
 ing, General ? " 
 
 " Nothing, where Watson is concerned. Tony came up 
 to the scratch without a balk," answered Evert with dry 
 brevity. 
 
 " He never balks," with cool scorn. " How did Watson 
 take it? Did he let out any hint?" 
 
 Evert transferred his impassive gaze to Hallett's face 
 and let it dwell there a moment, as though he saw Hallett 
 for the first time and found him an interesting develop 
 ment in credulity. 
 
 " He said," Evert resumed after that silent colloquy 
 was ended, " that his ah his practice engrossed his 
 entire time, and that as he was already attorney for the 
 Power Company, and as his client would no doubt 
 that is, it was a possibility that Falls would bid him 
 self, there was nothing in it. I have n't seen Hugh take 
 the trouble to play the fool in years that he did in our 
 talk; he 's about given it up with me." 
 
 " Could he not be persuaded to join us ? " asked Hallett 
 smoothly, but with a tightening lip and a dilating nostril 
 which caught the older man's eye as it was intended to 
 do. Evert's gaze grew more peremptory as he waited, 
 with impatience, Hallett's elaborate finessing. 
 
 " I think," Hallett went on with visible enjoyment of 
 his strategic approach, " that if I was to press a little 
 button, he 'd probably do the rest."
 
 HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING 113 
 
 He paused; the subtle change which did duty for a 
 smile had passed over Evert's impassive face. 
 
 Evert never smiled in the sense of amusement, yet he 
 was a boon companion; he had never been known to 
 smile in sympathy with another's joy, yet men and 
 women, too took to him their joys and their sorrows, 
 and he never failed to add to the one, and measurably, 
 at least, to mitigate the other. Life had winnowed every 
 tenderer emotion from him, leaving an empty shell, from 
 which flowed a tonic of bitter philosophy a caustic 
 which seared alike friend and foe; but to the one's hurt, 
 to the other's healing. 
 
 " A string on Watson, sonny ? " he inquired mildly ; 
 "what 's it made of?" 
 
 " Whipcord/' he said tersely. " The same sort as those 
 whips are made of that they say our pleasant vices twist 
 for us," he added, unconsciously adopting Falls's simile. 
 
 " A-y-e," said Evert, " it 's in him ! But has it come 
 out in any form we can lay hold of anything material ? " 
 
 " Very material ; it 's documentary evidence, and of 
 the most damning sort ! " 
 
 He rose as he spoke, and, opening the secret drawer 
 of his desk, took out the letter which he and Falls had 
 found weeks before in the square, and tossed it across the 
 table to General Evert. 
 
 The General mounted a pair of benevolent spectacles, 
 and, without surprise or comment, read the letter through. 
 He folded it, and threw it carelessly upon the table. 
 
 " You mean to put the screws on Betty ? " 
 
 Hallett winced; screws, and Betty's rose-white flesh! 
 Evert was unnecessarily brutal sometimes. Hallett's 
 eyes wavered, and the old man saw it.
 
 H4 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 "It 's useless otherwise; it may be useless anyway. 
 Women are so d forgiving ! " 
 
 " Is it so important to have Watson in this ? " Hallett 
 temporized. 
 
 " All-important ; Watson carries more weight than any 
 one man, in 'Dairville or out of it, in Holmes County. 
 And that 's not all; Falls is Watson's client, and there 's 
 no fooling Hugh! He is on to this already, or I am 
 much mistaken. He took his glasses off the moment I 
 edged on to the subject " 
 
 "Took them off?" 
 
 "He always takes them off when he thinks he 's got 
 what he wants. I 've had him after me in the witness- 
 box, those little railroad matters, confound him ! " 
 
 " Watson broke your nerve on the stand, General," said 
 Hallett coolly. " Now 's your chance to see how he looks 
 under the screw himself. Perhaps he '11 have more than 
 he wants after our little interview," he finished with vin 
 dictive complaisance. 
 
 General Evert sat erect, regarding his companion with 
 unfeigned astonishment, not altogether unmixed with 
 guarded admiration. 
 
 " ' Little interview ' ? " he echoed shrewdly. " Were 
 you thinking of opening this matter to Hugh face to 
 face, Hallett?" 
 
 " How ? " said Hallett, his carefully trained Southern 
 brogue falling from him, the combative blood of his Pil 
 grim forefathers pricking in his veins, the tough, un 
 bending spirit of old New England setting his handsome 
 boyish face like flint. "Why not face to face? We are 
 not on the Yallobusha, General, 'where there are n't no 
 ten commandments ' ! "
 
 HONORABLE UNDERSTANDING 115 
 
 "I I don't keep up with literature these days, sonny; 
 I lost track of the Decalogue forty years ago. I never 
 was," modestly, " exactly an authority on those old Mo 
 saic matters. But how many commandments should 
 you say were in common use in Holmes County to-day, 
 Hallett?" 
 
 " I cannot recall but one," murmured Hallett to his 
 cigar, " and then there is the one I propose to remind 
 Watson of " 
 
 " I 'd like to be by when you remind Hugh that ' thou 
 shalt not ' ! " 
 
 " Oh," murmured Hallett with modest deprecation, 
 " there will be nothing spectacular nothing for the 
 galleries. It will be just as easy ' as falling off a log/ ' : 
 
 " Well, le' me know when you 've fallen off. Good 
 night the Madam 
 
 " I '11 light you down, General " 
 
 " Never mind never mind, sonny. I 've walked in 
 darkness for sixty years; a light might make me stumble. 
 There are those " he turned his impassive face to Hal 
 lett without a trace of humor " those who malign me 
 by saying that I prefur darkness to light. But we all 
 have our detractors eh, son?"
 
 X 
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 
 
 HALLETT chose a moment, a few nights later, for 
 his face-to-face interview with Watson; and chose 
 it with the cautious diplomacy which characterized him. 
 As he had shrewdly prophesied, there was nothing in the 
 brief talk which would have afforded to a third person, 
 had one been present, the slightest clue to the real import 
 of the dozen careless sentences that passed between them. 
 
 He had sauntered in late to his dinner at the Adair 
 Hotel, and found the big, bright dining-room crowded 
 with guests; there seemed difficulty in finding a seat 
 for Hallett, and Jim Bow, Hallett's pet waiter, rolled 
 his despairing eye toward a table where Watson dined 
 alone. But between that table and " de ginural public " 
 lay the stern mandate of the head waiter, and Elias was 
 a person to be obeyed. Now the question which agitated 
 the little, hard nut of a brain tucked away under Jim 
 Bow's elaborately barbered wool was this: was Mr. Hal 
 lett to be construed as " de ginural public " ? Jim Bow 
 decided not, and began a crawfish-like progress toward 
 the forbidden table. Hallet saw, and diplomatically 
 seized his opportunity. 
 
 " I '11 dine with Mr. Watson, Jim Bow ; this will do 
 perfectly ! " The nimble coin slid into Jim Bow's ubiqui- 
 
 116
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 117 
 
 tous palm, and Hugh looked up astonished to find Hallett 
 at his elbow. 
 
 " Ah, Watson ! " Hallett seated himself and ran his 
 eye around the crowded room. It was an ideal oppor 
 tunity. He nodded here and there with his cold genial 
 ity, and, turning to his perfectly silent companion, said 
 in precisely the tone of polite, perfunctory inquiry with 
 which the whole world inquires concerning the welfare 
 of one another's relatives: 
 
 " How is Eosebud ? How does she like ah, Ohio ? " 
 It was so boldly, so admirably done time, place, and 
 circumstance so skilfully chosen that for one brief mo 
 ment Watson staggered under the impact of the unexpected 
 assault, a moment which afforded to Hallett a taste of 
 keen triumph. Watson's glance reinforced by his glasses 
 
 he had cursed the evil chance which caught him with 
 them on met Hallett's own in stern question; and 
 there was that in the look which brought to Hallett's 
 mind a sudden memory of icicle lances hanging from the 
 eaves of his distant New England home, so cold, so hard, 
 so piercing. Watson calmly removed his glasses, making 
 a place for them among the dishes at his elbow, and turned 
 his indefinite gaze upon Hallett. 
 
 " She likes it pretty well, I believe," said Hugh, after 
 the exact interval had elapsed which bored unconcern 
 would naturally have spaced. " Milly Ann Joan's maid 
 
 hears from her, and Joan was telling me that she 
 is making quite remarkable progress." The colorless in 
 difference of the tone turned Hallett's flank neatly and 
 left him to take the initiative once more. 
 
 The waiter had returned with Hallett's dinner, and 
 busied himself with deft arrangement of the dishes, Hal-
 
 ii8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 lett applying himself to his soup with the reserved en 
 thusiasm of a man who does not, lightly, allow anything 
 to come between himself and his dinner. Presently he 
 resumed : 
 
 " Interesting class, these octoroons ? " 
 
 " Where ? " said Watson, and turned his helpless gaze 
 upon the crowded room of immaculate diners. 
 
 Under Hallett's cool glance of understanding, Watson's 
 heavy features were stolid to the point of absolute stupid 
 ity; his dull gaze under half -closed lids, his long, flexible 
 lips devoid of humor, the heavy, bear-like lurch of his 
 great form all seemed purely, frankly animal. 
 
 As Hallett marked the sensuous curve of the man's 
 heavy jaw, the drooping eyelid, a cold qualm seized him. 
 What if, after all, his weapon should fall blunted from 
 Watson's armor of callousness? Such things were com 
 mon. Hallett's mind glanced backward over all he had 
 heard of General Evert his life, his experiences 
 which he had himself epitomized in that scathing epi 
 gram : " Women are so d forgiving ! " 
 
 Hallett mused. This acid with which he had meant 
 to corrode Watson's life would only bite into a pure metal. 
 What if, after all was told, it should roll innocuous from 
 the baser metal of the man's sensual soul? The blow, 
 then, must be struck straight at the center of Watson's 
 heart, where lay the image of Betty Archer guarded, 
 Cerberus-like, by his honor. Dinner progressed; the 
 waiters hovered near, other guests were seated. Watson 
 arose finally, and, adjusting his glasses, met Hallett's 
 glance once more squarely with his own. The glance 
 was a rapier now, upon whose shining blade was carved 
 a message of both challenge and reprisal.
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 119 
 
 Upon leaving the hotel Hugh turned with a sense of 
 oppression from his offices and his rooms, seeking grate 
 fully the solitude of the cold winter night outside. 
 
 Hallett's mine so adroitly sprung had not found him 
 unprepared. As General Evert had ruefully presaged, 
 Watson had picked up the thread of the scheme, without 
 difficulty, from the General's attempted sounding, and 
 had subsequently evolved the details. The blundering, 
 which had so exasperated General Evert upon the occasion 
 of his talk with Watson, had in reality covered Hugh's 
 profound amazement at the boldness with which the game 
 was being played. Every man in the new Cumberland 
 Gas Company deal knew that Watson was attorney for 
 the " Power " company and Falls's friend ; yet a prop 
 osition had been tacitly made him to lend his name as 
 president to the organization of a rival company being 
 organized, with scarcely an effort at concealment, to make 
 war upon his client, and, if possible, to break him down. 
 
 The unprecedented boldness of the thing had in itself 
 placed the end of the thread within Hugh's hand; and 
 he had followed it smoothly to the conclusion that some 
 thing more than met the ear lay beneath the unusual 
 proposition. There had been about it, to Hugh's ear, the 
 coercive ring of a demand; the employment of General 
 Evert as an emissary was significant. Following, with 
 blind steps, the clue to that peremptory note, Hugh had 
 decided that he was to be lashed into the company under 
 the scourge of public opinion. In other words, the town 
 offered him this opportunity to retrieve the position which 
 he had taken for Falls against his townsmen. On his 
 refusal to turn Falls over to the arms of Moloch, he would 
 himself share with Falls social ostracism.
 
 120 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Watson had laughed at the thought. Ostracism for him 
 Hugh Watson in Holmes County! For Kandolph 
 Watson's son! A wave of hot anger surged over him at 
 the thought. 
 
 But that night over his pipe, Watson's mind, ranging 
 in sequacious review each related circumstance, caught 
 the trend of the undercurrent which had escaped him in 
 the heat of his anger. There was a wheel within a wheel, 
 then. A little thing of Evert's? Hardly that. Of Hal- 
 lett's? Ah Hallett! Hallett knew, then, that he had 
 blocked him tried to block him. Eosebud had talked ? 
 That was conceivable, of course. He had weighed the 
 possibility of this against other factors which had deter 
 mined his course of action toward the girl, since that night 
 last June when he had first discovered her position in 
 Mr. Archer's family, and learned later from the girl 
 herself her determination to remain with Betty after 
 Betty's marriage. 
 
 " Life's little ironies ! " he had said to himself with 
 a grim sigh. " If Betty knew ! " 
 
 From that day he had set his feet with' resolute manli 
 ness into the path which led upward to the higher trail. 
 " Honor Betty duty," he had outlined his course, 
 naming his incentives in the order in which he saw them ; 
 and had then sent for Benson, who came promptly, di 
 vided between secret amusement and a due consideration 
 for the liberal payment which he received for his attention 
 to Watson's commands in regard to the girl Rosebud, 
 whom Benson knew as the daughter of one of Watson's 
 clients. 
 
 " Rosy 's beginning to feel her oats, Mr. Watson," he 
 said with a grin. " 7 cayn't do nothing with her,
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 121 
 
 nor Lezie cayn't; les'n you are minded to take holt 
 yerself, she '11 hev' to go her own gait. She sez she doan't 
 want no more uv no white man's money as is 'shamed 
 to own her ! She 'lows she kin make her own money fum 
 this on. And she sez" -Benson paused to laugh, with 
 vexed humor " she ain't er goin' to 'sociate with niggers 
 no more, neither en' she upped and got her er home at 
 Archer's befo' I cud more 'n wink." 
 
 Watson listened, his stolid calm unbroken, while within 
 a sick recoil, a cold disgust, wrenched his very soul. Yes; 
 as Benson with plain sense foretold, the time had come 
 when he must " take holt " or let the girl go her own 
 way which way, by evil chance, had led her into the 
 home of the woman he loved; worse under the cold, 
 watchful eye of Ben Archer. 
 
 " I thought," he said with weary disgust, " that you 
 had found her reasonable tractable?" 
 
 " As good as gold, sir ! " answered Benson, and his 
 shrewd, honest face underscored the words. "'T is only 
 sence this other 'nfluence has been working ergin me " 
 
 Hugh swung fiercely upon him. " What do you mean ? " 
 he said sternly. 
 
 "Mr. Hallett " 
 
 " Hallett ? D his impudence ! " 
 
 Benson's hard face showed a flicker of amusement. 
 " Impedence ? I ain't never heard it called impedence 
 befo' fur er white man She 's just er y allow gal, you 
 know, Mr. Watson. Not but she 's er good girl I ain't 
 nothing to say ergin Rosy and she 's got more sense 
 than any er her kind ever 7 see; she 's got white folkses' 
 sense, and white folkses' ways, abouten most things; but 
 I ain't never seen it work out different from what this
 
 122 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 here 's er working out. When it comes to yallow gals 
 they 're all alike, and they 're all rotten! En," he went 
 on, tracing with meditative cane the pattern of the office 
 carpet, not lifting his face to Watson's, " en you might 
 stuff 'em with eddication untell they bust, en les'n you 
 kin wipe out that black drop in 'em 't ain't no good, 
 and 't ain't no use ! " 
 
 Watson sat like a statue, his hand clinched on the 
 desk in front of him, as the old man's words of homely, 
 irrefutable, stinging truth sank like molten lead into his 
 shrinking consciousness. That black drop, to which 
 Benson referred with unvarnished frankness, seemed to 
 be burning its way through the living tissues of his brain, 
 dropping like an incandescent plummet through to his 
 soul. 
 
 "You may be right, Benson," he said at last, rousing 
 himself, " doubtless you are ; still, in this case, I feel it 
 my duty " 
 
 "Yer duty to yer client? Ex-actly, sir! And in this 
 case I doan't say nothing ergin Eosy, mind you 
 Hallett 's to blame cuss him ! Why, yes, sir," in reluc 
 tant assent to a question put by Watson, " it 's pretty well 
 erlong, sir, I should say. Lezie 's er ben er hiding it 
 fum me they will hide fur each other fum white 
 folkses. Do she care? I think so, Mr. Watson; en she 
 would n't be none to blame, now would she, sir? Eosy 
 ain't nuthen but er colored gal and he ! What, sir ? 
 A-h, naw, naw, sir; 't ain't nuthen on his part but jest 
 tb/ usual thing. Yes, sir, you 're right about that; he 
 is crueler then most; ur he looks it." 
 
 Watson walked the length of the room and back, his 
 heavy brows knitted in angry thought.
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 123 
 
 "Benson," he said at last, and paused; another turn, 
 and then another; "send Rosebud you call her Rose 
 bud still? Well, send her here to me at this hour to 
 morrow. Openly, you understand, no skulking; she has 
 a right to come. I have money of hers in my hands. 
 ... I '11 let you know later." 
 
 After the man had left him, he still paced, with restless 
 feet, the narrow confines of his private office, in grim 
 counsel with his most implacable client his own rebel 
 lious soul. 
 
 " It is but simple justidfej" he told himself ; " the girl 
 is right. If our positions were reversed, I should take 
 the same stand that she has taken. I have no right, be 
 cause I pay no moral right to thrust my wishes upon 
 her, to order her life to suit my own purposes. Our 
 mutual relation does not rest upon a money basis, and 
 she perceives that it does not." 
 
 The next day, when the door of his private office opened 
 to admit Rosebud, although Watson had summoned all 
 of his stolid passivity to meet the ordeal, every fiber of 
 his consciousness recoiled, driven back before a wave of 
 sick repulsion under the situation confronting him. Had 
 the girl's fresh and comely figure been the scaled form 
 of a basilisk, he could hardly have shrunk with more 
 horror than he did from her, ?is she hesitated upon his 
 threshold. 
 
 " Come in, Rosebud," he said, using the gentle coldness 
 cf his usual manner to her. They had met many times 
 before, the girl knowing him as the lawyer who managed 
 her affairs for the "client" whose name she had never 
 heard.
 
 i2 4 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 She remained standing near the door timidly, not meet 
 ing the glance Hugh bent upon her, and which, it seemed 
 to him, took cognizance of her for the first time in her 
 life. 
 
 The girl was well grown, though her strong, elastic 
 figure retained the soft curves of childhood, which lin 
 gered, also, in the tints and contour of her face, as richly 
 colored as a dusky rose. The dark olive of her com 
 plexion, coarsened by exposure, deepened upon her cheeks 
 to an indefinite richness of tint which was not rose or 
 scarlet, but a softened mingling of both ; the lips of her 
 wide, flexuous mouth were a clear scarlet, and her rich 
 abundance of coarse, chestnut-tinted hair was parted sim 
 ply above her brow, whose bold, intellectual development 
 was evident at a glance. She had the straight features 
 of her Caucasian ancestry, infused and vivified to a richer 
 exuberance of nature by the warm blood of her mother's 
 race. She did not speak in answer, to Watson's greeting, 
 but gazed about her with the unabashed curiosity of a 
 child tempered by a visible awe of Watson. 
 
 " Sit down," he said, seeing that she would not speak. 
 "No, nearer the desk here." 
 
 He pushed a chair toward her, and :he sank into it 
 with a frightened glance which he mev with a look of 
 keen inspection. She was already on her guard, he saw. 
 Over her frank gaze of *a moment before a veil of cold 
 reserve had fallen, as impenetrable as Hugh's own; her 
 rich color had paled a trifle, and, as her features settled 
 into a stolid repose, she bore a strong resemblance to the 
 man who faced her across the desk. 
 
 " Mr. Benson tells me, Kosebud," began Watson with 
 blunt directness, "that you prefer to work for your liv-
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 125 
 
 ing in the future; to make a life for yourself. I have 
 sent for }'ou to know from your own lips if this be true, 
 that I may communicate with my client and learn what 
 his wishes are concerning you." 
 
 " I did n't want to live with colored people ; I ? d ruther 
 work fur my living then then that." She spoke timidly, 
 but with an underlying note of firmness which would 
 develop, Hugh felt sure, into obstinacy as her shyness 
 wore off. 
 
 " There is no necessity for you to live among negroes 
 if you prefer not. I " he hesitated a moment and went 
 firmly on "I thought it best but let that go." He 
 leaned across the desk, looking keenly, but with the same 
 enforced gentleness, at the girl. " What would you pre 
 fer to do with yourself, if you could choose, Bosebud?" 
 
 " Stay with Miss Betty, and go to school," she said 
 with smiling promptness. 
 
 Hugh started in keen vexation. " That cannot be," he 
 said with harsh decision ; " put it at once out of your 
 mind." 
 
 She shrunk dismayed at his harsh tone for a moment, 
 but gathered herself together with a gentle dignity, and, 
 looking firmly at him from eyes that matched his own, 
 she said quietly: 
 
 " Do it does it rest with you, Mr. Hugh, to say what 
 I can do? Supposen I breaks off with this this white 
 gentleman as is your client, and works fur my own liv- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Did you not know," asked he slowly, " that Miss 
 Archer is to be my wife in January ? " 
 
 A rosy smile widened Rosebud's flexible lips; she 
 glanced roguishly at Watson. " I knowed you was Miss
 
 126 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Betty's beau. You would n't refuse Miss Betty anything 
 she would ask, would you? And she 'B already promised 
 me I shall stay with her after the wedding. What would 
 you say to Miss Betty when she asked why I had to go, 
 Mr. Hugh?" 
 
 What, indeed! 
 
 "What can I tell this this client ?" 
 
 " You know what to tell him, Mr. Hugh," she said per 
 suasively, " er ef you don't, just say I don't want no more 
 er his money that I can make my own living, and go 
 my own way. I guess," she added with the obstinate 
 smile which Hugh had half-expected to see, "I guess he 
 won't bother none with me." 
 
 Watson walked to the window and remained gazing 
 Out in silence for a space. " Why are you so set against 
 this man, your father, Rosebud ? " he asked, with his face 
 still turned to the window. 
 
 "I don't know as I am," she said slowly. "It was 
 only his trying to part me from Miss Betty; and it 
 don't seem fair, nohow, fur him to order me erbout ef 
 ef he is 'shamed to own me. And I ain't askin' nothin' 
 of him. I don't want nothin' he 's got, but fur him to 
 let me be." 
 
 " But if he was willing to own you, as far as he might ; 
 if you knew that his plans for you were for your own 
 happiness and good; in short, if he so conducted himself 
 as to convince you that he meant to do what was right 
 by you not only now, but always you would obey 
 him, and recognize his right to order your life, as any 
 man has a right to order his daughter's life ? " 
 
 He stood, with his hand in his trousers pocket, looking 
 sternly down upon her.
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 127 
 
 " Does you do you know him, Mr. Hugh ? " she said 
 softly. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Is he er gentleman, er sure-enough gentleman?" 
 
 Watson gazed at her fixedly, a streak of red creeping 
 slowly into his pale cheek. " I hope so," he said slowly ; 
 "what do you mean?" 
 
 " Do he go in style ? is he tony ? " 
 
 " Oh, that ! Yes, I suppose you would call it so." 
 
 "But ef he 's 'shamed of me?" 
 
 "You do not understand. And yet, you should know. 
 You must know, Eosebud, that there are circumstances, 
 customs, even laws both written and unwritten which 
 neither I nor this other man can change, no matter how 
 we might want to, which would prevent his doing for you 
 openly more than he has done. You should be just, child, 
 to this man try to see how he is placed. He recognizes 
 your claim upon him for care, protection, support; and, 
 if it lay in his power, he would secure happiness for you, 
 I do not doubt. He has done, and he will do, his duty 
 by you as God gives it to him to see it, and as circum 
 stances which he cannot alter allow him; more than this 
 he cannot do." 
 
 He stood above her, looking down into his own eyes, 
 which looked back at him in dumb question. He answered 
 the question : " Between you and this man, Rosebud, 
 though you are his daughter, and he is your father, there 
 is the same wall of race caste color which has al 
 ways been between the white race and the negro; which 
 will always be there so long as the world stands and time 
 is, and which may not be passed. You know what this 
 means; every day you live you see it round you; every
 
 128 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 hour that you will live in the future it will be at your 
 elbow." 
 
 A voiceless question formed upon her half-opened lips. 
 He answered it : " Yes, it is the color line. And, though 
 you do not remind him of it, that man, your father, 
 passed it." 
 
 He dropped into his seat again, leaned over the desk, 
 holding her eyes steadily with his own. " I do not know 
 how far a girl like you can understand, but listen: That 
 was a sin of the flesh, you know, and in the flesh will he 
 repay. But in the spirit, in all those things which be 
 long to his higher nature, you can have no part. Have 
 you understood at all what I mean? He could not love 
 you, cherish you; his very nature would recoil. It is 
 instinct, child, blood ! " 
 
 A slight trembling seized the girl, her rich color had 
 faded until she was as pale as he. 
 
 " Do you see now why you cannot stay with Betty ? 
 That it would bring unhappiness, trouble, upon her?" 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "I I see ! " 
 
 " You are willing to obey this man ? " 
 
 0h, yes, yes!" 
 
 " Then listen again, Rosebud." Resuming his old gen 
 tleness, he entered with patient detail into the sketch 
 of the life he had planned for her: the college in the 
 North, the higher education, the wider life ; touching with 
 skilful empbasis upon all that there was in the (to her) 
 unknown life of the mind, of books, culture, travel. 
 
 Making her understand that, out of the South, she was 
 free to live any life she might choose with the income 
 which he would settle upon her, he led her gently to see 
 that work mental work, the broadening, uplifting of the
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 129 
 
 mind would lead her upward from the bondage of the 
 flesh that held her here. He talked on and on; and she 
 listened with a tranced interest, with childishly clasped 
 hands and glowing face. 
 
 He won her consent without trouble, and she rose joy 
 ously to leave him, but he motioned her to her seat. 
 
 " There is something else," he said ; he paused, settled 
 his collar as though it choked him, but took up resolutely 
 the ugly task. " It is about Mr. Hallett, Kosebud." He 
 was regarding her with stern eyes, but she met them with 
 her impenetrable frankness ; it was impossible to read that 
 limpid gaze, to look into the dark corridors of indirection 
 behind it. And Hugh gave it up. 
 
 " Mr. Hallett do I mean does come sometimes ; 
 Lezie say says he comes to see about his laundry." 
 
 " You will not go to Lezie's cabin again ; nor leave 
 Mr. Archer's house alone until I am ready to send you 
 off. You will be ready to go by the first of September/' 
 he said with brief authority, and she murmured gently, 
 "Yes, Mr. Hugh." 
 
 She paused beside his seat, but he did not look up. 
 
 " Go now," he said. 
 
 "Shall I shall you " 
 
 " No ; Benson will come ; Benson will take you ; but 
 I will look after everything. It will be I you are obey 
 ing. You won't forget that?" 
 
 "Good-by, Mr. Hugh." 
 
 " Good-by." 
 
 In the months which had intervened between his inter 
 view with her and the coming of September, Watson had 
 perfected his plans for Eosebud's future with patient
 
 130 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 thoroughness, looking himself into every detail of her 
 life in the college which he had selected for her with 
 minute, painstaking care; satisfying himself that the en 
 vironment was really such as tended to develop her intel 
 lectually and lay the foundation for the life which he 
 had promised her. 
 
 And as the days wore on and his plans fell smoothly 
 into shape, he found that his repugnance to the task had 
 been replaced by a calm satisfaction in the course which 
 he had adopted. 
 
 There was about the arrangement of these final details 
 something of the satisfaction with which a man rings 
 down the last penny of a debt, under which he has sweated 
 for years, upon the counter of his creditor, and straightens 
 his back in the serene consciousness that he is his own 
 man again. 
 
 The girl herself had evinced no reluctance to meeting 
 his wishes; she had acquiesced with gentle readiness in 
 the arrangements made for her. Benson had reported 
 her happy and interested in the new life opening before 
 her. She had answered Watson's letter embodying his 
 final instructions, with a line through Benson; a stiff, 
 childish note as far as wording and intention, written 
 in a beautiful, ornate hand, but underlaid by the note 
 of firmness which Hugh had detected during his first 
 interview with her, and to which he had unconsciously 
 clung as an anchor to windward in the girl's problematical 
 future. 
 
 Then, without warning, had come the amazing check 
 which she had given to his plans for her. Adopting a 
 course infinitely simpler and more effective than argu 
 ment, or probably futile resistance, she had failed to
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 131 
 
 keep her appointment with Benson; she slipped from 
 their grasp like the shadow she had been upon Hugh's 
 life, 
 
 Through his agent Watson had sought for some trace 
 of her for weeks, but in vain. All that could be ascer 
 tained was simply that she had left Adairville at the time, 
 and upon the train designated, and had not arrived at 
 the point where Benson awaited her; that was all. 
 
 " Fool ! " Hugh had told himself, with a grim laugh. 
 " To think Lesby's dust had she lain for a hundred 
 years dead, a grain of her dust could outwit me! I was 
 a fool to forget it ! " 
 
 Hallett's bold move, the hardly restrained triumph of 
 his tone and glance, had given Watson the first clue as 
 to the girl's disappearance. That suave sentence of a 
 dozen words had done its work with absolute thorough 
 ness. Hallett knew, then, that Eosebud was not in Ohio; 
 and he knew also Hugh's relationship to her. 
 
 Plain and simple, with these two facts in his posses 
 sion, Hallett's game lay before Watson. It was being 
 played with an almost nai've simplicity, and so boldly as 
 to carry assurance that he counted upon success. 
 
 Neither Hallett nor General Evert was an antagonist 
 whom a man could afford to underestimate. Watson 
 awarded them a scornful meed of admiration for the deft 
 ness of the plot which had entrapped him. Hallett alone 
 would have been a relatively simple problem ; but General 
 Evert as a component complicated the conditions. 
 
 General Evert's world was Hugh's own; Watson's 
 friends were the General's; his kin the General's kin; 
 through his intimacy with Mr. Archer's family he was 
 woven into Hugh's affairs so inextricably as to be a dan-
 
 132 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 gerous factor in anything which touched his relations 
 with the family. Watson set his teeth with keen exas 
 peration as he realized his helplessness. The very inner 
 sanctuary of his affections was open to the old man's 
 coolly speculative eyes his heart-strings bare to his 
 remorseless manipulation. 
 
 Hallett had made a skilful cast, and the loops of the 
 lariat were taut about him. Turn as he would, Hugh 
 felt about his feet the double cord which bound him: 
 Falls and Falls's affairs one strand, and the other, Betty ! 
 
 To cut loose from Falls's affairs and lend his name 
 to the new company being organized to freeze him 
 if that were all! 
 
 That would be, of course, the form of the demand; 
 but Hugh knew his world too well, had too shrewd a 
 knowledge of the men he dealt with, to suppose for a 
 moment that they would content themselves with aught 
 less than the pound of flesh weight for weight. 
 
 There was, too, the personal equation to be solved with 
 both Hallett and Evert. Hugh recalled the railroad mat 
 ters of which General Evert had made mention to Hallett, 
 and the bad hour he had put the old man through when 
 he had sweated his nefarious dealings from him on the wit 
 ness-stand by a process of slow torture comparable to 
 which St. Lawrence's gridiron would have seemed a bed 
 of roses. It was as little likely that the General had 
 forgotten it as that he would forego his revenge. 
 
 The real meaning of that demand would be, in brief 
 and brutal terms, to deliver Falls into their hands to 
 be stripped. And the price of his refusal to suborn his 
 honor to his client Betty. 
 
 On the black curtain of that windless winter night
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 133 
 
 Watson saw, "as in a mirror moving darkly," the brief 
 drama of his love move on, scene after scene, to its bitter 
 finale. 
 
 There would be, as Hallett had said, nothing spectac 
 ular. Old Ben Archer, that clean-living, self-righteous 
 Presbyterian, would be the instrument of fate. There 
 would be a talk between the two old men, friends of a 
 lifetime, in which there would be no unseemly triumph 
 ing upon Evert's part, no faintest hint of any extraneous 
 motive; but with calm ruthlessness, touching this one 
 blotted page in Hugh's otherwise clean record, what facts 
 he had would be placed in Archer's hands, without com 
 ment, or, possibly, with a quiet word of warning drawn 
 from the fate of some other woman whom they both knew. 
 
 Watson started up under the intolerable smart of the 
 thought. Sooner would he cast Betty under the hoofs 
 of the half-wild cattle which came trooping through each 
 spring and fall from the mountain pastures, and trust 
 to them for mercy, than give her heart and her sweet, 
 unsullied mind into the hands of those two old men, 
 armed with the ruthless righteousness of a sacred duty 
 to perform. 
 
 Only of late had he been admitted to the clean, sweet, 
 narrow cell of Betty's mind; and its virgin austerity had 
 at once appalled and charmed him. A hard shudder 
 shook him now as, with prophetic eyes, he saw laid bare 
 under the fierce, white light of her indignant maiden 
 hood the black fungus of that old dead lust. He saw 
 himself in the years of their life together, looking into 
 her clear eyes, knowing that just behind their blue lay 
 the leprosy of this knowledge. . . . God in heaven no! 
 
 Betty's charm for Watson was not in the least a spiritual
 
 134 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 or an intellectual one; the girl was neither the one nor 
 the other ; she was of the earth sweetly, unconsciously 
 of the earth, as the blue fringed gentian is of the soil 
 in which it grows. 
 
 What he saw in her was the sublimated essence of a 
 perfect physical purity; very human, very womanly, and 
 the exact complement of his own nature. The cool shal 
 lows of Betty's nature were refreshment to Hugh's soul; 
 her passionless reserves thrilled him as no other woman's 
 warmth could have done. Her beauty, her calm, charm 
 ing dullness, the colorless polish of her social bearing, 
 pleased his fastidious taste. He read her mind as he 
 would have read the brief formula of some well-known 
 process couched in plain terms of scientific brevity. Bet 
 ty's nature was the kind of script whose sense the eye 
 gathers with a glance. 
 
 Watson knew that neither imagination nor spiritual 
 elation would color her judgment of him; with Betty 
 always it was 
 
 "... the low sun gives the color." 
 
 From the serene heights of an intellectual freedom, and 
 with her power of impersonal abstraction, Joan might 
 forgive not so Betty. 
 
 A more spiritual woman than Betty, uncomprehending, 
 might forgive utterly; but Betty had the kinship with 
 earth which would reveal, interpret to her with every ; 
 eloquent tongue in nature the crime against her against 
 their mutual love of which he stood confessed. 
 
 No merciful uncertainty tempered the pitiless logic of 
 Watson's reasoning; his despairing eyes sought for no 
 rainbow of hope spanning the mists of Betty's tears.
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 135 
 
 The storm would pass; her eyes would smile again in 
 their clear, unchanging blue but for others, never 
 again for him. He knew the swift recoil of race and 
 blood and caste, the physical repulsion, the pitiless 
 scorn and hate which is written, as he himself had de- 
 ' fined it for Falls, " in the very blood and bones, the fiber 
 of the mind, the texture of the soul," of the white 
 people of the South against the negro race. Had it not 
 risen up and choked him over and over again; did it 
 not throb in him now with sick disgust and horror ! 
 
 Watson was a clever lawyer, a great criminal lawyer; 
 for years he had tracked human passions as African hunt 
 ers track the soft-footed beasts of the jungles. Countless 
 times he had seen the sweat of anguish break out on 
 lip and forehead of some man stretched upon the rack 
 of his pitiless examination; he had watched the dumb 
 writhing of the tortured soul under his calm vivisection, 
 as his probe sank deeper, searching for that gangrened 
 spot so decently covered from the sight of the world, 
 so safe under the spotless reputation. 
 
 God! had it hurt like this? Had those poor devils, 
 while he broke them upon the wheel, seen some woman's 
 eyes looking into those hidden places of their hearts laid 
 bare under his scalpel? Had they seen, as he was seeing 
 now, the angel-light in those eyes go out, quenched by 
 
 ' that black drop which he had probed for and found? 
 
 I Watson bared his head to the cold air of midnight that 
 hung motionless about him; no sound of human life 
 reached him, though he was in the very heart of the 
 town. 
 
 Alone with himself as under the action of an alche- 
 mistic draft, mind and substance separated; Watson, the
 
 136 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 man, stood humbly before the mind, and sued for counsel 
 
 respite. 
 
 From the oak-tree came a sound of dumb straining; 
 and to Watson it seemed the sound of his own striving. 
 In the very core of the darkness, which seemed to flow 
 off from his figure in waves, his brain was awake; back 
 and forth it wove, seeking amid the tangled web of cir 
 cumstance the master knot which held the whole. It must 
 be there! 
 
 Hallett played with loaded dice, Watson felt sure. The 
 coercive note in the invitation to join the Cumberland 
 Gas Company, the veiled threat in old Evert's manner 
 
 all was plain now, and all pointed inexorably to the 
 possession of material proof. Not again would Hugh 
 underestimate Hallett as an adversary. 
 
 The question was now simply what he held. Eosebud's 
 word? The drifting leaves afloat upon the midnight air 
 would weigh as much with any one whom Hallett would 
 desire to influence. 
 
 Narrowed to its ultimate conclusion, the letter stared 
 Watson in the face. That fatal moment of yielding to 
 his self-imposed duty of restitution! That signature 
 no extenuation could touch it; no palliation lessen it8 
 damning evidence ! 
 
 Watson rose at last from his dark seat, stiff and cold, 
 and his mind, so long bent to the tension of intense 
 thought, sprung back to the normal with a snap. He 
 laughed as he stretched his stiffened muscles. 
 
 " ' Be good if you can be good ; but if you can't, be 
 careful/ What is left me ? There are, then : finesse, which 
 in this case means plain burglary pah! brute force 
 and Falls!" A sudden warmth, a thrill of hope, shot
 
 THOU SHALT NOT 137 
 
 through the man's tired frame as the thought of Falls 
 came to him. 
 
 Almost it was as though Falls had reached from out 
 the dank cold of the wintry dawn and grasped him with 
 a warm, firm hand, leading mm back to life and manhood 
 again.
 
 XI 
 
 ALIEN ! 
 
 DECEMBEK'S peevish sulks soon wore off, and the 
 lovely shrew smiled again, a chill, radiant smile from 
 a sky like clear, blue ice, under which the valley of the 
 Tennessee glittered like a jeweled flower from end to end. 
 
 From the car-window, as the long trip back to Ala 
 bama neared its end, Falls marked its icy smile with 
 bitter eyes. A cold repugnance to Adairville and its peo 
 ple had seized upon him. He strove in fierce revolt against 
 the meshes of the net about him, yet honor, duty, busi 
 ness integrity, the very forces of his own unbending na 
 ture, held him to his purpose; every tough, inflexible, 
 fighting instinct in the man rose and armed itself to the 
 unequal fight a fight in which he stood opposed not 
 alone to Adairville and its twenty thousand people, but 
 to the crowding ranks of importunate memories. The 
 town saw in Falls's bold, assertive presence, heard in his 
 masterful tones, the incarnate spirit of the power which 
 had oppressed them, pillaged them, drenched their land 
 in blood and tears, and broken the proudest spirit on 
 earth. 
 
 But there was mutiny in Falls's own ranks. If his 
 revolt against the meshes of circumstance had baen fierce, 
 his revolt against himself had been fiercer yet. Again 
 and again in those weeks of turmoil which had succeeded 
 
 138
 
 ALIEN! 139 
 
 upon the attempt to ruin him by the treacherous wreck 
 ing of his machinery, the thought of Joan had come to 
 him, and again and again had he thrust it savagely away. 
 She was a part of the town ; of the people who hated him 
 whom he hated ; they were her friends, her kindred, 
 and he ? He was alien to it and to her. Madness, folly, 
 weakness, to dream it could be otherwise. Suppose he 
 could tear her from them bind her to his own heart 
 would it not be the old losing fight of the individual 
 against the type the transient flame of human passion 
 opposed to an unswerving natural law, the force of racial 
 instinct ? 
 
 His tired nerves revenged themselves cruelly upon him 
 during the enforced quiet of the railway journey, for the 
 unremitting strain of the past weeks. Over and over he 
 lost himself in dreams of Joan, her lips, her eyes, her 
 warm breath on his cheek, only to lash himself anew 
 into harsh scorn for his puerile folly. And Watson's 
 proffered friendship? As Falls saw it now, it was of a 
 piece with the town. He would have none of it. 
 
 Noon of the next day found Falls in his office at the 
 power-house, with a pile of mail before him, which, with 
 the aid of a gasping stenographer at his side, he was 
 reducing to two orderly piles of letters, one for the mail 
 and the other for the file. His eyes, sweeping the valley 
 road upon the mountainside, caught a glint of sunlight 
 upon the burnished flank of a bright bay horse which 
 carried a slender figure; a gleam of gold showed beneath 
 the riding-hat; there was a familiar turn of the graceful 
 head. 
 
 Cummings, with his pencil suspended, awaited the last
 
 140 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 curt sentence of the letter; but he heard instead the 
 rattle of the telephone as Falls snatched it from its rest: 
 
 " Robinson's livery-stable, please. . . . Falls send my 
 horse out right away; and, Mat that you? All right; 
 if you get him here in ten minutes there will be a dollar 
 for you with Cummings." 
 
 " Ah, Cummings," said Falls to the stenographer, 
 " er I 'm a little pressed for time this afternoon ; just 
 leave this mail over." 
 
 And Cummings, discreetly blind to the picture still 
 in full view from the window, slowly climbing the moun 
 tain road, hoped Mr. Falls would have a pleasant ride. 
 
 " Cummings is inside three minutes to spare, thank 
 you, Mat." Falls swung himself into the saddle, looked 
 behind to see that the road was clear of spectators, and 
 put the black horse straight at the board fence which 
 separated the street from the open common ; riding across 
 country, he took rail-fences and gullies as they showed 
 up, in an air line for the mountain road. 
 
 Mat, his dollar rattling in solitary grandeur in his 
 baggy breeches-pocket, grinned his admiration, and turned 
 a leering eye upon Cummings. 
 
 "Ain't that er Miss Jone 'Dair? What 's Falls er 
 chasing after her fur ? Do she look at him enny ? " 
 
 "Naw," said Cummings in magnificent disdain, "he 's 
 just wasting his time. She 's the toniest girl in town; 
 she would n't hare nuthen' to do with no d Yankee ! " 
 
 With tender solicitude for her beautiful terra-cotta bay, 
 Joan was allowing him to climb the steep road at his own 
 sweet will, the reins loose upon his neck. 
 
 From the crest of the first hill she could see the build 
 ings of the power plant, a crude blotch of color against
 
 ALIEN! 141 
 
 the dull green of the belt of cedars intervening. She 
 smiled as her eyes lingered upon their bare, hideous out 
 line, thinking of how much those jumbled masses had 
 come to mean to her, infused as they seemed to be with 
 Falls's own strong personality. Falls and his plant had 
 come to be indissolubly linked together in her mind. 
 She had watched the duel between him and his crippled 
 plant against the town with breathless interest and a 
 partisanship which each day grew more shyly tender. 
 She awoke at night and listened for the panting of his 
 engines across the hill, with his face before her on the 
 black curtain of the night. Falls had scarcely been 
 absent from her mind since the night she had told him 
 she was on his side the side of fair play and the best 
 man. And she was thinking of him as she rode. 
 
 At the top of the first wide step to the mountain Joan 
 settled herself more firmly in her saddle, and gave Eitchie 
 a tiny love-lick across his shining flank. At the same 
 moment there was a clatter of hoofs behind her, and she 
 half-turned her head. 
 
 " Who 's coming, Ritchie ? Whoa, I say, whoa, sir ! 
 Till I see- 
 
 Falls waved his cap to her in gay salute, and a moment 
 after ranged the black horse beside Ritchie, regardless 
 of the tatter's superciliously arched neck and curling 
 lip. 
 
 " I did n't know you were home," she said; her radiant 
 eyes, her smiling lips, the joyous lilt in her voice, all bid 
 ding him be glad he was. 
 
 " ' Home,' " thought Falls in grim commentary, while 
 she went on : 
 
 " I could not think who it could be coming at such
 
 142 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 a pace. Why, I would n't even dr-e-a-m of asking Ritchie 
 to get out of a walk over that bit of road, and this big, 
 lovely fellow did n't even turn a hair ! " 
 
 " Eitchie is a lady's pet a spoiled darling. Joe knew 
 when he came to me that, if he was to carry me, it meant 
 work." 
 
 "Are you riding for exercise, or are you going some 
 where ? " Joan asked as the horses settled to the next 
 rise. 
 
 " I 'm going somewhere I suppose. You seem to be 
 headed for somewhere. I 'm going wherever you are 
 going." 
 
 There was a light in Falls's handsome eyes which Joan 
 had never seen there before, and his grave lips were 
 smiling. 
 
 " I 'm going to the mountain house to look after things 
 a little," she informed him with a businesslike air that 
 amused Falls, although his face, turned to her, was dis 
 creetly grave as he listened. " Father likes the house 
 kept in order, so if any time he fancies going up for 
 a week, it will be ready. So every little bit I ride up, 
 just to let Lethe know that I have an eye upon her and 
 what she would call her ' goings on.' ' ; 
 
 The horses climbed with strong, easy strides the steep 
 road that, twisting like a snake, ran along the mountain 
 side between stunted cedars and masses of cool gray rocks. 
 The girl bravely kept up her light chatter, though the 
 mute language of Falls's steady eyes was waking the 
 sleepy roses in her cheeks more effectively than the bracing 
 air bad done. 
 
 She was telling him brightly of the approaching Christ 
 mas gaieties, including him tacitly, with gentle tact,
 
 ALIEN! 143 
 
 in it all; confiding to him with her sweet matter-of-fact- 
 ness the "times" she was having with the preparations 
 for her own Christmas party. 
 
 " I mailed your card " Her eyes questioned him. 
 
 " Thank you, yes ; I have it here " Falls touched 
 the pocket of his coat, meeting her eyes with a look of 
 tender gravity. 
 
 He would not come. In the reticence of his glance 
 Joan read the refusal which Falls's lips would not utter; 
 and a wave of disappointment, of pity, of generous indig 
 nation, rose in her throat in a choking sob. He meant 
 to cut himself off, then, before . . . Joan looked straight 
 ahead, a sudden mist of tears blotting out the white road. 
 . . . And she had thought he did not know, did not care. 
 She knew now how well he knew, and how much he 
 cared ! 
 
 Falls had seen the mist in the lovely eyes, the sob climb 
 up in the girl's white throat, while he fought down the 
 impulse to tell her all; to tell her that he cared only 
 because it kept him from her. 
 
 " I 'm coming to the Dixie Club ball," he said gently, 
 at last; and, leaning over, he stroked Eitchie's shoulder 
 with a strong caress. " That is, I am coming if it is 
 plainly understood between us now that I am to have 
 a waltz, a whole one? I hate those fragmentary waltzes. 
 Yes?" 
 
 "Yes; and a whole one." 
 
 "And one later?" 
 
 Joan demurred. Falls was firm. " N"o tag-end ! I want 
 it all to myself and until the music stops." 
 
 " I '11 tell you," said Joan, " I '11 bet you the second 
 one that Ritchie can beat Joe to the second toll-gate."
 
 144 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Done ! " cried Falls. " Till the music stops ? " 
 
 " Till the music stops." 
 
 A smooth road as hard as asphalt lay before them 
 for half a mile unbroken by an obstacle, and slightly 
 inclining downward to the next abrupt ascent, at the bot 
 tom of which lay the second toll-gate. 
 
 " Make Joe toe the line. The shadow of that limb ; 
 no fudging ! " cried Joan gaily, backing Eitchie until his 
 reluctant fore feet rested upon the bar of shade which 
 fell across the road. 
 
 " Shall I give you a length or two ? " asked Falls, 
 magnificently disdainful, though his quick glance had 
 measured Eitchie's racing points with misgiving. 
 
 " Perish the thought ! No, indeed ; I 'm going to beat 
 you, fair field and no favor. One, two, three ! " 
 
 Side by side for the first hundred yards the two horses 
 swept down the incline, Eitchie willing enough to exert 
 himself, now that there was a man and a horse to look 
 on, to make it worth his while, in fact, leading by 
 half a head. The keen air, straight in their faces, sang 
 past their ears. The landscape was a painted panorama 
 of purple peaks and misty ranges, of stiff, dark cedars 
 and swaying pine-tops, the whole revolving about them 
 with a noiseless rush. The white road flowed backward 
 from the horses' pounding hoofs like a white ribbon un 
 rolled from the peaks ahead of them. 
 
 Eitchie was leading half a length when a third of the 
 distance had been traversed. Joan could see the clear 
 red of Joe's straining nostril level with her shoulder. 
 A second later Falls's hand upon the rein came into sight, 
 then a bit of his gray sleeve. He was gaining. Falls 
 was riding hard, in grim earnest, putting the black horse
 
 ALIEN! 145 
 
 up to all he knew, trusting to the laziness of the petted 
 darling, which Joan rode, to give him the race in the 
 end. 
 
 And Falls was right. Almost at the moment when the 
 black horse begun to forge ahead, Joan felt beneath her 
 her horse's slackening muscles. 
 
 What was the good, Kitchie had decided within him 
 self, of this unseemly haste? He could beat that black 
 brute; he knew it, and Joe was a fool if he did not know 
 it, also. Was not that enough? It seemed that it was 
 not, and to the end of his days Kitchie never forgot that 
 bit of specious reasoning. 
 
 Joan, his tender, his solicitous mistress, the dispenser 
 of loaf-sugar and kisses, incredible, amazing ! was 
 laying her riding-whip across those sacred, shining flanks 
 of his in such vigorous persuasion as made Falls sway in 
 his saddle with laughter to see. 
 
 Amazed, indignant, smarting under the indignity of 
 the lash and the pain of the blows, Ritchie gathered his 
 supple body together in a bound like a stag's, stretching 
 his dainty racer's head and supple length along the ground 
 until his red-gold body skimmed the road like a fire 
 brand carried swiftly through the night. 
 
 For the remaining distance to the goal he left Joe 
 behind him by three times his own length. 
 
 The rush through the cold air had been like wine in 
 Falls's veins; his dark cheek showed a streak of color, 
 his somber eyes were alight with the joy of the hour. 
 
 He stood beside her laughing, the care-free laughter of 
 a boy, holding out his hand in congratulation. Joan 
 struck her slender gauntlet across his palm with the frank 
 emphasis of good-fellowship.
 
 146 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Was n't it glorious ? And is n't Ritchie a p-e-rf ect 
 d-a-rling ! " Joan leaned from her saddle and flung both 
 arms about the horse's arching neck in a hug of sweet 
 abandon. And Ritchie turned his graceful head aside, 
 deprecating such public demonstration, in his embarrass 
 ment nipping Joe viciously. ^ * 
 
 The sun was warm on their shoulders, the murmurous 
 sounds of the pines like an organ note underlying the 
 lighter sounds of the winter woods about them. A flight 
 of wild geese passed overhead, traveling south in wedge- 
 shaped formation. 
 
 " That is a good sign," said Joan ; " it means cold 
 weather. I hate a muggy Christmas don't you?" 
 
 " Yes. . . . You broke into my confidences about the 
 Dixie Club ball with our race. Did you intend to prevent 
 my asking you to let me go with you purposely? I 
 am afraid I am late, but if by any happy chance you are 
 disengaged " 
 
 " But I am not ! " she said gently. " ' Prevent you ' ? 
 What nonsense! I should have been ch-a-rmed, simply 
 ch-a-rmed! But Mark Caldwell, a friend of Hugh's, is 
 here; in fact, he came all the way from New Orleans on 
 purpose. He is Alabama's Chief Justice, you know, and 
 very well worth while, in spite of it. I made the en 
 gagement quite a bit ago." She spoke eagerly, as though 
 to take the sting out of her refusal by showing how com 
 pletely it had been out of her power to go with him. 
 
 Falls leaned over to her horse to tighten the girth. 
 
 " Mr. Caldwell is quite welcome to his innings," he 
 said coolly. " I have to-day." He was quite close to her 
 as he slipped the strap through and pushed hard home 
 the buckle. He looked deep into her eyes, his own grave
 
 ALIEN! 147 
 
 again and a little somber, as he finished speaking : " I 
 would not give this for a dozen balls would you ? " 
 
 The last two words were uttered low and wistfully. 
 His nearness agitated her. Already to-day she had been 
 dangerously near self-betrayal; she had just refused him 
 his request, understanding, too, all the circumstances that 
 had led him to make it, sympathizing keenly with him in 
 the manly stand he was taking against the town which 
 meant to ostracize him; dreading for him, she knew not 
 why, the ordeal of the Dixie Club ball. It was impossible 
 to refuse this one drop of balm to his heart. 
 
 " No," she whispered, and, rallying instantly, added 
 serenely : " I prefer out-of-doors always ; I like the open 
 air more than any indoor amusement." 
 
 " Really, you know," she went on after a moment of 
 silence, " really, it is Betty's place to go with Mr. Cald- 
 well as Hugh's fiancee; he is Hugh's college chum. 
 But Buckley Shirley, you know! He was Betty's cousin, 
 or something Betty is kin to half the town ; it is often 
 er inconvenient." 
 
 " Buckley Shirley ? " echoed Falls. " I seem to know 
 the name but I can't place it " 
 
 " He is Lanier Shirley's son ; the banker, you know ? 
 And he is the man who threw Will-Henry off the car 
 that day " 
 
 " Ah that roistering young cub ! What has he been 
 doing now that Miss Archer must stop away from the 
 ball?" 
 
 Falls was speaking lightly, and Joan looked at him 
 with grave surprise. 
 
 " Have n't you heard ? Oh, I had forgotten ; you have 
 been away. When did you get in, Mr. Falls?"
 
 148 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Falls was puzzled by her gravity, but answered directly : 
 " At daylight this morning. 1 slept until noon, and 
 lunched in my room and went on to the office without 
 seeing any one but the waiter who served me." 
 
 " Buckle}" has been murdered " 
 
 "Murdered?" 
 
 " Yes," said Joan gravely, " murdered ! It was p-e-r- 
 fectly shocking! Such a grief to his family; they are 
 lovely people." 
 
 She paused, flushing under the glance of quiet irony 
 which Falls turned upon her, but meeting his glance stead 
 ily with her own. " I know what you mean, and I do 
 not defend Buckley. He was a grief to his family; but 
 they feel this all the more because of that. The Shirleys 
 are kin to half the State, and we all all their friends 
 feel deeply for them ; the whole town is excited " 
 
 Falls laughed with rasping scorn, and, raising his 
 whip, cut sharply at an unoffending weed upon the road 
 side. " More hysterics ? I have never before encountered 
 a community so subject to ' nerves ' as the Adairville 
 public." 
 
 They rode in silence for a minute; the sharp clicking 
 of the horses' feet upon the rocky road, a far-off call for 
 cattle in the valley at their feet alone breaking the silence. 
 They were almost upon the summit of the long " razor 
 backed " ridge before Falls spoke again. 
 
 " Buckley Shirley," he said with level-voiced delibera 
 tion, " was the most consummate scoundrel that I have 
 ever met ; he was too vile for human belief almost. 
 It shocks me beyond words to hear his name upon your 
 lips. ... If he has met the fate which beyond question 
 he merited, why should it concern me, or any other decent
 
 ALIEN! 149 
 
 man? Let the courts look to it that his murderer is 
 punished, if they can convict him. Why, in the name 
 of reason and common sense, should public opinion go 
 into spasms over it ? " 
 
 Falls looked back, as he finished speaking, to where, far 
 below, Adairville lay in her nest of low, green hills, 
 wrapped in the blue haze of distance like a city in a dream. 
 To the south the river curved like a silver simitar between 
 her and the world; while above the veil of mist, sus 
 pended between the blue of earth and the blue of heaven, 
 the great cross upon the spire of the church of " The 
 Brotherhood of Christ" hung like a covenant. 
 
 Falls raised his whip and pointed to it with a smile 
 of cutting scorn : " ' Put ye on the whole armor of right 
 eousness ! ' Adairville is panoplied with cross and 
 sworn to enforce the ' brotherhood of Christ.' ' : 
 
 As Falls let fall his arm, Joan leaned from her saddle 
 and laid her gloved hand upon it with quietly imperative 
 grasp. The color had slipped from her cheeks. 
 
 " Are you mad ? " she cried, in a low, tense voice. 
 " Promise promise me here that you will not say 
 those dreadful things again. Those things about Buckley 
 and Adairville ! " 
 
 There was appeal, almost anger in her eyes. And Falls 
 remembered, with swift remorse, how much this might 
 mean to her. This was her home; these people were her 
 friends her kin, for all he knew. 
 
 " I 'm a brute," he cried, and grasped in his own the 
 hand that still rested trembling, insistent, upon his 
 sleeve. 
 
 She drew her hand from his with quiet decision; and 
 once more Ritchie felt that keen lash across his shining
 
 150 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 flanks, as she sent him on far in advance of Falls and 
 Joe. 
 
 Ritchie absolutely refusing to mend his snail's pace 
 at the next rise, Falls overtook them, and leaning over 
 laid his hand firmly upon Joan's rein. 
 
 "You are not going to run away from me again/' he 
 said quietly, in answer to her indignant glance. " Not 
 until I know that you have forgiven me, that you are 
 not angry with me! Eeally, I had no idea I was such 
 a vindictive brute ! " 
 
 "Angry? Of course I 'm not angry," Joan said se 
 renely. " Ah, here is the gate of my castle ! " she added, 
 waving her hand toward the wide iron gates that Falls 
 now dismounted to open. The gates led into an open 
 lawn or a series of lawns stretching away upon one side 
 to the brow of the range, upon the other to the woods, 
 and buried just now beneath a brilliant blanket of drifted 
 leaves, which kept up a continual whirling, ghostly dance 
 about the horses' feet. 
 
 Falls captured a handful of the painted fugitives and 
 passed them up to Joan, who selected one of fuchsia- 
 tinted purple and red for her own coat, and, leaning from 
 her saddle, gave Falls back a maple-leaf which glowed 
 a clear scarlet from tip to stem. She sat in her elevated 
 seat and gravely contemplated the effect of it in his but 
 tonhole with lifted chin and lowered lashes as though 
 he had been a dress pattern of a particularly difficult 
 shade. 
 
 "You are too dark to wear gray," she pronounced at 
 last, still surveying him with serene, abstracted eyes, 
 "too dark for unrelieved gray, you know. "With a dash 
 of color, now, you m-i-ght venture."
 
 ALIEN! 151 
 
 This was the phase in which Falls found the girl most 
 charming; but he did not speak in answer; he did not 
 even smile; but in his grave face, lifted to her own, was 
 epitomized the whole immortal message of sex. Alone in 
 the still reaches of this upper world, the girl had cast 
 off, as though it had been a too elaborate garment, the 
 suave polish of her every-day manner, and was sweetly, 
 frankly woman. 
 
 They had crossed the ridge, and the long, narrow val 
 ley cove, Joan called it upon the other side of the 
 range lay before them. 
 
 " This is Lost Cove." Joan pointed with her whip. 
 " Those mountains across there bound Dixie on the north ; 
 all beyond is Yankee-land." She turned her laughing eyes 
 on Falls. " Don't you pine for your own land ? " 
 
 "Not now; all that I pine for now is on this side of 
 the Cumberlands." 
 
 " But when you have made your pile " 
 
 "If I could take my my treasure, you know, with 
 me " 
 
 "Ah!" Joan laughed lightly, "that is what all the 
 iYankees do. They come to Alabama, or to Mississippi, 
 or Texas anywhere, and ' realize their capital/ and then 
 go back to the North to spend it." 
 
 " I should not spend mine," Falls said slowly. 
 
 "Not?" 
 
 " No ; I should hoard it cherish it ! " Falls leaned 
 upon Joe's strong shoulder, looking off across the cove 
 to where range after range receded into the sky-line, with 
 wisps of pearly vapor clinging to their sides. 
 
 " Lambs of the sky," said Joan, pointing them out to 
 Falls; "they will go to bed directly; they sleep over
 
 152 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 there on 'Coon Top. I 've seen them go to bed lots of 
 nights and get up lots of mornings. And they are dread 
 fully, dreadfully lazy some mornings! I 've known them 
 to stay cuddled up there all day long. . . . Oh, Lethe, 
 is that you? Come in, Mr. Falls, while I decide what 
 I will do with you while Lethe and I transact busi 
 ness." 
 
 In the end she took him with her, and together they 
 visited every nook and cranny of the small farm, Falls 
 making himself useful with his deft strength, showing 
 a matter-of-fact interest in every detail of its manage 
 ment which rivaled Joan's own. 
 
 It had grown colder as the afternoon advanced, and 
 a great fire of hickory logs was suffusing the hall with 
 dancing, rosy light when they reached it. Joan dropped 
 a little wearily into a chair in the pleasant warmth, and 
 drew off her stiff hat. 
 
 "If I only had something to eat, I should be at peace 
 with the world! Are not you dying of hunger, Mr. 
 Falls?" 
 
 " I 'm hungry," Falls conceded, " but I might make it 
 back to town " 
 
 " Le-the ! " called Joan plaintively, " is there anything 
 here to eat?" 
 
 " Des cawn-pone," said Lethe, appearing, seemingly 
 materialized from the shadows at the rear of the hall. 
 
 "Good!" cried Falls, "I love it!" 
 
 "What else, Lethe?" 
 
 " An' sweet 'taters." 
 
 " Food for the gods ! We '11 roast them in the ashes " 
 
 "Des already cooked," said Lethe, reprovingly; "Fee 
 dun cooked urn wid de possum."
 
 ALIEN! 153 
 
 " Possum ! Oh, Lethe ! this is too del-i-cious ! " cried 
 Joan rapturously. " A possum supper ! " 
 
 Fatigue forgotten, she flung off her riding-coat, pinned 
 up her habit, and went lightly about the preparations for 
 supper ; to and fro from kitchen to dining-room and back 
 to the hall, where the table was set and supper was to 
 be served in the glow of the roaring log-fire. 
 
 " Can't I help ? " asked Falls. 
 
 " No ; you may play about till supper is ready. I '11 
 call you." 
 
 When she called him a few minutes later, Falls returned 
 from the gallery, bearing aloft upon his shoulder a laugh 
 ing, crowing, brown piccaninny, whose roly-poly form 
 was clad in a brief red garment, and a pair of immense 
 gold earrings. 
 
 She was a pretty creature, like the warm, furry, brown 
 things one finds in the woods in winter, whose bright eyes 
 shine with shy friendliness as they vanish down a hollow 
 log or an opening in the dark earth. 
 
 She sat securely upon Falls's broad shoulder, serenely 
 unabashed, one chubby brown fist grasping his immaculate 
 locks, whose parting had constrained even Betty's re 
 luctant admiration ! her white milk teeth shining in a 
 wide smile of universal friendship, her eyes like black 
 flowers glowing with mirth as she sought among the 
 shadows in the lower hall for her mother. 
 
 " See what I have, Miss Adair ! I found it out there 
 rolling about in the leaves. Here, sit still, you little 
 Hindoo god ! " The tot upon his shoulder had begun to 
 hammer her pink heels upon his chest in a lively tattoo 
 at the sight of the flames. "Is n't she a dream of a 
 'coon baby?"
 
 154 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 He advanced, as he spoke, within the circle of fire and 
 lamplight, tossing the little creature into the air and 
 catching her strongly, while she laughed her gurgling 
 laugh of sheer rapture, her great eyes shining. Joan did 
 not answer, and Falls, smiling broadly, turned toward 
 her. 
 
 Joan stood motionless beside the table, her slight figure 
 drawn haughtily to its full height and rigid with amazed 
 disgust. In her eyes, resting upon Falls's face, was a 
 dawning fear and pain, a piteous appeal to him against 
 himself, mingled with indignant protest against this 
 affront to her. 
 
 The uncomprehended anguish of her eyes pierced Falls 
 like a rapier, and he lowered the child mechanically to 
 his arm, holding her carelessly in his strong grasp as 
 he might a kitten. 
 
 Lethe emerged swiftly from the shadows of the hall 
 with soft, thudding steps. With instant comprehension, 
 she took the situation at once in hand with the inimitable 
 tactfulness of her race. 
 
 "Lawd Gawd A'might, Ad-lade, wut yu' doing in dat 
 w'ite gemmen's lap? Jes' yu' gin 'er to her mammy A 
 sur ! " She took the baby from Falls's unconscious grasp 
 and spanked her softly, with a gust of silent laughter. 
 
 " Dish 'er de f orwa'dest nigger on dis yearth ! I 
 dunno w'ut I'se gine do wid ? er ! " A turn of her eye 
 showed Joan to her, busy at the table in the dining-room 
 beyond; she laid her fat brown hand on Falls's sleeve 
 with a soothing pat; he might have been ten years old 
 and she about to soothe some childish woe with a stolen 
 cookie. 
 
 " Doan yu' fret yo'se'f nun, honey ! Lethe gine to
 
 ALIEN! 155 
 
 'splain dish 'er sit'cheration. Yu' never meant no harm; 
 'tis jis' yo' Yankee ways; but dey" she motioned back 
 ward fo the dining-room and Joan, " dey cayn't bide no 
 sich ! " She smiled a wide, toothless smile of amiable 
 derision. " Dey ain't never larnt wid all dey knows 
 bouten niggers dat de black won't rub off on 'em! 
 Yu' g' long 'n' ex'cise yo'se'f on de gal'ry some befo* 
 supper. Lethe gine 'splain to Miss Jone." 
 
 Falls strode the length of the gallery and back, and 
 back again, his hands clasped together behind him, his 
 head bent in thought; he was conscious of a dull ache, 
 a baffled, spiritless pain unlike the fierce tumult of his 
 anger after the accident to his plant, when he had sought 
 to put the girl out of his heart. This was different 
 inexplicable. 
 
 " What is this thing thrusting itself between us ? " 
 he mused hotly. " She has been so near me to-day ! Yet 
 twice it has come between us; I saw it in her eyes out 
 there on the hill." 
 
 "'No" he said with a sharp intake of his breath, "no; 
 this is not nerves it goes deeper ; there is reason behind 
 it something I do not know. But I will know ! There 
 was fear in her eyes both times fear for me." 
 
 He turned back to the door, and met her upon the 
 threshold, carrying a great platter of brown loaves. 
 
 " Supper ? " he asked gaily, with a resolute adoption 
 of his usual manner. 
 
 " Yes ; I was coming for you." 
 
 Upon the dainty table, set forth upon faultless damask 
 and served in exquisite china, was the simple fare Lethe 
 had promised. The possum, like a wee, wee pig, reposed 
 in a nest of golden yams dripping with butter, upon the
 
 156 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 platter in front of Falls; and upon a corresponding one 
 in front of Joan was a pile of golden-brown corn dodgers, 
 rich and flaky, with the prints of Lethe's supple fingers 
 upon their tops. 
 
 " That marks them sterling/' Joan explained. " Corn 
 dodgers which are smooth on top are an infringement upon 
 the patent, fraudulent imitations unworthy the name." 
 
 The little feast went rather gravely on. Falls ate his 
 possum with the appetite which the ride in the cold air 
 had given him, but the racy, wild flavor of the little wood 
 land creature might have been the tamest of domestic 
 fowls for all the cognizance his palate took of it. The 
 quiet hour, the ruddy hearth; the girl opposite him, 
 in her simple, unconventional dress, with bright hair, 
 loosened by the ride, about her face, which was softened 
 and pensive with fatigue; the close, warm intimacy of 
 the moment filled Falls as with a draught of drugged 
 wine. He answered mechanically her desultory talk, while 
 in the background of his mind he dreamed an intoxicat 
 ing dream of love, a longing dream of home. 
 
 " You shall have your coffee with all possible elegance," 
 said Joan, as they rose from the table, " to atone for any 
 slight deficiency in the viands." And she served him 
 herself from a beautiful old silver urn, in a cup of egg 
 shell china of clear Nankeen yellow, with a humming-bird 
 poised for a handle. 
 
 Presently Joan rose and looked about for her coat, 
 calling to Lethe. 
 
 " Not yet ! " Falls pleaded, his watch in his hand. " I 
 have been making this calculation for an hour past. See, 
 it will take only thirty or forty minutes to ride down; 
 it will be quite light still "
 
 ALIEN! 157 
 
 "An' de moon 's bright ez day," said Lethe from the 
 doorway. 
 
 " Just a minute, then," consented Joan, and sank into 
 ^he long chair which Falls was heaping with cushions 
 for her. " I really am dreadfully tiud tired, I mean," 
 as Falls laughed. 
 
 " Rest a bit, then and then I '11 take you down and 
 give you up to them." 
 
 " To whom, if you please ? Whom are you proposing 
 to turn me over to, the authorities?" 
 
 " Your people," he answered steadily ; " my hour is 
 over." 
 
 " Don't think it," Joan cried with forced lightness ; 
 "and while it is still with us, Mr. Falls, I I rather 
 wanted to speak to finish speaking about Buckley 
 Shirley." 
 
 Falls shifted his position slightly so as to interpose 
 his shoulder between her face and the too ardent glow 
 of the fire. Leaning across the low arm of her chair, 
 he could see that her eyes were troubled still. 
 
 " I want to give you the details of poor Buck's Ah, 
 let me call him that now! We were tiny tots together 
 Buck and I. Do you remember a tall, rather tumbled- 
 down old brick house on the left of Jeff Davis Avenue, 
 Mr. Falls?" 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " It used to be a school. We all went there as we 
 came on even in Hugh's day it was there; and Buck 
 Shirley and I came on together. I can see myself now. 
 I wore long aprons down to the bottom of my frock, and 
 a long plait down my back. Buck used to call me ' fraid- 
 cat ' and make me cry, but I admired him beyond any-
 
 158 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 body. He was a quaint creature. He could make all 
 sorts of wonderful things that would go, you know, mills 
 that went round, and railroad cars that could run along 
 the desks. ... I want to tell you before any one else 
 can before you go back to town." 
 
 Falls started in sharp surprise; and she took his strong 
 wrist into the clasp of one of her hands and held him 
 firmly while she went on speaking : " There may be noth 
 ing in what I am going to say; I have wondered if I 
 ought to speak at all " 
 
 " This has been troubling you all afternoon/' said Falls 
 gently. " Best pass it on to me ; that will get it off 
 of your mind." 
 
 " Well, you see it was like this : Buckley was murdered 
 killed by two men near that cane-brake on the road to 
 Lintonia. I don't know how they know, but every one 
 seems to know that he was set upon. They say it was 
 a plot." 
 
 " Well ? The millennium does not yet reign in Alabama. 
 Have not men been assassinated in Holmes County be 
 fore?" 
 
 "But they think it was Will-Henry, Mr. Falls. It 
 was Buckley who threw him off the car. . . . The negroes 
 have been secretly excited all along over that affair, and 
 now this murder " 
 
 Falls was listening now, absorbed in thought, and un 
 conscious for the moment that the light touch upon his 
 wrist had been withdrawn. " I see," he said at last 
 quietly ; " have any arrests been made ? What circum 
 stance directed suspicion to Will-Henry, other than the 
 fact that he is a negro, and because of the street-car 
 matter?"
 
 ALIEN! 159 
 
 " Some one saw him slinking about in Blackbird Hol 
 low at Melindys cabin several days before." 
 
 " Is that all is that all the evidence they have against 
 the poor devil? Xo jury on earth would " 
 
 Joan sat upright among her pillows with wide, startled 
 eyes fixed on Falls. " Jury ? " she echoed, a trembling 
 smile touching her lips for a second. " What was it 
 Hugh called you that night at Hillcrest so long ago 
 now?" 
 
 " ' An innocent Yankee/ was it not ? " 
 
 " Yes, and you are, too. There are hundreds of men 
 out hunting Will-Henry. They have bloodhounds with 
 them " Joan shivered in the warm glow of the hearth. 
 
 "If they catch him," she went on gravely, " they will 
 not stop to try him; they will just hang him without 
 any judge or jury or or anything, a mob, you know." 
 
 " Lynch him ? " inquired Falls grimly. " I 've read 
 of such things. Yet it is simply incredible that such 
 things as one reads of could happen here, in Adairville. 
 A remote country village might let itself lapse into bar 
 barism temporarily; but hardly a town the size of this; 
 with courts and with men of influence men who are 
 known outside of Alabama resident here." 
 
 " But such men are only one or two against the whole 
 of Holmes County." 
 
 " Does Holmes County take a hand also ? " 
 
 "They are far, far worse than the townspeople; more 
 ignorant and more prejudiced against the negroes." 
 
 " Naturally, as they have more to do with them. You 
 are suspiciously well up in mob etiquette yourself, it 
 seems to me. Surely nothing like this has happened in 
 your day?"
 
 160 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Since I can remember," she answered slowly, a sudden 
 pallor whitening her lips and cheeks, " since I can remem 
 ber there have been live men hung by mobs right here 
 in Adairville in the court-house yard, in the very center 
 of town two of them white men ! " 
 
 " What insane folly allowed a tender child like you to 
 know such things?" cried Falls sternly. 
 
 " Hugh was out of town, and father did not know ; 
 and when I passed through town on my way to school, 
 they were hanging still, three of them, stiff and 
 stark, all bloody, to a tree! They had shot them, you 
 know, after after " 
 
 Joan was trembling at the gruesome memory and by 
 her new terror for him. 
 
 Falls bent pitifully over her. This, then, was the spec 
 ter which had haunted her all afternoon. 
 
 " Don't ! " he pleaded, " don't think of such horrors. 
 They cannot touch your life, those you love, drive 
 them from your mind." With her clinging hand safe 
 in his own broad palm, Falls bent over Joan, arguing 
 gently with her, pointing out the improbability of any 
 trouble resulting from Will-Henry's capture. 
 
 " They may find the guilty man, you know, and Will- 
 Henry go free. There will be no danger to me. I am 
 not a helpless negro without friends or money. I could 
 not be jerked up without a trial " 
 
 " WTiat could you do against three hundred men, armed, 
 in the dark night, and you all alone?" 
 
 Falls laughed grimly. " I think I might account for 
 a dozen or two of the stuff that Alabama mobs are 
 made of. 
 
 " I 'm going to take you home now/' he added ; " the
 
 ALIEN! 161 
 
 air, the motion, will give you back your nerve. But one 
 question, first if I may?" 
 
 She met his eyes steadily; hers were full of trouble, 
 but they did not falter. " I know what it is," she said 
 quietly, " but yes, ask it." 
 
 " It is better to thrash it all out now, while we are 
 on the subject, and then forever and a day forget it. 
 Don't you think so ? " 
 
 " Perhaps," she murmured doubtfully. 
 
 " Tell me " Falls's deep voice was scarcely above 
 a whisper, and there trembled through it a caressing note 
 which wooed her, and woke her to fresh sorrow at once 
 " tell me why were you so startled, pained, when I 
 rode the brown baby on my shoulder? . . . No," he said, 
 gently firm, " no temporizing. Tell me all or tell 
 me that you will not toll me anything." 
 
 Flushed and distressed, Joan felt at bay under his eyes, 
 which held her like a spell. As she looked into the face 
 bending over her, proud, manly, tender, the high-bred, 
 cool abstraction of his ordinary bearing betrayed even 
 in the stress of the moment, she flushed with shame at 
 the thought of the cruel injustice which she had done him 
 when, in the grip of the fierce repulsion of race prejudice, 
 she had seen in his simple act a distorted shadow of the 
 grim bogey, that lifelong training and centuries of pre 
 natal influences had wrought like an atavism into the 
 very fabric of her brain. She struggled to find words of 
 explanation of apology ; words with which to make him 
 understand that it was not she who had condemned him, 
 but a something which lived within her; words to de 
 scribe the uncontrollable physical repulsion born in 
 her blood, nurtured in her mind, and breathed in with the
 
 162 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 air that nourished her which was yet not her con 
 scious will nor active intelligence. 
 
 If he could only know if she could but make him 
 understand the horror which had gripped her like a vise 
 when he had betrayed that he did not share her prejudice 
 of color of caste, did not feel the physical repugnance 
 which she herself felt, and the lack of which she had been 
 reared to regard with loathing, he would forgive her. . . . 
 She must must try to tell him. 
 
 Joan had recovered, almost at once, her mental poise, 
 which had been so roughly shaken under the recoil of 
 instinct and habit of thought. Her mind had found 
 swift excuse for Falls's act, had ranged in order every 
 fact in his defense; she knew intuitively what must be 
 his mental attitude to this thing which had so distressed 
 her. 
 
 Falls, reading her face as it were an open page, felt 
 the dull ache come back to his heart, the cold mist which 
 he could not thrust away creeping in between them again. 
 " Alien ! " he said to himself in bitter thought " alien ! " 
 
 Joan spoke at last, in a whisper, and Falls bent his 
 ear to catch it. " I cannot cannot tell you/' she sobbed. 
 " I should die of shame ! " 
 
 "You need not," he said gently; "you need not I 
 know!"
 
 XII 
 
 WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY 
 
 (TT^HE clerk handed Falls a note from Hugh, on his 
 JL arrival at the hotel after his ride to the mountain. 
 
 "I've been trying to get on your trail all day," it read, "I've 
 traveled miles in elevators chasing you ! 
 
 "I must see you at once. Better come to my place to-night on 
 your way in." 
 
 "HUGH." 
 
 Watson's sitting-room was comfortably filled with smoke 
 as Falls entered, and Hugh, flanked and buttressed by 
 orderly piles of papers plainly untouched, sat at his desk. 
 He was wearing his glasses, and greeted Falls with a 
 genial smile of welcome. 
 
 Falls's chair was ready, his favorite pipe and tobacco- 
 jar conveniently near. He dropped into his chair, filled 
 his pipe and lighted it. Then he leaned back with a 
 sigh of content, puffing abstractedly. 
 
 Hugh's gaze, searching and oddly without humor, 
 roused him at last, and he turned toward him with a 
 smile: "Well?" 
 
 Falls started in amazement. "You J ve been ill, Chal- 
 lie?" 
 
 " No," said Hugh, his eyes upon the papers which 
 he sorted methodically unseeingly, "not ill in the way 
 
 163
 
 1 64 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 you mean; yet ill enough, God knows, if it comes to 
 that ! " 
 
 Falls brought down his hand with earnest emphasis 
 upon the arm of his chair. " I knew there was something 
 wrong. But I thought it was with me my vexatious 
 affairs, as usual. I see it is with you, Hugh ? " 
 
 He leaned forward, his pipe in his hand, alert, intent; 
 strung with keen interest, with earnest partisanship, con 
 scious at the moment that somehow, in the last few min 
 utes, their positions had become reversed. Heretofore 
 Watson's clever hand had deftly steered Falls's craft amid 
 the shoals and breakers of his own familiar home waters; 
 now, Falls perceived, the time had come when he must 
 put forth his own capable hand to bring his friend's craft 
 head to the wind. On the instant his decision was taken; 
 he had reviewed the possible trend of affairs and braced 
 himself for action before he spoke again. 
 
 " Tell me," he said simply ; " my matters can stand 
 over." 
 
 " I 'm going to tell you ; that is why I have sent for 
 you; but your matters can't stand over, Falls. We '11 
 have to take 'em on together; it 's too late to unwind 
 them even if we could. Things are tangled up 
 damnably! Listen: I 'm in the devil of a mess! I 'm 
 learning, experimentally, the meaning of your term, 
 * squeezing ' ; only the process I 'm undergoing does not 
 stop there." 
 
 " Money ? " asked Falls gently. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Ah a woman ! " 
 
 "Yes; two." 
 
 " The devil ! Who 's turning the screw ? "
 
 WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY 165 
 
 " Hallett, d him ! He and the rest of his gang/' 
 
 " Ah ! " said Falls again, this time with clearer com 
 prehension. " Hallett/' Falls began, and paused in scorn 
 too deep for words. " It would be odd, Hugh, if you 
 and I together could not block any game that Hallett 
 could put up ! " 
 
 For a second Watson's unquenchable humor shone out. 
 " Together ! We two together ? Aye, that 's the very crux 
 of the matter, Gregory ! That is where he is putting the 
 screw to choke me off from your affairs. To muzzle 
 me, in fact, to tie my hands in the courts. This thing 
 is quite melodramatic when you 're on the inside, Falls. 
 This is no vulgar business rizzle; it is a transaction in 
 hearts, mine and Betty Archer's." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Falls once more. 
 
 Falls leaned forward in his chair. " I cannot work the 
 combination, Watson; I have n't the word, you know/' 
 he said quietly. 
 
 " Nearly any word of those which a man would be 
 most reluctant to use about himself would work it," 
 Watson said bitterly. " This is a nice bit of moral muck 
 I 'm about to drag you through, Falls ! Right down into 
 the primal mud it is. Well " He threw his heavy 
 form back in his chair with a savage lurch, and, lock 
 ing his hands behind his head, stared straight before 
 him. 
 
 " You 've seen since you have been here a girl 
 Rosebud ? Yes ; Miss Archer's maid. Well," he loos 
 ened his tie with a savage jerk, as though it choked him, 
 " that girl that colored girl is my daughter." 
 
 Falls did not speak, but kept the steady kindness of his 
 eyes upon Hugh's face as he resumed : " Sixteen, seven-
 
 166 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 teen years ago I was a lad of twenty then, living 
 with Uncle John at Hillcrest in vacations when I was 
 home from the university. It was there I met Rose 
 bud's mother. Uncle John had married for the second 
 time a beautiful Louisiana girl, Joan's mother, and 
 the most exquisite creature! She did not live two years. 
 Well, Felicia brought with her as a maid, from New 
 Orleans, this woman Lesby. Lesby was Rosebud's 
 mother. 
 
 " I wonder," said Hugh, " if you, with your clean, cold 
 New England standards, can form any conception of 
 what it means to be born to a heritage of lust with 
 the means of its gratification always at your elbow. I 
 had two hundred years of slaveholding ancestry behind 
 me, two hundred years of the garnered instincts of men 
 who had held such creatures as Lesby as goods and chat 
 tels. And I was a gallows young ass in those days ! Well, 
 to cut it short: a boy of twenty, a summer in Dixie 
 and Lesby! She was a warm, bright-colored creature, 
 voluptuous and passionate, as all those women are years 
 older than I. You know the rest, Falls ? " 
 
 " Aye, ' without benefit of clergy ! ' Go on ; how did 
 it end?" 
 
 " It has not ended yet," said Hugh slowly. " Felicia 
 died; Uncle John needed me, and I came home from col 
 lege. Lesby had gone vanished, as a snake slips into 
 the grass, leaving Rosebud to my care in a note mailed 
 from an ocean steamer." 
 
 He paused with an unpleasant laugh. " Adairville has 
 the vice of all small towns; it dearly loves to ferret out 
 family skeletons. Everybody knows everybody else's, and 
 can articulate 'em and name each bone. But, by God's
 
 WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY 167 
 
 good grace I was able to hide mine ! I had a man to look 
 after her; she has never known neglect. All went well 
 until this last development." Hugh rose to find his pipe, 
 lighted it, and cast himself down, one foot across the arm 
 of the chair, smoking hard. 
 
 "After sixteen years of peace I had grown careless, 
 or callous or both. The girl was grown, able to fend 
 for herself too able, as it turned out. I meant to get 
 her away buy her off, you know. I wanted to marry 
 
 to marry Betty; and there was danger always. The 
 only grain of comfort that I have had in the whole blasted 
 mess has been that I am still a free man; that when 
 Betty leaves me " He paused a moment, steadied him 
 self, went on : " If Betty leaves me, it will not be my 
 wife who leaves me ! You do not know, Falls do you ? 
 
 what it means to love a woman as though she were 
 your wife, and then to lose her by what is worse, infinitely 
 worse, than death! To go on living here, seeing her 
 seeing some other man court her, marry her God ! . . . 
 I had no dream that the girl was nearer here than two 
 hundred miles when I met her that night at Hillcrest; 
 and later Betty told me calmly that she was living in Mr. 
 Archer's house as her maid." 
 
 A smile gleamed in Falls's dark eyes. 
 
 " One of life's little ironies, Hugh. What did you 
 do?" 
 
 " Proceeded to cut my own throat in the promptest 
 and most methodical manner. Benson told me he could 
 do nothing with the girl. I decided upon a desperate 
 remedy; I sent for Rosebud. It was my only hope of 
 influencing her; and she did consent to my plan to go 
 away. She was gentle tractable ; everything was ready.
 
 1 68 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Then she disappeared. Until two days ago I had not 
 an idea where she could be; I know now." 
 
 "Hallett?" 
 
 "Aye; you have the combination now, Falls." 
 
 "Yes; I see/' 
 
 Falls was engrossed in puzzled thought. That letter? 
 What part did it play in this cruel scheme? Hugh had 
 not mentioned it ; he decided after a second's hard thought 
 that he would not himself refer to it not yet. 
 
 "Still," he said gently, "still, Hugh, if Hallett has 
 no proof, your influence with Miss Archer must out 
 weigh every one else's." 
 
 " There is proof," said Watson wearily. " I mean it 
 exists but in whose hands? If I had any means of 
 knowing if I could but be certain that Hallett had 
 it " His strong white hand shut slowly, with a cruel, 
 rigid movement. " But there is always the doubt. 
 Women and letters! It has been proved again and 
 again." 
 
 He leaned over and laid his hand upon Falls's knee 
 with an insistent pressure. "You see, Falls, where all 
 this has led us ? It is you, old man, you or Betty ! " 
 
 " Unless we can find a way out," said Falls quietly. 
 " If we do not, we will not sacrifice Miss Archer between 
 us. Women's hearts are not the sort of stuff to be mixed 
 up in a rizzle of this kind." 
 
 Falls roused himself from a trance of thought and 
 turned to Hugh, who saw with amazement that his steady 
 eyes were alight with some purpose, his stern lips bent 
 into a slight smile as he spoke. "They have a saying 
 in the Isle of Man, ' Close is my shirt, but closer is 
 my skin/ May I ask you a question, Hugh, rather closer
 
 .WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY i69> 
 
 than your shirt, but not as close as Betty Archer? Yes? 
 Do you care at all for this girl in the sense of natural 
 affection, I mean?" 
 
 "I loathe her," said Hugh briefly, "in the sense you 
 mean ! Every drop of blood in my body turns cold with 
 disgust at the thought the sight of her! But, under 
 stand me, Falls, this is a mere matter of instinct a 
 purely physical revulsion, to which my mind does not 
 consent." He dropped his head in puzzled thought. 
 " Strange inconsistency of the human mind I tell you 
 I loathe her, yet I would give every drop of my blood to 
 save her from harm from the fate in store for her at 
 Hallett's hands!" 
 
 " Sure," said Falls, and laid his hand upon his friend's 
 knee with a caress as tender as a woman's. "I 'm get 
 ting onto into, which ever it is this race prejudice 
 of you Alabama people." Falls was seeing, as he spoke, 
 a pair of gray eyes frozen with pain and disgust. " Sup 
 pose, Hugh, that this letter you spoke of which Hallett 
 may have suppose it was not in his possession, after 
 all, how far could he make use of the girl herself? How 
 far would her unsupported assertion go?" 
 
 "About as far as that smoke which you are blowing 
 into the air. Men call that sort of thing blackmail. It 's 
 common here ; it would be dismissed with a wink a 
 sneer; old Ben Archer himself would not believe it; 
 Hallett would not dare show in it. I was pressing the girl 
 hard to get her out of Hallett's hands, but I was not 
 uneasy on my own account; and the letter only reached 
 her hands about three hours before she was to have left 
 here." 
 
 Falls rose, shook the ashes from his pipe, beat the
 
 i;o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 bowl upon his palm, stretched then his big form care 
 lessly. 
 
 " I 'm going to walk about a bit, Hugh ; I want to 
 think this out alone; and I 'm used to doing my think 
 ing in the open. Will you be up a little later? I 'm 
 such a nocturnal beast myself." He leaned over Watson 
 and deftly slipped his glasses off. " They are awfully 
 out of plumb; let me tinker them a bit/' 
 
 Falls's own beautiful revolver, which he had given Hugh 
 weeks before, lay upon the mantelpiece at Falls's elbow; 
 he took it up under Watson's near-sighted eyes and slipped 
 it into his pocket, and after a moment more of clever 
 handling of the glasses handed them to Hugh. 
 
 " They 're all right now ; you should never be without 
 them, Hugh. You have no idea how easily one can take 
 advantage of you ; you 're blind, man, without them ! " 
 Falls turned at the door : " If I 'm late, don't wait up." 
 
 He ran lightly down the steps to the street, and with 
 out a second's pause turned to his left and struck across 
 the Court-house Square. After five minutes of rapid walk 
 ing, he emerged opposite the building where Hallett's 
 rooms were. A light shone from a side window, falling 
 in a wide bar across the street. 
 
 "He 's up/' said Falls to himself; "good!" 
 
 He knew the arrangement of Hallett's rooms well, hav 
 ing spent a day or two as his guest upon his arrival. 
 He ran up to the hall upon which all the doors of the 
 suite opened, and entered without knocking, through the 
 door of the sitting-room, and had a clear view of Hallett 
 in the lighted bedroom two doors beyond. 
 
 "Hallett?" he called. "It is I, Falls. I want to see 
 you a minute."
 
 WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY 171 
 
 Hallett, wrapped in a bath-robe, came through the inter 
 vening rooms, taking scant pains to disguise his surprise 
 and displeasure at the unexpected summons. 
 
 Falls coolly turned on the light upon the desk in the 
 center of the room, and, stepping behind Hallett as he 
 entered, turned the key in the door and withdrew it from 
 the lock. Hallett's fresh color paled a trifle, and he 
 glared at Falls in cold fury. Falls laid the key and his 
 own pistol upon the mantelpiece and leaned his back 
 against it, facing Hallett as he spoke: 
 
 " Your pistols are in your bedroom, I know ; there is 
 mine." 
 
 " Yon are well up in the role of midnight assailant, 
 Mr. Falls/' said Hallett, with acrid scorn. " Practice, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " No," said Falls carelessly, " this is my first appearance 
 in the role. Hallett," he went on without pause, " I want 
 Watson's letter, which you took from my hand three 
 months ago in the park down there, under pretense of 
 returning it to " 
 
 "I did return it." 
 
 "We '11 pass that; the point is this: as I was fool 
 enough to trust you with it, I am in that far responsible 
 for its safe-keeping and its return to its owner " 
 
 " Who is its owner ? " 
 
 " I '11 pass that, also. I 'm not a court of equity ; and 
 that issue is not before us. I don't care to whom it may 
 belong ! But I 've come to have you return it to me 
 now." 
 
 " When you have established your right to its custodian 
 ship," said Hallett with quiet insolence. 
 
 Falls crossed the space between them with a stride, and
 
 172 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 dropped the iron grip of his heavy hands upon Hallett, 
 twisting him as a man twists a sapling to uproot it. Hal 
 lett's close-knit strength and suppleness held its own for 
 a few moments, but he was no match for Falls, who inch 
 by inch bore him back, his hand upon Hallett's throat, 
 Hallett's supple form strained across his knee, his fair 
 face black with passion, his nostrils straining for breath. 
 
 " Have I established my right sufficiently, Hallett ? 
 Will you give me the letter without further demonstra 
 tion? Yes? Get up, then." 
 
 Falls sprang up, releasing Hallett, who rose more slowly. 
 Falls could see the fierce restraint he was putting upon 
 himself in his struggle to regain the composure which 
 he meant to maintain at any cost, and with it all that 
 remained to him of dignity in the encounter. 
 
 " The paper is in the private drawer of the desk be 
 hind you," he said with tremulous dignity. " It has a 
 secret spring." 
 
 " I know," said Falls, and bent to open it. In the 
 second that he turned his back, Hallett made a silent 
 spring to the pistol upon the shelf behind Falls. But 
 even as he was about to grasp it, he started back. The 
 loose skirt of his bath-robe had brushed the glowing bars 
 of the grate and the flame sprang upward. Falls swung 
 round in time to see Hallett's quick motion toward the 
 pistol, and his scornful glance seared Hallett like a flam 
 ing brand. 
 
 " You hound ! " 
 
 " Not at all," said Hallett coolly he had himself well 
 in hand "not at all! In brute strength, Mr. Falls, 
 you are vastly my superior; that little toy would have 
 equalized us, that is all ! "
 
 WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY 173 
 
 " I don't think I have much the advantage of you, 
 Hallett " Falls was arranging the papers neatly in the 
 drawer as he had found them, and rose with Hugh's letter 
 in his hand " in brute strength, or, let us say, brutal 
 application of such strength as you may have acquired. 
 This little thing," he held up the letter, " and the use 
 you were making of it, warrants any little er rough 
 ness I may have used in regaining its possession. And 
 I shall in time take from you that other helpless tool you 
 may try to use ! " 
 
 A spasm of silent rage crossed Hallett's face. 
 
 " I thought," he said with slow insult, " that you had 
 your hands full with Miss " 
 
 " Don't dare ! " cried Falls, in a voice scarcely above a 
 whisper, it was so hoarse with passion. " Don't dare, Hal 
 lett unless you want to die ! " They faced each other 
 for a moment, both men breathing quickly; then with 
 a look of unutterable contempt a look that stung even 
 Hallett's hardened sensibilities Falls walked out of the 
 room. 
 
 " Sleep, Watson ? " asked Falls, ten minutes later, from 
 the door of his own room. 
 
 " Naw," drowsily ; " come in." 
 
 " Just a minute." Falls came in without coat or vest, 
 the short pipe in his mouth, a light of quiet pleasure 
 in his dark eyes. " I have a paper of yours." He turned 
 on the light at the head of Hugh's bed, and handed him 
 the letter. \Vatson took it, glanced it over carelessly, 
 started, sat erect, staring at Falls silently, as his mind, 
 in one smooth roll, took in the whole. 
 
 " You you old Indian ! How did "
 
 174 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Simply enough. You see, I knew Hallett had it ; 
 so I stepped round there and got it." 
 
 " Got it ! Of course, you mean you took it vi et 
 armis ? " 
 
 "I suppose so. I have forgotten my Latin. I 
 choked him till he gave in," said Falls simply. 
 
 Watson laughed his big laugh of sheer delight. 
 
 " Oh, tell it, man ! For Gawd's sake tell it ! " 
 
 " There 's nothing to tell and I 'm so deuced sleepy, 
 Hugh." 
 
 " Watson ? " he called a moment later. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Don't let that black automaton of yours " 
 
 "Naw. Sleep all day if you like." 
 
 He was snoring in five minutes, but Watson rose, and, 
 flinging his dressing-gown about him, sat out the dawn. 
 
 He smiled as he held the letter in the flames, watching 
 it turn to a phantom sheet whereon the ghost of his letter 
 lingered, dimly visible in pallid lines, through which ran 
 a fiery serpent of dying sparks. 
 
 " Be good if you can but if you can't, be careful ! " 
 he murmured. A sudden sound smote upon his ear, and 
 he rose and went to the window. Outside, the pearly 
 reaches of the dawn were creeping upward from behind 
 the dim underworld, though the streets still were gulfs 
 of darkness, from which were borne to Hugh's ear, in 
 the dead stillness of the town, the muffled tread of horses' 
 feet, a thin rattle of steel, then, full and clear, a hound's 
 deep bay. 
 
 Hugh smote his hand upon the sill in sudden recol 
 lection. 
 
 " I had forgotten. They must have caught that poor
 
 devil ! " He leaned across the sill and spoke in cautious 
 tone to a man whose steady tread sounded below him 
 on the pavement. 
 
 " That you, Kelly, is it ? Who 's that they 're bringing 
 in?" 
 
 "Yes, it 's Kelly; that 's you, Mr. Watson?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " It 's the posse er comin' in ; they 've got Will-Henery 
 and urnuther nigger I disremembers his name " 
 
 "Good night!" 
 
 Hugh slowly closed the window. His face was grave. 
 " If that poor, hunted devil, with the hound's teeth in 
 him, should have implicated Falls " 
 
 He extinguished the outer light, and, taking a candle, 
 passed onward to his own room. Obeying a sudden im 
 pulse, he turned to Falls's room, and, shielding the light, 
 peered in at the sleeping man. Falls slept profoundly, 
 his dark head thrown back upon the pillow, the stern 
 lines of his face relaxed in calm repose. 
 
 "I 'd knock the bottom out of, not only their rotten 
 Tenth Circuit, but the State of Alabama before they 
 should touch him ! " murmured Watson grimly. 
 
 His lips softened with a smile, whimsical, humorous. 
 " Close-mouthed old Indian ! Has n't breathed where 
 he 's been all day; thinks I don't know a word. Old 
 cast-iron statue of Abraham Lincoln I" he murmured, 
 and left him to his slumbers.
 
 XIII 
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 
 
 TT1 HE weather vouchsafed to the valley of the Tennes- 
 JL see by the deities of the Weather Bureau was ideal 
 Yule-tide weather. 
 
 So conventionally perfect was it in every detail as to 
 suggest an emblazoned Christmas card; and eyes were 
 dazzled by the clear-cut blues and silvers of the sky and 
 frost, the shimmer of gilded sunlight and the jovial red 
 of holly against masses of evergreens, dusted with a 
 sparkling diamond-dust of frost. 
 
 From the heights beyond the town, in the intensely 
 rarefied atmosphere, Adairville took on the semblance 
 t)f those fairy cities etched by frost sprites upon the 
 window-panes, while weary mortals sleep. A city of the 
 mist, built of the stuff which dreams are made of, the 
 little town lay like a frozen pearl upon the heaving bosoms 
 of the low green hills, while high above it the spire of 
 the Brotherhood of Christ, like an extended arm, held 
 aloft its silver cross, flashing like a heliotrope, from hill 
 to hill, its holy message of peace on earth. 
 
 Joan, driving rapidly along the road which wound 
 among the hills toward Adairville, looked down upon the 
 town at her feet, wrapped in a white dream of peace, and 
 felt her heart swell with the first throes of the same 
 titter resentment which had shaken Falls's deep voice 
 
 176
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 177 
 
 the day before, when he had pointed out to her, with 
 scathing irony, the significance of that message of peace 
 held high above the menace of the low sword. 
 
 Her horse's feet rang cheerily upon the hard road with 
 a musical rhythm good to hear; the morning sun gilded 
 a scene of enchanting beauty all down the jeweled length 
 of the valley; the thin, buoyant air whipped the blood 
 to keen elation along the veins, making Joan's beautiful 
 thoroughbred mare prance and curvet; but the debonair 
 figure, wrapped in rich furs, with a dainty toque of pea 
 cocks' breasts upon her crisp waves of bright hair, sat 
 motionless upon the driver's seat in the pretty cart, 
 plunged in deep and troubled thought. She was recalling 
 paragraph after paragraph of the report of the capture 
 of the two negroes which had appeared in that morning's 
 edition of the Enterprise. The report had contained noth 
 ing pertinent to the bare fact of the capture of the two 
 men, Will-Henry and Sledge, charged with having com 
 mitted the " deed of vengeance," as Montgomery named 
 the murder of Buckley Shirley ; but it had literally reeked 
 with veiled hints of the fate in store for "those in high 
 places " who, it was covertly insinuated, had instigated the 
 negroes to do the killing, and whom their confessions 
 had implicated directly in the crime. 
 
 Other arrests would follow shortly; the town was quiet 
 now with insidious emphasis but Holmes County 
 felt deeply the outrage it had suffered in the foul and 
 unprovoked assassination of a member of a family pecul 
 iarly endeared to its people and so on for columns. 
 
 Judge Adair had read the report during the intervals 
 of breakfast, his face growing sterner with each flaming 
 period. He said nothing as he folded the paper with a
 
 178 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 too gentle precision, and laid it aside with the air of 
 one who puts by a dangerous explosive. 
 
 Joan noted the action from where she sat across the 
 table, her white chin in her palm, studying her father's 
 face with anxious eyes, a chill premonition weighing on 
 her heart. 
 
 " Will there be trouble, father ? " she asked, as she met 
 his eyes at last. 
 
 "Yes," said the old man deliberately, "there will be 
 trouble I think. There will be, certainly, if Alec Mont 
 gomery and his ring of 'home capitalists' can compass 
 it. 'Dairville is primed for it chock-full of countrymen 
 and moonshine whiskey. And the Enterprise spurring 
 them on. Yes, there will be trouble; whether it will 
 involve Falls " his eyes fell upon Joan's face, and he 
 turned with a startled gesture toward her and held out 
 his arms. 
 
 "Why, daughter! Joan, child, I thought you under 
 stood the town by this. There will be no danger to you, 
 my pet." 
 
 The old man held her close, chafing her white cheeK 
 with his own. He chuckled softly. 
 
 "Are you showing the white feather before Alec 
 Montgomery at last, Joan? Has this last broadside 
 of bombast brought down your colors ? " Joan rallied 
 in the warm shelter of her father's arms, and smiled 
 faintly. 
 
 "Such a pity," she murmured, "Christmas, and all 
 that and to have this hateful thing happen ! " 
 
 "Is n't this the night of your ball?" Judge Adair 
 eked. 
 
 "Yes, father, everything is ready." Her eyes were
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 179 
 
 absent, still, and the hand with which she adjusted her 
 father's tie was not as firm as its light touch was wont 
 to be. 
 
 " Father, ought not Mr. Falls to go away from Adair- 
 ville until ?" 
 
 " It would be wise, perhaps ; but Falls will not go, 
 of course." 
 
 " Not if Hugh urged him ? Or if if others " 
 
 " Challie would not so advise him ; I should not, in 
 his place." 
 
 "Not if he were in danger, father dear?" 
 
 Judge Adair's face grew stern again; he flipped the 
 flimsy sheets of the Enterprise with a scornful finger. 
 
 "A man could not yield to pressure like that, Joan. 
 And apart from that, it would mean financial ruin to 
 Falls. If I am not strangely mistaken in the man, Falls 
 will see this through. With Watson and a conservative 
 course, this trouble here may be averted." 
 
 " But, father, if Mr. Falls should not be guided by 
 Hugh if he went his own way as he did about the 
 street-cars and Will-Henry ! " 
 
 " Oppose the mob in the hanging of these negroes, 
 you mean?" 
 
 "Yes," she breathed. 
 
 " He will not be so mad. But if he did if he were 
 so mad Falls would hang. No power on earth could 
 save him from the mob ! " 
 
 Silently Joan fell forward in her father's arms, smoth 
 ering her moan of anguish upon his breast. 
 
 The lawn in front of Mr. Archer's house was still 
 tucked away under the sparkling coverlid of the frost,
 
 i8o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 when Joan drew rein at the gate to await Betty, who 
 was to join her in the morning's shopping in town. 
 
 She came out at last, furred and feathered and velvet- 
 coated to a degree that caused Joan's eyes to linger upon 
 her in suspicious inventory, as she tucked the rug about 
 her. 
 
 " Why, Betty Archer ! " still looking her over with 
 open and shocked inspection, " are not these your trous 
 seau clothes? It is aw-fully unlucky to wear them 
 before the wedding ! " 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Betty, serenely above superstition. 
 "What in the wide world could come between Hugh 
 and me now? It is too late for any of the ordinary 
 things jealousy and that. And I don't believe," she 
 said reflectively, though a glint of steel showed in the 
 depths of her flower-soft eyes, " that I could be jealous 
 of Hugh. If he told me with his own lips that he loved 
 another woman, I simply should not believe him ! " 
 
 " Of course not," smiled Joan, slightly superior, " if 
 he told you himself. But, my lady Betty, if some one 
 else told you?" 
 
 " It would not matter," firmly, " who told me. If 
 every man, woman, and child in 'Dairville, with Mrs. 
 Eldridge-Jones at the head of the line that 's just 
 where she 'd be and Emmy Speight's brand-new baby 
 at the foot, all told me over and over that Hugh loved 
 another woman, I should not believe it! For he has 
 told me over and over that he loves only me ! " 
 
 Joan freed one hand from the reins and softly patted 
 Betty's shoulder. " That is p-e-rfectly lovely in you, 
 Betty! But suppose, just suppose, you know, Betty, that 
 they gave you some sort of proof, you know?"
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 181 
 
 . " No ; women in books and those awful ones who 
 bring breach of promise cases in the courts may need 
 proof of a man's love; but in real life like with you 
 and me, Joan loving is its own proof." 
 
 " This is ch-a-rming in you, Betty ! Like a book, 
 only much better done. But," she went on a little 
 shyly, " I should want to love with my whole being, 
 heart and mind and soul ! " She looked straight ahead 
 with unseeing eyes, across which a shadow of pain had 
 fallen. " To love with the heart, and not the mind 
 the soul; to shrink from the touch which thrills you; 
 to have your ear ache for the sound of a voice, and your 
 soul recoil with horror from the sentiments it utters! 
 What hideous turmoil what mortal conflict ! . . . Betty, 
 Betty, would n't it be horrible ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said Betty, with startled comprehension 
 in voice and eyes ; " for for every one to know like 
 poor Mrs. Evert." 
 
 They drove in silence for a few minutes, the wind 
 tugging at their wraps and tingling in their cheeks. 
 
 " Have you heard about Rosebud ? " asked Betty, 
 breaking the silence with a careless question. 
 
 Joan was busy for the moment with the reins, and 
 answered indifferently : " No ; is she coming back, after 
 all, to be your maid?" 
 
 " I should think not," said Betty, a cold reserve in her 
 voice suggestive of old Ben Archer's ruthless sense of 
 duty. " She has not been anywhere to come back from," 
 she continued. " Rosebud has never been out of 'Dair- 
 ville." 
 
 There was a pause, and a glance of keen significance 
 from Betty, and Joan blushed hotly. "Who has been
 
 182 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 gossiping to you, Betty? I would not allow such things 
 to be told me," said Joan with cold reproof. 
 
 " It } e all over town," said Betty vaguely but unre- 
 buffed, adding irrelevantly, " That is what comes of negro 
 equality." 
 
 She looked carefully away from Joan as she spoke, 
 tucking in the rug upon her side with elaborate care, and 
 she did not see the flood of angry scarlet which poured 
 across Joan's cheek, nor the proud dilation of her nostril. 
 When she looked again, Joan's cheek had its own soft 
 pallor, but her tone of apologetic courtesy had a cutting 
 edge which told Betty's wise ear that her shaft had 
 found its mark. 
 
 " Father is the dearest the best, you know, Betty ; 
 but he is particular about this sort of thing. He in 
 sists that I do not listen to gossip of of this sort. 
 If you will excuse me, shall we drop this?" 
 
 "If you like, Jo," with tactful good temper. "I 
 wanted you to know I mean, I wanted to tell you 
 before some one else did " 
 
 "I do not think," with proud scorn, "that I am a 
 person to invite this sort of confidence. Why should 
 you have feared for me?" 
 
 Silence answered her, a silence more eloquent than 
 words. The smart cart rolled gaily onward to the music 
 of Nanny's hoofs upon the highway, a galaxy of mimic 
 suns flashing back from her harness, but Joan's blind 
 eyes saw them not. 
 
 A scorching shame seemed slowly to consume her; 
 she writhed under a maddening sense of a something 
 contaminating humiliating. 
 
 The curse of Dixie! As far back as Joan could re-
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 183 
 
 member, she had heard with bated breath of this curse 
 of those shapeless things with cowled heads turned 
 aside, which hung upon the dark side of life in Dixie; 
 nameless words of dread which haunted the hidden cor 
 ridors of men's speech hinted at, but never named. 
 
 They came boldly forth, now, to confront Joan's 
 shrinking soul; gibed at her, shamelessly claimed ac 
 quaintance with her, as part and parcel of the dark 
 secrets of her race. With shame and anguish she heard 
 within herself a voice speaking their tongue. This hor 
 ror was real then; Alec Montgomery's blatant tirades 
 had covered this? She had thought them words 
 words, empty of aught but sound. And now she saw 
 those empty words take form. Empty words no longer, 
 but living passions; she felt their hot hands seize her; 
 heard their voices gibber at her ear. "We are the Curse 
 of Dixie ! " they shouted. " You, a Southern woman, 
 and not know our faces! All the proud women of your 
 line have known us. We are the Nameless Shame, the 
 Hidden Pain! Their proud eyes never looked our way, 
 their pure lips never named us; but they knew us, 
 even as you ! " 
 
 Joan's breath sobbed in her throat; her eyes were 
 blind with pain. Nanny was disdainfully threading the 
 narrow streets leading to the business part of town, but 
 Joan still sat motionless, her hands gripping the reins, 
 fighting down a vision of Falls's face as he had bent 
 over her the day before at the mountain house, his deep 
 gaze frankly tender. 
 
 She shivered. What was it she had just said to Betty? 
 To love with the heart, the mind not consenting con 
 flict she had named it then. It was agony!
 
 184 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Joan ! " shrieked Betty, as they spun round a corner 
 upon a motionless cordon of men drawn across the street; 
 but Joan had seen or Nanny saw, and swerved aside. 
 
 " \VTiy are they standing in the street, then ? How 
 could I know they were not going to move? If this 
 had been Ritchie " 
 
 " They are soldiers, goose ; see the guns ! Why, 
 surely you know, Jo ? It 's all over town ! " Her fa 
 vorite formula fell glibly from Betty's lips, as she waved 
 her little gloved hand toward the line of soldiers stand 
 ing on guard across the street leading to the jail. 
 
 "That is the Alabama National Guard, if you please. 
 . . . Don't tell me, Joan Adair, that you have not read 
 Alec's * piece ' ! Well, those are ' the noble lives standing 
 between us and Anarchy ' ! " She laughed lightly. 
 " They 'A run if you said turkey if you even whis 
 pered it! Pl-e-a-se look at the airs those absurd men 
 are putting on with those silly guns! Every one in 
 the place knows there ? s nothing in them. . . . What? 
 Oh, they are guarding the jail to keep the mob from 
 hanging Will-Henry and that other nigger I forget his 
 name. Why, Jo, how silly! Turning pale about ur nig 
 ger getting hung! What earthly difference? There are 
 plenty of niggers. And they ought to be hung or burned 
 or something," she went on placidly, the trill of laugh 
 ter still upon her lips, " and the white men, too, who put 
 them up to killing poor Buck ! " 
 
 The rug was getting refractory again; Betty stooped 
 to adjust it. 
 
 "They say Mr. Falls has left town. No one has seen 
 him since he got in from the East and heard about the 
 posse being out after Will-Henry."
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 185 
 
 " How do they know that no one has seen him ? " asked 
 Joan quietly. 
 
 " They have a watcher," said Betty easily. 
 
 " Betty," gasped Joan, " how do you know these dread 
 ful things?" 
 
 " Lynn told me. It 's Andy Caruthers." 
 
 The smart little cart, with the two prettiest girls in the 
 place as occupants, drew every eye as it made its slow 
 way along the crowded streets. It was soon piled with 
 packages as they went from store to store. 
 
 " There is Hugh ! " cried Betty. " Do stop, Jo; I want 
 him to see my coat." 
 
 Nothing loath, Joan pulled Nanny up, and Watson 
 leaned upon the cart to chat, openly adoring both Betty 
 and the coat with entire impartiality. He was full of 
 his old gay humor; indeed, Joan thought, interrogating 
 his face with wistful eyes, that she had never seen him 
 happier. Her troubled heart drew comfort from the fact, 
 and she entered into the talk going on about the cart, 
 where a circle of young men had gathered, with something 
 of her old raillery. 
 
 It was a gay crowd, the men chaffing one another, and 
 the girls, with nonsense and much laughter the sweet, 
 ready laughter of youth which waits not on wit nor epi 
 gram, but is its own excuse for being. 
 
 The talk was all of the ball that night at Hillcrest and 
 the next night at the Dixie Club. 
 
 " There 's a report about town that you are to wear 
 the Gown, Joan! Is it true? I want to know to 
 get braced up to it ; I 've a weak heart. You know about 
 my weak heart, Joan," said Jemmy Page insinuatingly. 
 
 " Indeed I do not ! " laughed Joan, " and don't try
 
 i86 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 to put the responsibility of your damaged organ off on 
 me, Jemmy. Go to that Latham girl from Atlanta for 
 sympathy or damages. No ; I 'm going to run in an 
 old gown on you boys to-night. But to-morrow night 
 when I am with my lord the Chief Justice of the great 
 Commonwealth of Alabama ! " 
 
 " Go to ! Who cares for titles ? " doughtily. 
 
 " Eight you are, Jemmy ! " cried Hugh, putting his long 
 arm round the lad. 
 
 They were half-romping together, and the boy drew 
 Watson farther from the crowd about the cart, which 
 Hallett and Tom Evert had just joined. 
 
 " Is it true Falls has jumped the town, Hugh ? " 
 
 " You young ass Falls ! " Watson turned aside, with 
 his arm still about the boy. " What d' you mean, Page ? " 
 
 " Why, they say Falls has bolted 'f read to face the 
 mob ! He has n't been seen since he got back did n't 
 sleep in his room at the hotel last night has not showed 
 up this morning. They 've a watcher in the lobby." He 
 cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder toward the 
 group. " Fur Gawd's sake, Hugh " 
 
 " Naw ; no one will ever know that you have given 
 me this tip, Page. But I '11 remember it, and Falls will. 
 Who 's the spy?" 
 
 "Andy Caruthers." 
 
 Hugh thought rapidly; he set his strong teeth in an 
 exasperation too deep for words. If he could but keep 
 Falls where he was for forty-eight hours, they might think 
 what they please. But that could not be done, he well 
 knew, and, failing that, a bold game was best. How 
 to play it? 
 
 For a moment longer Watson stood in deep thought
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 187 
 
 before the spark struck in his brain which fired his line 
 of action. In that brief space of introspection he saw 
 his way as a man sees a blazed trail leading away through 
 the devious aisles of the dim forest; glancing from point 
 to point, his mind caught each salient circumstance which 
 might serve to guide him along the blind path of his 
 purpose. 
 
 " With another d fork in it ! " he muttered. On 
 
 the one hand Falls's personal safety, on the other Falls's 
 business integrity. 
 
 He must slay with one hand this hydra-headed, multi- 
 tongued rumor before it reached Falls's ears that might 
 be done while he held down with the other hand the 
 wild beast of public opinion, whose gathering roar was 
 even now in his ear, its hot breath on his cheek. 
 
 But this was familiar ground. Watson had fought this 
 dragon before. He knew it well; knew that it was all 
 stupid brain and jaundiced eye and blatant roar. Knew 
 that he had vanquished it before, that he might again; 
 and he braced his nerve to the fight. 
 
 " Only one thing on this earth is more fickle, or more 
 cruel, than a woman," he mused, " and that thing is 
 public opinion. Well, I 've wheedled both." 
 
 But he did not deceive himself as to the difficulties 
 of the task he had set before him. He knew what it 
 meant to cast the weight of one man's influence into the 
 scale against the town, and this time against the town's 
 interest, as the town saw it. 
 
 It would be a bitter duel, in which his personal influ 
 ence over the minds and wills of other men would be 
 opposed to that of the ring of men backed by Montgom 
 ery's paper, who, as Watson realized with bitter indig-
 
 i88 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 nation, were instigating popular feeling against Falls 
 with the single aim of forcing him out of Adairville, 
 freezing him out of business. 
 
 That they were deliberately using the chance which 
 mockimg circumstance had thrown in their way, and by 
 the aid of their mouthpiece, Montgomery, were whip 
 ping the passions of the crowd of ignorant and vicious 
 men whom accident and holiday time had drawn together 
 in the town, to further their own ends, Hugh did not 
 for a moment doubt; although the brutal unscrupulous- 
 ness of the attempt struck him aghast, well as he knew 
 the mettle of the town and the men behind it in this at 
 tempt. 
 
 In indignant summary Watson's mind seized upon the 
 one element in the whole incredible situation which made 
 it possible of conception credible of human belief. It 
 was the lack of individual responsibility. 
 
 Watson well knew that this plot, in its fiendish incep 
 tion, had been the work of no one mind; that no single 
 brain had formulated it; no lip had dared to give it 
 utterance; but that, like some hideous evolution emerg 
 ing from the womb of time, it had developed without 
 extraneous aid; the impulse had been born as are born 
 convulsions of nature. Thus would it pursue its devastat 
 ing course, thus bury itself again in the bosom of the 
 past, and no one man be to blame. 
 
 " Aye, I know them ! " Watson finished his grim solil 
 oquy. " I can win out against them, too, if I can manage 
 Falls." His smile was grimly whimsical. " The dear 
 fool! He '11 be after collecting evidence, making affida 
 vits so much waste paper! Wanting me to set the 
 hounds of justice upon the leaders of the mob; and that
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 189 
 
 in a county where mobs and juries are drawn from the 
 same box ! " 
 
 Watson ran his eye over the crowded street with a glance 
 practised in the art of sifting men and classifying them 
 with instant perception of their relation to the purpose 
 which he might have in mind. The hour was well on 
 toward noon, and the streets were bright with holiday 
 shoppers; business men, with the urbanity of the after- 
 lunch mood, lingered in the genial warmth of the mid 
 day sun, often with heads bent close in low-voiced, un 
 smiling talk. Hugh's anxious mind had not far to seek 
 for the subject which thus engrossed them. 
 
 A dozen yards away Alec Montgomery stood upon the 
 flags in front of the Adair hotel, surrounded by an ever 
 growing group of men whose lean, sinewy forms, rough 
 clad in nondescript jeans, stiffened by time and weather 
 until the marks of the sculptor's chisel seemed visible 
 upon the rigid folds, proclaimed them to be mountain 
 men. Hugh's covertly anxious eye failed to detect a show 
 of interest in the motionless circle, expression and atti 
 tude alike evincing bored and listless inattention; neither 
 assent nor denial touched the faces turned upon Mont 
 gomery with the impassivity of their native limestone. 
 But Watson knew that a man might as well try to turn 
 or change them from their course as arrest a boulder in 
 its downward plunge amid a landslide. 
 
 Montgomery's fair face, its womanish beauty marred 
 and coarsened by dissipation, was deeply flushed, and 
 his still, ice-blue eye shot a warmer beam than it was 
 wont to do; a word occasionally tripped and stumbled 
 upon his lips, as he talked earnestly and volubly to an 
 ever-increasing audience. The detail from the jail just
 
 190 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 off duty, trailing their guns in braggart hands, mingled 
 with the group of mountaineers, answering their brief 
 questions with condescending explanations of the mechan 
 ism of the guns, surrendering them to the strangers with 
 suppressed laughter and half-spoken words of mutual 
 understanding. 
 
 Andy Caruthers sauntered out of the open doorway of 
 the hotel, and was instantly surrounded by an eager circle. 
 
 " Well ? " said a man in the circle. 
 
 " Naw ! " said Andy. 
 
 Casual passers-by turned an attentive ear in passing; 
 men, busy with their Christmas shopping, paused, listened, 
 edged away, and passed on, a dubious gravity upon their 
 faces. Twenty feet away the pretty cart still stood, sur 
 rounded by the men who lingered in gay talk with the 
 two girls, while Nanny tugged at her reins and pawed 
 the unoffending pavements. 
 
 " A-w, Jackson ! " called Watson, over the heads of 
 the passing throng, his mellow voice carrying easily to 
 the ears of a negro seated at his ease upon a pile of bag 
 gage in front of the hotel. The Honorable Peter Lacey 
 Jackson, erstwhile member of the Legislature for the State 
 of Alabama, now enjoying the more congenial, no less 
 honorable, and scarcely less lucrative position of Wat 
 son's servant, disentangled himself from the ruck of por 
 ters and hotel servants which hung upon- the outskirts of 
 Montgomery's crowd and came nimbly at Hugh's call. 
 
 It was at once apparent that the pleasantest relations 
 existed between the Honorable Peter and the man he 
 served. He stood before Watson, his fine, urbane face 
 the color exactly of burnt paper, ready, at his bidding, 
 to undertake anything, from another term in the Legis-
 
 THE CURSE OF DIXIE 191 
 
 lature to brushing his coat, each with equal zeal and 
 intelligence. He did not forget that he was the Hon 
 orable Peter Lacey Jackson, nor did Hugh forget it or 
 ignore it; they met in the relation of servant and not 
 master never again that but employer, sanely and 
 kindly, with mutual respect. 
 
 " Yes," Hugh had said when the humor of having a 
 member of his State's lawmaking body as his servant 
 was first suggested to him, "yes; Pete is my private 
 servant, and I 'm Pete's private attorney. He looks after 
 my rooms and my clothes and keeps me comfortable; and 
 I look after his ' 'vorces ' and keep him out of the peni 
 tentiary. No problem at all. Simple case of reciprocity." 
 
 " Lacey," he said now, tossing him a bunch of keys 
 over the heads of a dozen men who turned to laugh and 
 listen, as Hugh had calculated they would do " take 
 these keys and go round to my place and wake Mr. Falls 
 up; tell him I sent you." 
 
 " What is Mr. Falls doing at your place, Hugh ? " asked 
 Betty curiously. 
 
 "He sleeps there frequently. I 'd forgotten him 
 promised to wake him at noon. Going, girls? A-w, 
 Joan!" 
 
 He drew Joan down and whispered a brief message: 
 
 " Falls is in no great danger; you shall know anything 
 that happens, and at once; don't worry." 
 
 Milly Ann met the two girls in the hall of Hillcrest 
 with a huge florist's package in her hand and a note for 
 Joan from Falls. Merely a line pleading a business en 
 gagement, and his card in the package. 
 
 " P-e-rfectly ez-quisite ! " cried Joan, as both girls hung 
 enraptured above the great sheaf of deep red, velvety
 
 192 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 roses, whose stems set with purple thorns touched the 
 ground. 
 
 " But, Joan, red a blonde, and red ! You cannot 
 wear them ; think of your gown ! " 
 
 " I have other gowns," said Joan dreamily, " but these 
 were not meant to wear." 
 
 She did not add what they were meant for, and Betty 
 thought it better to refrain from inquiry.
 
 XIV 
 
 "IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER" 
 
 WHEN the last glimpse of the cart and Betty's blue 
 eyes was lost to view, Watson sauntered across to 
 his rooms, where he found Falls demolishing a beefsteak 
 in the sitting-room, while he endeavored with indifferent 
 success to keep erect the meager sheets of the Enterprise, 
 wherein he read eagerly the account of the capture of the 
 two negroes. 
 
 " So they 've got that poor devil, Will-Henry," he said, 
 as Hugh entered. 
 
 " Yes ; I saw them bring him in last night. Who looked 
 after you the Honorable Peter?" 
 
 " D' you think I 'm a sucking baby that I can't look 
 after myself?" inquired Falls absently, still immersed 
 in the report of the capture. " What the devil," he broke 
 out, astounded and indignant, " is this Montgomery after ? 
 Listen to this, Hugh why, this thing is an open justi 
 fication of lynching the men! An invitation to the mob 
 to assemble! Does he dare " 
 
 " Naw. Montgomery never dares. He waits until he 
 sees which way the cat will jump, and then he sicks hia 
 paper on. That did n't take any daring; the town 's on 
 that side." 
 
 Watson flung himself into his lounging-chair, regarding 
 Falls across the table with laughing eyes. 
 
 193
 
 194 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " I went down to the jail this morning to see Will- 
 Henry." Hugh laughed lazily. " He called me ' Marst 
 Hugh/ poor devil ! His sort ordinarily would die before 
 they would call a white man ' master/ " 
 
 "Eight," said Falls; "why should he?" 
 
 " We were boys together," Watson went on meditatively. 
 " I 've played marbles with him many a day on that 
 common back of Hillcrest. In those days he called me 
 'Challie Watson/ and I called him 'Billy.'" Watson 
 laughed again. " That ' Marst Hugh ' fetched me ! I 
 could n't let 'em hang him without putting up some sort 
 of a fight ! " 
 
 Falls had flung the paper aside and was eating his 
 breakfast meditatively. He looked across the rim of his 
 coffee-cup at Watson with frank pity and concern. 
 
 " Watson, if you will take this case for Will-Henry, 
 and I suppose we might as well dump in the other brute, 
 I '11 settle your bill. Get any one you like to help you. 
 Will you?" 
 
 Hugh looked at his friend with a comical pathos. 
 " Falls, I hate this sort of thing. If it was just an or 
 dinary crime a plain killing any other sort of trouble 
 the negro was in, I 'd take it gladly, without any fee, 
 of course. For auld lang syne, you know and to pay 
 off the score of the marbles I used to win from him. 
 But as things are this muck of passion and prejudice 
 and dirty publicity! There 's going to be trouble here; 
 those negroes are going to be lynched. It '11 be in all 
 the Northern papers, you know. I do not want to get 
 mixed up in it as having taken some stand or other 
 about the solution of this infernal negro problem with a 
 capital N". There is n't any, you know. This mess here
 
 "IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER" 195 
 
 now : it is not the murder of Shirley, per se, which is ex 
 citing the town nobody cares a hang about Buck Shir 
 ley; it is race prejudice, pure and simple, and a deter 
 mination to maintain what they call the supremacy of 
 the Caucasian race. It grew out of the street-car inci 
 dent." 
 
 He walked the length of the room and back, a worried 
 frown upon his brow. " Why I hate it," he burst out 
 anew, " is that here in Alabama, and all over the South, 
 they make politics of this sort of thing and the dirtiest 
 sort! The nigger has been the stalking-horse of Democ 
 racy in the South for forty years; and all sorts of per 
 sonal aims are advanced behind the bogey of negro equal 
 ity." 
 
 He looked keenly at Falls as he finished, but Falls's 
 face was alert with an interest as purely impersonal as 
 though the discussion had involved the Chinese immi 
 gration act. 
 
 " Now, if I mix up in this," Hugh continued, " a per 
 fect howl will go up all over the State that I 've turned 
 Kepublican." 
 
 Falls turned his rare smile, with a flash of strong, 
 white teeth, upon Watson's worried face. " You 're the 
 best Republican I know, Hugh. But don't let this worry 
 you. Suggest some one else. I '11 go at once " 
 
 " Finish your breakfast." Watson walked to the win 
 dow, his hands in his pockets, staring silently out into 
 the street, thinking hard. " I '11 tell you what I '11 do, 
 Greg. I saw both those men this morning ; they had made 
 no confession, and they will make none. I barely got in 
 ahead of Montgomery. But the facts are these: Sledge 
 did the killing a private quarrel between him and Buck
 
 196 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Shirley, I take it. Will-Henry had been hiding out there 
 in the sticks, and saw the thing done slipped down 
 there, after Sledge had gone, to see what he could steal. 
 The poor fool ought to have known that Buck Shirley 
 never had a cent in his life. Well, that 's how the dogs 
 got on his trail he handled Shirley, you know the 
 stupid fool! There 's nothing in the case; the most 
 ignorant jury ever paneled in Holmes County and we 
 can get 'em right could see the merits of it in a ten 
 minutes' talk; yet God A'mighty himself could n't get 
 them off! Sledge ought to hang; he 's as guilty as h 1! 
 Well, yes; a trial I can get them both a trial in 
 Cruikshanks's court," Watson laughed. " It '11 be a mere 
 form, of course. It will give them twenty-four hours 
 longer on earth, that 's all." 
 
 " But if you can prove Will-Henry's innocence " 
 
 "Falls, dear fellow, the ghost of Daniel Webster 
 could n't prove his innocence to a nigger-hating Holmes 
 County jury ! Lanier Shirley, this lad's father, was colo 
 nel of one of the foremost regiments of Alabama right 
 here, out of Holmes County. He brought home enough 
 Yankee lead in his old carcass to start a foundry. Lanier 
 Shirley is a Confederate veteran from 'way back ! " 
 
 With cigar suspended, Falls was regarding Watson with 
 open amazement. "What has all that got to do with a 
 man's right to a fair trial by jury, thirty years after this 
 maniacal struggle is over and forgotten by sane men ? " 
 he demanded in deep-voiced indignation. 
 
 Hugh laughed again. " You innocent Yankee ! These 
 niggers are going to be lynched to-nigh.t, unless this farce 
 of a trial is set on foot at once. I '11 see to it this after 
 noon. I '11 get a severance. I 'm not going to defend
 
 "IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER" 197 
 
 Sledge. Oh, the court will appoint some attorney as 
 Sledge's counsel; and I '11 hunt up some technicality, 
 anything will do, and hang on for time." 
 
 Falls rose to go. 
 
 " Here ! " cried Hugh, laying violent hands upon him 
 and forcing him down into his chair. " Did you think 
 I 'm going to do this ' all for the love o' you ' ? There 
 is a string on it; it 's going to be done on the condition 
 following, to wit " (he leaned over Falls, his hands upon 
 his shoulders, an unaccustomed gravity in voice and eyes) : 
 " You are to promise me upon honor, Falls, that you will 
 not say a word about this hanging, nor take any hand 
 in it, unless you are yourself molested. In that case, 
 promise me, Falls, that if that should happen, you will 
 leave all to me. You will follow my advice, eh, Gregory ? " 
 
 Watson's golden voice had sunk to its most wooing note. 
 He hung over the big fellow with a suppressed passion 
 of tenderness and anxiety. 
 
 " Is it fair to tie me up like this ? " asked Falls rest 
 ively. 
 
 " Yes ; it is fair." Hugh paused a moment, hesitated. 
 Falls's reserve was a barrier difficult to surmount. " I 
 know a word to conjure with," he said at last. " Do not 
 force me to use it, Falls. If you knew that, by placing 
 yourself in danger by taking any part, no matter how 
 slight in this trouble here you were causing pain, rack 
 ing a woman's soul with anxiety " He paused, and, 
 turning from Falls, adjusted a picture-frame upon the 
 mantelpiece, as he passed it, with a nervous hand, and left 
 the room. He had turned Joan's sweet face to Falls 
 and left the two together. 
 
 He heard the street door close a moment later, and
 
 198 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 when he returned to the sitting-room he found a slip of 
 paper inscribed with the two words, " I promise," in 
 Falls's writing, in the empty frame which had held Joan's 
 picture. 
 
 "Light everything in the room that will light, Milly 
 Ann! I 'm going to dress." 
 
 It was the night of the Dixie Club ball, and Joan, 
 standing in the middle of her room, issued her orders 
 with the brief incisiveness of a general upon the eve of 
 battle. 
 
 " Put my gown on the bed, slippers, stockings, all 
 those petticoats, the one with chiffon flounces on top. 
 Now get out of my way, while I do my hair and don't 
 be a goose ! " This last in laughing admonition, as she 
 caught sight of Milly Ann's black face in the mirror 
 literally molten with admiration. 
 
 The hair-dressing went on in silence for a few minutes ; 
 the shining twists of Joan's bright hair were drawn deftly, 
 high upon her graceful head the baby love-locks upon 
 her square white brow being left to their own sweet will 
 a cluster of pearls securing a single, half-opened red 
 rose, set high and almost hidden among the crisp waves. 
 
 " Milly Ann ! " 
 
 " Ya'as 'm." 
 
 " Have you heard from Rosebud lately ? " 
 
 "Naw 'm; I ain't never heard fum Rosebud. Rose 
 ain't never writ to nobody 'n 'Dairville sence she went 
 erway." 
 
 "Is n't that funny?" 
 
 " Naw 'm ; Rose did n't never go wid her own color 
 none ; Rose 'lows she 's w'ite folks ! " Milly Ann's soft
 
 "IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER" 199 
 
 gurgle of laughter was discreetly suppressed as Joan made 
 no reply. " But de niggers, dey ain't spiling none 'bouten 
 hit. De colored folks is dun turn de back er deir ha-an' 
 to Rose." 
 
 "Why, Milly Ann, I thought Rosebud was a nice 
 girl- 
 
 " Rosebud ain't got no ca'acter, Miss Jone ; dat 's hit, 
 no ca'acter ! " 
 
 " Milly Ann, it 's wicked to speak so " 
 
 Milly Ann's snort of indignant protest was not so sup 
 pressed as to be totally without effect. 
 
 " Wen folkses gits deyse'ves read outen de churches, 
 'tain't no 'casion fur nobody to holt dey ha-an' no longer ! 
 Wen de churches dun sed dey say, den common folkses 
 kin say dey say. Ennyhow dey doose hit/' with philo 
 sophical calm. 
 
 Joan had been familiar all her life with this form 
 of condign punishment meted out by the churches to some 
 erring member; it was equivalent, she knew, to social 
 ostracism among white people. 
 
 " How long has this talk about Rosebud been going 
 on, Milly Ann?" 
 
 " She wuz read outen de churches 'bouten the time 
 Mist'r Falls's 'chinery bruk down when he went to 
 de N"orf to git hit mended up." 
 
 The eyes of the two girls met in the mirror ; Joan's cool 
 and wide, a frozen pain in their depths; Milly Ann's 
 kind, inscrutable, a warm loyalty to Joan overlying the 
 hereditary infidelities of her race. 
 
 " I would not be too quick to think evil, Milly Ann," 
 said Joan gently; "it is very wicked to start this sort 
 of talk about poor Rosebud. Get my skirt now."
 
 200 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 The birthday gown was a thing of beauty. Fashioned 
 of satin as thick and soft as Venetian leather, and the 
 color of the bands of green ether which lie along the 
 horizon after sunset on cold, clear winter days, it was 
 softened by a vapor of chiffon held close to the shining 
 surface of the satin by the weight of its own embroid 
 eries, through which the pale sheen of the satin struck 
 with a broken gleam like moonlight. Joan's figure, as 
 she moved, seemed enveloped in a delicate green haze. 
 Her bust rose from the low, clinging corsage like the 
 petals of a newly opened lily from out its calyx, its 
 snowy swell unbroken save for a triple row of pearl;-. 
 A wisp of the green vapor did duty for a sleeve, droop 
 ing low upon her arm to meet the loose folds of her 
 glove. 
 
 Joan leaned closer to the mirror after the maid had 
 left her, studying with wistful dissatisfaction the effect 
 of the red rose in her hair. It dominated the color scheme 
 of her toilette like a deep, rich organ note amid the har 
 monies of silver flutes. 
 
 Turning aside, Joan took up a cluster of long, creamy 
 buds, and tried the effect of their sulphur-green hearts 
 against the color of her gown, catching her breath with 
 sheer artistic delight in the combination. Caldwell's 
 flowers! She looked at them a moment longer, let them 
 trail against her skirt, gloating upon their beauty, then 
 laid them aside and took instead a dozen long-stemmed 
 beauties whose glowing hearts matched the one in her 
 hair. 
 
 "Is yu* gine to tek these raid roses, ur de ones th' 
 Guv*ner er Alabama sarnt yu', Miss Jone ? " 
 
 "He 's not a governor, Milly Ann; he 's nothing in
 
 "IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER" 201 
 
 the w-i-de world but a chief justice! . . . The red ones, 
 of course! Take the wraps on down." 
 
 Watson had dined at Hillcrest, and waited in the library, 
 with Judge Adair and Caldwell, for Joan. - All three 
 men wore evening dress. Watson and Judge Adair were 
 to follow Joan and her escort in a short while, and all 
 were to meet at the ball. 
 
 Caldwell came to meet Joan as she entered. His glance 
 went instantly to the flowers she carried. He raised the 
 heavy head of one of them, looking with raised brows 
 of inquiry from it to Joan, seeking explanation of her 
 neglect of his own offering. He had the deliberately 
 tender, half-masterful manner of the man who is sure 
 of his ground with women; exquisitely deferential, his 
 polished softness sheathed a cool consciousness of power, 
 a relentless purpose to bend them to his will, which roused 
 a latent antagonism in Joan, arraying the unyielding ele 
 ments of her nature, which so few suspected her of pos 
 sessing under her pliant charm, against Caldwell. 
 
 She withdrew the rose from his touch with a supple 
 movement of her form, and flashed a bright, daring smile 
 at him, challenging and coolly unattached. 
 
 A faint smile flitted across Caldwell's charming, sen 
 sitive face; he gave Hugh a guarded glance of keen de 
 light. There was to be the added joy of conquest, then? 
 There was another Eichmond in the field!
 
 XV 
 
 THE STRANGER WITHIN THEIR GATES 
 
 Dixie Club had for its residence a massive colo- 
 J_ nial building standing within its own grounds, which 
 had been restored, together with the building, as nearly 
 as possible to their old-time formal grandeur. The house 
 had been one of the most imposing of the antebellum resi 
 dences until, fallen from its high estate, it had passed 
 into the lavish keeping of its present owners. 
 
 The clubmen had been wise enough to adapt themselves 
 to their house rather than attempt to bend its unyielding 
 austerity to their more modern ideas; and its restoration 
 had been along the lines of early colonial taste. 
 
 The stately drawing-rooms on either side of the hall 
 were decorated in the pure, pale colors, the classic lines, 
 the marble and polished floors, of its old estate, every 
 where to-night wreathed and garnished with masses of 
 holly and mistletoe. Huge crystal chandeliers shed the 
 radiance of wax candles upon the scene, while in the hall 
 the Yule log burned in a great fireplace which yawned like 
 a glowing cavern midway the length of the hall. Under 
 the arch of the staircase, and full in the hearth's red glow, 
 a huge holly-crowned table bore sturdily the weight of 
 massive silver tankards filled with steaming apple-toddy 
 and egg-nog, served by old-time " aunties " in snowy white, 
 
 202
 
 WITHIN THEIR GATES 203 
 
 with bright-colored turbans on their heads, who tendered 
 to each guest a cup of Christmas cheer, upon which floated 
 a bit of mistletoe. 
 
 For this was to be an old-time Dixie function; a regu 
 lar " befo' de wah " ball, a compliment tendered to the old 
 regime by the New South, and Adairville's four hundred 
 had met to do it honor; the past and the present were 
 met to-night to quaff a. cup to the future. 
 
 The great doors of entrance were flung wide in hos 
 pitable greeting, and the reception committee stood within, 
 welcoming the guests. By eleven o'clock the rooms were 
 fairly full, and the pendants of the chandeliers kept a 
 tinkling accompaniment to the cheerful hum of talk which 
 almost overpowered the insistent strains of the band in 
 the distance, playing over and over the piercing strains 
 of Dixie. 
 
 Watson, standing in the group of gentlemen in the hall, 
 and receiving the guests, felt a cautious touch upon his 
 arm, and found Jemmy Page at his elbow. 
 
 " Come outside a minute, Hugh." 
 
 " I cannot leave my place, Jemmy." 
 
 " Well, listen and fur Gawd's sake don't let on I 
 told you ! If you do, I '11 deny the whole blamed thing ! " 
 
 " Of course," said Hugh. " Get on with it." 
 
 " Well, stop your laughing. It 's about Falls." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Watson, keenly intent. 
 
 " Urn-hum ! I thought you 'd listen ! " triumphantly. 
 " Here, it 's this er way : I like Falls I wish I had his 
 muscle ! but they 're going to kick him out to-night 
 out of the club. It 's all fixed cut and dried. Hal- 
 lett and Tawm Evert Payne 's in it, too ; 'fact, nearly 
 all of the clubmen are and the others won't do any-
 
 204 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 thing to stop it ! I thought I 'd let you know. Don't ask 
 me any more ! " 
 
 " Just this, Jemmy publicly ? " 
 
 " 'Course, publicly ! Where 'd be the use otherwise ? " 
 
 " How 'd you get on ? " Watson put his arm about the 
 lad and drew him closer. " Don't you be scared " 
 
 " Scared ! " cried the boy roughly. " Who 's scared ? 
 It 's this er way: I 'm secretary of the club, you know 
 I heard it talked I 'd er let Falls take care of him 
 self, but when they drew Joan in " 
 
 " Joan ! What er you giving me, Page ? There is n't 
 a man in 'Dairville that would dare " 
 
 " It 's to be when she is with Falls ! " He glanced back 
 over his shoulder uneasily. " Lemme go, Hugh ; and 
 you know enough all I know." 
 
 The waltz within was just over as Hugh reached the 
 hall, his face dark with anger. He endeavored to snatch 
 a moment to think, to work out, with the meager facts at 
 his command, some counter plan to save his friend. He 
 sought insistently within himself for some excuse which 
 might serve to detain Falls prevent his coming to the 
 ball. Yet he had counted on having Falls here under 
 his eye where no trouble could result, while the lynch 
 ing of the negroes took place, as Hugh felt sure it would 
 do before midnight. As he stood swiftly balancing the 
 choice of evils, answering with mechanical gaiety the 
 greetings of the guests, he saw Falls approaching from 
 the direction of the cloak-room. 
 
 As he flashed his eye over the line of men receiving with 
 him, he perceived a certain stiffening of manner as they, 
 too, recognized Falls's unmistakable figure, and they 
 awaited him with hostile courtesy. Falls reached the line,
 
 WITHIN THEIR GATES 205 
 
 bowed, waited while a man might count three for the mo 
 tion of a hand extended in welcome. There was none; 
 they returned his bow with ceremonious stiffness, as he 
 passed along the line. 
 
 In the hall behind the group a sudden silence, like a 
 nipping frost, had fallen; laughter was hushed, and talk 
 ing died to whispers. By a sort of mental telepathy, the 
 knowledge of the scene in the hall brief almost as a 
 heart-beat spread to the rooms beyond, and Watson saw 
 throughout the entire suite the wavelike motion of heads 
 turned toward the hall. 
 
 As Falls reached him, he turned to greet him with 
 genial courtesy; even in this perturbed moment, Watson 
 was careful to make the distinction between his ordinary 
 manner and this more formal manner, which he conceived 
 to be Falls's due. He welcomed him, not as the friend 
 whom Falls had left a couple of hours ago, but as one 
 of the hosts of the evening, with the courtesy due to a 
 guest. 
 
 Boiling stood next Watson in the line, and, as Watson 
 turned to him, Falls's hand still in his warm clasp, Boll- 
 ing felt an imperative elbow admonish him at a point in 
 his anatomy peculiarly susceptible to advice. He stepped 
 up to Falls, gruffly genial. " A merry Christmas, Mr. 
 Falls ! Will you er pledge it ? " He took, as he 
 spoke, two glasses from the tray of a passing waiter, and 
 tendered one to Falls, who accepted it, raised it to his 
 lips an instant and returned it, and, with a cold bow, 
 was passing on, when Watson laid a detaining hand on 
 his arm. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Hugh, still in his grand manner, 
 " if you will excuse me, I will go with Mr. Falls to greet
 
 206 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 the ladies. I have not made my own greetings yet, and 
 Mr. Falls has not met them all, I think." 
 
 They turned together to the first drawing-room, where 
 a party of ladies were receiving. " Lord ! " groaned Wat 
 son to himself, " I 'd rather face an ambush of Stewart's 
 ' Bloody Thirteen ' than Mrs. Jones and the rest of those 
 mothers in Israel! Ah, Al Manning's wife! She '11 do. 
 She 's got brains in that pretty head of hers ! " 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge-Jones stood first in the line of ladies, 
 well forward, a distinguished figure clad in heavy, cream- 
 colored satin, her white hair turned back in a full roll 
 from her bold, angular face. The cold gleam of diamonds 
 was everywhere about her, and the colder gleam of a sat 
 isfied malice shone in her insolent old eyes as she per 
 ceived Watson and his companion advancing upon the 
 line of ladies. She turned to make a quick gesture of 
 warning to the other women in the line; she was too 
 clever a tactician to show in a position of individual re 
 sponsibility. Her pose was the impregnable one of an 
 exponent of public opinion ; in the insult which she meant 
 to level at Falls by a public refusal to recognize him 
 socially, she was firmly resolved to have the support of 
 every other woman in the line. 
 
 But Hugh's shrewd diagnosis of human mind and mo 
 tive was a generic one, including women as well as men; 
 he read the woman's tactics at a glance, and bent his keen, 
 compelling glance upon her. She met it with as bold a 
 one. 
 
 " Mrs. Jones," he said, with formal courtesy, as different 
 as possible from Watson's usual genial ease, his menacing 
 glance riveting his meaning upon her mind, "you have 
 met my friend, Mr. Falls ? "
 
 WITHIN THEIR GATES 207 
 
 Watson's tone was the assured tone of the man whose 
 world recognizes him as a power; his glance, as arrogant 
 as her own, was full of the freemasonry of caste which 
 assumes as impossible the slightest divergence from its 
 recognized laws. 
 
 The traditions of a lifetime, reinforced by the instincts 
 of fifty years of social diplomacy, the ritual of conven 
 tionality, to women of her class more binding than 
 Holy Writ, warned her to avert the scene which would 
 follow her refusal to recognize Watson's friend, presented 
 by himself, in a house where he was practically host ; that, 
 and a chastening vision of Henderson Jones's plebeian 
 wrath when the inevitable explanation should ensue. 
 
 With consummate cleverness, she changed her course. 
 She allowed herself to seem to waver to be convinced, 
 to generously yield the point, and handed her sword to 
 Watson with the grace and dignity of one who, yielding 
 only when she must, yet yields so tactfully as to convert 
 defeat into a semblance of victory. She swept Falls a 
 courtesy, gracious, if cold, murmuring a sentence of greet 
 ing. 
 
 But to the end of his life Watson never knew what it 
 was those suave tones uttered. Falls engaged his attention 
 to the exclusion of everything else. He stood erect, look 
 ing Mrs. Jones, who was a tall women, squarely in the 
 eyes, with a glance from under his drooping lids so full 
 of studied insolence and deliberate, cold scorn for her and 
 all she stood for that even Watson winced. Thus they 
 faced each other for the space of a pulse-beat, these two 
 strong natures with glances locked like blades in a silent 
 interchange of hate, the impersonal living expression of 
 an immutable prejudice. Then he bent his head to Mrs.
 
 208 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Eldridge-Jones in a bow so deep, so studied, as almost 
 to savor of mockery. 
 
 They passed on down the line, and to each woman in 
 turn Falls gave the tribute of a careless glance, a profound 
 bow, a murmured word. 
 
 " Janie," whispered Hugh to the last lady in the line, 
 a brisk and wholesome young matron, " Falls is a .friend 
 of mine; I want you to be nice to him, will you? Not 
 too nice, you know. Falls is a lonesome old bachelor 
 like I 've been, ever since you threw me over for Al Man 
 ning. Take Falls in hand, won't you? Tell him about 
 the babies. He '11 be tickled to death." 
 
 She led Falls away a moment later, making the circuit 
 of the rooms with him, talking brightly and naturally, 
 and, as she told Al that night, "liking him better every 
 step I took." 
 
 She told Falls about her babies, and the precocious 
 things they said. And Falls forgot how bored he was, and 
 laughed down upon her with his boyish smile that so few 
 people had seen. 
 
 " Why," said Janie to herself, " why, goodness me ! I 'm 
 right sorry I 'm married ! He 's simply lovely ! " 
 
 Falls's height enabled him to follow Joan about the 
 crowded rooms without trouble, and, in spite of himself, 
 his eyes sought her again and again; he knew the man 
 with her must be Caldwell. 
 
 " Joan is simply radiant to-night," said Janie, mali 
 ciously, as she detected one of Falls's covert glances. 
 
 " Perfect gown ! " murmured Falls. " Light green suits 
 Miss Adair to perfection." 
 
 "I said Joan," persisted Janie, a shrewd smile wrin 
 kling her pretty eyes.
 
 WITHIN THEIR GATES 209 
 
 " I was making talk ! " retorted Falls, at bay. " You 
 do not give me credit for my honest intention to provide 
 you with a subject upon which we might differ. There 
 could be no difference of opinion where Miss Adair is con 
 cerned her gown now ! " 
 
 " I think the gown rather takes precedence as far 
 as unanimity of opinion is concerned/' said Janie, serenely 
 in possession of the information which Falls fondly 
 dreamed he had concealed; and she dropped the subject. 
 
 " This is mine/' Falls said five minutes later, standing 
 beside Joan, where she and Caldwell sat snugly ensconced 
 in a nook of the stairs under a nodding canopy of palms. 
 
 " I was waiting for you," she replied with a smile in 
 the dimpled corners of her lips, though her eyes met his 
 gravely. 
 
 She paused a moment to introduce the two men, who 
 clasped hands with the perfunctory warmth men feel con 
 strained to show when a woman introduces them ; a word 
 or two of talk passed between the two each with a spec 
 ulative eye on the other. 
 
 The first bars of the waltz were being played as Falls 
 drew Joan away. " A whole one ! " he reminded her, and 
 she smiled her assent. 
 
 They were upon the floor of the ballroom; the music 
 swept about them like a resistless current. Falls placed 
 his arm about Joan to draw her out upon the tide of the 
 waltz wailed forth by the violins. But in the very act 
 a hand touched his arm, a courteous, stammering voice 
 accosted him, a floor manager for the evening stood at 
 his side, proffering him an open paper, the ink yet wet 
 upon it. 
 
 As Falls paused involuntarily, in amazement, Stannifer
 
 210 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 spoke : " Mr. Falls, I am requested by the committee to 
 hand you a copy of the rules and to er to request 
 you to leave the floor." 
 
 Jemmy Page, his handsome, boyish face flushed with 
 embarrassment, stood bowing at Joan's side, his arm ex 
 tended for her hand. It was evident that both he and 
 Stannifer expected to see it transferred from Falls's arm 
 to his, but Joan did not move. 
 
 " Thank you, Jemmy," she said icily ; " as you see, I 
 am engaged for this." 
 
 In the almost perfect stillness which had fallen upon 
 the room, the wailing of the flutes and violins in the 
 orchestra rose into a psan; the waltz had but been called, 
 with only a couple here and there upon the floor, though 
 the walls were lined with spectators; and in the drawing- 
 rooms beyond, the hall, and the more distant card-rooms, 
 every head was turned toward the little group of four. 
 The tableau, during the brief second it lasted, was not 
 only visible, but perfectly intelligible to every eye which 
 beheld it. 
 
 The arrested waltz, the floor manager with the open 
 paper in his hand, Falls's face of restrained anger, Joan's 
 pale dismay, needed no commentary. 
 
 Falls had stood petrified for a second, then he said 
 quietly, almost inaudibly : " Mr. Stannifer, I will ask you 
 to stand aside." 
 
 "As you like, Mr. Falls; the committee will enforce 
 its rules not I." 
 
 " That being so stand aside ! " Stannifer courteously 
 obeyed, and the next instant Falls had drawn his partner 
 out upon the floor. 
 
 With trembling limbs and a heart bursting with in-
 
 WITHIN THEIR GATES 211 
 
 dignant pain, Joan mechanically kept step with Falls's 
 strong turns in an unconscious obedience to his will and 
 to the cadenced motion which was sweeping her along in 
 a breathless whirl. 
 
 Falls felt her tremble in his arm, felt her light feet 
 flag. 
 
 " Can you go through it," he whispered close at her ear, 
 " for my sake ? " 
 
 " Yes," she breathed, " it would not do to stop now." 
 
 Falls drew her imperceptibly farther within his arm, 
 as she seemed to falter. " Lean on me," he said with 
 gentle authority. 
 
 The floor was filling rapidly with waltzers, and Falls 
 guided his partner mechanically among them, with eyes 
 which saw but a dimpled shoulder and the triple row of 
 pearls upon Joan's throat. He was not thinking not 
 yet. He was hoarding each moment as it flew, gloating 
 as a miser upon his gold. He was conscious of the wall 
 of hostile faces hemming him in, of the dull murmur of 
 voices which discussed him, the public insult offered him, 
 only as of the sound of distant breakers which threatened 
 to snatch from him this girl within his arms. He had a 
 dull sense of impending loss; almost he could feel Joan 
 slipping from him. That yielding form upon his breast, 
 that soft cheek blanched with pain for him, how could 
 he let her go? 
 
 Involuntarily he tightened his arm about her. " I 'm 
 going after this dance," he whispered, " and I have to start 
 to-morrow for New York. I shall not see you again be 
 fore I go. Will you say good-by to me now, here ? " 
 
 " Good-by," she said, with a fleeting glance from eyes 
 that had the still radiance of the winter stars outside.
 
 212 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Here is Judge Adair. Shall I leave you with him ? " 
 As the old man drew his daughter's hand into his arm,' 
 he offered his other hand to Falls. 
 
 "You are such a stranger, Mr. Falls," he said smiling, 
 " that I am never just sure if it is greeting or good-by, 
 but I feel that it is always in order to shake hands." 
 
 " It is good-by this time ; I am just leaving." 
 
 Hallett stood with Watson and Caldwell in the group 
 about Judge Adair; they had been in earnest talk, which 
 Joan's advent with Falls had arrested. A nondescript 
 greeting passed between Falls and Hallett; but Caldwell 
 offered his hand to Falls with a cordial clasp. There was 
 a warm light of liking upon both faces in Caldwell's 
 an expression half-amused, half-speculative, as well. 
 
 " You have dropped your rose," he said to Joan, as the 
 loosened rose in her hair tumbled to the floor, and 
 stooped instantly for the rose himself. But Falls was 
 quicker and held the prize high above Caldwell's head 
 in teasing triumph. 
 
 "It is mine," cried Caldwell, "by all the laws of sal 
 vage ! " 
 
 " Hark to the judicial mind ! " laughed Hugh. " Hear 
 him spin the cobweb of the law across the path of ultimate 
 resort ! " 
 
 Caldwell still smiled, but there was a touch of chagrin 
 in his eyes. 
 
 " I have not the judicial mind," said Falls, " but I 
 have the rose ! "
 
 XVI 
 
 THE VERDICT 
 
 to my place and smoke, Falls," said Hugh, 
 joining Falls upon the steps; "it 's too late to 
 go to the power-house, and too early for bed." 
 
 " Yes," said Falls absently ; " I was coming." 
 
 They walked in silence for half a block, their steps 
 ringing clearly upon the pavement. 
 
 " You heard of that trouble there to-night, Challie? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I would that I could have spared you it, 
 Falls! A man gave me a tip, but too late to avert it. 
 It was all fixed up, you know." 
 
 " Just what am I to understand by it, if you know, 
 Watson ? " 
 
 Watson linked his arm with Falls's, paused, cleared his 
 throat, as though he had been going to debate, paused 
 again, unable to go on. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I 'm not really a brute " 
 
 " Go on." 
 
 " It was simply an excuse to force your resignation 
 from the club, Falls ; that, and the public insult. I looked 
 into it at once; it was all perfectly regular; rules all 
 signed by the committee and countersigned by Pugh. 
 'No man not escorting a lady' a stag, you know 
 Could go upon the floor 
 
 213
 
 2i 4 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Preposterous ! I saw twenty ! You waltzed yourself, 
 Watson." 
 
 " Of course the rule was not intended to be enforced ; 
 it was made only to make the fellows come to the scratch 
 and get the girls there. It was given out unofficially; 
 not put upon the bulletin board until ten minutes before 
 you got your copy. Stannifer told me it knocked the 
 breath out of him when Pugh signed the copy for you." 
 
 " What 's to do about it except kick the men who 
 put it up ? " 
 
 "You 'd have to find 'em first, Falls. They were 
 mighty scarce about there to-night, I can tell you ! I 
 did all there is to do before I left. Filed your resigna 
 tion, together with my own, Judge Adair's, and Cald- 
 well's Here, let go er me, Falls! Don't you go hug 
 ging me here in ' de day's broad light ! ' ; 
 
 " But this is great, Watson ! Judge Adair, and Cald- 
 well! What can I have done to merit their their " 
 He paused, at a loss for a word. 
 
 " There was Joan, you know ; that gave color to their 
 resignations; but I never saw Uncle John so angry! I 
 thought he 'd go all the way out to Hillcrest after that 
 old sword of his covered all over with Yankee blood 
 to run Tom Evert through with ! " Hugh shouted with 
 laughter at the recollection. 
 
 They walked on, Falls's arm still about Watson's shoul 
 ders. 
 
 "You know what took me there to-night, Watson, do 
 you not?" 
 
 " To waltz with Joan. But why should you not go, 
 Gregory? You are a member of the Dixie Club." 
 
 "The waltz, of course, would have taken me anywhere j
 
 THE VERDICT 215 
 
 but I could have denied myself the pleasure, great as it 
 was, had I dreamed the punishment in store for me would 
 rebound upon her in the way it did. Cowards! And I 
 cannot move in the matter I cannot drag her name 
 into it ! " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I went there deliberately to assert my rights my so 
 cial rights, I mean, not my rights in the club. I intend," 
 he continued with cold deliberation, " I intend to fight 
 this ostracism, Hugh ; not that I value an entree to Adair- 
 ville's society " Falls broke off with a cool, brief laugh ; 
 " but because it debars me from much that I do care for ! 
 All that I care for most," he added, after a moment, de 
 liberately ; " for in time I am getting to see this more 
 clearly every day in time this prejudice, madness, this 
 poisonous emanation from the grave of the past, may sep 
 arate me from her. ... In a tender nature like " 
 he paused, steadied his grave voice " like Joan's, en 
 vironment, early influences, prenatal influences really, 
 the love of home and friends and kin these strike their 
 roots deep. I could not if I would and I would not 
 unwind her heart-strings from among them. Mine must 
 encompass both her heart, I mean, and all that it holds 
 dear. You see," he turned to Hugh, " you see, Watson, 
 why I must make this fight for social recognition here? 
 T am fighting for standing-room beside Joan, that is all. 
 That and one other thing." 
 
 Falls lifted his face to the cold fires of the stars above 
 his head the great, white-enameled stars which burn 
 over Dixie ; that saw it drip with the red horror of blood 
 for four long years; watched its slow writhing under the 
 surgeon's knife of reconstruction, and saw it gather its
 
 216 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 maimed parts together in a new birth, born anew of the 
 spirit, not of the sword this time as he continued: 
 
 "I have, as any man has, my own happiness to look 
 out for; to win, as other men, the woman I love. And 
 I have her happiness as well to care for. You see that, 
 Hugh? And I must have time! Time to wear out this 
 insane opposition. 
 
 "I would not declare my love ask her to share my 
 life as things are here," he continued proudly. " It 
 galled me like the devil to have to accept their pity 
 CaldwelPs and her father's " 
 
 "You mistake the position, Falls," said Watson 
 gravely; "they came to your support through a sense 
 of fair play, not pity. . . . Come in, while I get a 
 light." 
 
 "Am I sleeping here again to-night?" asked Falls 
 in surprise, as Watson closed and locked the outer door, 
 and then turned to lock the hall door. 
 
 "Yes; you M just as well. Your things are here. 
 The Honorable Peter Lacey Jackson has taken you in 
 charge, I see." 
 
 " How 'd that trial go off this morning, Watson ? I 
 have been so busy all day I could not get off; and every 
 thing seemed so quiet the thing seems to have blown 
 over eh ? " 
 
 " Oh, it was quiet, deadly quiet ! Well " Watson 
 yawned and laughed. He had divested himself of his 
 coat and waistcoat; he walked about the room while he 
 told of the trial. 
 
 "Well we went to trial, with the sheriff and four 
 or five deputies and forty-two soldiers of the Alabama 
 National Guard lined up in the court-house guarding the
 
 THE VERDICT 217 
 
 prisoners. Poor devils, they were ashy with fear. The 
 black ones get about the color of these ashes in my pipe; 
 the yellow ones, like Will-Henry, turn green; they were 
 all of that. We had to get a jury first we had a special 
 venire of sixty, county men most of them. There was the 
 usual fight over them. McClung and I McClung 'a 
 the prosecuting attorney, pretty fair lawyer. He 'd been 
 out at Hillcrest dancing all night, and could hardly keep 
 his eyes open. He 'A just as well have laid down on a 
 bench and had his nap out. I weeded out all the ex-Con 
 federate soldiers, and their sons and grandsons; and Mc 
 Clung went for the niggers and the Republicans there 
 were two or three of each and then we had n't any more 
 challenges. But we had got a hanging jury. I saw it 
 in their damned old eyes ! Tony asked 'em in great shape 
 the usual questions if they had their minds already 
 made up I nearly laughed right out in court ! Minds 
 made up ? Why, men of that sort in this State have their 
 minds made up fifty years before they are born, on all 
 questions concerning a nigger, and set like the tension 
 of a typewriter when it comes from the factory. 
 
 " But they said no, and that they would convict on cir 
 cumstantial evidence. They might as well have added, 
 ' or without it/ but Tony forgot to ask that. 
 
 "And at last we got down to business; I made my 
 motion for a severance, and Tony let *er go. Named 
 Charlton Finn to defend Sledge. The State had Sledge 
 on the stand, but I got him later on the cross-examination. 
 He bungled and lied and contradicted himself nigger way, 
 you know; he never saw Will-Henry in his life until they 
 met here in jail and I made him say so." 
 
 Watson gazed meditatively into the fire.
 
 2i8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " There was not a scintilla of proof against Will-Henry, 
 first nor last " 
 
 " You got him off ! " cried Falls exultantly. 
 
 " A-w naw, Falfe, naw ! Ur nigger, charged with killing 
 a white man in Holmes County! Nothing on earth or 
 in heaven could have got him off, I tell you! 
 
 " I summed up the evidence made the jury a fair 
 talk; we looked each other in the eye for fifteen minutes 
 
 not a shadow of proof against my client, mind you! 
 But I knew he was a gone 'coon ! Tony charged 'em 
 on the law straight and fair oh, yes, he knows ! There 
 is n't a better lawyer in Alabama than Cruikshanks. 
 It 's not brains Tony is lacking in " 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Falls curiously. " Somehow I 
 can't like the fellow, and he 's a pleasant animal, too." 
 
 " The hypercritical call it principle," said Hugh dryly. 
 " Well," he paused to laugh, a big laugh of sheer 
 amusement, " the jury was out exactly three minutes, 
 and brought in a verdict of murder in the first degree 
 against 'em both." 
 
 "The devil!" cried Falls. 
 
 " Naw," drawled Hugh ; " not the devil ; a nigger-hat 
 ing Holmes County, Alabama, jury ! " 
 
 " What 's the difference ? " demanded Falls, with such 
 scandalized indignation that Watson laughed again. 
 
 " Mighty little when it comes to a nigger client." 
 
 "How did it end?" 
 
 "'Tis n't ended yet," said Hugh slowly. "I made a 
 motion for a new trial ; Tony was all serene. I M a good 
 mind to take Billy by the ear and lead him out with me 
 
 in the face of their d tin soldiers ! " 
 
 "Where is Will-Henry," asked Falls, "now?"
 
 THE VERDICT 219 
 
 " Holmes County jail, waiting his new trial." 
 " When will it come off ? Is it the superior court ? 
 Who is judge of it?" 
 
 " God knows ! " said Watson, with weary sarcasm. " It 
 is the court of last appeal; and they say it takes cog 
 nizance of the fall of a swallow, but ur nigger? Poor 
 devil!"
 
 XVII 
 
 THE MOB 
 
 SLOWLY Watson emerged from the purple depths of 
 sleep to find Falls at his side, his heavy hand upon 
 him, his voice, tense with excitement, in his ear. 
 
 " Watson ! Wake up, man ! There 's the devil of a row 
 on down-town! Listen to 'em! There 's firing! I 9 m 
 going " 
 
 " Naw," drawled Hugh drowsily, " naw, you 're not, 
 Falls. Not if I know it, and I think I do." 
 
 " Not ? " laughed Falls, a ring of gaiety in his voice 
 that Watson had never heard there before. " Not, eh ? 
 You just wait until I get something on me in place of 
 these silk rags! They 're fighting, I tell you! Not any 
 old, moldy Rebel ghosts, either ! Those are live guns ! " 
 
 " A-w, blank cartridges in pop-guns. I was in hopes 
 you 'd sleep through this mess, Greg. Don't you know 
 what that is? They 're hanging those niggers; that 's 
 a bona-fide, howling, sweating, dirty Southern mob, and 
 the choicest Holmes County brand ! " 
 
 Falls was heaping wood and coal upon the almost ex 
 tinguished fire. " Get up and dress, Watson. No ; I 'm 
 not going back to bed. I 'm going to dress and go down 
 there. A pack of dirty cowards ! " 
 
 Watson groaned in comical dismay. " A nice job I 've 
 
 220
 
 THE MOB 221 
 
 got ahead of me ! " he soliloquized, as he turned reluctantly 
 out upon the cold floor. 
 
 "What can you do, going down there, Falls? There 
 are three or four hundred men there, armed, and drunk 
 with moonshine whiskey and the lust of blood." 
 
 Falls was leaning far out of the window. " Come here, 
 Hugh. What is that pounding, smashing?" He turned 
 resolutely within. " I 've got to see this thing ; hearing 
 won't do for me ! " 
 
 Watson was dressing rapidly. " Sit down a minute, 
 Falls. Listen to what I 've got to say, will you? After, 
 if you will go, why, I '11 go with you you don't go 
 alone!" 
 
 Falls paused, impatiently. 
 
 " This thing 's been gathering all day pooh, what 
 difference did that fool trial make? They were as good 
 as dead yesterday. I only got it up to quiet you. And 
 I brought you here to sleep because it 's farther from this 
 rumpus at the jail than the hotel, and besides, the 
 truth is, Greg, I 've taken quite a lot of pains to produce 
 the impression that you went East on that midnight train. 
 I had Lacey pack you a bag and leave it with the clerk 
 to meet the train. There was a spy in the hotel lobby, 
 you know. Don't make a light here! Those windows 
 have no blinds." 
 
 The dancing firelight filled the room, and Hugh passed 
 about pulling down shades; he came at last to where 
 Falls still sat upon the table, impatiently waiting. 
 
 Watson paused before him, his hands in his trousers 
 pockets, his face grave. 
 
 " Now, you listen to me, Greg, a minute. I know this 
 blamed old town ! I 've eased her through lots of scrapes
 
 222 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 since I 've been a man, and had to stand aside lots of 
 times and see her bust her way to the devil ! She 'a 
 doing that to-night, and I 've got to stand aside. Any 
 influence which I might have ordinarily won't be worth 
 a continental damn to-night; my sort is the sort which 
 appeals to a man's mind, you know, influences, con 
 vinces, along that line. Those men out there, that you 
 hear howling and smashing in that jail those men are 
 not men. They are brute beasts, and mad for blood like 
 any other ! " 
 
 He walked a pace away, came back, laid his hands upon 
 Falls's shoulders. 
 
 " I 've been dodging this all day dodging telling 
 you, but it 's got to be told. The fact is, Falls, you 're 
 bracketed in the town's mind with this nigger, Will-Henry. 
 You remember the street-car trouble? All this has grown 
 out of it or the town chooses to see it that way. There 
 are a hundred chances to one that, if you are thought 
 to be out of town, what with the two negroes to glut 
 the mob's appetite for blood this time, you will not be 
 molested; but if you should be mad enough to go, or I 
 mad enough to let you go, upon the streets to-night, let 
 the crowd see you, hear your voice, find you opposed to 
 them, and no power on earth could save you. I could 
 go under with you I could not save you ! " 
 
 Falls started up, shook Watson's hands from his shoul 
 ders, thrust him off. Almost it seemed to Hugh that he 
 saw the man for the first time, so changed was he. His 
 somber eyes were aglow with wrath, his stern lips curved 
 into a smile of fierce scorn and derision. 
 
 "And do you suppose," he cried, his voice shaken with 
 Bnger almost too profound for utterance " do you sup-
 
 THE MOB 223 
 
 pose that I shall skulk here, in hiding, and let that mis 
 erable negro suffer for any fault of mine? / put him in 
 the place he held. I held him there by force, when the 
 poor wretch begged and prayed to go. Is he to hang 
 for my act ? It was bad enough when I thought I sup 
 posed it was but the natural barbarism of this place 
 let loose under the guise of race prejudice. But you 
 amaze me, Hugh, with talk of this sort ! " 
 
 He passed into his room, snatching up his long coat, 
 and, without ceremony, on into Watson's chamber, search 
 ing tables and drawers. " I want a pistol, Watson, and 
 some cartridges. Come, like a dear fellow, and get them 
 for me. I 'm in no danger, Challie, from that cowardly 
 rabble. One man with a gun, and decent nerve, can stand 
 off the whole lot of hysterical cowards. Alabama mob? 
 the devil! All mob-stuff everywhere is the same. Ala 
 bama or Springfield, Calcutta or Central America it 's 
 the punk of the world. Eotten fungus that an honest 
 kick will smash/' 
 
 Watson got the pistols and cartridges and gave them 
 to him, but when Falls reached the outer door he found 
 Watson with his back against it, calmly awaiting him. 
 
 Falls paused, arrested, and the two stood eye to eye in 
 a silent battle of the strong. 
 
 Falls's brows met in a frown of intense annoyance, but 
 he spoke gently, almost caressingly: 
 
 "Don't be a fool, Challie; I 'm going." 
 
 "No," said Hugh, without his drawl this time; "no, 
 you 're not, Falls. Not through this door, anyhow." 
 
 Falls turned, placing the pistols high out of reach of 
 either upon the cornice, thrust away the chair, and turned 
 back toward Hugh. He was pale and fiercely determined,
 
 224 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 but intense repugnance shone from his eyes, bent his 
 troubled brow. He made a step toward Hugh, who calmly 
 held the door, bracing his sturdy back against it, but other 
 wise making no sign or motion of resistance. 
 
 " I 'm getting rather bored with leading-strings, Hugh," 
 said Falls dryly. " I ? ve been out of pinafores for quite 
 a bit/' 
 
 " You 'd prefer a shroud a bloody one ? " 
 
 "Pooh! Well, Challie, if you will" have it " 
 
 His heavy grasp fell upon Hugh, swayed him fiercely 
 to one side. Hugh wavered, staggered a step, caught him 
 self, and with a spring regained his position in front of 
 the door. Again and again Falls thrust him back and 
 again and again Hugh sturdily resisted. Falls strove in 
 silence, twining his supple form about Hugh's bear-like 
 frame, bending his great shoulders like a ram against his 
 side, the muscles of his broad chest straining, his long 
 arms laced about Watson, wrestling like Laocoon. 
 
 No faintest sign of anger betrayed itself upon either 
 face; upon Falls's was a hard determination, as he still 
 strove to twist Hugh from his place. As well might he 
 have striven to uproot some earth-locked boulder from its 
 bed in the Cumberland's deep bosom! 
 
 Suddenly, as they still strove in grim silence, broken 
 only by their panting breath coming in gusts between 
 set teeth, the grinding of their feet upon the entry floor, 
 the rattling and straining of the disputed doorway the 
 telephone bell rang sharply. 
 
 " See who it is, Falls," said Watson coolly. 
 
 Falls had involuntarily dropped his hold and leaned 
 panting beside Hugh, who calmly held his position in 
 front of the door.
 
 THE MOB 225 
 
 Still breathing quickly, Falls took up the receiver. 
 Watson saw him start, bend eagerly to the tube, and, when 
 he spoke a moment later, Hugh knew, without further 
 telling, who held the wire at the other end. Falls was 
 speaking in a voice scarce above a whisper, a tremble 
 catching his deep tones in spite of the restraint he put 
 upon himself. 
 
 " Do not you know who this is ? It 's Gregory." 
 
 Then Watson strolled away from the door. 
 
 " Oh," came softly to his ear, in answer to his name 
 " is it you ? How glad I am ! I thought I feared 
 Promise me you will stop there will not go upon the 
 , street. Promise ! " 
 
 " Give me a moment to think," said Falls. He leaned 
 
 r against the lintel of the door, his brows furrowed in 
 
 harassed thought. Watson saw the struggle in his 
 
 face, the wrench with which he yielded. "Joan are 
 
 you there? Yes? Tell me just what it is you wish me 
 
 , to do." 
 
 " Not to go upon the street, and not to leave Hugh." 
 
 "I promise. What? ... Oh! Good-by." 
 
 Falls did not turn immediately to Watson, but rested 
 his forehead upon his arm against the wall. 
 
 Watson was looking out of the window, smoking, as 
 Falls threw off his coat and hat; neither made any ref 
 erence to Falls's change of plan. Falls sat beside him 
 at the window, lighted his cigar by Hugh's pipe, and 
 together they smoked in silence. 
 
 From the third-story window they had a clear view of 
 the streets converging toward the Court-house Square; 
 they lay wide, empty, and white under the mingled light 
 of the stars and the arc-lights.
 
 226 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 The clock in the tower of the court-house solemnly 
 struck two, trailing a long echo through the thin air that 
 was presently lost in the strident clamor of the mob which 
 came from the direction of the jail two blocks away. Then 
 came the muffled boom of wood crashing upon wood, fol 
 lowed by a resonant clang, as of some heavy body falling. 
 The deep murmur of voices rose into a brief cheer, rose 
 and fell and rose again when the splitting crash resounded 
 through the night. 
 
 " They 're breaking in the jail doors to fire the inside 
 to smoke out the soldiers," said Hugh. 
 
 " Soldiers inside ? Why are they not about the entrance, 
 holding these men off?" 
 
 Watson blew a long thread of smoke into the air, watch 
 ing it float off into the darkness like a pale, writhing 
 ghost. " What can eighty-four tin soldiers, with blank 
 cartridges, do against four hundred armed men ? " 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me," cried Falls, laying an im 
 perative hand upon the other's arm, " do you mean to 
 say that nothing really will be done to prevent this out 
 rage?" 
 
 " There will be some show of force, yes. I suppose 
 Ainsley will look after his job. He '11 do enough to stave 
 off impeachment. You see, Ainsley is rather up a tree; 
 his son, Bob Ainsley, is leading this mob. It is n't likely 
 Ainsley 's going to give troops an order to fire on his own 
 son!" 
 
 "The governor can get troops here in two hours." 
 
 Watson calmly knocked the ashes out of his pipe. 
 
 "This will be over in thirty minutes. And besides, I 
 understand the telegraph wire is out of order long dis 
 tance, too."
 
 THE MOB 227 
 
 He laughed grimly, as Falls turned to stare at him, 
 amazed at the cool effrontery of the way in which this 
 thing was being carried through. 
 
 " How dare a Western Union operator " 
 
 " Bigeloe 's got a pretty wife here couple of babies 
 she was a home girl ; he don't want to be run out of 
 'Dairville; and electrical currents do disarrange wires 
 sometimes ! " 
 
 " Jimmy ! " cried Falls, the puritanical oaths of his 
 boyhood coming naturally to his lip, as there stirred in 
 him the old, stern New England standards of human lib 
 erty. " This beats out all creation ! " 
 
 " They 're coming/' said Watson, leaning out and point 
 ing to where a column of smoke rose, wavering, against 
 the sky. " They 've got about ten pounds of sulphur in 
 that old feather-bed smeared with tar. No human lungs 
 could breathe it five minutes without bursting." 
 
 The first dark fringes of the rabble showed at the top 
 of the hill; straggling, retreating, advancing, like the 
 spine-like antennae of a gigantic insect, whose body was 
 the black mass below the hill. 
 
 A wave of sound came with the crowd, keeping pace 
 with it; a deep murmur pierced by quick orders, broken 
 by strident laughter, more appalling, considering the time 
 and the errand, than a curse. The ringing tramp of 
 footsteps upon the frozen ground beat time to its advance. 
 A vague, indefinable body of sound hung like a cloud about 
 the moving mass. 
 
 The crowd moved in two sections : a compact mass, dark 
 and silent, which held the middle of the street; and a 
 loose, noisy, shifting fringe which hung upon the pave 
 ments. From this latter came the quick patter of women's
 
 228 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 feet the flutter of their gowns the shrill calls and 
 shriller laughter of their voices. 
 
 "Women, too!" muttered Falls. 
 
 Watson had left the window, busied about something 
 within the room. Falls did not see with what, until 
 Hugh's voice called to him guardedly. He held in his 
 hand some garments of strange make and unaccustomed 
 aspect to Falls's eyes. 
 
 " Put on this old hunting-coat of mine, and turn up 
 the collar. And this 'coon-skin cap " 
 
 " Challie," murmured Falls in remonstrance, " don't 
 make an ass of me ! " 
 
 But he put on the coat and the cap. Watson stood by, 
 regarding him, when he was attired, with an odd gravity 
 not unmixed with admiration. 
 
 " Jove, Falls ! " he cried, " how you look the part ! " 
 
 He drew him into the bedroom, turned the light on 
 by the mirror, and pushed Falls in front of the glass. 
 " Do you know what you have on ? " he asked. " That's 
 my father's 'coon-skin cap; he was a captain in the Rac 
 coon Eoughs. No, you would n't, you know! It 's only 
 local history; but" he stroked the cap tenderly 
 " if every one of these absurd rings was a quartered 
 'scutcheon of nobility, I could not be prouder of it than 
 I am!" 
 
 He gazed at Falls's reflection in the mirror; his dark 
 face, his somber eyes, the grave, noble presence of the 
 man, lent itself to the rough garb he wore as noble words 
 to some homely martial ballad. 
 
 " I think you are all right now," he added, as they 
 returned to the window. " If any one notices you, they 
 will take you for one of my Pine Barren constituency."
 
 THE MOB 229 
 
 The scene below had changed when they looked forth 
 again. At the junction of the four streets below the win 
 dow where the two looked down, the crowd had opened, 
 spreading itself like a ragged coverlid upon the open space. 
 Under the arc-light, swung in the center of the space, 
 the whole scene was illumined as if by a noonday sun, 
 except where the shadow of the framework fell. About 
 it men moved here and there, like quick, moving shadows, 
 silently, busily. The crowd was quiet, too; only that 
 indefinable murmur hung like a rustling curtain about the 
 huddled masses; nothing moved except those dark, hurry 
 ing figures about the patch of shadow which lay, like the 
 pupil of a sinister eye, in the white, unwinking stare of 
 the streets. 
 
 In the intense stillness Falls spoke cautiously, pointing 
 downward : " I don't see any gallows or rope ; do 
 you?" 
 
 " Limb of a tree ; over there in the Court-house Square." 
 
 They watched in silence a moment longer; and Falls's 
 hand fell in a grip of steel upon the other man's arm. 
 
 " God in heaven ! Watson, see see what those fiends 
 are doing ! There in that patch of shade ! " 
 
 As Watson strained his eyes into the gloom, a ringing 
 blow of steel on steel smote the night; another and an 
 other in rhythmic accent, as sledge-hammers swung aloft 
 by practised hands smote the head of a stake held upright 
 in the center of the spot of shade. A spike or heavy bar 
 of iron was being driven into the center of that black 
 altar, deep into the frozen ground. And now men seemed 
 to rise from the solid earth to huddle in motionless ex 
 pectancy; while others yet, seeming to drip from that 
 black mass of violence like noisome ooze from some
 
 230 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 putrid body, flitted forward, laden with logs, with pine 
 knots, with empty barrels and boxes. Upon the awful 
 quiet which had fallen like a pall upon the waiting crowds, 
 the homely sound of splitting wood fell sharply. With 
 incredible swiftness a V-shaped pyre arose about the base 
 of the stake. 
 
 " God ! " moaned Falls, his hand gripping hard the sill 
 beside him, his strong teeth set, " is this hell or Dixie ? " 
 
 Down below a pause ensued a question passed from 
 lip to lip; a man ran across the open street and tried a 
 shop-door, tried another, called back something of which 
 the only words audible were, " Bust 'er in ! " 
 
 "Coal oil!" said Watson. 
 
 It was quickly forthcoming. A woman's voice rose 
 shrilly; a woman's form leaned over the low balcony 
 above a small store, in her hand a bright tin can. 
 " He-ah," she drawled, and the strident sound smote to 
 the farthest confines of the waiting crowds, over which a 
 shudder swept, like the dumb moaning of the pines upon 
 a windless day ; " he-ah 's er can er coal ile. I kin he'p 
 erlong that much to burn th' black brute ! " A man 
 climbed up for it, and sped back to the waiting ministers 
 about that black altar of human sacrifice. 
 
 " Come, Gregory," said Watson, his hand on the sash, 
 <jlet 's shut 'er down." 
 
 "No," he said in a hard voice; "no, I '11 see this 
 through. I 've seen all the evil that the sun sets on 
 from Calcutta to the Klondike, but this is the first time 
 the first time " His voice broke in a hard shudder, 
 his strong hand gripping the window shook. 
 
 " Sledge ! " exclaimed Watson, as a dark form, huddled 
 and lurching, held upright by the hands which grasped
 
 THE MOB 231 
 
 him, was thrust between the open ends of the V-shaped 
 pyre ; the ends were closed so that he stood upright against 
 the bar, the heaped wood reaching to his waist. In the 
 hush, the hollow rattle of the chain was heard, turn on 
 turn, binding the victim to the stake. The bright can 
 flashed as it was lifted high; the acrid odor of coal oil 
 filled the air as it was poured over Sledge's huge black 
 form, naked to the waist, in a baptism of hate. 
 
 A faint blue streak pierced the gloom as a man struck 
 a match upon the rough cloth of his trousers, and a thin 
 column of smoke rose ; it widened, swayed here and there ; 
 a blue flame trembled a moment at the victim's knees, 
 turned to rose, then green, and, bursting into a sheet of 
 blinding radiance, wrapped him in a winding-sheet of 
 pure white flame. For one moment, through a rift in 
 the curtain of flame, Sledge's face was seen, heavy, bestial, 
 his dull gaze uplifted in dumb agony and unconscious 
 appeal upward to where the great cross on the spire 
 of the Church of the Brotherhood of Christ shone, alien, 
 among the stars. 
 
 Then from that huddled mass, as from one parched 
 and gasping throat, a hoarse shout rose. A curse, a groan 
 ing prayer, in one. An insensate howl of the brutal lust 
 of blood; one long, fierce imprecation uttered by the in 
 carnate voice of an ancestral hate. It rose upon the star 
 tled night, and sunk to shuddering silence. Rose again, 
 swelling in fierce tumult over the sleeping town; beating 
 in waves of hideous discord against the mountain walls 
 about it, which hastened to join the tumult with hoarse- 
 voiced echo in savage antiphonal. 
 
 The crowd broke, surging more closely about the black 
 pyre, where hung in chains the flaccid body of Sledge,
 
 232 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 without sound or motion, wrapped in a pall of sooty smoke, 
 pierced by leaping tongues of flame. 
 
 No sound, no faintest sign or motion; no prayer, no 
 groan, no curse, had come from behind that black curtain. 
 
 Sledge's soul, like a spark struck vainly in the night, 
 had been quenched by the hand which had lighted its 
 brief candle; reclaimed by the Power which had struck 
 it forth.
 
 XVIII 
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE 
 
 pillar of smoke rose some twenty or forty feet 
 _l_ above the stake, where it encountered a lateral cur 
 rent of the air, and, extending itself, spread like a canopy 
 above the scene, cutting off the diffused light of the stars 
 with a heavy screen of opaque gloom, beneath which the 
 arc-lights glowed with the iridescent brilliance of giant 
 glowworms. 
 
 Falls quietly laid his hand upon his companion. " I 'in 
 going to show you something; don't say anything. Do 
 you see that fellow there, to the left with the piece 
 of white wood in his hand?" 
 
 " Andy Caruthers ! " 
 
 Falls leaned far out, drawing Hugh with him, until 
 they could see down the wall of the building in which 
 they were to the pavement, they themselves being invisible 
 in the gloom. 
 
 It was a corner building of three stories, built of gray 
 stone, with its main entrance upon the pavement just 
 below the window from which the two men leaned. A 
 roomy vestibule led from the street to the entrance door, 
 guarded where it abutted upon the pavement by heavy 
 iron gates, rusty from disuse. 
 
 The creaking of these gates had drawn Falls's eyes 
 downward to rest upon a sight which caused him to start 
 
 233
 
 234 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 with amazement. Half a dozen men were dragging a 
 prostrate form along the ground to this entrance. They 
 had thrust the man within, and swung to the heavy gates 
 before the meaning of the scene had flashed upon Falls. 
 
 Will-Henry ! It was Will-Henry whom they had thrust 
 within the shelter of the doorway for temporary safe-keep 
 ing! More sure was he, as he saw one of the men fling 
 down a coil of rope upon the pavement, selecting one of 
 their number to hold the gate before he, too, sauntered 
 off to join the crowd. 
 
 As they disappeared in the crowds about the stake, Falls 
 called Watson's attention. 
 
 " Look at that fellow they J ve left to guard him. See 
 what he means to do. Ah hah, I thought so ! " 
 
 Caruthers tried the stout billet in his hand across his 
 knee; it resisted; he glanced along its length and, step 
 ping to the gateway, thrust it through the staples, and, 
 turning carelessly, melted into the mass of people who, 
 like iron filings about a magnet, drew inward toward that 
 black pillar of smoke. 
 
 Falls started up, and with a stride reached the corner 
 where he had placed the pistols. As he reached the floor 
 after securing them, Watson stood at his side. Not sup 
 plicating this time. He stood haughtily erect and looked 
 Falls over with a glance of cutting surprise. W T hen he 
 spoke, it was with a formal courtesy. " I thought," he 
 said slowly, "that you were under promise, Mr. Falls? 
 I could not avoid overhearing your conversation with 
 Joan, and I so construed it." 
 
 Falls was counting out the cartridges upon the table 
 into two piles : " Six, I am, Hugh, seven, eight ; 
 this is a plenty. I '11 borrow back my pistol, if you don't
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE 235 
 
 mind, Hugh? It suits my hand, and you can use this 
 one of yours better." He was loading them as he spoke, 
 his deft fingers pushing the little cylinders home with 
 urgent haste. He slipped the surplus cartridges into 
 Hugh's pocket, who paid no heed but stood in haughty 
 silence, waiting Falls's attention and took up his own. 
 
 " The terms of the promise were, Hugh, that I was 
 to stay with you ; not to leave you I am doing that." 
 
 " Sophistry," said Watson quietly, and a flush sprang 
 to Falls's cheek. He did not speak for a second, but when 
 he lifted his glance to Hugh's it was alight with a frank 
 and noble simplicity. 
 
 " Challie," he said, the boyish name coming uncon 
 sciously to his lips, as it had often done of late, " this 
 conflict I 've been fighting it over there for thirty min 
 utes is as old as Adam, and the first woman. How I 
 keep that promise concerns only myself and another. 
 That other will judge, and I will accept her decision." 
 
 He laid Watson's pistol upon the table, took up his 
 own and turned to the door. Watson passed through it 
 at his side. As he did so, Falls thrust an arm through 
 his, and together they made their way down the unlighted 
 passage. Falls turned back from the stairs, rushed into 
 the rooms they had just left, and returned with another 
 pair of glasses, which he thrust upon Hugh. 
 
 " For fear the others should get broken," he panted ; 
 " I don't want you putting a ball in my back ! Hugh, are 
 you on " 
 
 " A-w," said Watson, in bored resignation, " a-w, get 
 out ! I saw Andy five minutes before you did and that 
 coil of rope on the pavement. Yes, I do think it feasible. 
 If I had n't, I should not have budged nor let you.
 
 236 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 What 's ur nigger compared to" the last words came 
 with a rush " to you, Greg ! " 
 
 Watson's suite of rooms extended the whole length of 
 the building, which had a side entrance at the far end 
 opening upon a side street. The halls and stairways were 
 in perfect darkness, as the two young men made their 
 way downward to the ground floor. 
 
 "What did you say was in here, Hugh?" asked Falls, 
 as he bent with a match in his hand to inspect the lock 
 upon the door at the rear end of the ground floor. 
 
 " It 's a warehouse for machinery, hardware, reapers, 
 stuff of that sort " 
 
 " If she 's not full up, so hard against the door it can't 
 be opened, it '11 be the very thing. This is just a plain 
 lock. Stand hack a bit, Challie." 
 
 Falls put his shoulder against the door. The wood 
 strained, the panels sprung, the knob hung loosely in 
 the broken lock, but the door resisted. Outside, dead- 
 -ened by the distance, a deep roar rose, the first sound 
 the mob had made since that initial groan. 
 
 " There is a bar," said Falls. " The jambs must go ! 
 On that side, Hugh. Now, together ! " 
 
 With a splitting crash the facings of the door gave way ; 
 the door itself lurched inward, swayed aside, and fell. 
 
 " If 't was n't for that row outside " panted Hugh. 
 
 " They '11 never hear. Come on or wait. You know 
 where the vault is and the way out. I '11 pass him 
 through to you." 
 
 "Yes; I think he '11 mind me." 
 
 The warehouse was loosely packed with heavy machin 
 ery of all sorts, as Watson had surmised. It was distrib 
 uted without attempt at classification or arrangement, and
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE 237 
 
 Falls made his way with infinite difficulty through it, until 
 his hand, after what had seemed to him an interval of 
 hours, rested upon the lock of the outer door which opened 
 upon the pavement, and behind whose iron gates Will- 
 Henry lay upon the tiled floor of the vestibule. Instantly 
 Falls found the key; the heavy door swung inward on 
 well-oiled hinges without a sound. But he might as well 
 have battered it open with a maul, for all the attention 
 it would have attracted in the uproar without. The crowd 
 had surged across the lighted space to the Court-house 
 Square. Montgomery was speaking from the steps. His 
 voice, pitched to a note of maudlin pathos, pleaded with 
 the mob in behalf of law and order. A line of soldiers 
 came at a quickstep along the open street, and as Falls 
 cast a hurried glance without, a flame sprang across the 
 width of the street, a sharp, simultaneous discharge shook 
 the air; they were firing pointblank at the mob at twenty 
 paces. The mob answered the volley with hoots of deri 
 sion, with yelling laughter, and cries of, " Spitballs ! 
 Spitballs ! " 
 
 Turning upon the line of militia, they closed with the 
 soldiers, wresting their useless guns away; the soldiers, 
 yielding them with laughter, and with hands in their 
 empty cartridge-belts, strolled into the yelling crowd. 
 
 The miserable heap upon the floor at Falls's feet was 
 as insensible as the maddened mob without. Falls leaned 
 without the doorway. Will-Heirry lay almost beyond his 
 reach, but he succeeded in grasping a portion of his ragged 
 clothing, drew him nearer, tightened his grip, lifted the 
 man to his knees, dragged him upright, and drew him 
 within. The door was in the act of closing upon the two 
 when a breathless gasp fell upon Falls's ear; four round
 
 238 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 eyes, bright with mischief, gleamed upon him through the 
 grating, two pairs of ragged shoes scuttled along the 
 pavement. 
 
 " Gee ! " cried a boy's voice from about the level of 
 Falls's trousers-pocket, " ef de 'lectric-light man ain't dun 
 stole dat ar nigger f um de mob ! " 
 
 " Can you stand up ? Do it, then ; don't say a word, 
 just follow me," said Falls to the limp bundle he held 
 upright against the door. 
 
 As though electrified into a new life by the firm grip 
 of Falls's hand, Will-Henry rose and stood erect. Hope 
 filled him like a potent cordial, and he followed nimbly 
 as Falls began his tortuous return, working his way 
 through the masses of heavy freight which lined the space 
 toward the rear of the building where the broken doorway 
 showed, a faint blot of light against the deeper darkness 
 within. 
 
 The noises outside had dropped to a confused blur of 
 sound, broken now by a swift rush of feet upon the hollow 
 pavement, followed by an indistinguishable clamor of pro 
 test by yelling laughter. 
 
 " Those little scoundrels have got it told by this," 
 thought Falls. " There will be a rush to the other end 
 in a minute." 
 
 Hardly had the thought formed itself in his brain when 
 a deeper roar of wrath, of surprise, of vengeance, shook 
 the building. 
 
 Vv'ithin Falls paused, measuring the distance to be trav 
 ersed before the rear door leading up out of the warehouse 
 could be made; he looked down at his trembling charge 
 about to sink at his feet and his grave face broke into 
 a sudden laugh the situation was so utterly prepos-
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE 239 
 
 terous. Outside that savage mob, within two men and 
 this limp fragment of humanity ! 
 
 When the rear door yielded, Falls had half-uncon- 
 sciously picked up the stout bar of iron which had been 
 used to secure it, and carried it in his hand when he 
 opened the door through which he had dragged the negro. 
 With an instinct of caution he had darted without and 
 rammed it hard home through the iron stanchions of the 
 gates into the stonework at the sides. He knew that it 
 would hold unless the solid masonry should be torn away. 
 He did not fear attack in the rear, and he made his way 
 forward through the darkness toward the opening, drag 
 ging Will-Henry with him. His hand, feeling his way, 
 touched Watson on the breast. 
 
 " They '"re at the side door," said Watson calmly, " btft 
 there 's no need to worry ; in that narrow entry, with that 
 sharp turn at the stairs " 
 
 " We '11 just heave a few reapers and things across that 
 opening. Take hold, Watson ! " 
 
 " Here, you 're not taking me for a derrick or some 
 sort of hydraulic lift, are you ? " 
 
 Through the dusk Hugh saw the flash of Falls's white 
 teeth in the laugh with which he answered. Where had 
 gone Falls's repelling gravity and icy reserve ? asked Hugh 
 to himself. Gone Falls was as frankly, as boyishly gay 
 as though he and Watson had been two lads of ten build 
 ing a sand fort across the mouth of a purling stream. 
 
 " That 's a good place for Will-Henry over there under 
 that eight-legged thing." He turned. " Get under ! " he 
 said to the negro, with the peremptory gentleness which 
 he might have used to a favorite setter, and Will-Henry, 
 nothing loath, dived under.
 
 2 4 o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Naw," said Watson, " that won't do ; come out, Billy. 
 You see," he went on to Falls, " Billy has a right to defend 
 his life. Give him a pistol. Now, if shooting has to 
 be done, the three of us shoot together, and, if any 
 damage is done why, 't is Billy did it! Eh, Billy?" 
 
 He turned his brilliant, rallying smile upon the negro, 
 who moved his stiff lips faintly in a heart-sick grin. 
 
 They stood just within the barricade which Falls had 
 reared across the opening, waiting in silence which pieced 
 minute to minute into a lengthening chain of wonder to 
 the men within. They could scarce see one another, and 
 the heavy stone walls of the building deadened the sounds 
 without. Almost would they have thought the mob with 
 drawn, except that about them was that same dim sense 
 of the presence of a mass of living men, a deep breath 
 ing a subdued movement of restless bodies. 
 
 As often happens in moments of intense mental strain 
 or danger, the minds of the three men waiting within 
 muscles strung, forms rigid, senses alert slipped the 
 leash of the present, busying themselves each with some 
 trifle, as a wave waiting to engulf the shore may lick a 
 bright-hued pebble in its path. 
 
 The negro, plucked but a moment since from the noose 
 which lay coiled like a python before his eyes and wait 
 ing to choke the life from out his body, thought only 
 of how hungry he was. 
 
 " Gawd," he moaned, nodding with fatigue and weak 
 ness above the useless pistol in his hand, " Fse shore 
 hongry ! Lawdy, don't I wisht I had er piece er M'lindy's 
 cawn bread an' bakin ur even er 'tater ! " 
 
 Falls looked through the dusk at his two companions 
 with a thoughtful smile. He had noted Watson's uncon-
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE 241 
 
 scious adoption of the name by which he had called the 
 negro in their vanished boyhood. He saw that the years 
 had dropped from them both, like the folds of an encum 
 bering garment; they were boys again on the common 
 back of Hillcrest, playing marbles, punching heads, in the 
 glorious freemasonry of youth. 
 
 Never, in all of his " bawned days " had Will-Henry 
 profaned his freedman's lips by calling any white man 
 master; but in this new stress of fear and desperate mis 
 chance, from the black shadow of the gallows, hereditary 
 instinct woke and answered to the call in both. Watson 
 was " Marst Hugh/' Billy was Watson's " nigger." No 
 blesse oblige! 
 
 " Where are they ! " exclaimed Falls at last, in wonder. 
 Watson glanced about him, without answer, at the heavy 
 stone walls of the unfinished basement (which had been 
 designed for a vault, but was being used as a warehouse 
 pending the completion of the building), at the long, 
 narrow space, finally at the narrow entry the broken 
 doorway. 
 
 " Dey dun gorn fur de baid," said Will-Henry, from 
 out his bitter experience of an hour before. " Dey lef 
 hit at de jail ; 'spects dey gine smoke us out some mo' ! " 
 
 " Sure ! " cried Falls, with sudden enlightenment. 
 " That 's the game, Hugh. But they '11 have to come 
 inside to do it," he added with grim significance. " The 
 wind is straight down that street out there " 
 
 " I see ! " said Hugh, a sudden horror falling on him. 
 What schoolmate friend relation whose well-known 
 form would he see dart across that space, and fall, never 
 to rise again? 
 
 While his mind was yet tense with the horror of the
 
 242 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 thought, across the space where his eyes mechanically 
 rested a soft bulk, propelled by many hands, shot swiftly 
 past the open doorway and wedged itself into the nook of 
 the stairs. There was an odor of sulphur, of tar, a suf 
 focating stench of burning feathers in the air. 
 
 Thrusting Hugh aside as though he had been a child, 
 Falls tugged at the barricade he had erected across the 
 doorway, tearing at the unyielding iron with frantic 
 hands. It had taken the combined strength of himself 
 and Watson to place it there inch by inch, but under 
 Falls's mighty straining it slowly, sullenly gave place, 
 and he sprang through the narrow aperture with a bound 
 to the bundle smoking upon the entry floor He trampled 
 it, kicking the burning parts aside, himself almost invis 
 ible in the suffocating clouds of smoke which filled the 
 space. 
 
 " Do you see that red tile, Hugh ? " he panted, strug 
 gling for breath, his lungs bursting with the foul gases 
 which he had breathed. " There in the entry floor Yes ? 
 Well, whoever lights that bed again will have to pass it. 
 When he does " 
 
 "Yes," said Watson steadily. 
 
 " Can you shoot, Billy ? " asked Hugh, over his shoul 
 der. 
 
 " N"aw, sur, Marst Hugh, not to hit nuthen'." 
 
 " Then, Falls, I 'm the best shot, better let me " 
 
 " ' N-a-w ! ' '' said Falls, in mockery of Hugh's slow, 
 musical drawl, " n-a-w together, like we said." 
 
 The entry was dimly illuminated by the shifting light 
 of the torches carried by the mob, the pine lights flaring 
 bloody-red one moment and sooty-black the next. Under 
 the wavering light the men inside could see the entry
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE 243 
 
 stairs, the black bulk huddled at the bottom, and the red 
 tile gleaming like a sinister pool of blood. 
 
 A cheer outside, the sound of a bounding step upon 
 the tiles ; a lithe form shot within the open doorway from 
 the street, a blazing brand held high above his head, throw 
 ing the man's face into deep shadow; a long coat covered 
 him almost to his feet. 
 
 As his foot touched the threshold of the inner doorway, 
 he stooped toward the bundle and thrust his torch into 
 it. As he did so, two shots rang out upon the air. The 
 man's form shot upward to his full height, wavered, 
 whirled half-round, and fell its full length across the red 
 tile, which seemed to slip away beneath him in a slow 
 stream of blood. 
 
 A second passed ; another slipped by, and another. The 
 man lay still where he had fallen, the lighted pine torch 
 sputtering upon the tiles extinguished in his blood. 
 Within the dark warehouse the three men stood motion 
 less, waiting in an intensity of silence, listening for a 
 sign, a sound to guide them. There was none. 
 
 In the entry outside, the lurid light ebbed slowly, re 
 placed by the steady glare of the arc-light beyond. They 
 could see the motionless figure of the man lying with his 
 cheek upon the cold tiles, as a boy might lie down to 
 sleep after an hour of play. His long coat, dashed aside 
 in his fall, showed that he was in evening dress a jewel 
 sparkled upon his outflung hand. 
 
 " Who can he be ? " thought Falls, and started forward. 
 Watson restrained him, and together they stood listening 
 intently. 
 
 Neither light nor sound now came from without. Was 
 the mob still there? Incredible to think it could be
 
 244 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 g 0ne dispersed as noisome vapor escapes into the open 
 air. 
 
 Their ears, bursting in the silence, caught at last the 
 hushed lisp of cautious footsteps upon the flags, the rustle 
 of garments brushing the walls without a cough, smoth 
 ered hastily a door closed far down the street. Slowly 
 the consciousness grew upon them of emptiness without, 
 even as they had been conscious of the presence of the 
 mob in its silence. 
 
 Gone slipped away, leaving the dead man alone upon 
 the tiles. The second sacrifice offered up upon the altar 
 of lawlessness. A life for a life a soul for a soul. 
 
 " I told you they were the punk of the world ! " cried 
 Falls. 
 
 " Dey dun gorn, Marst Hugh " 
 
 But Hugh was stooping over the dead man and made 
 no reply. Falls bent beside him, raised the boy's limp 
 hand, touched a damp curl upon his brow, bent closer, 
 looked again. 
 
 How strangely familiar the young face seemed! Those 
 straight, chiseled features fast settling into the calm 
 immobility of death where had he seen them? 
 
 "Who is he, Watson?" 
 
 " Lynn Archer Betty's only brother," Hugh answered 
 stonily.
 
 XIX 
 
 HE OB i CHOOSE! 
 
 WATSON" rose at last from where he knelt beside 
 Lynn Archer, turned and called : 
 
 "Will-Henry!" 
 
 " He 's gone, Hugh," said Falls. " I gave him money, 
 told him what to do. He can flag the east-bound train 
 from that embankment out of town. He has a line to 
 Blakeley in New York. Jim will get him off to the 
 Bahamas I have a friend there " 
 
 " No use in that," said Watson wearily. " He 's as 
 safe in Adairville to-day as if he were in his mother's 
 arms. The reaction has set in; he might walk the town 
 all day and not a dog sniff at him ! " 
 
 Falls laid his arm about Watson's neck, speaking low 
 at his ear: 
 
 " What is to do about this lad lying dead there on the 
 tiles ? No need to tell me what this means to you, Hugh, 
 for I know only too well. Will you listen to me ? " 
 
 " No," in the same lifeless tone, the tone of a man 
 whose brain alone is living. " No ; I knew you would 
 try to say it, Falls, but there is no use in listening. 
 I know." 
 
 Falls's voice sunk lower. " No human being knows of 
 your presence here to-night, Watson, or that you had any
 
 246 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 part in this, except that negro; and I have sent him off. 
 He will never return to Alabama." 
 
 " I knew the moment you spoke why you had sent him 
 off, Falls so that I need not show myself in this to 
 let you bear the brunt of it. But there is no legal aspect 
 to this thing," he continued in the same dull tone. " We 
 were upholding the law this poor lad in open violation 
 to it!" 
 
 " I was not thinking so much of the legal aspect ; it 
 is the personal consideration that weighs. Miss Archer's 
 brother Ben Archer's son! Forgive me, Hugh, but 
 have you thought of this in all its aspects how the 
 family may see it?" 
 
 "Aye; in that second when I raised Lynn's head, I 
 saw it all ! " He threw himself wearily upon the stairs, 
 and Falls stood beside him. 
 
 " Now see," he urged, " how simple this is. No faintest 
 shadow of intentional wrong to bring remorse in its train. 
 Why should you suffer? I implore you to be guided by 
 me; let me think for you, act for you in this, Challie. 
 Go back now, up-stairs; I stop here until the coroner 
 comes; only one ball struck Archer. I have only to state 
 that the negro and I fired together " 
 
 " This is not so simple as you think ; the negro did 
 not fire. His pistol lies there, loaded still. True, but 
 one ball struck him; but can you swear that it was your 
 ball?" 
 
 "I I could not swear," said Falls unsteadily; "but 
 I shall not be asked to do so." 
 
 "Do you think I should find any comfort in having 
 sacrificed you, Falls? No; this is between us, we will 
 bear it together; share the mercy of the doubt between
 
 HE OR I CHOOSE! 247 
 
 us, in private, and face the world together. I could not 
 sacrifice you, Falls, not even for " 
 
 He rose wearily. " I must go I must be the first 
 one to see her to tell her ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Falls. " I will stop here." 
 
 The winter dawn stark in the grip of a bitter frost was 
 showing its face, ghostlike, at the window-panes, when 
 Ben Archer wakened to the consciousness of a careful 
 hand upon the door underneath his window tapping in 
 sistently, waiting between each tap to listen for the an 
 swering movement within the silent house. 
 
 " Who is it ? What 's wanted ? Lynn Sonnie is 
 it you?" 
 
 General Evert cleared his throat softly, and Archer 
 started, a thrill of sharp horror gripping him. 
 
 " Bennie," said Evert gently, " it 's me ; come down " 
 
 Archer was already huddling on his clothes; Betty met 
 him in the upper hall, shivering with terror, clinging to 
 him with sobs. 
 
 " Oh, father, father ! Lynn he is not in his room ! " 
 
 Evert came inside, took the candle from the other man's 
 shaking hand, laid his own hand upon the other's shoulder 
 not in tenderness, as Archer, even in this tense moment, 
 knew. It was to steady him under the blow which fell 
 with merciful abruptness. Evert had broken too many 
 hearts to bungle. His method was good : one short, sharp 
 blow straight at the heart's core, that brought the life- 
 blood in its wake. Experience had taught him that they 
 healed best broken thus. 
 
 " Bennie," he said now, without preface, " Falls has 
 shot your son dead ! "
 
 24 8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Well that restraining hand! Old Archer staggered 
 under the blow. 
 
 " Falls ? " he gasped, mechanically drawing his weeping 
 daughter within his arms, " Falls ! " 
 
 Evert briefly recounted the circumstances, without men 
 tion of "Watson, adding in conclusion that there was no 
 redress under the law; Falls had been upholding the 
 Jaw Lynn, with calm directness, violating it. 
 
 After the first burst of Betty's grief had worn itself 
 out to calmness, Archer returned to Evert, and the two 
 old men, friends of a lifetime, sat beside the cold hearth 
 for hours in low-voiced talk. 
 
 "Watson is in the house now," said Evert, as he rose 
 to go. " I saw him go to the sitting-room some time ago. 
 The less she sees of him the better for awhile. The 
 wedding must be postponed, of course, on account of 
 Lynn's death ; that will wean her by degrees What ? 
 Oh, yes, if Hugh consents to give up this man Falls 
 to cast him off ! Lynn's murderer how can he do other 
 wise? . . . Betty's heart? Umph! Let me know if I 
 can do anything else, Bennie." 
 
 Watson had entered the house without knocking, and 
 passed at once to the family room at the back of the 
 house, where he hoped to find Betty or some one to send 
 her a message. 
 
 She was there alone, walking softly back and forth, 
 sobbing to herself, moaning forth Lynn's name as though 
 the boy stood beside her and could answer to that piteous 
 appeal. 
 
 It tore Hugh's heart to hear her. He had not often seen 
 Betty weep. She had her father's cold poise, and rarely, 
 since her childhood, had Watson seen those bright eyes
 
 HE OR I CHOOSE ! 249 
 
 dimmed, had need to comfort her. He went to her now, 
 gathering her close into his arms, holding her silently, 
 his cheek on hers, murmuring words of tenderness, of 
 pity, gathering her hands against his lips, kissing the 
 tumbled masses of her soft dark hair. 
 
 " Oh, Hugh," she sobbed, " my poor, poor boy ! He was 
 mine my own ! I raised him, tended him loved him ! 
 So young, so gay so happy ! And now shot down in 
 cold blood murdered ! " 
 
 Her voice rose hysterically into a passionate wailing 
 appeal to him. " What had he ever done to Mr. Falls ? 
 Why should he vent his spite against Adairville by shoot 
 ing Lynn? the gayest, happiest boy! Nothing in the 
 world but a boy ! " 
 
 " Betty," said Watson at last, and paused, pressed her 
 closer to his breast. Constrained by his tone, the girl 
 raised her face, and Hugh stooped and put his lips to hers, 
 kissing her softly, almost solemnly, before he spoke 
 again. 
 
 "Betty, Falls did not kill Lynn " 
 
 She started, gazing at him with amazed eyes. 
 
 " Falls is no more guilty of your brother's murder 
 if you will call it such than I. We fired together. 
 No human tongue can tell, not Lynn himself if he stood 
 beside us, whose ball killed him. That will never be 
 known until all things are made known in the end." 
 
 " Oh, Challie ! don't try to take the blame, to shield 
 him ! Who on earth would believe it ? " 
 
 Watson drew her to the old-fashioned sofa near the 
 fire. He told her with tenderest patience every detail 
 of the scene, sparing himself not at all. Told of his offer 
 to shoot alone, impressed her with the fact that he was
 
 250 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 himself an unerring shot, Falls but an indifferent marks 
 man; gently leading her, with all the art he had ever 
 used to lead a jury, to take his view of the matter; tried 
 to make her see the merciful probability of doubt, where- 
 from both he and Falls drew comfort. 
 
 She grew calmer as he talked, lay more lightly in his 
 arms, finally withdrew herself entirely from him and sat 
 looking steadfastly in the coals, her eyes dark with tears. 
 
 " This is noble in 3 r ou, Hugh/' she said at last. " I 
 love you for it! But do not hope to deceive us. It is 
 perfectly plain to me. Mr. Falls has avenged himself upon 
 Adairville which hates him and upon us all by mur 
 dering Lynn. He knew the law could not touch him. 
 There were hundreds of men at home in bed why did 
 he have to play the hero? 
 
 "Of course," she added in a tone of quiet assurance, 
 " of course after this you will give Mr. Falls up, Hugh ? " 
 
 Watson moved restlessly. 
 
 " Let me tell you, Betty, the first thing Falls said " 
 
 "No," said she with quiet decision, as she drew her 
 hand from Hugh's grasp. " No, Hugh ; I do not wish 
 to wound your feelings about your friend, if you can 
 call Lynn's murderer your friend, but I never wish to 
 hear his name again. To me, to father, to our friends, 
 he is the murderer of my brother my only brother ! 
 None the less his murderer because the law cannot touch 
 him, and he must go free free to live, when my poor 
 boy Think of it," she cried passionately, beating her 
 soft hands together in impotent grief, "think of Lynn! 
 So happy, so young Oh, Challie, it is hard that I must 
 lose you both ! " 
 
 Watson flung himself upon the floor at the girl's feet,
 
 HE OR I CHOOSE! 251 
 
 drew her hands from her wet eyes, forced her to meet 
 his eyes with her own, which rained bitter tears, unheeded, 
 down her cheeks. 
 
 " What do you mean, Betty, by such madness ? " he said 
 roughly. " Lose me ? Child, I am almost your husband ! 
 You cannot lose me, Betty, save as a wife would lose her 
 husband, by my death or yours ! " 
 
 " We cannot be married, Hugh," she said firmly ; " it 
 it would not be right! Lynn would cry from his 
 grave " 
 
 " Not just now, darling ; not as we had planned, per 
 haps; but after a proper time for mourning " 
 
 " I shall mourn Lynn all my life," she said with pa 
 thetic grief. 
 
 " Betty ! " cried Watson desperately. " My darling, do 
 not try to talk this over at all to-night. When you are 
 calmer " 
 
 " I cannot see you again, Hugh, until this is settled." 
 She spoke with a well-considered decision that sunk into 
 Hugh's soul like lead. 
 
 " Would you " he was beginning passionately, but 
 she took him coolly up. 
 
 " You leave me no choice, do you, Hugh ? It rests with 
 you do not reproach me. You are free to choose be 
 tween the woman whom you say you love " 
 
 "Say I love? God!" 
 
 " and the man who has murdered her only brother ! " 
 
 Watson walked a pace away, and stood looking down 
 into the coals. " Must this decision be made to-night, 
 Betty?" He spoke gently. 
 
 "It is all with you, Hugh," she said coldly. "Until 
 you have made it public that you turn your back upon
 
 252 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 this man, it would not be right for you to come here. 
 Father " 
 
 Watson stood stfill in tense deliberation, his blind eyes 
 on the grate. 
 
 The room was lighted now by the pallid light of the 
 new-born day; it showed Watson's face as pallid as the 
 dawn, in a silent passion of renunciation. 
 
 "Listen, dear, I am going to accept your conditions. 
 I will not see you until I am ready to cast Falls adrift 
 that was it? Answer, Betty! Yes? But listen 
 again, stop sobbing, dear. For six months I have been 
 thinking of you as my wife of myself as your husband ; 
 it is too late to change even if I could. And I cannot. 
 I accept the conditions you impose, since I must, but I 
 hold you mine. No other man " He raised her to her 
 feet, crushing her against his breast, kissed her hair, her 
 eyes, her lips, which turned stubbornly aside from his; 
 bent and whispered one short word low at her ear, and 
 left her. 
 
 Falls put aside his own urgent affairs, postponing his 
 engagements in New York by wire, and lingered day after 
 day at Watson's side. He had no comfort to offer him; 
 Watson had tacitly refused it on that first day, but Falls 
 refused to be rebuffed by his friend's stubborn reserve, 
 although it both wounded and puzzled him it was so 
 unlike Hugh. He clung to his side with dogged tenacity. 
 Days passed with hardly a word between them, and if 
 Hugh drew silent comfort from Falls's strong, warm pres 
 ence always at his side, he gave no sign. 
 
 At his offices, where he plunged with stern resolution 
 into his work, Falls lounged at his side, smoking and read-
 
 HE OR I CHOOSE! 253 
 
 ing. He moved into two of Hugh's suite of rooms, changed 
 his late, irregular hours to suit Hugh's more regular life; 
 made Watson buy a horse, and took him for long rides 
 about the country-side; joined "Watson in a week's hunt 
 ing in the Pine Barrens, where they camped in a lonely 
 log-cabin, with the sound of the airy breakers of the pines 
 beating forever upon the shores of silence in their ears, 
 and hunted all day in the glorious, keen air, with the 
 frozen stubble under their feet and the sunshine like 
 wine in their veins. Watson was a keen sportsman; and 
 the homely life, the breaking fatigue of tramping all day 
 over the stubble, won him by imperceptible degrees back 
 to himself. 
 
 " This is quite respectable weather for an Alabama 
 winter," he said smiling, as he kicked the ice upon a 
 small pond and found that it would hold. " Here 's some 
 ice, Hugh not in a mint julep real ice ! " 
 
 Little by little, in the eternal silences of the pines, Falls 
 slipped off the reserve he wore, like a suit of chain mail 
 under his ordinary manner, and told Watson of his early 
 life ; of the years he had spent in Central America 
 the money he had made there; of his strenuous life since 
 he had been connected with the English syndicate; of t'le 
 enterprises he had set afloat for them in the ends of the 
 world. It was a terse, picturesque sketch of a life full 
 of color, movement, of strong, virile ambitions, of big 
 achievements; a clean, sane record, temperate and calm; 
 untouched by passion, though full of a strong man's keen 
 enjoyment of the pleasures of the world the joy of 
 living. 
 
 They were lounging, tired with the day's work, before a 
 great pile of logs in the cabin chinfhey, while Falls told,
 
 254 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 with thoughtful eyes upon the glow, of some incident con 
 nected with those earlier days. 
 
 " It 's odd, Falls," said Watson, " how little women enter 
 into all this part of your life. Most men living as you have 
 lived Your type of man, too ! How does it happen " 
 
 " I never seemed to care for those irregular entangle 
 ments that men drift into/' Falls said carelessly. He 
 rose, walking restlessly about the cabin, came to the hearth 
 and stood kicking the logs about, staring into the glowing 
 heart of the hickory with somber eyes. 
 
 "What is it, Falls?" asked Watson, without stirring. 
 " Don't get stampeded like that. Say it, man " 
 
 Falls stared down into the heart of the hickory logs. 
 
 " I 've found Rosebud, Hugh," he said at last, quietly, 
 and, as the other started up, a worried frown upon his 
 brow, Falls crossed the space between them, and, drawing 
 his chair beside Hugh's, spoke on with strong cheerfulness. 
 " The evening before we came out here I rode out to 
 Hillcrest to say good-by. Miss Adair had ridden out 
 to the mountain house, and I rode on, hoping to overtake 
 her; but I managed to lose myself in some way, and 
 after a bit of rough riding I stumbled upon that lonely 
 cabin off the road, to the right, I think?" 
 
 "Yes; I know it " 
 
 "Well, she was there Watson, I 've a plan I want 
 you to listen to. Will you ? Let me " 
 
 He went on speaking, earnestly, convincingly, and 
 though Watson had listened reluctantly at first, by degrees 
 his knitted brow lost its harassed frown; he ceased to 
 interpose objections, nodded acquiescence, and when Falls 
 rose at last they separated for the night with a close 
 hand-clasp, a word of thanks from Hugh.
 
 XX 
 
 UNCLE CAD'S WIFE 
 
 ON the morning of the tenth of January, the date set 
 for the sale of the old Adairville Gas Works, under 
 the order of the court, Watson sat in his private office 
 with his stenographer at his elbow, immersed in work. 
 The door to the outer office opened gently; a clerk put 
 in his head : 
 
 " Eleven-thirty, Mr. Watson." 
 
 " All right, Anderson," said Hugh abstractedly. " You 
 have Western Union time?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir!" 
 
 " Hawkins," to the stenographer, " step to the window 
 in the hall and get the town time." 
 
 " Twenty-nine to twelve," the report came back. 
 " They 're together to-day, have been all day," the man 
 supplemented. 
 
 Watson plunged back into his dictation for twenty min 
 utes longer without break or hitch. He rose then, and, 
 taking his hat, passed into the street on his way to the 
 court-house, where the sale had been called for twelve 
 o'clock, noon. 
 
 It was but a step from Hugh's office to the court-house ; 
 he had but to cross the street and traverse the tiny park 
 surrounding the building, and he walked leisurely in that 
 direction. 
 
 255
 
 256 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 The proverbial January thaw had succeeded the clear 
 cold of the preceding weeks, and a sky of deceitful fair 
 ness fawned overhead. Watson walked slowly, absorbed in 
 a double train of thought which had possessed him all 
 day, the same perplexing tangle, so familiar, so inex 
 tricable! Falls and his affairs the sale of this old 
 gas company which he was on his way to bid in for Falls, 
 and thereby break the back of the new company organized 
 to fight him for the contracts were uppermost ; under 
 neath, and held resolutely in check, was a flood of half- 
 sad, wholly bitter reflections. To-day was to have been 
 his wedding-day ! He turned his head as he came in line 
 with the street, half-way down which stood the house he 
 had fitted up for Betty; it stood closed and empty amid 
 its green lawns. 
 
 Hugh crushed back a quick sigh as he stepped upon the 
 path leading through the Court-house Square; as he did 
 so, the, nrst calm stroke of twelve was announced by the 
 clock overhead in the tower with silvery distinctness. 
 
 Watson snatched his watch from his pocket, consulting 
 it with startled eyes, and with amazement too deep for 
 exclamation. The walk from his office could not have 
 consumed more than five minutes. When he came to 
 himself he was mechanically counting the strokes as he 
 strode, regardless of admonitory signs, straight across the 
 green to the steps. 
 
 " Ten, eleven, twelve ! " fell with calm impressiveness 
 upon his ear. Watson was no longer startled ; a burning in 
 dignation had supplanted every other feeling in his breast. 
 
 With his watch still in his hand, taking the stairs at 
 two bounds, he reached the upper landing just as a party 
 of half a dozen gentlemen reached it from the flight above.
 
 UNCLE CAD'S WIFE 257 
 
 There was laughter, congratulations, a note of scarce re 
 strained triumph in the voices which fell upon his ear. 
 
 Hallett and General Evert met him a second later. 
 
 " That you, Hugh ? " asked General Evert, and Hugh 
 calmly opined that it was. " You 're just too late fur the 
 sale. Thought we 'd have to bid erginst Falls and his 
 English millions. Heard he 'd left you particular orders 
 to 'double up any little local concerns 5 " 
 
 " The doubling up will be in order later, General ! Ah, 
 Tony step this way a minute. Good morning, gentle 
 men." 
 
 He drew Judge Cruikshanks aside. 
 
 "Were you present when this sale was made, Tony?" 
 
 " No," said Cruikshanks carelessly. " I 'm merely pass 
 ing through the building to my office. What 's wrong with 
 the sale?" 
 
 " I did not say anything was wrong. My watch was 
 a little behind or the clock a little ahead." He looked 
 piercingly at him. " The sale was published for twelve 
 o'clock, noon. Eleven fifty-five is not counted noon in 
 the Tenth Judicial Circuit, is it?" 
 
 " The Tenth Circuit is n't run by your watch, Watson," 
 said Tony, with judicial aspect. 
 
 " No ? " said Watson coolly. " That 's a good deal of a 
 pity, too. It might be a trifle more honestly administered 
 if it were." 
 
 The two men looked each other keenly in the eyes for 
 a second; Hugh's gaze significant, Cruikshanks's blandly 
 impervious to any meaning which the other sought to drive 
 into that shrewd mind behind the gold-rimmed glasses. 
 
 " Got the new circuit licked into shape yet, Tony ? " 
 asked Hugh, as he turned to leave the building.
 
 258 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " About," the other answered, with a sudden tightening 
 of his loosely hung, sensitive lips, the lips of a sybarite. 
 
 " That talk about the unconstitutionality of the Moody 
 bill fizzled out, did n't it?" 
 
 " I can't say," said Tony, calmly non-committal. " You 
 are better qualified to give an opinion upon that than any 
 man I know. What do you think " 
 
 "I have n't had time to look into it yet. Pleasant 
 weather after the freeze." 
 
 Hugh's eyes were gleaming with laughter as he took 
 his disconcerted way back to his office. 
 
 " D them ! " he cried heartily. " D this whole 
 
 rotten Tenth Circuit ! ' Can't say,' indeed ! He 's holding 
 his breath for fear some one will put up a test case. Well, 
 my blooming judge, you are going to say shortly." 
 
 He sent Falls a note in his own beautiful, formal writ 
 ing, so oddly uncharacteristic of the man and of the text 
 of the note itself. 
 
 " Falls," he began with curt informality, " I '11 pay for your 
 ticket here and back if you will come down to Alabama and 
 kick me from the river to the Gulf and back again. I Ve lost 
 you the gas works. I let Hallett and Tony Cruikshanks beat me, 
 I '11 be hanged if I did n't ! For the moment they are on top ; 
 but it is only for the moment, dear fellow 1 Don't worry and 
 don't cuss. Say that terrible oath of yours, that New England 
 one 'Jiminy' and let it go at that. The thing was done 
 by a dirty an unspeakably dirty piece of fraud, perfectly 
 simple and perfectly effective for the moment. Come on 
 home for Alabama is your home you have only your clothes 
 and your brains in New York ; your heart 's in Dixie. And a 
 man's home is where his heart is, and latitude and longitude and 
 mother tongue may go to the devil 1 
 
 " WATSON."
 
 UNCLE CAD'S WIFE 259 
 
 January slipped away, and when at last from the win 
 dow of the car Falls's eyes fell upon the long, purple wall 
 of the Cumberlands again, Spring stood a-tiptoe there 
 and blew kisses from her warm mouth, sweet with 
 the odor of growing things, adown the valley of the 
 Tennessee. 
 
 Falls leaned out of the window, and the buoyant air 
 beat in his face, vital with the smell of the fresh-turned 
 soil in the fields. How familiar had grown that long line 
 of mountains against the sky! Behind that purple wall 
 lay Dixie and Joan ! 
 
 A thousand heretofore unconsidered sights and sounds 
 welcomed him. A deep thrill stirred within him. This 
 long, green valley paved with the silver river those 
 misty, dim blue mountain walls this wooing air this 
 was Dixie, and Dixie was home! 
 
 Watson was at the station, and even in that first hand 
 clasp Falls saw that he was thinner, his dark cheek 
 blanched as from overwork or confinement. 
 
 " The screw is on somewhere too tight," he thought. 
 " Is it work or Miss Archer ? " A shadow drifted across 
 his own sunny mood as he remembered. 
 
 "Your rooms are all ready," said Hugh as they 
 alighted at the door. " Lacey almost had nervous pros 
 tration getting them ready." 
 
 Watson sat down upon the table uneasily. " I 've been 
 studying how to break it gently to you, Greg." Falls 
 turned swiftly to him. " The fact is, I 've got to leave 
 you alone to-night. I 'm stopping at the mountain house 
 with Joan and Uncle John; and Uncle John is away 
 to-night; Joan is alone " 
 
 " Darn you ! " said Falls caressingly. " I thought **
 
 2 6o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 "I know what you thought. I am going on to that 
 now. I '11 give you the facts in short order/' 
 
 "Just so I know how we stand " 
 
 "We stand pat! Cruikshanks confirmed the receiver's 
 report of that rotten sale ; he would, of course ; he had to. 
 But he trembled in his socks while he did it. It '11 cost 
 him his newly found dignity of judge. Why, Falls, the 
 thing smelled to heaven ! I excepted to Tony's confirma 
 tion of the sale, of course, through Littlesmith he was 
 the heaviest creditor yes, you know him. It took me 
 some time to get it through him he could not see where 
 Tony had jurisdiction. The court sits conjointly as a 
 chancery court; it was all regular, that part. I appealed 
 it on two clauses, fraudulent sale and the unconstitution 
 ally of the Moody bill creating this new circuit. In real 
 ity no such thing as a Tenth Judicial Circuit exists in 
 Alabama. Tony and his court are the stun* that dreams 
 are made of." 
 
 Hugh laughed with keen enjoyment. " There '11 be 
 darkness upon the face of the waters, and men's hearts 
 failing them for fear, before they 're done with all this ! " 
 
 "And the end?" asked Falls, rather lost. 
 
 te We '11 be exactly where we were before Hallett and 
 the General got their deal through; and they J ll be out 
 what they paid Tony. The Tenth Judicial Circuit will 
 be non est 'a portion and a parcel of the dreadful 
 past!'" 
 
 " Most extraordinary state of tilings ! " murmured Falls. 
 
 "A-w, naw," said Hugh calmly, "not at all. Logical 
 result of given causes. The Legislature is full of young 
 asses from the Pine Barrens and the hill counties what 
 d' you expect ? The journals of the House and the Senate
 
 UNCLE CAD'S WIFE 261 
 
 show that the Moody bill passed the House ripping, and 
 went on to the Senate; the Senate committee reported 
 back with a substitute for the bill, and the Senate adopted 
 the substitute with two amendments tacked to the sub 
 stitute and sent it back. Then the young asses bucked ! 
 The thing went to a conference committee, which decided 
 that the Senate should recede from the amendments. This 
 report was adopted by the House, and it was all serene. 
 But and here 's the tangle by some incredible piece 
 of stupidity the House failed to pass the substitute as 
 passed by the Senate. Tableau! The bottom drops out 
 of the Tenth Judicial Circuit; Tony takes a seat 'way 
 back in the bottomless circuit ! " 
 
 " Leave Tony alone ! " said Falls with a laugh. " Where 
 do we come in? What 's my cue?" 
 
 " The sale of the insolvent gas company will be set 
 aside if the Supreme Court quashes this Moody bill, 
 and it will and you can double up the Cumberland Gas 
 Company's bids at your leisure. This time" he was 
 smiling back at Falls from the door " this time I pro 
 pose to bivouac upon the court-house steps for a few days 
 previous to the new sale, so as to be in on time. Good 
 night. Any message for Joan?" 
 
 " Get out ! " Falls admonished him gently. " I '11 do 
 my own talking ! " 
 
 Watson, at the mountain house, spent a lonely evening 
 as it turned out. Milly Ann met him on his arrival, 
 handed him a tiny note from Joan, pleading headache 
 could he dine alone? . . . Too bad not to see him. 
 . . . Would be down later. . . . 
 
 " Tell her not to bother about me, Milly Ann. Yes, I '11 
 dine now. Who was in that carriage I met going down ? "
 
 262 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Miss Jone's Uncle Cad's wife " 
 
 " Mrs. Allen ? " He pondered. " And Joan in tears. 
 Of course she 's crying ! " He groaned in half -humorous, 
 half-angry protest. 
 
 That afternoon Joan had flown lightly down to meet 
 Mrs. Allen's carriage when it drew up at the gallery steps, 
 joyously greeting the older woman. 
 
 " The very id-e-a of your coming all the way out here 
 to see me ! How p-e-rfectly delightful ! " 
 
 " Yes," agreed the other, sighing and panting, her deep, 
 indistinct guttural seeming to proceed from the nether 
 most fold of her series of chins ; " yes, child ; I had to 
 come to see what you are doing 'way out here alone. It 's 
 not proper, Joan, for a girl like you " 
 
 " Oh, Aunt M'Liza ! " cried Joan, pathetically gay, 
 "don't, pl-e-a-se don't chaperone me out here! There 
 is n't a single thing in the w-i-de world out here in the 
 woods but jay-birds and ground squirrels." 
 
 " What do you do when young men come to call ? " 
 
 " They don't come ; and father is here, and Hugh. . . . 
 Poor Hughie ! " 
 
 " Yes, you mean about Betty ? It 's probably a blessing 
 in disguise. I never could see what Hugh found in Betty. 
 And now she 's rejected him " 
 
 " She has not rejected him ! " cried Joan hotly. 
 
 " because of his stubborn refusal to give up this man, 
 Falls. Your Uncle Cad said to me last night, ' 'Liza,' said 
 he, ' I 've never known anything like Watson's defiant at 
 titude about this man Falls.'" She dropped her subject, 
 giving the odd effect of letting it slip away from her, grop 
 ing for it, as it were, and grasping it again in another place- 
 
 " Your Uncle Cad saw this man Falls in New York "
 
 UNCLE CAD'S WIFE 263 
 
 "Yes?" said Joan, with a rising inflection. "Did n't 
 you say you wanted one of Phyllis's kittens, Auntie? 
 There are four. The most ec-stat-ic creatures! with sap 
 phire eyes, and rose-leaf ears, and tails too pointed for 
 anything " 
 
 " Don't talk to me about kittens, Joan ! Your Uncle 
 Cad sent me out here " She paused, her heavy, kindly 
 face perplexed. Her subject had eluded her again; she 
 dived for it, coming to the surface a little out of breath. 
 
 " Did John ever tell you that I was your mother's best 
 friend?" 
 
 "Yes," said Joan softly, "yes, he has, Auntie lots 
 of times ! " 
 
 Joan was softly stroking her hand between her own. 
 
 That slippery subject which she could not hold was 
 gone again. Presently she came up in a new place. 
 " You 're nearly twenty, are you not, Jo ? " 
 
 " I '11 be twenty in August, Auntie." 
 
 " You are old enough to know that there is sin in the 
 world and coarseness ; that there is vile wickedness, and 
 that men are not always just what they er " 
 
 A flood of scarlet poured over the girl's face. 
 
 " Father," she murmured piteously, " Father does not 
 want me to know to hear such things ! " 
 
 The older woman took her hands firmly within her own, 
 baring the tender face, the agonized eyes, to her loving, 
 searching gaze. 
 
 " Men never want us to know, dear," she said ; " but 
 for all that we have to know. Your Uncle Cad saw this 
 Mr. Falls in New York. He was in a carriage with Eose- 
 bud. She was tricked out to kill. He took her away from 
 here with him."
 
 264 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 As though a shot had pierced her heart, the girl sprang 
 upward, wrenching her soft hands from the other's grasp, 
 facing her, standing erect, with limbs which trembled al 
 most too much to keep the slender figure at its proud 
 poise; a tense line deepened between her brows, under 
 which her eyes shone coldly gray, devoid of the tender 
 color they wore at other times. Mrs. Allen started. 
 
 " I am too late too late ! " she murmured. " She loves 
 him this man ! " 
 
 " Why do you tell this this horror to me ? " said the 
 girl at last, her level tones quivering under the strain she 
 put upon herself. " Tell Uncle Cad to take his confidences 
 to those who need them! . . . No! no! not if my own 
 mother rose from her grave and stood before me would 
 I listen ! What more can there be ? " 
 
 She half-turned away from the woman standing with 
 agitated face beside her. "Your work is done, Auntie; 
 you might as well go." She paused, as though she was 
 not just certain of what she had said. 
 
 " I am a little busy to-day." She passed bravely to the 
 door, opened it with unsteady fingers, and passed quietly 
 to her own room, closing the door against the world. 
 
 Below, in the town, Falls was dropping to sleep, tired 
 from his journey, a thought like a full-blown rose linger 
 ing at the half-closed door of his consciousness: 
 
 " To-morrow 1 I '11 see her to-morrow ! "
 
 XXI 
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN WKO CAN TELL? 
 
 "mO-MORROW," Falls had promised himself, and the 
 
 JL next afternoon saw him in the saddle on the long 
 ride out to the mountain house. From the brow of the 
 hills behind Hillcrest the crumpled ranges lay before him, 
 fold on fold, veiled in a curtain of rainy mist which was 
 lifted here and there upon a lance of sunlight, so that its 
 lacy edges just brushed the hilltops; though elsewhere 
 it trailed heavily, sinking into the sinuses among the 
 crumpled folds, where it lay like still lakes of burnished 
 water. 
 
 " Seven weeks ! " Falls tightened Joe's rein, and his 
 horse sped on. He had not seen Joan since the night of 
 the Dixie Club ball, and he had carried with him through 
 those busy weeks in New York the memory of her face 
 as he had seen it in the last turns of the waltz. 
 
 Milly Ann met him at the gallery steps, sedately spec 
 ulative. " Miss Jone ain't here ; she dun gorned er way/' 
 she vouchsafed Falls, her face as void of expression as 
 that of a black india-rubber doll ; her voice seeming to be 
 released by means of a string pulled somewhere in her 
 economy, ceased abruptly when the cord flew back. She 
 offered no enlightenment as to the vague location implied 
 in " dun gorned er way." 
 
 Falls interpreted it to mean that Joan was in town 
 
 265
 
 2 66 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 shopping or visiting, and was getting out his card-case 
 with blank disappointment, when a voice which he seemed 
 dimly to remember hailed him from the back of the house, 
 and Lethe's substantial presence, with "Ad-lade" upon 
 her ample arm, bore down upon him in beaming welcome. 
 
 " Howdy, His'r Falls ! Is yu' dun f urgit Lethe an' 
 Ad-lade?" She set the unsteady little creature down 
 upon the gallery floor. " G' long, nigger, and see Mis'r 
 Falls! He de Yankee gemmem what rode yer." 
 
 Unmindful ' of Hilly Ann's horrified eyes sternly re 
 garding Lethe's " f or'ardness," she pushed the little thing 
 toward Falls, who touched her gently with his riding-crop, 
 and, stooping, opened her tiny brown fist and put a coin 
 into the little puckered palm, which instantly closed upon 
 it. Ad-lade's lips slowly widened, showing two rows of 
 pearls and a tiny red tongue. Two great dimples, rising 
 like bubbles upon the surface of a pond, appeared in her 
 soft brown cheeks. 
 
 Lethe gave Milly Ann a defiant glance, openly flouting 
 that demure damsel, blandly assuming herself the role 
 of hostess. 
 
 " Is yu' dun corned to see Hiss Jone ? Case if yu' 
 is " 
 
 "I know," said Falls. "Hilly Ann has just told me 
 she is out." He handed to Hilly Ann three cards as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " Dey ain't no use in yu' leavin' no 'scriptions, les'n 
 yu' jist er doin' hit fur style," said Lethe with kind offi- 
 ciousness. " Hiss Jone ain't nowhere but down the cliff 
 paf. She 's jist er setting dere er readin' in her book." 
 With a last triumphant glance at the discomfited Hilly 
 Ann.
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN 267 
 
 " Yu' Lethe ! " whispered Milly Ann in a loud aside, 
 "w*at yu' dun tole 'im de way down dere fur? Miss 
 Jone J s hidin' fum him ! " 
 
 But Falls was already out of hearing. He struck into 
 the path which wound along the cliff wall, and in twenty 
 steps the house was lost to view, the stillness of the moun 
 tain solitudes about him. On one side lay the narrow, 
 green cleft of Lost Cove three hundred feet below him, 
 on the other a tangle of vines lashing together the under 
 growth of sumach and oak scrub, which hid Joan from 
 him where she sat in a niche of the rocks. She wore a 
 long box coat and a boyish red cap, from which her bright 
 hair strayed about her face. An open book lay upon her 
 lap, unheeded, while she read instead with dreaming eyes 
 the pallid curtain of the mist drawn across the nearest 
 ranges seeming to mark with a solid wall the end of the 
 earth. A stone slipped under Falls's foot, and bounded 
 off with a crash into the nether world of clouds and sway 
 ing tree-tops. 
 
 Joan started up, looking back along the path with 
 startled eyes. Falls called to her, striding recklessly 
 forward, sending a shower of stones down into the still 
 depths. 
 
 " Wait ! I 'm coming down there ! " 
 
 She rose and came a few steps along the path toward 
 him, carrying a sleeping kitten upon her arm, followed 
 by a yawning, shivering, sleek-coated fox-terrier, who, with 
 cocked ears and twitching nostrils, considered Falls with 
 grave suspicion as he advanced ; decided that he was 
 nearly up to the mark; sniffed his leggings with reserve; 
 looked upward to his face archly, and, abandoning the last 
 pretense of disapproval, this was a man after a fox-
 
 268 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 terrier's own heart, leaped upon him with a shrill bark 
 of welcome. 
 
 "Bob- White," remonstrated Joan, "don't be so so 
 demonstrative. How do you do, Mr. Falls?" She gave 
 Falls her hand as she spoke or did she give it? Only 
 for one second did it touch his palm; before his eager 
 grasp could close upon it, before he knew that he had 
 touched it, it had slipped away from him. 
 
 " Shall we go up ? ... Certainly, I prefer it here, too. 
 And it is quite mild; this is the loveliest month of our 
 spring." 
 
 Joan's eyes as she talked rose no higher than Falls's 
 breast; they rested level with the spot where his riding- 
 coat was buttoned, though his eyes, warm and eager, 
 sought hers. She wore about her the serene composure 
 which he had scarce seen since he had met her first, 
 Then it had seemed to him a graceful garment draping, 
 but not concealing, a sweet frankness beneath. To-day 
 she wore it as a suit of chain mail, delicate as silk, flexible 
 as leather, imperviable as armor. 
 
 Falls struggled silently to regain his poise under his 
 strong recoil of surprise and pain. He sat beside Joan 
 on the bench among the rocks, stroking mechanically, 
 with an unconscious hand, the fox-terrier's head as it 
 lay upon his knee; gazing sometimes on that sleek 
 little head with loving, dozing eyes, sometimes upon the 
 wall of mist. Was it really in front of him or was it 
 not a dull, blank curtain across his own brain, cutting 
 off the past ? 
 
 !< Yes," Falls heard himself saying at last, with an even 
 ness which amazed him, " yes, New York is perfectly 
 beastly in February and March. I 'm rapidly becoming
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN 269 
 
 a sybarite about my weather. Dixie has spoiled me. To 
 think of sitting out-of-doors in February ! " 
 
 But even as he called attention to its mildness, he was 
 conscious that it was cold here at the verge of the cliff, 
 and turned with mechanical courtesy to the woman at 
 his side. 
 
 " Is n't it too cold for you, Miss Adair ? Let me " 
 
 His tone had only the coolest of conventional solicitude ; 
 his careless glance swept over the girl with courteous in 
 difference as he rose to draw about her the rug upon which 
 she sat. He did not touch her, he did not even linger 
 as he drew the folds about her, but Joan sat as though 
 turned to stone, a look of cold repugnance growing upon 
 her face. It seemed as if every fiber of her being, mind 
 and soul, shrunk from the lightest contact with him. 
 
 Already in Falls's soul the gates of pain had been shut 
 down, locked, and barred ; and though he read Joan's atti 
 tude with an amazement too deep for words, he did not 
 betray his knowledge of it by the slightest sign. When 
 he seated himself again he took possession of a flat rock 
 in front of her. 
 
 His words came with an animated readiness that rather 
 amazed Falls himself, and strung the girl to keener emu 
 lation. He had accepted the challenge of her changed 
 manner with a steady courage, meeting her with a tact 
 calmer, more perfect than her own. She was conscious 
 of a sharp pang of resentment; a mad impulse to give 
 voice to the agony which was bursting at her own heart. 
 She had expected she scarce knew what. Some little, 
 little sign at least that he felt a kinship to her own anguish 
 that much she might have. But there had been none; 
 only at the first moment, when her hand had slipped from
 
 2 ;o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 his, had she been conscious of the shock which had thrilled 
 him; but now the stone upon which he sat was not more 
 unmoved than he, as he waited a fitting moment to take 
 his leave. 
 
 Bob-White, asleep upon the rug at Joan's side, missed 
 Falls from his place; he stirred uneasily, yawned re 
 proachfully at him, looked sheepishly at Joan, tenderly 
 at Falls, licked Joan's hand in fawning apology, rose, 
 slunk across to Falls, and leaped upon his knee. 
 
 As their eyes met in a smile, a rush of color swept over 
 Joan's face. It was the first time that her eyes had met 
 his fully; he had had only fleeting glimpses behind those 
 perplexing lashes, and he started, striving to hold them 
 with his own. Her lips smiled as she rose, cuddling the 
 sleeping kitten against her breast. 
 
 "You need not apologize," she said to the dog; "you 
 may follow Mr. Falls back to town if you like. Puckie 
 and I will go in to the fire and go to sleep upon the rug, 
 and Puckie will have chicken bones for supper ; and you " 
 she stroked the sleek, small head making eager, depre 
 catory motions toward her, even while the little wriggling 
 body pressed itself closer and closer to Falls's breast 
 "you will have the ashes out of Mr. Falls's pipe." 
 
 " Don't asperse my character," said Falls with a smile, 
 as he rose to gather up the rugs and books scattered 
 about, holding the little dog in his arm, " and don't 
 grudge me my place in Bob's heart if I have one 
 there." 
 
 " I do not grudge you it," she told him with her 
 gentle aloofness, which was not coldness, but the stu 
 dious kindliness which courtesy accords in the case of 
 unconsidered acquaintances. "And to show you that I
 
 do not, I will give Bobby to you, if you like, for your 
 own." 
 
 " Really ? " cried Falls, his face alight with pleasure. 
 " You are willing for me to have him ? " 
 
 "If Bobby wants to go; if he likes you best/"' 
 
 Falls looked down at the little dog dozing against his 
 bosom. 
 
 " We had better be sure he knows his own mind ; I '11 
 set him down and let him choose between us." 
 
 Bob-White, suddenly roused from his warm dream of 
 chicken bones and chops, stood in the path shivering 
 piteously, looking from one to the other of these arbiters 
 of his fate, with wrinkled brows and alert ears. 
 
 "Bobby, honey," said Joan, regarding the unhappy 
 Bob-White torn with the pangs of indecision. His loyal 
 dog's heart was with Joan every higher ideal of his 
 little soul, every conception of his mind set upon this man 
 this glorious creature in leggings, with a horse and a 
 strong, firm, warm hand to stroke one; and at whose 
 manly heels one could trot, the envied of all other fox- 
 terriers. 
 
 " Bobby, honey, the issue of your life is before you, 
 ' Look on this picture and on this ' ! " 
 
 " Now don't," said Falls, " don't bias his little mind 
 like that. If this thing is to turn upon a point of looks, 
 why, I '11 withdraw from the contest." 
 
 " What do you suppose he 's basing his decision upon, 
 if not looks ? If I thought he was such a mercenary little 
 wretch as to be weighing his chances of chops ' 
 
 " They know," said Falls slowly. " God gave dogs and 
 women an added sense which tells them whom to trust. 
 Dogs" he paused a mome.nt "dogs are wise enough
 
 272 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 to obey it, and so find their happiness where God meant 
 them to find it " The sentence lapsed; he made no 
 effort to take it up. 
 
 Bobby still stood in the path, forgotten by the arbiters 
 of his fate, whose eyes had met at last in the glance which 
 Falls had hungered for. He had it now. Eeproach? 
 could it be reproach? But a happy thought had come to 
 Bobby. Stupid not to have thought of it before! Com 
 promise have his cake and eat it, too ! He ran to Falls 
 and, grasping a strap of his legging, sought to draw him 
 to Joan; then to Joan in mad haste, and tugged at her 
 long coat, with backward, imploring gaze on Falls. And 
 back again to him. 
 
 " No ! no ! Bob," said Falls, bending to stroke him, 
 " this is not a compromise measure. I I could not 
 palter with love ! " He spoke so low that the girl could 
 scarce hear him. " It must be ' all in all or not at all ' ! " 
 
 He looked up after a moment, smiling. " This must 
 be an assisted fate. Bob can't make up his mind. I have 
 one advantage over you, Miss Adair." 
 
 "What is that, pray?" 
 
 " I can whistle." 
 
 "Why, so can I," indignantly. 
 
 "All right," coolly, "you may have the first go. Call 
 him whistle to him." 
 
 Joan drew her lovely mouth together in the shape of 
 a kiss, looked a little blank, tried again, blushed, laughed. 
 
 "Why er!" 
 
 " You 've had your go." Falls gave a low whistle, and 
 Bobby bounded to him, leaped upon him, clawing his way 
 upward to his arms, and covered Falls's cheek with an 
 ecstasy of kisses from a warm, red tongue.
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN 273 
 
 "After that demonstration, I make you a title," mur 
 mured Joan. 
 
 Falls went inside with Joan to unburden himself of 
 the rug and books he carried. The storm which had been 
 brooding all day in the mountains had come rapidly at 
 last, and the first heavy drops were falling upon the gal 
 lery floor as they crossed it. 
 
 " You must wait, Mr. Falls/' said Joan courteously ; 
 " storms in the mountain this time of year are so dan 
 gerous." The dusk hid her eyes from him, but in her 
 voice was the same gentle, cool abstraction, as colorless as 
 the mist rolling in upon them. Falls set his teeth in 
 a momentary sharp wrestle with himself. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, his tone as even as her own, " I 
 have a business engagement at seven; I must get down." 
 
 At the same moment Judge Adair came forward from 
 the hall to greet them; kissed his daughter, gave his 
 hand to Falls. 
 
 " You will stop for the night, Mr. Falls," he said with 
 courteous decision. " These spring storms in the hills are 
 not to be tampered with timber, you know I insist. 
 We could not have you leave us in this storm. Joan " 
 The storm, which had come on apace, had darkened the 
 hall so rapidly that Judge Adair had not seen her slip 
 away; but Falls had marked it; it gave more firmness 
 to his demurrer. 
 
 " Listen ! " said the old man, and held up his hand 
 with a smile. The wild rush of the rain outside, like white 
 horses trampling the lawn, the booming of the distant 
 cannonade of the wind in the heavy timber, the sullen roll 
 of thunder behind the peaks, offered an irrefutable argu 
 ment against him. Falls acquiesced. Yet to the man's
 
 274 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 sore pride, his anguish of doubt and longing, the enforced 
 nearness to Joan under her roof, her father's hand upon 
 his arm, was a trial scarcely to be borne. Falls thought 
 with dismay of the quiet, lamplit evening before him; 
 the homelike hearth, the tender intimacy, they three about 
 the shining board; of the girl's averted eyes which never 
 would meet his own, her ready tongue which made cour 
 teous effort to entertain him, her soft voice, solicitous for 
 his comfort. . . . 
 
 " This is my Castle of Indolence," the old man was 
 telling him, with a gentle laugh, when at last Falls dragged 
 himself from his bitter musing. " I come here to escape 
 the courts and the lawyers. Inside these doors folks rest, 
 whether they like it or no. Up here, the hour before 
 dinner is sacred to repose napping, you know. Will 
 you go to your room, or rest in the library here?" He 
 drew Falls to the open doorway. Within was the cosy 
 calm of the evening hour; curtains drawn, a gleaming 
 hearth, the subdued light of reading-lamps which shed 
 a clear glow downward, leaving the room in gloom. 
 
 " Here, I think," said Falls with a smile. " It would 
 be a restless mind indeed which could not find repose 
 here!" 
 
 But when Judge Adair had left him, he did not seek 
 it. He paced the quiet room with restless feet, hearken 
 ing to the hoarse whoop of the wind in the gorge as to 
 the voice of a comrade. He was not thinking, merely 
 struggling among the breakers of feeling. He fought, 
 as strong men fight, against his love as against a chain 
 which galled him; holding down with resolute will the 
 angry, baffled pain which swelled his sore heart to burst 
 ing, as he would have held down some savage creature
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN 275 
 
 with whom he wrestled. Why did he suffer so? Fool! 
 When all along he had known it must come to this. It 
 had been madness, folly, to dream it could be otherwise. 
 She was of the place, the people who hated him, whom 
 he hated. At first ah, at first had she loved him, 
 even then? . . . Could he blame her did he? No. It 
 had been too strong for her that was all. What was 
 a woman's frail purpose against God's meaning, working 
 in her like a knife? 
 
 He flung himself into the dark corner of a couch and 
 gave himself to the mingled sweetness and pain of the 
 memory of the Dixie ball to futile questioning. Again 
 he felt Joan tremble in his arm, saw her sweet face 
 blanched with pain pain for him! Falls hugged the 
 thought for a brief moment, then thrust it fiercely from 
 him again. 
 
 Suddenly, and without a warning sound, a woman's 
 form showed against the lighted hall beyond, as she 
 peered into the dusky room. 
 
 " Jo ! " said Betty's voice. " A-w, Joan ! Why, where 
 on earth is everybody ? I 've had my nap " 
 
 She came into the room, and Falls rose from his dark 
 corner to meet her. 
 
 " Miss Adair is resting, I think, Miss Archer." He 
 spoke quietly, fearing to startle her, but his thoughtfulness 
 was wasted. As though a trumpet had sounded in her 
 ear, the girl started back; her eyes hardening with anger 
 to gleaming sapphires, she gazed at Falls, a wordless ques 
 tion on her lips. 
 
 " You did not know that I was here ? The storm has 
 detained me." He turned the chair, upon which her hand 
 rested, slightly toward her. " Won't you sit down ? " he
 
 276 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 said gently. " I have wanted so much to speak to you ; 
 there are so many things " 
 
 " To me ? " she said in a low, even voice. " Speak to 
 me you murderer ! " 
 
 Falls looked down upon her in silence. Her delicate 
 brows were drawn, her features rigid with anger; and 
 her resemblance to that other face whose features he had 
 watched grow slowly rigid in death smote him with a 
 spasm of remorseful pity. He went a step nearer to her. 
 
 " Will you not let me speak explain ? " 
 
 " Would you dare to try ? " she asked him slowly, a sort 
 of angry wonder slowly breaking through the rigid mask 
 of her face. 
 
 " Xot for myself, perhaps," Falls told her, and made 
 a half-weary gesture of negation, "but for Watson 
 yes, I would dare ! " 
 
 She laughed, and even in that troubled moment Falls 
 marveled that a sound so soft upon the ear could convey 
 so harsh a meaning. 
 
 "Are not your heroics a little bit late in the day, Mr. 
 Falls ? " she said with withering scorn. " You have sac 
 rificed Hugh without remorse " 
 
 Falls faced her squarely, his head held high, an amaze 
 ment in his somber eyes almost too deep for words. 
 
 "I I sacrifice Hugh ? " He paused a moment, stead 
 ied his voice. " I would give my life for Watson," he said 
 with even deliberation, " and he knows it. For the 
 rest " He turned back to the fire, let the sentence 
 lapse. Betty's blue eyes, hard and bright with anger, 
 softened; her face relaxed its lines of hate; she sank 
 into the chair. It was impossible to doubt the sincerity 
 that spoke in Falls's half-weary voice, in his face, harsh
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN 277 
 
 and bitter with suffering. His somber eyes under the deep 
 fold in his brow were upon the red logs; he did not look 
 at Betty, his own bitter thoughts engrossed him. 
 
 " But you knew/' she began hesitatingly in spite of 
 her anger, her bitterness, a wistful note would betray itself 
 in her voice; her own pain, her loneliness, her yearning 
 for Hugh could not be suppressed " you must know, 
 Mr. Falls, that that I that Challie " Her speech 
 faltered, died upon her quivering lips. Falls turned 
 quickly to her. He had not liked the girl she had been 
 so harsh, so implacable to him, it seemed impossible that 
 she could be tender. But he put that by; when all was 
 told, this was the woman whom Watson loved; nothing 
 else really mattered. 
 
 " I knew nothing," he said gently. " Watson has never 
 spoken of you. But of course I suspected the estrange 
 ment. Jt was of this that I wished to speak, if you will 
 let me ? " He turned his back to the chimneypiece, faced 
 her, looking into her eyes, his own eyes grave and insistent. 
 "You know the circumstances of your brother's death, 
 do you not?" 
 
 Tears welled up in her eyes, her hand fluttered to her 
 throat ; she could not speak, but she nodded silently. 
 
 " Forgive me if I give you pain I must speak for 
 Hugh's sake for the sake of plain right and common 
 justice." He went on rapidly, to spare her all he could. 
 " You know but one ball struck the lad. That ball was 
 from my hand or Hugh's the negro did not shoot." He 
 leaned toward her insistently. " Believe that it was from, 
 my hand, Miss Archer. Believe that I killed your brother. 
 Morally the blame is mine. I took Hugh there that night ; 
 but for me he would never have been there. You know
 
 278 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 that Challie would not have harmed a hair of Lynn's 
 head. You believe this?" 
 
 "Yes; oh, yes," miserably. "It I you do not 
 understand, Mr. Falls " 
 
 Falls did not heed her ; his voice had sunk to its gravest 
 note; he pressed her hard; he would not be diverted from 
 his purpose. 
 
 " Do you know what this is to Watson this estrange 
 ment between you?" He lifted his head, stared blindly 
 past her into the dark room. " Do women ever know ? 
 ... Of course, Hugh does not speak, but I know that 
 this is breaking his heart." The girl, with a gesture of 
 intolerable pain, hid her face in the cushions of the chair ; 
 but Falls would not be stayed. "What fairness is there 
 in your attitude to him what reason ? Why should 
 Hugh suffer for my fault? Blood-guiltiness cannot rest 
 upon us both." 
 
 " It was not that ! " she cried, raising her face toward 
 him. "You you do not understand. I I thought 
 somehow you knew; but I see now you do not." 
 
 She dashed the tears from her eyes, faced him, speaking 
 with rapid clearness. "I broke my engagement with 
 Hugh, not because I ever believed him guilty of Lynn's 
 death my mind simply cannot, cannot associate him 
 with that awful thing ! It was because of you, Mr. Falls, 
 because he would not break with you! His friends, our 
 kin every one had tried to influence him and he would 
 not listen not even to me! Why," she passionately 
 demanded, " why should Hugh take your side against his 
 lifelong friends and and me! Then when this dread 
 ful dreadful thing happened, when my poor boy " 
 She paused, steadied her quivering voice, crushed down
 
 THE MOOD OF WOMAN 279 
 
 her sobs, and with bitter, resentful eyes upon Falls's 
 unmojed face, hurried on : " Then after Lynn was killed, 
 and we all, all knew it was your fault, I told Hugh he 
 must make his choice ; you or me, and he took you ! " 
 
 " Not in the sense you mean," exclaimed Falls ear 
 nestly. " Is it possible that you do not see that no other 
 course was open to him, in honor? Would you have had 
 him suborn his honor to his client, betray his friend? 
 What are you women made of ! You fail, utterly fail, Miss 
 Archer, to see this thing at its true value. Watson's 
 love for you should never have been weighed against his 
 loyalty to me, never for a moment! It was unfair to 
 him cruel ! There could be no question of my influence 
 with Hugh as opposed to your own, unless you or others 
 chose to force that issue. It is incredible to me that you 
 should, but you seem to have ignored the vital issue; it 
 was not the sacrifice of his friendship for me, alone, that 
 was involved in the demand you made upon him, but this, 
 of course, you did not know. What it really meant was 
 the sacrifice of his business integrity, his personal honor; 
 that he should himself become the tool of unscrupulous 
 political tricksters in a deal whose object was to line their 
 own pockets! You are not lacking in shrewdness, Miss 
 Archer. Ask yourself why pressure, and persistent pressure, 
 should have been put upon Hugh for this purpose ! This 
 ring I mentioned, with Evert as its leader, had already 
 tried to effect this thing in other ways, to lash Hugh 
 in " 
 
 The girl started upright in her seat. 
 
 "Lash Challie!" she exclaimed hotly. "How how 
 dare they ! " 
 
 "Aye," said Falls grimly, "lash Challie! But they
 
 2 8o THE NORTHERNER 
 
 failed How? It would not interest you to know; a 
 business detail, that is all; let it go at that, won't you? 
 The only part of all this worth your consideration is 
 this: when they had failed to effect their purpose they 
 played their last card." Falls paused, but his stern 
 glance drove his meaning home; in spite of herself the 
 girl wavered; facts unknown to Falls pressed upon her, 
 and without her own volition fitted themselves into place 
 in his quiet recital. But Falls was speaking again, and 
 his quiet voice carried conviction spite of her stubborn 
 hatred of the man himself. 
 
 " This last card I speak of was, briefly, you, Miss 
 Archer! If you could be got to make this demand upon 
 Watson, ah, then indeed, they counted on success." 
 
 The girl was half-convinced ; but her hate for Falls was 
 like a cordial, the pain of his words stung her to a quick 
 reprisal. 
 
 " All this does credit to your invention, Mr. Falls," 
 she said smoothly; "it is, I suppose, a natural revenge, 
 and quite worthy of you, to slander the men who have 
 injured you " 
 
 " You are deliberately missing the point, Miss Archer. 
 No one has injured me, though, of course, the motive of 
 the attack upon Hugh was to injure me; still, in effect 
 I have escaped. It is Hugh who is suffering. That is 
 my only concern with this matter; that is to me the 
 inner imperative ! That is why I have, as you say, ' dared/ 
 Your antagonism, your childish pique wounded van 
 ity, do not affect me to any degree; but," he finished, 
 with his old grave simplicity, "it is breaking Challie's 
 heart." 
 
 Betty turned a face from which every tint of its usual
 
 lovely bloom had faded, upon Falls, her bosom rising and 
 falling in a tumult of pain and anger. 
 
 " How how dare you ! " she breathed with quivering 
 lips. " Why do you thrust yourself into this ? What con 
 cern of yours is it?" 
 
 " It is not entirely between you and Hugh," said Falls 
 gently, " and I told you a moment ago why I have spoken 
 well, thrust myself in, if you prefer the term ! Wat 
 son will never give way in this No ! Do not deceive 
 yourself, Miss Archer! You can break his heart, rob life 
 of all that it is worth to him, but you cannot make Hugh 
 betray his honor. Child," he cried with a sudden vehe 
 mence, " is happiness so cheap that you can afford to be 
 thus reckless with it ? " 
 
 Betty did not answer, but gazed steadily past him into 
 the blaze. Falls dropped into a chair beside her, and 
 though her hard gaze did not leave the fire, he knew she 
 listened as he talked on; no longer arguing, but telling 
 her, gravely and simply, little homely details of Hugh's 
 daily life; assuming, with quiet tact, both her interest 
 and her right to know all of his inner life that Falls knew 
 himself; and by imperceptible degrees this tacit assump 
 tion of her possession wooed her, as Falls knew it must, 
 to forget the jealousy of him that had rankled so sorely. 
 Without a hint of effect, yet without reserve, he described 
 the change in Hugh; the weary boredom which had re 
 placed his old, gay humor; his restless days and sleepless 
 nights; his manly effort to hide his need of Betty, his 
 loneliness ; the agony of yearning which would not let him 
 even call her name lest he give way all this he told her, 
 and as she listened her stubborn face grew tender; a 
 sigh quivered through her shut lips; she forgot the man
 
 282 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 beside her, her long lashes drooped over dreaming eyes 
 eyes that dreamed, as Falls well knew, of Hugh. She did 
 not notice when his voice finally ceased, and they sat to 
 gether in silence for a space, broken only by the clear 
 tinkle of the embers on the hearth, and the bellow of the 
 storm which still lashed the forests without. Falls watched 
 her curiously for some sign of yielding that would tell 
 him he had won the battle for his friend. 
 
 She rose at last and turned to Falls. " I do not pretend 
 that our talk here to-night has changed my feelings, my 
 personal feelings, to you, Mr. Falls," Falls bowed a 
 little wearily, " but I am glad you have told me this. 
 So glad ! " A flush sprang to her cheeks. She hesitated, 
 went a step nearer him a little shyly. "I I know you 
 did it for Challie's sake brought us together again, I 
 mean; I know you think I am not good enough for 
 him " 
 
 "I know you are not," he told her inexorably. 
 
 "But if it is any satisfaction to you to know that 
 that " 
 
 "You '11 do the right thing by Hugh?" he cried 
 eagerly. " You mean that ? I may tell him ? " 
 
 In the eager glow of his pleasure for his friend, Falls 
 held out his hand, but Betty shrank coldly back. 
 
 "Why do you hate me, child?" he asked slowly, as 
 he dropped his hand. "What makes you hate a man who 
 never injured you?" 
 
 "I every one does," she said simply. " All the people 
 that I go with hate you. I only went with the rest."
 
 XXII 
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT 
 
 is Betty's bridal bouquet, father," cried Joan, 
 holding up for his inspection a loose, exquisite 
 bunch of freshly gathered snowdrops. " Hugh dug the 
 bed for Betty and me when we were tots. I think it is a 
 rather sweet idea, don't you, father?" 
 
 " Yes. It is hard for me to realize that Challie is to 
 be married to-day, and to little Betty Archer. Why, 't is 
 only yesterday I was shaking hands with Ben Archer 
 and asking after his new baby girl." 
 
 " It is going to be a p-e-rfectly i-d-e-a-1 wedding," 
 sighed Joan, in rapt complacency. " I planned it e-v-ery 
 bit myself. And the house " 
 
 "Falls is Hugh's best man, is n't he?" 
 
 " Oh, father," in tender, shocked surprise, " a best man 
 at a wedding like this Who ever Mr. Falls is in 
 New York; he will not be at the wedding." Her eyes 
 were on the dainty bells; a hard note marred her fresh 
 young voice; a hot flush swept her cheek; she choked 
 back the pain which rose in her throat as a vision of Falls's 
 face floated for a moment before her. 
 
 And the quiet wedding had been over two weeks before 
 Falls found himself again in Alabama. He sat in his 
 office at the power-house, his foreman McNelly with him, 
 his bag and coat upon a chair beside him. The west-bound
 
 284 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 train had set him down an hour before at the bridge, and 
 he had walked across to get his mail, which lay upon 
 the desk before him. Both gloom and weariness were in 
 the fixed gaze he bent upon the smoke curling from his 
 cigar. 
 
 " I might put Carmichael here, since we are so pressed 
 for men ; he is pretty fair with machinery. The up-town 
 place is easier to fill." 
 
 " Aye, sir," said McXelly with reserve, " you might." 
 
 " Things are running a trifle roughly just now, McXelly, 
 but we '11 come out ahead yet. We 've a good fighting 
 -chance. And the contracts must be held ! " 
 
 "All right, sir," said McXelly cheerfully, "ef you say 
 fio, Mr. Falls." And Falls, with one of his rare moments 
 of softening, laid his hand upon the man's rough shoulder ; 
 but even as he did so a quick frown crossed his face. 
 He glanced with keen exasperation at the man's face. 
 
 "You 've been drinking," he said coldly. 
 
 " Only a finger as I came by town, sir nothing to 
 hurt. You have worse than me to look to, Mr. Falls," 
 significantly. 
 
 " Nothing is worse than a drunken foreman, McXelly." 
 
 "I 'm not drunk, sir." 
 
 " Drinking let it go at that. I will go back East 
 on that late train. Get my bag across to the station in 
 time, will you? I must get in to my rooms for an hour 
 or two." 
 
 But if he was getting in to his rooms, he was taking an 
 uncommonly roundabout way, or the Leftwich Building 
 must be coming to meet him at a trysting-place among 
 the hills, for he turned aside, and took Joe rapidly along 
 the mountain road which led up the broad steps of the
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT 285 
 
 foot-hills. About him, as far as eye could reach, was the 
 crude brilliancy of March's varnished landscapes and lac 
 quered skies. 
 
 With the reins upon the horse's neck, his unseeing gaze 
 upon the panorama of spring bloom outspread before him, 
 he mused in bitter introspection. 
 
 " I have the drift of this, I think," he said to himself. 
 "It is some infernal rot about their insane prejudice- 
 their blasted ' color-line ! ' I might nay, I could, con 
 vince Joan's mind; but how combat instinct, rearing, and 
 prenatal influences ? She would bow to me as Betty does/' 
 he laughed shortly, " and look behind her to see who 
 saw her do it. ... Xo, it must be all in all or not 
 at all. I will not crawl to any woman. I would not have 
 her love unless her faith " Joe nickered restlessly, and 
 Falls, peering into the woods in the direction of the horse's 
 pointing ears, saw deep within the tangled greenness 
 where the ragged snow of dogwood powdered the half -bare 
 undergrowth, the glint of a burnished flank. A spirited 
 head was thrust through the boughs, and Bitchie came 
 slowly to meet them, his saddle empty. 
 
 Falls leaped to the ground, crashed through the flowery 
 thickets, trampling the waxen faces of the mountain 
 laurel, and a moment later the dragging rein was in his 
 hand, and Eitchie, nothing loath, was nozzling his sleeve 
 in condescending recognition. Falls glanced him over 
 hurriedly; then suddenly he leaned sick and trembling 
 against the horse. Upon the creamy leather of the saddle 
 was a red stain, yet damp to his touch. A moment to 
 beat back the sharp anguish which blinded him, and Falls 
 had plunged back into the thicket, following the fresh 
 tracks in the loamy soil.
 
 286 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Deep within the hushed beauty of the spring woods, 
 where the sunlight sifted through half-opened foliage upon 
 a carpet thick-set with violets, Joan wandered, singing 
 softly to herself, the heavy folds of her habit slung across 
 one arm, her eyes searching out the haunts of the wild 
 flowers, which slunk out of sight in cracks and crannies, 
 and fled to the topmost points of the boulders to escape 
 this charming marauder. At every other step she paused 
 to add yet one more to the great, straggling, lovely bunch 
 she held. She was standing, poised lightly upon a stone, 
 pursuing a clump of Indian pink, when a crash in the 
 woods behind her first caught her ear. She abandoned her 
 floral prey for the moment, and stood listening, like a 
 lovely dryad about to slip into the mossy beech-hole at 
 her side. Not frightened what was in the woods to 
 frighten anybody? but listening with misgiving for the 
 thudding of the iron hoofs she expected to hear. Ritchie 
 
 the cunning thing! And she had knotted that bridle 
 
 and knotted it! 
 
 An impetuous hand thrust aside the wild azaleas, and 
 Falls stepped into the sunlit glade, glancing keenly 
 along the ground for something the girl could not think 
 what. Herself unseen, Joan stood transfixed, her eyes 
 on Falls, her hand holding the flowers pressed against 
 her breast. A sudden mist dimmed her vision, so that, 
 for a moment, she could not see him. And it had been 
 so long so long, since she had seen him ! She had 
 thought he was in the North. How came he here what 
 could he be looking for with that pale face of anguish ? 
 
 The torturing vision which Mrs. Allen's words had 
 seared upon the girl's brain for the moment slunk out 
 of sight. Deep within her young bosom woke and stirred
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT 287 
 
 the primal instinct. He was there before her, and, for 
 some reason which she could not divine, he was suffering; 
 she loved him and he needed her. 
 
 She slipped softly from her perch, and, stumbling in 
 the heavy folds of her habit, with wide eyes which never 
 left Falls's face, she went toward him. 
 
 " What is it ? " she cried. What troubles you ? " Un 
 consciously she held her hands out to him, the great bunch 
 of flowers dropping unheeded upon the ground. 
 
 Falls could not speak; with her hands in his, crushing 
 them against his breast, he gazed dumbly down iipon her 
 in the swift revulsion from despair to relief, to certainty. 
 
 They stood thus, motionless, in the first shock of feeling. 
 Each was drinking deep of the unexpected joy of the 
 other's presence. 
 
 It was Falls who spoke first. " The horse ! " he said 
 unsteadily, " Eitchie ! I met him in the road his bridle 
 loose blood on the saddle ! I thought God ! " His 
 broad chest heaved convulsively. 
 
 Joan had drawn her hands away from him, and with 
 a little trembling smile she held up her wrist, about which 
 a handkerchief was tightly twisted. The folds of the 
 linen were stiff with blood. 
 
 " I tried to reach that Judas bloom such a fine bit 
 from the saddle, and Ritchie started and jerked my 
 arm against the barbed wire of the fence." 
 
 In spite of her sudden cool aloofness for Joan was 
 beginning to remember again Falls took her arm into 
 his hand, and deftly unwinding the handkerchief, laid 
 bare the jagged cut upon her wrist. " It is nothing," 
 he said, with a quick sigh of relief, after a moment's 
 examination; "it has stopped bleeding."
 
 288 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 The little blue-veined wrist lay along his palm; too 
 proud to struggle, the girl left it quietly in his hold. It 
 may be that those minutes of agonized uncertainty in the 
 wood had shaken the man out of his habitual self-control. 
 Whatever the cause which prompted the mad impulse, 
 Falls bent his head quickly and kissed the wound; kissed 
 it with all the pent-up passion with which for weeks he 
 had been struggling. 
 
 With his kiss, memory awoke, and with a gesture of 
 loathing, she snatched her hand from his lips. A flood 
 of angry scarlet poured over her face and ebbed again; 
 her eyes met Falls's with the same frozen horror and dis 
 gust which he had seen before. 
 
 " How how dare you ! " she whispered. She turned 
 from him with hidden face, and, as if her trembling limbs 
 could no longer support her, sank upon a stone and buried 
 her face upon her outstretched arms. 
 
 Falls stood still, his face slowly whitening, his mind 
 striving to pierce the motive underlying the girl's swift 
 aversion. Suddenly he crossed the space between them, 
 dropped upon his knee beside Joan, and drew her hands 
 from her tear-stained face. She struggled to rise, to free 
 her hands, but he held her with gentle firmness. 
 
 "We are going to have this out to-day, you and I," 
 he said with exquisite gentleness, his head bent down 
 to her averted face. "I had thought that I would go 
 away, get this thing under, blot you out of my life 
 as men do, you know; but God fate whatever it is, 
 has given me this chance. I would be mad to let it pass 
 me by." 
 
 Falls spoke brokenly, with a stammering tongue. "I 
 love you, Joan love you. . . . You know, do you not?
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT 289 
 
 For months since the very first almost you have been 
 all _ all " 
 
 Joan writhed in his hold, shrunk from him tried to 
 thrust him off. " Don't don't speak like that to me," 
 she sobbed ; " I cannot, cannot bear it ! " 
 
 His voice sunk lower. " Tell me what this is that has 
 come between us ? Has n't it does n't it Joan, is it 
 the curse of Dixie that poisons the blood of all you South 
 ern people, this cursed color-line ? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " You will tell me, will you not ? " 
 
 She met his eyes at last, her own hard with pain. " I 
 asked father; father says no sane person would doubt 
 the evidence of his own senses. And I am sane." 
 
 Falls's stern lips bent into a smile of tender coaxing. 
 " Is it the piccaninny I rode on my shoulder ? " he asked. 
 
 " No," she said, looking straight past him down the 
 green alleys of the woods; "no, I saw you " 
 
 " Saw me ? In God's name where ? doing what ? " 
 
 He saw her struggle to answer, saw the words die on 
 her lips, and, like fire smitten from a stone by the sharp 
 impact of a blow, his own mind flashed him the answer. 
 He rose from where he knelt and looked her coldly over 
 as though he saw her for the first time. 
 
 " Great God ! " he said at last slowly, " do you think 
 me so vile ? " He laughed a hoarse, shaken laugh, not 
 good to hear. " No wonder you fended off my touch ! 
 Child, what sort of men . . . Did you think that I could 
 come to you " The girl made an anguished gesture. 
 " I know," he said, " I know I forced this on you you 
 tried to avert it but I had to know. Well " he drew 
 his breath in sharply through clenched teeth "well, we
 
 290 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 are both awake now; wide-awake. But one thing before 
 I go. You did not state the proposition fairly to your 
 father. You should have told him the evidence of one 
 of your senses, unsupported; merely that of eyesight. 
 You saw me at that cabin over there. Yes; but Joan, 
 you did not know what I did there why I went ! When 
 you do if ever you do it may change things for you. 
 As for me " He picked up his hat, paused a moment. 
 " Kitchie is just below us, here upon the road. May I " 
 She made a negative gesture without raising her head, 
 and a moment later his step sounded upon the rocks of 
 the roadway, growing fainter; an echo of his voice floated 
 to her as he spoke to his horse. 
 
 "Joan is coming, pet," said "Watson, coming in with 
 a telegram in his hand to where Betty lay, like a drooping 
 rose, among her pillows, convalescing from malarial fever. 
 " St. Augustine won't seem so far from home then, will it ? 
 Won't it be great to have her ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Betty without enthusiasm. " Mark Cald- 
 well is coming, too," she added with apparent irrelevance. 
 It brought Watson's heavy brows together in an annoyed 
 frown. 
 
 "A-w, there 's nothing in that," he said shortly. 
 
 " I would n't be a man for anything," said Betty with 
 calm scorn, " much less a lawyer ! They are the most ob 
 tuse It takes a hundred pages of typewritten evidence 
 and twelve stupid men in a box, and a judge, and heavens 
 knows what else, to get a single thing into their heads ! " 
 
 Watson smothered a laugh upon her bosom as he leaned 
 over her. " May I inquire, madam, concerning your pro 
 cedure?"
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT 291 
 
 "Why, I just kii oiv f and that 'a all there is to it. And 
 I just know that Joan will never look at Gregory Falls " 
 
 " If she does not," said Hugh, his worried frown deep 
 ening, "she will make the mistake of her life! Falls is 
 the finest gentleman I have ever known, Betty ! ' The 
 truest friend and the noblest foe ! ' : 
 
 " Pooh, Challie, you are so absurd about Mr. Falls ! " 
 
 Watson was silent; Betty slid a penitent hand into 
 his; drew his head down to see that he was not offended; 
 received his smile, his kiss upon her pretty, tumbled curls. 
 Peace restored, Watson took up his paper. 
 
 Silence for five minutes. 
 
 "Challie?" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I can talk to you about anything I like now we are 
 married, can't I?" 
 
 " You could before " 
 
 " I mean a little er " 
 
 "Fy!" said Hugh, laughing, "naughty Betty!" 
 
 " It 's about Mr. Falls." 
 
 " Fire away ! You don't know anything on Falls. 
 Nobody does; he is n't that sort." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Betty, " pooh, several times ! What do 
 you call all that talk about Rosebud, Hugh?" 
 
 Watson was reading without his glasses, holding the 
 paper close before his face, and his start was lost in the 
 rustling folds. He answered carelessly after a second. 
 "What? what about Rosebud?" 
 
 " Oh, Hughie ! " Betty's voice was like the cooing of 
 a dove in mating season. " Of course you know ! Why, 
 it was all over town ! " 
 
 "I do not know; I never heard a word about Falls
 
 292 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 in connection with the girl in my life ! I have lost sight 
 of her utterly, and" he paused a moment, looking 
 carelessly along the columns of the paper " and I wish 
 you to do the same." 
 
 But Betty had disappeared; only a bunch of soft curls 
 remained above the surface to show where she had gone 
 down; a stifled sob came from the depths. 
 
 Watson cast the paper aside, and rising, passed into 
 the next room. A pitiless search-light seemed to have been 
 turned upon the innermost recesses of his soul his mind. 
 Under its light he saw the circumstances of the past weeks 
 with startling clearness. This talk how much it made 
 clear to him! Falls had been under this for weeks. He 
 leaned upon the window in the dressing-room, his hands 
 clinched upon the sill. Before him was a stretch of daz 
 zling sand, the feathery green of palmetto scrub and 
 the blue waters seen through a burning mist. 
 
 This was why Falls lingered in New York; this was 
 what had come between him and Joan. 
 
 " I know well," he thought, hot with impotent anger 
 against himself, " those wicked tongues of slander, the 
 sickening mesh of circumstance in which his manhood has 
 struggled, netted and bound! Falls and Betty always 
 those two ! " 
 
 A sob fell upon his ear. Poor Betty ! 
 
 He went to her, drew the covering from her face, kissed 
 her soothed her with caresses. " You said I might," 
 she sobbed, "and then then I did not make it up, 
 Hugh ! It was all over town ! " 
 
 He kissed her again absently. " Betty, does Joan know 
 this vile thing you women have invented about Falls ? n 
 
 " Why, Hugh ! Everybody in 'Dairville knows it ! It 'a
 
 HEARTS INSURGENT 293 
 
 been talked about for months. Mr. Cad Allen saw Mr. 
 Falls in New York with Rosebud " 
 
 Watson groaned. 
 
 " and Joan's Aunt 'Liza went out to the mountain 
 house and told her." 
 
 " My prophetic soul ! " muttered Hugh. 
 
 He propped the girl up in her pillows, took her two 
 hands in his own. " Now listen, Betty, never forget this 
 as long as you live, child ! You are my wife the core 
 of my soul and all that a man can give a woman of him 
 self I give you. But there is a big part of me of any 
 man which men do not give to women; all of me that 
 is not yours belongs to Falls! I love him as much as I 
 do you yes ! let me tell it you make you understand 
 this once for all! I love Gregory differently, you know 
 
 differently, but as truly as I love you! I could not 
 see him suffer, know that I had wronged him see an 
 other wrong him, any more than I could see you wronged ! 
 Falls is my friend, you are my wife both are dearer 
 to me than life. Never, as long as you live, try to come 
 between us! Never again let a word of evil of him pass 
 your lips ! This thing you speak of is a vile a heinous 
 falsehood! Never let me hear it on your lips again. 
 Now put your arms round my neck tell me that you 
 love me, and that you will obey me." 
 
 Two soft arms came round his neck. 
 
 "I love you, Challie," whispered Betty meekly, "and 
 
 and I " 
 "Say it, Betty!" 
 
 " will obey you."
 
 XXIII 
 
 LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY 
 
 IS Miss Adair at home, Milly Ann?" asked Hallett, 
 standing upon the Adair door-mat the day after 
 Joan's return from St. Augustine. 
 
 " Ya-as, sur," demurely answered Milly Ann. She led 
 the way with soft teetering footsteps to the quiet room 
 where Joan and Judge Adair sat playing their nightly 
 game of cribbage. 
 
 Hallett called often at the house, but he never entered 
 this room without a renewed sense of its charm, as well 
 as a chastening recollection of the not long past days 
 when Judge Adair's courtesy, like that of so many of 
 Hallett's gentlemen acquaintances, had not extended to 
 his fireside. Those were the days when Hallett, with the 
 patience of the born diplomat, had founded his faith in 
 the solvency of time to bring about the disintegration 
 of those conditions which made him welcome in the offices 
 and business houses of his men acquaintances, and barred 
 their homes to him. His faith had not gone unrewarded. 
 In the ten years of his residence in Alabama he had seen 
 that slow stream of time reintegrate from the debris of 
 the old regime a new system of things. Upon the silt 
 thus deposited, and covering the wreckage of the war, had 
 been laid the foundations of the New South. That he 
 had himself been accepted, at last, simply aa a compro- 
 
 294
 
 LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY 295 
 
 mise, a part of the new system of things, Hallett perfectly 
 understood, but the knowledge had brought neither re 
 sentment nor the slightest abatement of a policy which 
 had been so potent a factor in the amelioration of those 
 conditions. So it had come about that in the general 
 subsidence Hallett had found himself among, if not of, 
 the old aristocracy of Dixie accepted by most of the old 
 families of Adairville, welcomed by a few, rejected by two 
 or three. Of this latter small class, whose attitude was 
 marked by courteous indifference rather than antagonism, 
 Judge Adair's family had been one. During the earlier 
 days of Hallett's residence in the town, the family had 
 consisted of only Judge Adair and Hugh, Joan being a 
 madcap schoolgirl, whom the town alternately worshiped 
 for her beauty and brilliancy, and groaned over for her 
 reckless independence of thought and action. Even in 
 those days, when she had passed him, swinging her books 
 with the strong, easy swing of a lovely boy, with shy 
 glances from under her gold-tipped lashes, Hallett had 
 adored her. 
 
 Upon the reopening of the house to society, when Joan 
 was grown, Hallett had persistently sought an entrance 
 there, paying open and assiduous court to the girl. His 
 wooing was of the deliberate, strategic order, the care 
 fully perfected plan of the born intriguer. And she 
 watched his siege in silence and with an amused tolerance, 
 without evincing sufficient interest to erect a barricade 
 or prepare a line of defense. 
 
 To-night she greeted him calmly upon his entrance, 
 including him in the fireside group with a courteous ease 
 that just missed cordiality. To his passionate, resentful 
 eyes she seemed somehow to be denying him the right
 
 296 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 even to look at her, as she leaned far back in her low 
 chair among her cushions, her drooping lashes hiding 
 dreaming eyes of cool abstraction, leaving the guest tacitly 
 to her father. The talk ran nimbly on between the two 
 men; it was all of Falls and Falls's affairs, and of the 
 once more disabled plant of the ill-starred Power and Pas 
 senger Company. Joan heard from Hallett's lips for the 
 first time of the fresh disaster which had completely 
 wrecked the machinery. 
 
 Carelessness, Hallett pronounced it, or criminal igno 
 rance. No, this with rather more reserve, he believed 
 the town papers had not reported it. Probably in the 
 course of the next month or two Montgomery would give 
 them several columns of " language " about it. 
 
 All this, together with a cheerful prophecy concerning 
 the total extinguishment of the Power and Passenger 
 Company, was detailed in Hallett's clear-cut tones, with 
 frank regret very pleasant to see. " Oh, yes/' said he, in 
 answer to Judge Adair's last question, " it closed down 
 on last Tuesday night. No sign yet from Falls; yet 
 Carmichael would no doubt have notified him. It has been 
 rumored that Falls was on his way to England. At all 
 events, only about five days remain to him of the two 
 weeks' limit ; unless he is heard from in that time it means 
 smash for Falls ! " 
 
 Joan, lying lazily in her long chair, brushing her cheek 
 with a deep red rose from the vase beside her, in apparent 
 abstraction, was making a rapid calculation. Last Tues 
 day, Hallett had said? Watson had not heard of this 
 on Saturday, when she had left him in Florida! Her 
 mind ran over the letter from Falls which Hugh had read 
 her the day she left, dated from his club at New York;
 
 LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY 297 
 
 ehe remembered the address perfectly, but that could 
 wait! 
 
 The words of the letter started up before her eyes, in 
 Falls's clear, even writing: 
 
 " I will run the plant," he had written, " as long as 
 I have a dime, or a lump of coal or a man to shovel it ! " 
 
 Seven days, and no word or sign that he knew or cared 
 for the fate of his plant! Incomprehensible! When she 
 caught the current of the talk once more, Hallett was 
 saying : 
 
 " No ; Carmichael is with him though he was ad 
 vised to get clear of him weeks ago rats and a sinking 
 ship, you know ! " 
 
 " Is the Power and Passenger Company a sinking ship ? " 
 asked Judge Adair quietly. 
 
 Hallett caressed a knee of his faultless trousers with 
 an air of regretful decision, as he said: 
 
 " I think it is, Judge ! I well, if any man in town 
 is qualified to know the condition of Falls's affairs, I am, 
 and I know positively that every dollar he has in the 
 world is in this deal here. There is not a ha'penny of 
 English capital invested in it. When it goes down" 
 a hard complacence crept unconsciously into Hallett's 
 frank tones " when it goes down, Falls goes under 
 with it!" 
 
 In Judge Adair's eyes, resting courteously upon his 
 guest, there shone so clear a light of comprehension, so 
 scornful a summary of the whole recital, and withal so 
 strong a likeness to the lovely, downcast one across the 
 hearth, that Hallett's startled eyes sought Joan with a 
 swift interpretation of her cold abstraction, only, however, 
 to meet instant reassurance in her attitude and expression.
 
 298 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Joan reclined among her rose-colored pillows, her grace 
 ful head drooping in thought, while the roses bending 
 from their tall vase beside her were not more still, nor 
 seemingly more unattached than she. 
 
 But Hallett could not see her eyes. Nor could he know 
 of the turmoil of rushing thoughts engrossing Joan's 
 mind, as she sought to grasp, to fix in memory, the flood 
 of facts poured out upon the stream of Hallett's clear, 
 incisive speech. And all the while came the insistent cry 
 of her heart to help him! Her breath came short, in 
 little sobbing breaths the furbelows of her dainty gown 
 trembled to the rapid beating of her heart. 
 
 Hallett talked on and on ; she could not keep pace with 
 it. Would he never stop never give her time to think 
 to plan ! 
 
 The necessity for action gnawed at her mind; but 
 action in what direction? 
 
 Still she lay quietly among her pillows and seemed 
 to droop in the heat like the heavy-headed roses beside her. 
 Groping blindly for the end of the tangled skein, her gaze, 
 focused to inward vision, fell upon Hallett's face as he 
 mused, for the space of a heart-beat in a pause of the 
 talk, upon the man whose ruin he had so ably and inex 
 orably compassed. And in that instant the kaleidoscope 
 of her broken thoughts was shaken into form by what 
 she saw there ; her brain cleared as does some turgid mix 
 ture under the action of a chemical reagent. 
 
 There had come to Hallett, sitting in the light of that 
 shining hearth, under the eyes of the woman whom Falls 
 loved, one of those crucial moments in which a mind 
 trained to duplicity turns upon itself, and the features, 
 so long obedient to the tyrant will, turn traitor to their
 
 LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY 299 
 
 parts; it is an instant when the will is in abeyance, when 
 there seems to be a blind spot in the nervous tissue of 
 the brain corresponding to the blind spot upon the retina 
 where there is no vision ; will is for the instant suspended, 
 and the thing upon the mind, which has brooded in secret, 
 radiates from a man's glance from his whole face. 
 
 Joan had, in an extraordinary degree, the intuitive 
 intelligence which distinguishes women of high mentality ; 
 and supplementing this gift was her power of clear rea 
 soning inherited from her father, as well as the old man's 
 inimitable poise. It kept her silent now in her attitude 
 of graceful ease, while a fierce tumult of thought assailed 
 her. 
 
 In the instant when she had looked through his reverie 
 into the brain behind it, the whole scheme by means of 
 which Falls was to be frozen out and ruined was pro 
 jected before Joan's mental vision with the clear detail 
 of an image cast by a magic lantern. 
 
 A web of circumstance was spun backward in her brain 
 and she saw the extinguishment of Falls's plans the 
 imminent ruin of his business life. 
 
 Joan rose after a few moments, and, crossing to her 
 father, bent a cheek pale with excitement to his own. 
 " Father dear, I must ask you and Mr. Hallett to excuse 
 me to-nighi I I do not feel just myself," she said 
 quietly; and it was so evident that she did not, that they 
 made no demur. She left them, bidding Hallett finish her 
 game of cribbage with her father. 
 
 In the hall, her heavy train tucked into the hollow 
 of her arm, Joan went with flying feet to her father's 
 study, where a minute's search supplied her with a tele 
 graph form; she rapidly filled in the name and address
 
 300 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 as she stood, and without hesitation the message flowed 
 from her pen: 
 
 " Your affairs need you here ; return at once," she 
 wrote, and paused; the pen slid from her unconscious 
 fingers, unheeded, to the floor; she sank upon the arm of 
 the chair, staring at a square of wall-paper with eyes that 
 saw nothing but Falls's face looking down upon her in 
 anger and pain. A mist blurred her clear eyes, a chok 
 ing anguish of shame rose in her throat as that last scene 
 with Falls rose before her with aching distinctness. 
 
 The clock behind her on the mantel began to strike 
 ten, eleven ! Joan started up, found her pen, and bending 
 down, wrote firmly, " J. H. Adair," which were her father's 
 initials as well as her own. 
 
 A wire also to Hugh a dozen addresses recklessly 
 dashed down; some one of them must find him! Ten 
 minutes later Joan stood arrayed in her box coat, with 
 Milly Ann beside her. 
 
 Milly Ann was Joan's usual escort in her after-dinner 
 visitings among her girl friends on the hill, and the two 
 girls found their way with accustomed feet down the back 
 stairs, out on the rose gallery to where, in the very black 
 ness of darkness, the terraced lawns yawned below them, 
 leading to the road to town.
 
 XXIV 
 
 A WOMAN'S VERDICT 
 
 hall clock pointed, with grave reproof, to a quar- 
 _L ter past twelve as Joan softly crossed the hall on 
 her way up-stairs. She held her breath as she passed the 
 parlor door, turning away after a moment's pause with 
 an impatient gesture. They were still playing cribbage. 
 Would Mr. Hallett never go! Clad in her long gown of 
 silk, as blue as the October skies, Joan restlessly paced the 
 floor, with her door set open to hear Hallett when he took 
 his departure. 
 
 To and fro she went, and the soft whisper of the silk 
 followed her. She loosened the heavy plaits of her bright 
 hair, pushing it restlessly from her face, gathering the 
 long, curling ends into her hands as she wandered about 
 the room, drawing it like a mantle of cloth of gold about 
 her, seeing always Falls's face before her; his look of 
 pain, of scorn, of unfaltering renunciation. She had not 
 stated the proposition fairly to her father, he had said. 
 If that be true, she could undo that, at least; make rep 
 aration in that far for the wrong she had done him. 
 Wrong ! She knew it now. That hideous memory, which 
 had spread through her like a slow poison, tainting her 
 mind, filling her soul with sick horror, fell from her 
 to-night like an infected garment. During the weeks 
 she had been with Hugh in Florida, his faith in Falls, 
 
 301
 
 302 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 his devotion, his loyalty had appealed to her strongly, 
 set, as it were, against her own faltering unfaith. Over 
 and over she had thought that Hugh would speak would 
 intercede for his friend, but he had not. Only a moment 
 at the last he had spoken briefly. He went with her to 
 the train, and stole her a moment from the gay party of 
 friends from Caldwell and his tender, unobtrusive solic 
 itude and whispered just as the train was pulling out: 
 "Joan, Falls is going to England next month, but he '11 
 be home before he sails." That was all. 
 
 This scheme of fraud and treachery of which she had 
 learned to-night and of which Hugh evidently knew 
 nothing had been skilfully planned and carried out just 
 when both Watson and Falls were out of town, by Hallett 
 and a ring of home men her father's and her own 
 friends and kinsfolks. 
 
 True, she had no proof. And her father would be sure 
 to talk about proof. Both he and Hugh always talked of 
 proof, when a thing was as pl-a-in as d-a-y ! 
 
 But Hallett was going at last. Judge Adair's tone, 
 courteous and a little weary, reached Joan as he bade his 
 guest good night. Joan found her way swiftly to the 
 study, where she knew she would find her father smoking 
 his nightcap pipe, and Pomp nodding upon the rug at 
 his feet. 
 
 He heard her coming, soft-footed like a kitten, over the 
 shining hall floor. " Is the headache better or was it 
 Hallett?" 
 
 "It was Mr. Hallett," she answered, in a tense voice 
 that startled her father. " Father dear, I want to talk 
 to you, if you are not too sleepy. No, no I am too 
 heavy for your knee. Let me have a piece of your chair
 
 A WOMAN'S VERDICT 303 
 
 so. I am a great, big girl now, you know, father ; 
 * expanding into womanhood/ as you said. ... Do you 
 remember when you told me that I would know that I 
 was grown up when my heart began to ache ? " 
 
 The Judge laid his pipe aside, waiting gravely, his hand 
 upon the heavy, unbound locks which made her seem a 
 child again except for that pale excitement on her face, 
 so new, so strange in his boyish Joan. When at last he 
 caught the drift of her hurried speech, Joan was telling 
 him in terse, clear narrative of the plot against Falls. 
 Every detail of the treachery, the injustice, seeming to be 
 etched into her brain; even names and dates were fitted 
 into her account with an unconscious accuracy that amazed 
 Judge Adair. As she went on, her father, more and more 
 troubled, took her cold hands into his and felt them trem 
 ble; noted the pale exhaustion of her face with pained 
 wonder, which was not wonder either, but premonition of 
 the thing that had haunted him for years. This was love ! 
 For thirty years his heart-strings had been wrapped round 
 his two women, this child and her mother. He saw on 
 the face before him the pain, the rapture, which that other 
 face had worn for him. This was love! 
 
 " My daughter," he said at length, " I have known of 
 this dirty piece of scheming for weeks Hugh also; it 
 has been patent to the town. Not, perhaps, just how it 
 would be done, but that it would be done sooner or later. 
 The tool was all that has been lacking until now; and 
 now, it seems, Jimmy Carmichael was not able to stand 
 the pressure. . . . But what is all this to you, my child 
 
 this vulgar wrangle between two conflicting business 
 interests ? " 
 
 He felt her hands grow colder and the slender fingers
 
 304 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 closed upon his own with nervous tension, but she met his 
 eyes bravely. 
 
 " I thought you would ask that, father. I I am ready 
 to answer, but you know, don't you, father?" 
 
 " I have an idea, daughter, of course. The signs are 
 not hard to read on a face like yours. Will you answer 
 me I must know, my pet, if I am to help I am to 
 help, am I not?" 
 
 Her arms about his neck answered him, her cheek on 
 his. 
 
 " Is Falls your lover, child ? " with calm directness. 
 
 "I I do not know, father," she murmured, her face 
 hidden. 
 
 " Joan ! " remonstrated the old man, " what can I make 
 of that? You must know, my pet. Women always 
 know " 
 
 "I do not know now." 
 
 "Ah! Does Falls love you, or not?" 
 
 " Not now," more faintly still. 
 
 "He did, and he told you so, and now he does not? 
 Am I right?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is this a lovers' quarrel, dear ? " 
 
 " No, oh, no, father ! " 
 
 The old man mused, his daughter held close at his heart. 
 "I cannot probe your heart with questions, daughter. 
 Tell me, if you will, how it is with you." 
 
 "I loved him I love him now; but I wronged him 
 cruelly, father. And and I have lost him." 
 
 The old man drew her closer to his heart. 
 
 " What could you have done to Falls to wrong him so 
 bitterly, daughter?"
 
 A WOMAN'S VERDICT 305 
 
 " I told him that you said no sane man would doubt 
 the evidence of his senses " 
 
 Judge Adair started, held the girl off from him while 
 he interrogated her with grave eyes. 
 
 " My child ! What can this mean, Joan ? " 
 
 She gazed back at him with wide eyes, whose strained 
 gaze was dark with trouble, as she answered as simply as 
 a child: 
 
 " I do not know, though I thought I did. Will you tell 
 me, please, father ? He Gregory said I had not stated 
 the proposition fairly to you ; 
 
 " State it now. Be careful, daughter. Language is 
 a terrible weapon to slay happiness. I 've seen it twine 
 like a cobra about a man and choke life, honor, happiness 
 out of him ! " 
 
 " Once before, some time ago, I asked you about the 
 direct evidence of one's own senses. Do you remember ? " 
 
 " I think I do ; you often ask me abstract questions, but 
 
 yes, I think I can recall it. You said, if I remember, 
 that if a person saw a thing with his own eyes, under cir 
 cumstances which admitted of no reasonable doubt, how 
 would the man stand toward the fact?" 
 
 " And you said, father, that no sane man would doubt 
 the evidence of his senses ; and I told him told Gregory 
 
 and and " 
 
 " It was Falls you asked me about ? You had seen 
 him " 
 
 " I saw him with " 
 
 " Another woman ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Judge Adair rose, putting Joan gently on one side, and 
 paced the room with thoughtful steps.
 
 3 o6 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Child," he said, coining back to her, laying his hand 
 gently upon her bowed head, "child, one isolated fact, 
 even if it rests upon the evidence of a man's senses, may 
 be susceptible of explanation extenuation." 
 
 " It was not an isolated fact, father. I thought of that ; 
 I fought for my faith against all sorts of odds. There 
 was corroborative evidence it all hung together, too, 
 too fatally well ! " 
 
 " But you say you wronged him wronged Falls ? You 
 believe him to be innocent " 
 
 "I feel him innocent, in my heart, you know, father. 
 I do not think him so with my brain. When I shut my 
 eyes, my mental eyes only feel, only only love him. 
 Then nothing matters. But I cannot stay asleep. You 
 see, father, I am not as strong as he is. I cannot put 
 him out of my heart cease to think of him, to love him ! 
 No matter what I know, I must love him j ust the same ! " 
 
 Judge Adair stooped, gathering the girl up in his arms, 
 crooning over her as her mother might have done. 
 
 " I 've let you suffer like this ! Taught you to blot out 
 life with question-marks! God forgive me! . . . Who 
 was this woman, Joan did you know her ? " 
 
 She writhed in his arms, pressing her face into his 
 breast. " Do not ask me, father I cannot, cannot tell 
 you I should die of shame ! " she moaned. 
 
 The old man's face hardened. 
 
 "Joan," he said at last, "if I believed this thing, I 
 should not advise you to put Falls forever from your 
 mind and heart; I should command it. I should take 
 you to the world's end to keep you from him. But some 
 thing tells me, child, I feel, as you say, that this can 
 not be. There is something in the man himself which
 
 A WOMAN'S VERDICT 307 
 
 forbids roe to think him vile. Falls is not an easy man 
 to know, 't is true; he is a stiff, cold fellow How he 
 ever won my baby's heart ! But the very fact that he has, 
 no matter through what storm and stress, ranges me on 
 his side. You could not love him, child, were he un 
 worthy. . . . Let me plead for Falls for my daughter's 
 heart. Joan, I have been a judge for forty years. I was 
 weighing human evidence before Falls was born, and I 
 know how little it is worth. Let me look into this mat 
 ter " 
 
 " Oh, father ! You are the dearest but, father, you 
 have forgotten that he hates me now ! " 
 
 " Pooh ! Falls is eating his heart out in New York 
 to-night for your sake, child. Unless, indeed " he 
 stopped, laughed gently "unless he has your telegram 
 by this time, and is worrying over his plant. Poor Falls 
 poor Orestes! Scourged by the furies his love and 
 his business! He 's made a magnificent fight here, and 
 against the heaviest odds! And now this! You do not 
 know, Joan, what a thing like this can be to a man. 
 A proud, reserved man, like Falls " 
 
 " Father, do not, do not ! I cannot, cannot bear it " 
 
 He soothed her for the moment, but he did not spare 
 her. Gently, but inexorably, he did the duty that his wife 
 would have done more tenderly, perhaps; but he did it 
 in the only way he knew, the way that nearly seventy 
 years of life had taught him. 
 
 "Love is not divisible into its elements," he told her. 
 " We cannot analyze it, accepting and rejecting as we will ; 
 it is not a mental thing, as you would make it, Joan, and 
 you must see this. You have told me that you love Falls, 
 but that you must close the doors of your mind to do
 
 3 o8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 so; that is not love, my precious. Life will teach you. 
 Falls gave you your first lesson, when he left you, in 
 perfect love the sort Falls is demanding of you; and 
 that very fact makes me trust him. Mind and heart, brain 
 and conscience, body and soul, the depths of your nature 
 no less than its heights, all must pull together. Love fills 
 the whole perspective of life. ' The taint of earth, the 
 odor of the skies/ is in it, child." 
 
 He paused, gazing into the fire, looking back over the 
 wide area of his past ; then solemnly he went on : "I 
 would not myself have a woman not if she gave me 
 her life, her heart, her lips, and all wifely submission 
 if she held back even a shred of her faith in me." 
 
 "He said so, father; he told me that it must be 'all 
 in all, or not at all ! ' ; 
 
 " Ah ! Well I can go a little further than you seem 
 willing to go, though Falls is your lover. I will say, I 
 think I am of the deliberate opinion that Falls can 
 explain this circumstance. ... I will find out. How? 
 Easily enough. Nothing is ever really hidden in this 
 world." 
 
 They talked on before the sinking fire, and the girl 
 found comfort; the terrible finality of youth's vision be 
 came expanded to her father's own, and she saw, not the 
 universe in black ruins about her head, but the sunlight 
 upon the distant hills. 
 
 " Falls has not a leg to stand on in this business here," 
 he told her calmly ; " but it does not matter. The Power 
 Company must shut down is shut down now and that 
 does not matter either. No business on earth could stand 
 the drain Falls has been under for ten months, -ilad he 
 the Bank of England at his back. . . . ' Break his heart ? '
 
 A WOMAN'S VERDICT 309 
 
 Is this my child I have boasted could reason? Men do 
 not put their hearts into their business. Falls knew what 
 to do with his heart. His bank account only is in danger. 
 If he had invested his capital as safely as he has his heart ! 
 . . . But do not worry about your lover, child. Father 
 will see. Evert and Jim Frazier do not hold 'Dairville 
 in the hollow of their palms yet not yet! Nor the 
 State Judiciary, either. Hugh will be back you sent 
 him a wire also ? Eight ! We will have that opinion from 
 the Supreme Court in April; and then Hugh will have 
 a word to say to Evert, and to Hallett and maybe to 
 Sears. You knew that Falls has found McCormack? 
 Orestes may find the scourge in his own hand some fine 
 day. But it all hinges upon this decision and it upon 
 Caldwell ! " 
 
 " Did you know Mark Caldwell had been in St. Augus 
 tine, father? Well, he was. And I talked to him quite 
 a good deal about this matter here. . . . Why, 1 talk 
 about what I like, of course! It seemed such a pity, you 
 know, that he should not know, before he made his de 
 cision, just how things were; and so why, I told him! 
 He was not a judge then, father, was he? Was n't he just 
 a plain man ? At a dance, you know sailing driv 
 ing. He had not his judicial mind on then, had he ? " 
 
 The old Judge laughed, hugged her close : " God 
 knows ! " he cried, wiping the tears of laughter from his 
 eyes. " Only God, who made feminine logic and put it 
 in the world to work confusion in men's minds, could 
 answer that ! Thank Heaven it is not within my juris 
 diction! Xow kiss me, and run away to bed." 
 
 " Fadie,," she had not called him thus for years, 
 "fadie," Joan paused, pressed down the ashes in her
 
 3 io THE NORTHERNER 
 
 father's pipe with a deft little middle finger, ramming 
 them hard home, "you 're sure you are not jealous about 
 about anything? You don't mind my loving any 
 one else ? " 
 
 "No, I would not keep you from your lover, child." 
 And the old man held her close that she might not see 
 the quiver of his face.
 
 AN" April sky hung above the terraced lawns; the 
 spring wind stirred gently the half-unfolded, satiny 
 foliage of trees, whose wide canopies cast a dappled shade 
 upon the new grass and the tender verdure of the under 
 growth. In the dark wall of the cedars a redbird flashed 
 in and out, swaying upon the somber bough like a live 
 coal, as he tuned his golden flute to the ear of his little 
 dun mate, watching, with bright eyes, her gorgeous lord 
 preening and parading without. From the silver poplars, 
 shaking a cloud of silken catkins like a sunset cloud of 
 ashes of roses, came the wrangling of the blue jays. 
 
 Joan watched them with a smile, standing upon one 
 of the upper terraces, whence she issued calm orders from 
 the depths of a white sunbonnet tied under her dainty 
 chin to old Jen* and the Captain of the Guard, 'Zekial. 
 
 " I want e-v-ery sin-gle leaf raked off of these terraces 
 and carried off and burned in an unquenchable fire ! 
 without any smoke, Jeff and Zeke without a p-a-rticle 
 of smoke ! " 
 
 " Ya-as 'm," said Jeff to Joan ; and he muttered to his 
 wheelbarrow : " Gawd A'might' knows how Fse gine to 
 burn up des 'ere wet leaves in er unsquinchable fire 
 dout makin' no smoke ! Git 'p, wheelbar'r ! "
 
 3 i2 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Joan turned to go within, and found herself in a pail! 
 of arms strong arms, tweed clad that gave her a 
 hearty embrace; a pair of glasses fell upon the ground at 
 her feet, and Watson, finding her mouth at last under the 
 crisp flutings of her head-gear, kissed her heartily. 
 
 " That 's one of the many advantages of being a mar 
 ried man I can kiss you again, Jo ! " 
 
 Joan found his glasses and put them on for him, his 
 eyes resting lovingly upon her the while. 
 
 " How well and handsome you look, Hugh ! I used not 
 to think you handsome. And what p-e-rfectly 1-o-vely 
 clothes ! " 
 
 " They are part of my trousseau," he said complacently ; 
 and Joan gave a dainty shriek of laughter. 
 
 " Hugh, do men have a trousseau ? Why, I thought 
 only girls " 
 
 " Goose ! Did you suppose a man rushes into matri 
 mony as he would from a burning building, with only 
 what he had on ? " 
 
 " Something like it ! " she laughed. " Come in, Hugh, 
 and stop for luncheon." 
 
 " No," he said, suddenly grave, " I came out to see you, 
 Joan to have a talk like old times. Let 's go on to 
 the wistaria arbor; that 's a good place to exchange con 
 fidences ! " with an attempt at lightness. 
 
 A fear clutched Joan's heart. Had he sailed, and had 
 Challie come to tell her? 
 
 Watson threw himself down upon the bench. 
 
 " I courted Betty here," he said, looking about him. 
 " There, right there by the steps, I kissed her for the 
 first time. The more fit for expiation ! " 
 
 Joan turned her clear eyes upon him in amaze.
 
 "MY LOVE IN DIXIE" 313 
 
 " Expiation, Hugh? Why, what can you mean? And 
 to me?" 
 
 "Aye; to you! But for another for Falls." He 
 broke off abruptly, sat in thought, as though he sought 
 within his mind a fitting opening for what he had to say; 
 but when he spoke again it was to recall with tender grav 
 ity scenes of their childhood, when Joan was but a baby. 
 
 " You don't remember when Elvira used to bring you 
 down in your little nightie to say good night to me and 
 Uncle John, do you, Jo?" He laughed boyishly at a 
 sudden recollection. " You used to ride straddle on my 
 knee and stick out your little pink toes, and say, * T-u 
 turkey/ after me. You were the sweetest angel that ever 
 dropped through a star-hole ! Have you forgotten t T-u 
 turkey ' ? " 
 
 " Yes, Challie," she told him gently ; " that classic ode 
 has escaped me. It is part of the expiation ? " 
 
 "Aye; it goes back to that time. But you must be 
 nearly twenty now, Joan, are you not ? You are a woman 
 now; old enough to understand " 
 
 Joan turned a face of anguish upon him, her hands 
 fluttering to her heart. 
 
 " Oh, Hugh," she cried, " must you ? Oh, must you ? " 
 and buried her face upon his bosom. 
 
 Watson put his hand upon her head, pressing it closer 
 to him. " Keep it there, Joan," he said hoarsely ; "I I 
 can tell this cursed thing easier if I do not see your eyes ! 
 . . . Last winter," he went on, forcing himself to speak 
 firmly and rapidly, " last winter, Joan, you saw out 
 there on the mountainside, at a cabin you saw Falls 
 there with a colored girl Rosebud, did you not ? Joan, 
 listen to me. You were wrong cruelly, wickedly wrong !
 
 3 i4 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 Falls had never seen that girl but once in his life before 
 that afternoon. He was acting for for another man 
 for me, Joan ! That girl, Kosebud," he spoke slowly, 
 as though to gain breath to steady his hoarse voice, which 
 was scarce audible; his handsome, stolid face was white 
 to the lips, " that girl is my daughter, Joan." 
 
 With a bitter cry the girl tore herself from his arms. 
 " Oh, Challie, Challie ! You, too ! I 've lost you, too ! " 
 
 Watson sat in silence, his heavy face hiding his pain. 
 It was the bitterest moment of his life. "All that Mrs. 
 Allen told you was as false as hell false, not in inten 
 tion, but in fact," he said at last. " Falls was with Bose- 
 bud in New York for about two hours. He met her there, 
 put her aboard a steamer, paid her passage to Germany 
 with my money! He did this for me to lift off of me 
 the consequences of my own viciousness. And to save 
 Betty. It was simple friendship to me; no other motive 
 on God's earth! And for that he has been hounded by 
 their blatant tongues ! " 
 
 Joan leaned back in the corner of the bench, her eyes 
 upon the long line of the mountains in front of her, her 
 soft hands clasped tight together. Watson parted them, 
 and taking one into his warm clasp went on : 
 
 "Hallett had got hold of this this old madness of 
 mine. He had a letter absolute proof and he was 
 using it to injure me, to ruin Falls, and to break Betty's 
 heart. Falls went to him and took the letter took it 
 by force, you know. Now, Joan, you understand, do you 
 not, that you hold my happiness and Betty's Betty's 
 very life, child! in this little rosy hand?" He put it 
 to his lips. "I laid my happiness cheerfully in the 
 balance against Falls's honor; but Betty, Joan "
 
 "MY LOVE IN DIXIE" 315 
 
 '' I know, Challie ; I understand." 
 ' And Falls? Joan, has all this nightmare that I have 
 ./one through here to-day this pain to you has all 
 ihis been in vain? Things will be right between you 
 now ? " 
 
 " He hates me ! " she murmured ; " he will never, never 
 forgive me, Hugh. Never ! " 
 
 " Falls loves you to distraction, Joan ; he will love you 
 as long as he lives, even if he does not come back to you/' 
 
 Joan turned her startled eyes upon Watson, with an 
 agonized question that her breathless lips could not utter. 
 
 " No ; not that ! Falls will be in Adairville to-night. 
 I meant come back in the sense of making the first ad 
 vance toward patching up this this quarrel. That is 
 all ; but, Joan, there is a harsh, unbending streak in Falls, 
 for all his gentle tolerance, and he '11 take it through 
 life with him and six feet into the ground at last ! 
 Don't cross it, dear girl. And don't expect of him what 
 is not in him to give." 
 
 " Challie, what can I do to " 
 
 " To show Falls that you are changed, that you will 
 make him happy? Nothing, unless he comes to you; or 
 unless chance accident throws him in your way. May fate 
 send the hour ! " 
 
 " But I thought," she said timidly, " I feared he was 
 going back to England." 
 
 Hugh's brow clouded. " He is," he said ; " almost at 
 once. He will be here only for one week; he sails the 
 twenty-fifth on the Waldravia" . . . 
 
 Falls arrived at midnight, his train rolling into a station 
 dark as Erebus.
 
 316 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 He alighted amid a crowd of growling, swearing pas 
 sengers traveling men, for the most part listening 
 with grim amusement as they cursed the town's admin 
 istration with fluency and abandon, while they stumbled 
 down the steps and about the unlighted station. A lantern 
 here and there in the hand of a train-man, the lamps of 
 the waiting cabs and carriages, the sickly gleam of coal 
 oil from the ticket offices and waiting-rooms, alone miti 
 gated the universal gloom. 
 
 " Cab, sur dat yu', Mis'r Falls ? Lem'me tek yer 
 up. Power-house? She 's shet down, sur ya-as, sur 
 nigh on to two weeks, sur. What, sur? We ain't dun 
 had no lights, er no kind. . . . Mr. Watson's 'partment? 
 Ya-as, sur, I knows, sur, Leftwich Building. Thanky, 
 sur!" 
 
 In the familiar rooms, which were cosy and clean, with 
 a bare, manlike cleanliness Falls had inherited the Hon 
 orable Peter since Hugh's marriage he flung himself 
 moodily into a chair, and clasping his hands behind his 
 head stared absently in front of him with eyes which saw 
 close ahead the wreck of his business prospects. The fierce 
 passion of anger and revenge which had torn him when 
 his machinery had been wrecked that first time had given 
 place to a dull quiet. The game was about played out, and 
 his stake swept off the table. There remained to him but 
 to rise and go his way ; to cut off with one clean blow the 
 encumbering wreck of his ten months in Dixie; to kill 
 memory with work; to sanely and bravely grasp life at 
 another point, and to bury this dead year deep out of 
 sight. . . . 
 
 A trembling little form had crept upon his knee, a 
 wriggling little body clambered over his bosom, Bobby's
 
 "MY LOVE IN DIXIE" 317 
 
 warm tongue kissed his cheek. Falls's blank eyes, coming 
 slowly back to life, became conscious that they rested upon 
 Joan's face in its medallion frame on the mantel, and 
 she seemed to smile upon him, tender, debonair, clad in 
 the lovely ball-gown which she had worn that eventful 
 night. Falls rose and leaned over it, studying it with 
 bitter eyes. 
 
 He turned from it with a harsh laugh. " All of a piece," 
 he muttered, " all of a piece ! Dixie and Dixie's daugh 
 ter!" 
 
 As he turned away, a rapid, stumbling step upon the 
 stair caught his ear; he sprang to the door. 
 
 "Hugh!" 
 
 "Falls, old fellow!" 
 
 A strong hand-clasp, a moment's silent gaze eye to eye, 
 then a joyous chuckle from Watson, as he fumbled in 
 his pocket and handed a scrap of yellow paper to Falls. 
 
 " We 've won out ! The opinion has been handed down, 
 and the Tenth Circuit is a last year's bird's nest. Tony 
 is a naked, wandering, melancholy ghost of a back number. 
 Moral " 
 
 "Let Cruikshanks go. He 7 s past." Falls flung the 
 scrap of paper on the table. " That draws the Cumber 
 land Gas Company's last trump. Now with the London 
 and Edinboro' Consolidated Companies, Limited, as a 
 lever, why should we not take a turn at the screw ourselves, 
 Hugh?" 
 
 " Aye ! " cried Hugh exultingly. " Why not indeed ! 
 You have McCormack ? Then we '11 stick our ' local capi 
 talists ' for punitive damages in the Federal courts. 
 ' Sting money ' will make Evert and Hallett sweat worse 
 than the old General did under that B. H. & Q. business."
 
 3i8 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 "You know," said Falls steadily, his firm hand on 
 Bobby's silvery coat, stroking it softly, "you know, 
 Watson, that my own stake has gone down with the Power 
 and Passenger Company. I will turn it over to the Lon 
 don and Edinboro', but, owning both, it seems to me they 
 can dictate terms to the honorable city of ' 'Dairville ' ! " 
 
 There was a bitter ring in Falls's voice new to Hugh, 
 and he turned to him with anxious, covert scrutiny as 
 he replied: 
 
 "Judge Adair told me six weeks ago that this would 
 be the result of this entanglement; he does not advise 
 litigation; but I do. I would give ten years of my life 
 to squeeze that ring ! We '11 do it, Greg ! You will make 
 more money this way, Falls," he went on, " and have 
 a better time, managing here for the London and Edin- 
 boro' " 
 
 "Yes?" absently. "I 'm not so keen about money as 
 I was. If Bobby can have his chop and a nigger to give 
 him his bath, we '11 pull through." He shook the little 
 dog lovingly. " We are not such high-rollers as we were, 
 are we, Bobby? And we '11 not manage for the London 
 and Edinboro' shall we, Bob- White? We '11 see the 
 world together ; Dixie has passed for us ! " His voice 
 shook on the last words. He rose and wandered restlessly 
 about the rooms. Watson noted that his old, keen vigor 
 seemed dimmed, the fold in his brow deeper; he paused 
 before the mantelpiece again, and Watson rose and stood 
 beside him with an arm about his shoulder; together and 
 silently they looked upon Joan's pictured face, still smil 
 ing upon them from the medallion. 
 
 " Greg," said Hugh, at list, " Greg, kick me if you like 
 but I \e got to talk ! "
 
 :< MY LOVE IN DIXIE" 319 
 
 " Talk on, old man why not ? " Falls stooped as 
 he spoke and blew a speck of dust off the frame, and set 
 it straight with a gentle touch of his firm hand. 
 
 " Joan knows now, Falls, of her mistake. She knows 
 all quite all ! And she has suffered God, how she 
 lias suffered ! Were Joan a man, Falls, she would follow 
 you to the world's end to expiate with blood or service 
 the wrong she did you just as you or I would do." 
 
 He ceased, waiting for Falls to speak; but the silence 
 remained unbroken ; there was a hard look in Falls's eyes. 
 
 Hugh turned to take his hat and paused. 
 
 " Greg," he burst out restlessly, " I hate to have you 
 here alone. These rooms seem dreary after home. Come 
 back with me, won't you? Your room is ready Betty 
 told me to bring you back; she 's looking for you." 
 
 " I will come with pleasure, Hugh, for a day before 
 I leave. Tell Mrs. Watson so, and thank her for me. 
 But these rooms are not dreary to me." 
 
 The week of Falls's stay slipped by like a fevered dream 
 to Joan. The long, bright April days seemed to be shod 
 with lead yet winged with the speed of light, as she 
 clung to each hour that passed without a word, a message, 
 from him. Too restless to endure the silent house, she 
 spent the days of sunlight and perfume filled to the 
 brim with palpitating life and riotous bloom in the 
 gardens, with her sunbonnet tied under her chin and her 
 trowel in her hand, making piteous pretense at work; 
 her eyes straying now and then to the rocky road lead 
 ing up from town. He would come that way if he 
 came ! 
 
 Joan knew from Watson that Falls was not at the
 
 320 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 power-house, that he was at Watson's offices, and she looked 
 for him always in that direction; she would see him far 
 down the street when he came. And at night, when the 
 kindly darkness hid that torturing road, she sat in the 
 wistaria arbor, or paced the terraces with restless feet, 
 back and forth back and forth, listening, now that she 
 could not see, for his step upon the stair ; she had decided 
 that he would come that way, by the rose garden and the 
 broken flight of marble stairs if he came. 
 
 But the days succeeded one another in pitiless indif 
 ference to her pain, and he did not come. The nights 
 reeled round her, filled with the cloying sweetness of jas 
 mine, full of restless memories of unutterable longing ! 
 
 Wednesday came and passed; Wednesday night 
 Thursday morning; the days were being paid out with 
 cruel speed. Thursday afternoon (Falls was to leave at 
 dawn on Friday for New York, sailing Saturday at noon) 
 Betty came in, and found Joan among her roses, bare 
 headed, but gowned in filmy white elaborately gowned, 
 as Betty's shrewd eyes saw at once with cunning touches 
 and studied details. Betty wondered. 
 
 " Are you going to Mrs. Westingham's, after all ? How 
 p-e-rf ectly " 
 
 " I am not going," Joan hastened to say. "I it is 
 so hot I hate playing cards days like this." 
 
 " Why are you so b-e-a-utifully gotten up to wander 
 about here in the back yard?" 
 
 "I I usually dress for dinner, Betty " 
 
 " You take dinner about seven this time of year, and 
 it 's only half-past three. You got ready good and early, 
 Jo. Well, / 'm going, and I 'm glad to have the chance, 
 too! Hugh" plaintively "Hugh thinks it is silly
 
 "MY LOVE IN DIXIE" 321 
 
 to play euchre. So I thought, as Challie is not here to 
 day Hugh ? Why, I thought you knew ! Hugh went 
 to Xew York with Mr. Falls this morning at daylight. 
 The Waldravia sails Saturday. Silly in Hugh. He is 
 perfectly d-af t about that Gregory Falls ! " 
 
 "Joan," said Judge Adair that night at dinner, "do 
 you remember Jim Davidson, who so inconsiderately left 
 me that land in California ? I 've been losing money right 
 along on that ranch. What use in the world Jim thought 
 I had for a ranch Well, I ? ve decided to go out there 
 if you care to go, and if you can be ready to leave 
 by the first of the week " 
 
 " I 'm ready now," said Joan, still in the dream from 
 which she could not rouse herself : a tossing space of rough, 
 gray water, a big liner ploughing her way on and on, 
 and a tall figure, a man with his face turned away from 
 the land she could see his eyes steady and cold look 
 ing ahead to the life she was not to share! 
 
 " Monday will do," said the old man gently ; " you 
 might muss that pretty gown if we went to-night." 
 
 The girl threw herself eagerly into her preparations, 
 ran gaily to and fro, talked brightly to her father of their 
 plans, drilled Milly Ann, who was to go, in her duties 
 as a traveling maid, and the two days sped by. But even 
 Sunday brought no rest to Joan's active feet. Her gay 
 tongue did not lag once all the day, a bright spot of color 
 showed on her soft cheeks, her lips had the polished tinge 
 of a tulip leaf only her eyes were absent. That rough 
 water and the big liner was a speck now, the tall figure 
 lost only his eyes still haunted her, looking steadily 
 into her own with reproachful pain.
 
 322 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Is it your night to look after the door, or Zeke's, 
 Hilly Ann?" 
 
 " It 's ma night, Miss Jone, but Zeke he 'lowed " 
 
 " Zeke, I am going to the wistaria arbor, and no matter 
 who comes, no matter who, Zeke, I am not at home ! " 
 
 " Ya'as 'm, Miss Jone," said Zeke, and retired to the 
 back gallery steps and the soft picking of banjo strings, 
 and Milly Ann's demure black charms. 
 
 The silken, gray-green foliage drew a rustling curtain 
 about Joan, as she sat in the corner of the old bench with 
 dreaming eyes. Hot tears gathered and quivering sobs 
 rose in her throat as, one by one, memory gave back to 
 her hungry heart his face, his voice, his touch. 
 
 Phase by phase the scene of their parting came back 
 to her with torturing vividness. " All all ! " he had 
 said. She had been so near to him and now ! 
 
 With the long vision of youth's clear eyes, Joan saw 
 the years hurrying to meet her, to claim her, to cut her 
 off from him. "Get this thing down blot you out of 
 my life as men do," he had said; and why not? With 
 that clear balance which was part of her mental self, she 
 saw herself walking serenely on to meet the insistent years, 
 another form beside Falls; a woman's figure at his side 
 not her own. The girl sprang up in impotent an 
 guish. Her soul, beating upward to where she had been 
 taught to seek for comfort, asked the old question, old 
 as love: 
 
 " Oh, God who put this love into my heart, why do 
 I suffer so ! " 
 
 A man's step fell upon the broken marble stairs a 
 rapid, ringing step that came straight on toward her hid 
 ing-place; a tall form swung into a bar of moonlight
 
 "MY LOVE IN DIXIE " 323 
 
 upon the terrace, and Joan's heart leaped to her parted 
 lips, as, with eyes which could not believe their own joy, 
 she hung upon the familiar outlines waiting. How deep 
 those shadows were! It could not be Gregory, of course 
 he had sailed ! 
 
 The man stepped into the second bar of moonlight 
 lying like a sheeted ghost upon the terrace, and, with a 
 broken cry the girl sprang up, sped with flying feet across 
 the dewy grass, through the honeysuckle walk, past the 
 pale cascades of jasmine into the starry ranks of moonlit 
 lilies, and stopped, conscious as Eve, but with hands that 
 fluttered toward him and lips that breathed his name. 
 
 Falls found her thus, a Burne-Jones angel among the 
 lilies the night wind holding the boughs aside to show 
 him her face. 
 
 " Is it you ? " she whispered, unable still to believe her 
 joy, though her hands were held against his lips. a Did 
 did not the Waldravia sail?" 
 
 " I suppose so," said Falls, with his old, grave sim 
 plicity, though his voice was unsteady, " but when it came 
 to the final turn of the screw, I found I could not leave 
 you, Joan. Could not, of my own will, go where my duty 
 and my manhood call me; and I came back to you, to 
 my love in Dixie, to ask her to send me if she will " 
 
 " To me ? Have you come back to me ? " She swayed 
 toward him in the gloom, and Falls drew her close. 
 
 " Is it England ? " he whispered, his cheek on hers, 
 "together?" 
 
 "Yes together." 
 
 " Have you thought," he said at last, " all that it means, 
 love, to give up home, and kin, and friends even your 
 father?"
 
 3 2 4 THE NORTHERNER 
 
 " Father? " she faltered. 
 
 "Yes," he told her steadily, "your father, too." 
 
 The girl paused upon her answer, and Falls strained 
 her to him in an agony of suspense; the very currents 
 of his blood seemed to stop, to wait upon her words. 
 
 She stirred in his embrace, lifted her face to his, met 
 his eyes through the gloom steadily with her own. 
 
 " I have thought now, Gregory," she whispered, in a 
 happy, breathless voice. 
 
 "Is it_ 
 
 "You!"
 
 PRINCESS MARITZA 
 
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