THINGS' 
 THAT ARE 
 
 FL.W. as> 
 
 KAUFFMAN
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S
 
 THE THINGS THAT 
 ARE CAESAR'S + * 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 By 
 Reginald Wright Kauffman 
 
 Author of Jarvii of Harvard 
 
 New York 
 
 D. Appleton and Company 
 i 902
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902 
 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published September, 1902
 
 SRLB 
 
 URO 
 
 TO 
 JAMES PRESTON 
 
 AND 
 
 THORNTON SHERBURNE HARDY 
 
 2130776
 
 " Brother, brother, we are both in the wrong." 
 The Beggar's Opera
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTXR PAOK 
 
 I. Our OP THE SHADOW 1 
 
 II. THE HEART OF THE WORLD .... 18 
 
 III. ENTER A GIRL 83 
 
 IV. A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 51 
 
 V. IN THE STATE OF DENMARK .... 62 
 
 VI. DOCTORS DISAGREE 80 
 
 VII. AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY .... 98 
 
 VIII. AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT .... 114 
 IX. THE USE OF A DAUGHTER .... 126 
 
 X. A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST .... 136 
 
 XI. EXIT A REPORTER 149 
 
 XII. THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR . . .160 
 
 XIII. SIR ORACLE RICKER 175 
 
 XIV. CUPID'S COUPE" 183 
 
 XV. THE DEAD SPEAK 192 
 
 XVI. A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE . . . 210 
 
 XVII. A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE . . . 223 
 
 XVIII. EXIT A BANK CLERK 240 
 
 XIX. "SOMETHING TO DO" 257 
 
 XX. CROSS- PURPOSES 275 
 
 XXI. THE Kiss OF DEATH 288 
 
 XXII. THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS . . . .809 
 
 XXIII. PROSPEROUS ART 822 
 
 vii
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE (LESAR'S 
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 WHEN they had reached the little shed 
 that did duty for depot, John Haig turned 
 about and looked back at the walls of the 
 prison where he had spent the last ten years 
 of his life. The road led straight upward 
 to the huge gate, a broad white highway be- 
 tween dun autumn fields. The red sand- 
 stone ramparts shone almost pleasantly in 
 the early morning light, and the slate roof of 
 a single little guard-house caught gaily the 
 rays of the late October sun. There was not 
 a human creature in sight about the place; 
 nothing to give hint of the busy black life 
 teeming within. To the unknowing eye the 
 penitentiary might have seemed a newly de- 
 serted fortress drowsing, even at this hour, 
 
 1
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 in the Indian Summer's heat. But John Haig 
 knew and shuddered. 
 
 The intoxication of his first draught of 
 the world's free air had not yet had time 
 to mount to his head. He could not yet 
 realize his new liberty, and the prison pallor 
 was still as clearly on his soul as on his 
 face. 
 
 " I can't help it, Uncle Stephen," he apolo- 
 gized to the man beside him. " I'm the least 
 sentimental of men, and the place doesn't 
 look unfriendly from the outside. But I 
 can't help it." 
 
 The sweet, weak face of the bishop re- 
 laxed its calm, his mild eyes blinked under 
 the shadow of his resetted imitation shovel- 
 hat, but his oddly ascetic mouth drew tight 
 above his patriarchal beard. He put a 
 kindly hand upon the still broad and straight, 
 if wasted, shoulders of the young-old man 
 beside him. 
 
 " You must help it," he said. " You have 
 paid the price, John, and earned forgetful- 
 ness. How often must I tell you that your 
 penance was to the full ? ' If we confess our 
 
 2
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 sins, God is faithful and just ' You know 
 the passage." 
 
 Haig regarded him with a strange ex- 
 pression on a face which a decade of disci- 
 pline had left well-nigh expressionless. 
 
 " I have thought of nothing else," he said, 
 " for ten years." 
 
 "I know, I know," the bishop answered 
 hurriedly. " It was my recalling it, my coun- 
 selling it, that brought that brought you 
 here. And you see that I was right." 
 
 " Yes, I see that you were right now." 
 
 " Six years ago," continued the bishop, 
 "you said bitterly that the world had for- 
 gotten you. I told you to be of good heart; 
 that, if you would be, the day would come 
 when you would thank God for the world's 
 short memory. Well, John, the world has 
 forgotten you and this is the day." 
 
 The released convict did not reply, and 
 Bishop Osgood's profession, which had 
 taught him so few things of practical worth, 
 had at least impressed upon him too deeply 
 the value of silence to allow him just then 
 to force the note. Instead, he contented him- 
 
 3
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 self with regarding, unostentatiously, the 
 white face of his nephew while Haig's daz- 
 zled eyes gazed absently up the dancing per- 
 spective of the tracks. 
 
 White indeed was the face. In fact, it 
 was the strange pallor of the skin that, as if 
 somehow trying to shun, all the more strik- 
 ingly attracted, attention. For it was the 
 pallor that catches the eye of even the igno- 
 rant beholder by the subtle furtiveness of 
 its character. And yet, beyond this, there 
 was. nothing furtive about the man. The 
 high forehead, the features all made of firm 
 straight lines, the mouth habitually set and 
 square, the clear gray eyes, even the aggres- 
 sive bristling hair, if some of them spoke of 
 a man of vain imaginings, all told of faith 
 of that implicit sort which at once translates 
 its visions into actions. In those surround- 
 ings, and with the bishop's last words still 
 trembling in the air, it was but too clear that 
 this was a man who firmly believed that he 
 had paid society's own high price for his 
 otherwise forbidden pleasure and was once 
 more quits with the world. 
 
 4
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW. 
 
 Standing there, however, the generally 
 immobile features underwent a slight change. 
 The delicate nostrils expanded, the broad 
 chest heaved, the gray eyes glistened. The 
 intoxication was mounting at last from the 
 novel cup of liberty. 
 
 At that moment the morning stillness was 
 rent by a piercing shriek ; with a hideous roar 
 the train dashed upon them and came to a 
 protesting stop just as the young man start- 
 ed violently into the arms of his guide. 
 
 " You see," he ruefully explained, " it's 
 all so new to me." 
 
 They got aboard, the bishop leading the 
 way to a compartment in one of the parlor- 
 cars. As they settled themselves there, Haig 
 looked about with all the curiosity of a child. 
 Then there dawned upon him the sense of 
 their secure privacy. 
 
 His uncle noted this. 
 
 "We're quite alone here, you observe," 
 he said. " I thought that, just at first, it 
 would be pleasantest." 
 
 " You arranged for it ? " 
 
 The bishop nodded. 
 5
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^SAK'S 
 
 " Then I owe you this as well. I wish 
 you could understand how much I appreciate 
 your wonderful thoughtfulness in every de- 
 tail of to-day, sir." Haig still spoke much as 
 a boy. " There seems to be nothing you've 
 forgotten. Even you yourself can't guess 
 all the horrors you've saved me from." 
 
 The elder man raised a protesting hand. 
 
 " I think I guessed some of it," he replied. 
 
 " But you couldn't guess it all. It's not," 
 Haig hurried to correct himself, " that I'm 
 afraid to face men. I've served my full 
 term ; I've taken my punishment. But you've 
 made the end as easy as you made the be- 
 ginning hard. You saved me all the vile 
 associations, all the loathsome details, that 
 must make leaving such a place as hard as 
 going into it and much harder than staying 
 there." 
 
 "I'm glad you haven't forgotten. I'm 
 glad that you said that about my making it 
 difficult at the start," the bishop took him up. 
 " For it brings us to the point at which I 
 wanted most to arrive. My boy, I'm not 
 going to refer to this thing again, but for just 
 
 6
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 that reason in order, that is, to show you 
 why it will not be necessary again to refer to 
 it I want once and for all to make my posi- 
 tion clear to you." 
 
 He coughed uneasily and looked at his 
 nephew from under the protecting shovel-hat, 
 which, if he could help it, he never removed. 
 But Haig met him fearlessly, taking it all, 
 rather disconcertingly, as so much a matter 
 of course. 
 
 " I understand," he replied. 
 
 " Well, then," said the bishop, " this is it, 
 and I sha'n't mince words: When I first 
 learned of your sin I had the natural im- 
 pulse to wish it all to be kept secret to 
 have it covered up and hidden. It was, I 
 say, but natural that I should not want the 
 only child of my own wife's dead brother 
 publicly to be pronounced a felon and to go, 
 a common criminal, from dock to jail. I was 
 only a parish priest then, and I told myself 
 that, in my humble position, I could be acting 
 from no selfish motive if I did everything in 
 my power to hush the matter up. However 
 much noise it might have made, it could never 
 
 7
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CAESAR'S 
 
 have reached my little corner of the world. 
 I was sitting in my study I remember the 
 night so well! I couldn't think of going to 
 bed with my wife's dear flesh and blood in 
 such agony so many miles away from me. I 
 resolved to start East in the morning and to 
 do everything in my power and it turned 
 out that it would have been easy enough 
 to keep you from the hands of the law." 
 
 As he progressed, Bishop Osgood lost a 
 great deal of his hesitancy, and it would soon 
 have been clear to the unprejudiced beholder 
 that he did not altogether disrelish his part. 
 
 "With that thought," he pursued, "I 
 stood up to go to my room and pack my 
 valise. And then, just as I put my hand on 
 the door, I remembered the words of our 
 blessed Saviour : * Render to Caesar the 
 things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
 things that are God's.' I sat up for the 
 whole night and thought it all out. I have 
 always, I am thankful to say, lived a life of 
 ideals, not of material concessions. I saw at 
 once, and clearly, that the protection I had 
 thought to offer my wife was only a more 
 
 8
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 subtle form of selfishness. And then I 
 thought of the duty I owed to you. I was a 
 minister of the Gospel and your aunt's hus- 
 band. You had done a great moral wrong; 
 you must purge yourself morally. You had 
 sinned, too, against society; you must make 
 the reparation society demanded. In my 
 position, it was my evident duty to make 
 this plain to you. I don't think I was a mere 
 meddler. I was sincere, and the result will 
 show that I was right." 
 
 Haig was looking straight before him. 
 
 " You were right," he assented. 
 
 " I came," the bishop went on, " and you 
 know the result. I showed you what I be- 
 lieved to be your duty. Society had said 
 such a crime merited such a penalty. That 
 penalty you must pay. I could not com- 
 pound a felony. I could not allow you to 
 compound a felony with yourself. The doc- 
 trine of penance is as sound as it is old. 
 ."Well, we have both rendered unto Csesar the 
 things that are his due, and to God what 
 belongs to God." 
 
 The old man's voice trembled a bit as 
 2 9
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 he concluded he really meant every word 
 of it but in Haig's face there was only high 
 resolve. 
 
 "Uncle Stephen," he said, "I'm glad of 
 it. I am glad I did it. You don't know how 
 much I admire and thank you." 
 
 "I knew it would be so," the bishop 
 answered. 
 
 " It was so," Haig assured him, " almost 
 from the start. Anything was good then, so 
 that it was an end. Anything was better 
 than the hideous suspense, the agony of re- 
 morse, the fear of facing acquaintances with 
 with all this against me. I couldn't have 
 faced them. I see now that I couldn't. Some 
 word of it would have been sure to leak out, 
 and I'd have imagined whispers wherever 
 I went, and so I'd have gone only one way- 
 downhill. But you brought me altogether a 
 certainty, a comfort, a chance of expiation 
 and a place to hide my shame. It was a re- 
 lief oh, you can't dream what a relief it 
 was when the gates shut behind me ! " 
 
 Again the bishop touched him gently. 
 
 " I don't pretend it was a pleasant place," 
 10
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Haig kept it up, already speaking as one 
 who recounts vanished things. "I don't 
 pretend that. But it was away from every 
 one every one. That alone was so much 
 that I didn't seem to feel those first indig- 
 nities the stripping and measuring, the 
 bath, the barber-shop, and the clothes. And 
 at the worst there was always the hard work, 
 and at the last your own counsel and the 
 good chaplain's, until at length I saw that I 
 had performed the act of atonement and 
 would come out, as you and he said, rehabili- 
 tated and square." 
 
 " You have paid to the uttermost far- 
 thing," the bishop repeated. " There was 
 no mercy asked of the court and none was 
 granted." 
 
 Haig reflected. 
 
 "But have I paid in full? Havel?" He 
 played upon the question with all the fervor 
 of the accustomed zealot. " Should you have 
 come for me to-day, for instance, and ar- 
 ranged," he waved his hand about their 
 stuffy compartment, and concluded, " ar- 
 ranged all this? Should you have spared 
 11
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^SAK'S 
 
 me the coarse clothes and the vile shoes they 
 give a man when he leaves a jail? " 
 
 The bishop shook his head instinctively. 
 
 " I would not use that word," he ven- 
 tured. 
 
 "Jail? Why not? It's all in line with 
 your own doctrine, you know." 
 
 "Yes, yes, to be sure. No doubt you're 
 right. Of course you're right there. But in 
 these surroundings However, that's not 
 the point, is it? Rest assured, my poor boy, 
 upon my word and you've taken it all along 
 thus far that you have paid, as I tell you 
 again, to the full. Now, that's all settled," 
 he pursued with a sigh of fatuous relief. 
 " What we must talk of now is your future. 
 You know, John, my own life and your Aunt 
 Katherine's have been much changed since 
 that is to say, in the last several years. 
 From a poor Western clergyman I have come 
 to be the head of a wealthy diocese in what 
 is now one of the most important of the three 
 or four really great Eastern cities." 
 
 Haig's eyes were all expectancy. 
 
 "Of course I know that, sir," he said, 
 12
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 " and I am sure," he added, " that there 
 couldn't be a better man for the place, or 
 one who more deserved it." 
 
 Bishop Osgood was human enough to be 
 pleased with any form of gratitude. 
 
 " Tut, tut," he however replied. " I shall 
 do my best. I always have done it; that is 
 all. Well, as I was saying, for three years 
 now I've had this place. All that time, I may 
 say, we've been laying our plans for you. Of 
 course, I have indicated to you what they 
 were. We have influential friends there, and 
 I can trust you now, John, as I could trust 
 myself, not to abuse your opportunities." 
 
 The bishop was fairly launched. He set- 
 tled back in his seat and proceeded to outline 
 the life that he proposed for his charge. 
 Presented as his nephew, John's way would 
 be comparatively clear. They were living in 
 a city far enough removed from the scene of 
 Haig's crime and punishment. The expia- 
 tion having been made, there was no need of 
 the fact ever coming forward to dishearten 
 him. To his native cleverness, honesty and 
 hard work need alone be added for the 
 13
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 achievement of all the requisite success, and 
 these qualities the good bishop felt sure his 
 nephew's severe lesson had already secured 
 him. 
 
 As he listened, John Haig's whole soul 
 opened to his uncle's words. For ten years 
 he had lived simply by force of such a hope. 
 Morning and evening it had been with him. 
 It alone had kept the prison books from driv- 
 ing him mad ; it alone had admitted sleep be- 
 tween the bars of his narrow whitewashed 
 cell. Fanatical it had indeed fashioned him, 
 but it had also moved him to keep himself 
 strong in body and, more powerfully still, it 
 had wrought to make him morally, if narrow- 
 ly, sound of soul. He opened now to the final 
 realization of it as a rose-tree wakes from its 
 sleep of winter to the first glad sunshine of 
 returning spring. With this day the world 
 was recreated for him, and the joyous 
 glimpses of it that flashed in at his window 
 wove themselves into his uncle's words. This 
 earth that he had been so long shut away 
 from, this earth with its splendid greens and 
 yellows; this sky with its soft clouds and 
 14
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 tender blue, came to him in all the glory of 
 its first birthday. He breathed it in and 
 never noticed that for him its pure air was 
 choked with the dust of the engine's coal. He 
 was too drunken with its free glory. He 
 looked upon the world and saw that it was 
 good. 
 
 Nor did his mood change when their talk 
 had wiled away the miles and, with the sun- 
 set, they began to enter the city which was 
 to be his home. The town seemed even more 
 to him than the country. Here was the scene 
 of his new life. The dancing snatches of it 
 delighted him. Its bustle was a music. The 
 clang of trolley-cars, the smoke of factories, 
 the bustling groups that blackened the 
 streets, gave him the intense sense of action, 
 of work through all its manifold units of ex- 
 pression controlled by one great purpose. 
 Work, work! that was the magnificent sum 
 of it. His whole soul filled with gratitude to 
 his God, who had granted him this chance of 
 doing among men and for men his little share 
 of the great world's mighty task. 
 
 The joyous dream was overpowering. In 
 15
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 a daze he allowed the bishop to hurry him 
 from the car, down the platform, and through 
 a crowd of men real men and free ! into a 
 cab. In a daze he was dimly aware that they 
 sprang from a babel of tongues and clattered 
 through a babel of traffic down this street 
 and up that, and in a daze he alighted, all too 
 soon, at the door of the big brownstone house 
 which served for the episcopal residence. 
 
 The bishop took out his latch-key. Then, 
 observing the excitement in his nephew's 
 face, he gripped the trembling hand. He was 
 even a bit sententious as the best of clergy- 
 men are apt to be. 
 
 " * He hath sent me,* " quoted Bishop Os- 
 good, " ' to bind up the broken-hearted, to 
 proclaim liberty to the captives, and the open- 
 ing of the prison to them that are bound ! ' 
 
 And at that moment the bishop believed 
 what he said. He was the shepherd bearing 
 home the lost lamb to the fold. 
 
 The next and he had opened the door. 
 
 Then there came about something with 
 the effect of which, for all his fancied fore- 
 sight, he had failed to reckon. 
 16
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 His wife had rushed down the hall and 
 flung her arms about the neck of a man whom 
 the bishop had seen but a matter of hours 
 ago a convict in prison garb and prison cell. 
 
 The light was strong on the clergyman's 
 face. He started and immediately his eyes 
 met those of John. He saw that his nephew 
 read what was so largely written there. 
 
 17
 
 n 
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 WHEN John Haig described himself as the 
 least sentimental of men he was as far wrong 
 as, when we come to describe ourselves, most 
 of us are. Whatever he had been in that 
 early life which he left behind him upon en- 
 tering the prison, he emerged, after his long 
 ordeal, to find the old self gone and the world 
 all new to his bewildered eyes. Throughout 
 his incarceration he had fed on one idea until 
 that idea, daily impressed upon a susceptible 
 nature and a plastic mind otherwise unoccu- 
 pied, had become a part of him. Unlike the 
 lower criminal, this had been a prisoner with 
 an intellect. His brain was of the active sort 
 that, be the hands employed at labor never 
 so arduous, must have something of its own to 
 work upon. And this was the only thought that 
 was given him. It turned him from rebellion 
 18
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 to loyalty, from despair to certain hope. It 
 grew to be the great fact and purpose of 
 his existence; the one dominant, controlling 
 force of his spiritual and intellectual life. 
 
 This idea, it is almost needless to remark, 
 was essentially the creation of a sentiment 
 which a coarse-fibred world would surely 
 mistake for sentimentality. Haig's valuation 
 of his own outlook on life was, indeed, so far 
 from correct that, in any other instance, he 
 himself was prone to accept the common con- 
 fusion of such terms. But in his own case 
 his solitary life had made him a blind zealot. 
 For a full decade his sympathies had been 
 innocently but ruthlessly directed into abnor- 
 mal channels, and he therefore returned to 
 existence with a definitely formed plan, a 
 hard-and-fast conception of the moral law. 
 Practical in his application of this scheme of 
 ethics, and intolerant of many another of no 
 greater futility, he had yet met his aunt's 
 embrace secure in the bishop's own faith that 
 the man who has paid society's price for its 
 indulgence will infallibly have that paper de- 
 livered to hand. 
 
 19
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE C^SAB'S 
 
 When, then, his observation, trained as 
 only a prison can train it, caught the flash of 
 awakening in his uncle's face, the whole man 
 trembled in the balance. At once he under- 
 stood, far better than the clergyman, just 
 what was going on in the bishop's soul. Not 
 that he doubted the justice of what, but a mo- 
 ment before, had been their common premise. 
 He only saw that the bishop doubted it, and 
 for a moment he felt that he must leave him 
 to his shame ; that he must quit a house under 
 the roof of which he could not, morally, be 
 seen to stand upright. 
 
 Yet the matter-of-fact side of his nature 
 came quickly and anomalously to the rescue 
 of his ideal. After all, his faith in the 
 prophet was, as yet, a part of his faith in 
 the god. They had for years been closely 
 intertwined, and both were far too deeply 
 and severely rooted just then to fall. The 
 bishop, said his common-sense, was only 
 human; his action had been but natural. It 
 was an involuntary action, the result not of 
 reason, but of a sudden juxtaposition of two 
 pictures, the remembered one of which must 
 20
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 inevitably and shortly fade away. Of that 
 one, moreover, the men among whom Haig 
 was about to begin his work would have no 
 knowledge at all, and even to privately ad- 
 monish the bishop for wavering would serve 
 but to prolong the last moments of a mem- 
 ory or a life better in every way under- 
 ground. 
 
 Being a man who always and at once 
 acted in accord with his reason, Haig passed 
 the incident by and shortly achieved tem- 
 porary forgetfulness. He bore himself sim- 
 ply as he was : one returned from a long ab- 
 sence to the home of his only living relatives. 
 By the time they sat down to dinner he had 
 so far put the prison behind him that he was 
 able to eat the unaccustomed food in the old 
 accustomed manner, and had so succeeded in 
 brushing aside the disturbing incident of his 
 arrival that he could calmly and even pleas- 
 antly discuss his wish to fall to work without 
 delay. 
 
 As a result of that wish Haig found him- 
 self in the afternoon of the day following in 
 the small and dirty room that served as office 
 21
 
 . THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 for the city editor of the Globe-Express. He 
 had entered a great narrow building on one 
 of the main streets, and been shot in an ele- 
 vator to the fifth floor at the risk, as it 
 seemed to him, of his life. He had threaded 
 a bewildering maze of rooms and intermin- 
 able passages, and at last stopped before this 
 door to a compartment that opened off a 
 larger room filled by a long table where sat 
 many men bending over the morning papers, 
 and apparently waiting for some summons. 
 
 Mr. Fealy, the city editor, was a tall, slim 
 man with a brilliant red mustache and pierc- 
 ing blue eyes. He was chewing a great quid 
 of tobacco, and he paused only for an instant 
 from this amusement to look at Haig with a 
 blankly preoccupied air. 
 
 " Morning," he said. " What can I do for 
 you?" 
 
 Unlike most men who have so suffered, 
 Haig had left his fear in jail. 
 
 " I think," he submitted, " that my uncle 
 called on you an hour or two ago. I am John 
 Haig." 
 
 "John Haig?" 
 
 22
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 Evidently the name awakened no echo in 
 the memory. 
 
 " Yes, my uncle is Bishop Osgood." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! To be sure. Your uncle had 
 a letter from Billy Gwynne. Sit down, Mr. 
 Mr. Haig." 
 
 Fealy waved a vague hand about the 
 room, but, his auditor's glance discovering 
 the only other chair filled with newspapers 
 already yellow from age, John remained 
 standing. 
 
 " So you want to go into the newspaper 
 business ? " continued the city editor, unper- 
 turbed by this little difficulty. " What ex- 
 perience have you had! " 
 
 " I haven't had any." 
 
 " Then what put this into your head? Can 
 you write 1 " 
 
 Haig determined to regard only the latter 
 of Fealy's questions, most of which, he was 
 already beginning to learn, did not presup- 
 pose any answer at all. 
 
 " I can't write yet," he admitted. 
 
 "Can't write? That's good, anyhow. 
 I've no use for fellows who can write. A re- 
 23
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 porter just wants to report. Do you know 
 the city?" 
 
 " I'm a stranger here, but I guess it won't 
 take me long to learn." 
 
 Fealy, whose eyes never wavered, spat 
 into a distant cuspidor, flung his large feet 
 upon the desk knocking down a few unre- 
 garded papers in the process and creaked 
 back in his slatternly desk-chair until Haig 
 expected to see him end on the floor. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Haig," he said, " you haven't 
 much to show, have you? The staff's full 
 just now, and the season hasn't opened up 
 the way it ought to. But our paper owes 
 Billy Gwynne a good deal, so I'm willing to 
 try you. I'll put you on at once at a small 
 salary till I see what you can do. That's 
 fair, isn't it?" 
 
 " Thank you," replied Haig. " When 
 shall I start in?" 
 
 " Right away. This is Friday. We pay 
 Friday. That will give you a full week." 
 
 " And what's the salary ? " 
 
 " I'll start you at ten dollars." 
 
 " Ten dollars ! " 
 
 24
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 " My dear sir, we've got men in there who 
 aren't new at the business and are glad to 
 get that much." 
 
 " But if a man's brain's worth anything, 
 it's worth more than ten dollars a week." 
 
 " A new reporter doesn't use his brain ; he 
 uses his legs." 
 
 Mr. Fealy evidently considered this epi- 
 grammatic, and he smiled, accordingly, his 
 habitual take-it-or-leave-it smile. 
 
 Haig took it. For a bit he hesitated, but 
 he argued that he must have something to do, 
 and that this man must know his business. 
 Moreover, he could not reasonably expect his 
 employers to buy pigs in .pokes. 
 
 " Very well," he said. " I'll take ten dol- 
 lars as a starter." 
 
 " Only as a starter," Mr. Fealy reassured 
 him. " Mr. McGuire ! " he called. 
 
 A broad - shouldered, pleasant - faced, 
 sandy-haired man answered this summons. 
 
 " Mr. McGuire, this is Mr. Haig, the new 
 member of our staff," said Fealy. " I spoke 
 to you about him a little while ago." 
 
 Haig was all wonderment at this evidence 
 8 25
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^ESAK'S 
 
 of Fealy's counting upon his accepting the 
 poor terms, but he was speedily recalled 
 from that condition by McGuire's severe 
 wringing of his hand. 
 
 "Brown's off to-day," Fealy was mean- 
 while continuing, " so you'd better send Mr. 
 Haig out on the second day of those teachers. 
 .Take good care of him." 
 
 " I will," said McGuire. 
 
 " Good luck, Mr. Haig. McGuire will tell 
 you anything you want to know. Good-bye." 
 
 There was another hand-shaking, and 
 then Haig was led into the larger room, now 
 well-nigh deserted, and directed to one cor- 
 ner of a smaller table by a far window. 
 
 " I guess," said McGuire, laying a great 
 hand upon the spot, "I guess this will be your 
 place. Mr. Jay, the society editor, sits there 
 against the wall, and Mr. Bicker has this 
 place on the other side of you. They're not 
 about just now, but I'll introduce you when 
 they come back. Did you read to-day's 
 paper? " 
 
 The suddenness of this question, appar- 
 ently apropos of nothing, took Haig off his 
 26
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 feet. Fortunately he had read the paper 
 the last, except for his own " stuff " and the 
 " heads " he was to read for some time to 
 come and managed to say as much. 
 
 " Well, here's what we had on this meet- 
 ing of the public-school teachers to discuss 
 the courses of music they're going to give. 
 We want a follow-story on that. There'll be 
 some speeches and things. Get about half a 
 column on it we're long on space just now. 
 I guess we have the pictures to carry it." 
 
 Most of this was Choctaw to Haig, but he 
 was far too wise to admit it, and so he event- 
 ually found his way into the blinking sun- 
 light of the street again, asked a policeman 
 how to get to the place of meeting, and was 
 soon in a car on his way thither. 
 
 It was indeed an odd profession, he re- 
 flected, this upon which he had been em- 
 barked without any palpable instruction. 
 Odder still, he might have added, that he 
 should seek to be at all embarked upon it: 
 The truth is that Haig, like many men who 
 have no taste for any other particular sort of 
 work, had always supposed that the news- 
 27
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE 
 
 paper was a hole to which almost any peg 
 was suited. He wanted also, and for obvious 
 reasons, to be out of doors as much as some 
 good class of employment would allow him to 
 be, and above all he was anxious to get close 
 to the very throbbing heart of life. Journal- 
 ism, he had decided, was exactly the place 
 for him. 
 
 Unacquainted with the hours of the busi- 
 ness, he had gone to the office somewhat late. 
 The meeting he was to " cover " had been set 
 for eleven in the morning, so that when he 
 finally got to the appointed place he was sur- 
 prised to find it fast closed. By the aid of a 
 directory he managed, however, to find one 
 of the officers who lived near by, and from 
 him got a portion of an address and enough 
 additional facts to fill, he thought, the space 
 required. 
 
 When he again entered the local room it 
 was after six o'clock. At his place was a 
 manila envelope containing for his guidance 
 clippings from the evening papers, which of- 
 fered all the news he had so elaborately 
 gathered, and beside it, even elbowing it, sat 
 28
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 a little fellow, pale, briefly mustached, close- 
 cropped, with a set of false teeth and a broad 
 grin. 
 
 " You're the new man, ain't you? " asked 
 this person. 
 
 Haig admitted his guilt. 
 
 " Well, say my name's Ricker was you 
 out on those teachers ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Why, I could 'a' given you th' whole 
 thing. I've been doin' th' Board o' Educa- 
 tion for two years now. I guess you're new 
 at the business." 
 
 " This is my first offence." 
 
 " Then look-'e-here : You don't want to 
 bother over a story of this kind. You want 
 to wait for the first edition of the evening 
 papers. Oh, yes and you want to keep an 
 account of everything you spend for the pa- 
 per. That goes on your expense-list. You 
 turn it in Thursday nights. It's a rotten 
 business. All work and no thanks. I've been 
 kep' here till two o'clock every mornin' this 
 week." 
 
 Haig wanted to write, but Ricker assured 
 29
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 him that there was no hurry he couldn't 
 leave for dinner before the evening assign- 
 ments were given out, and that would not be 
 for an hour yet so that he had to let the 
 man run on: 
 
 "How'd you get on the paper? It's like 
 drawin' teeth. Everything's pull these days, 
 I tell you. See Fealy? My my! ain't he 
 lippy? And that toiling copy-reader over 
 there, he's another. He's literary, an' he 
 thinks Marie Corelli's the greatest writer 
 ever lived. But he's just an ordinary 'editor' ; 
 doesn't count for much name's Carson an' 
 Mac's the salt of the earth, an' so's Ben Don- 
 ald he's Fealy's assistant. Guess you got 
 Wayne's place. He was fired to-day. That 
 seat never was lucky. Stubbs had it before 
 Wayne an' he shot himself. Lovely boy, 
 too." 
 
 Haig was arranging his clippings and 
 notes. 
 
 "By the way," he asked, he never knew 
 why, "who's Billy Ginn? " 
 
 Ricker leered. 
 
 "You mean Billy Gwynne. Be careful 
 30
 
 THE HEART OF THE WORLD 
 
 what you write about him. He's the boss of 
 the whole town." 
 
 " Politically I" 
 
 " Yep. An' every other way, too. 
 They've never been able to catch him, but 
 if there was only a paper that'd print it, I 
 know stories about that man enough to get 
 him twenty years." Ricker spoke with a sort 
 of admiration. " But," he concluded, " even 
 the Courier wouldn't touch them. I tell you 
 a man's all right as long as he has friends 
 and isn't caught." 
 
 Haig turned to his work. He had long 
 ago forgotten this popular attitude towards 
 crime, and Ricker's crude expression of it 
 shocked him not a little. Nor was that all. 
 He had heard his uncle speak of a letter from 
 this politician, who had then been mentioned 
 as a respected churchman. Now it appeared 
 though there was large possibility of both 
 confusion and overstatement that the man's 
 worldly reputation was one for successful 
 fraud. If there was not some mistake of 
 identity, then he was at a loss to account for 
 the bishop's blindness. But of base conces- 
 31
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CJSSAB'S 
 
 sion on the part of his relative he did not 
 dream, and, as Ricker's latest sentiment 
 closed a door between the two reporters, he 
 resolved that he would think no more about 
 the matter. Here was a subject of which he 
 would next day talk to his uncle, but in the 
 mean time he would none of it. Work was, 
 after all, the first thing. And so he started 
 upp,n his story. 
 
 32
 
 Ill 
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 No appeal to work was destined long to 
 keep the new reporter from his cogitations 
 upon the house of Gwynne. He had, with 
 infinite pains, written just twice the required 
 number of words about his musical school- 
 teachers when his name was bawled from the 
 end of the table technically known as the 
 " copy-desk," and, following the example 
 which had just been set by Kicker, he made 
 his way thither. 
 
 Fealy had long since completed his day's 
 work, and his assistant, Donald, was in 
 charge of the local room. The latter man 
 was a pleasant, persuasive Scot who came, 
 nevertheless, directly to the point: 
 
 " Mr. Haig, I'm glad to meet you. I hope 
 you'll like the work. We're a little short of 
 men at present," John remembered that 
 33
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 Fealy had said just the other thing "but 
 I'm going to be easy on you to-night. We 
 have to make up the Sunday society page to- 
 morrow and we need one more picture. 
 Phyllis Gwynne was one of the debutantes 
 last week, and somehow nobody got a photo- 
 graph of her. We'd like one. If you can get 
 hold of her father or mother I don't think 
 you'll have any trouble. She's a daughter of 
 Billy Gwynne. Here's the address." 
 
 This assignment did not precisely meet 
 Haig's preconceived notions of journalism. 
 Indeed, to tell the truth, the profession had 
 thus far given him a rather dismal initiation. 
 His early opinions of it had been like those 
 of most outsiders. He did not, of course, ex- 
 pect at once to be placed upon the editorial 
 staff or sent to interview a presidential pos- 
 sibility, but he decidedly had not counted 
 upon being sent to report a meeting of 
 school-teachers in the afternoon and to secure 
 a girl's picture- in the evening. He had all the 
 novice's disdain for these tasks, and all the 
 novice's inability to understand the market 
 value of such " news " as he had been gather- 
 34
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 ing. He failed, in a word, to comprehend 
 that a newspaper is as little of a sermon and 
 as much of a business concern as is a depart- 
 ment store. Consequently he was half-con- 
 sciously depressed and almost as sensibly 
 disheartened by his new mission. 
 
 Nevertheless, since it was not as yet given 
 to him to mould public opinion in the larger 
 affairs of life, he was forced to acknowledge 
 that his assignment presented certain com- 
 pensations. He was already more than mild- 
 ly concerned about the family the head of 
 which had apparently done so much for him, 
 so that he was rather glad of the chance to 
 learn more of it, and not a little relieved 
 when, after some search, he at last found 
 himself before an eminently inoffensive 
 brownstone house, very like the bishop's, 
 and standing in what he had that day learned 
 was the most fashionable portion of the city. 
 
 His pull at the bell was answered by a 
 man-servant, whose appearance was not cal- 
 culated to interfere with the impression pro- 
 duced by the exterior of the house. 
 
 Harg asked for Mr. Gwynne. He was not 
 35
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 at home. And Mrs. Gwynne? She also had 
 gone out. Possibly, then, suggested Haig, he 
 could see Miss Gwynne. 
 
 The man showed signs of discretion, and 
 thereupon Haig, though he knew it not, gave 
 his first evidence of the newspaper instinct. 
 
 " I came," he triumphantly and almost 
 authoritatively explained, " to see Mr. 
 Gwynne upon a somewhat personal matter, 
 but Miss Gwynne will answer quite as well." 
 
 The servant capitulated. 
 
 " What name 1 " he asked after the man- 
 ner of his kind. 
 
 John was not yet enough of the world to 
 have recovered his card-plate. 
 
 "Never mind that," he said shortly. 
 " Take my message at once." 
 
 The connotation had nettled him, and the 
 resulting tone completed his victory. He 
 was shown into a large and brilliantly lighted 
 room, rich, but furnished in undeniably good 
 taste. The pictures especially were of the 
 first order, and framed for their own sakes, 
 not for the frames'. The walls were in deep 
 colours and the rugs luxurious but calm of 
 36
 
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 tone. Bishop Osgood, even with his small 
 means, could have done no better. Nay, at 
 the first glance, Haig concluded that nobody 
 could have improved upon the heiress of 
 the house herself as she advanced towards 
 him. 
 
 When those who knew her well did not 
 think only of her position and wealth, they 
 rightly considered Phyllis Gwynne a very 
 pretty girl. Slightly under medium height, 
 with a complexion of clear and healthy pallor, 
 a too red mouth, and a nose that in a young 
 woman of less breeding would have been un- 
 justified in its scorn of the Greek concep- 
 tion of all that a nose should be, she had been 
 reared so to carry her defects that any save 
 a cynic saw but her trim, graceful figure, her 
 magnificent chestnut hair, and her large and 
 subtle hazel eyes. Her real charm lay, in 
 fact, in the na'ive happiness of the child with 
 the golden spoon. For she was decidedly a 
 type with possibilities, no doubt, for specific 
 characterization, but with such development 
 so neglected not to say combated as to be 
 relegated to a mental background whence 
 37
 
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 only a supreme emotion could evoke it into 
 kinetic energy. 
 
 To John Haig's shattered experience the 
 race was, however, a collection of individ- 
 uals, and upon his fresh horizon, already 
 somewhat troubled by the initial day's little 
 discomfitures, this, his first daughter of for- 
 tune, rose with all the soothing beauty of the 
 evening star. 
 
 He had got as far as her dress, and had 
 noted only that it was filmy and blue and en- 
 chanting, when there burst upon him the 
 sense that she had paused before him be- 
 tween curiosity and surprise. 
 
 " Good-evening." 
 
 It was not so much the pleasant Ameri- 
 can soprano of the tone as the frank Ameri- 
 can spirit informing it that put them both at 
 once somehow at their ease. 
 
 He looked up to her face again and, each 
 a child from such divergent causes, they 
 smiled. 
 
 " Miss Gwynne? " he asked. 
 
 She nodded. It was the inclination of a 
 girl. 
 
 38
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 " I am here," he continued, " on a rather 
 embarrassing errand. The fact is, I'm from 
 the Express. I was sent to get your picture 
 for the society page, and as I'm new at the 
 work I didn't know any way but to ask 
 for it." 
 
 Further apologies thronged easily now to 
 his lips, but were not destined for birth. 
 
 " My picture? Oh, isn't that splendid! " 
 
 She sat down on a fragile chair and, with 
 a happy laugh, considered the joyous oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Here for Haig was the end of another 
 Philistine illusion concerning journalism. 
 Pleasant people really did like to have their 
 pictures in a paper ! But the present exam- 
 ple of such people was far too pleasant, not 
 to say startling, for any analytical considera- 
 tion of the general problem involved, and iu 
 obedience to a gesture John too sat down to 
 deal with the phase of the matter directly in 
 hand. 
 
 "Then you don't mind?" he managed 
 to ask. 
 
 Her reply was one of those pretty verbal 
 39
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 cascades that, having so long to fall, turn 
 mist half-way down and are not again a co- 
 herent stream until they are gathered into 
 the final pool beneath. 
 
 "Mind?" she gasped. "I'm only too 
 glad of it the chance, you know. All the 
 girls who came out have been in but me 
 Bess Dinwiddie, Blanche Hardy, Ethel 
 Trench, Jen Freeze oh, all of them! and 
 I'm green with envy or yellow, or whatever 
 one gets. Really, I'd almost made up my 
 mind to send my photograph as I'd like to 
 know if some of them didn't." 
 
 Haig drank of the pool, but 
 
 " I'm afraid," he confessed, " that I can't 
 help you there. This is my first day on the 
 paper." 
 
 "And they sent you to me? Is that a 
 compliment? " 
 
 John was forgetting himself, surprising 
 himself, and delighting in the surprise. 
 
 " For you? " he achieved. " To a new re- 
 porter it was very flattering." 
 
 Miss Gwynne had tact enough to revert 
 to the main theme. 
 
 40
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 " I don't know what Mr. " She hesi- 
 tated, looked him over, and then chose the 
 term of equality, " what my father would say 
 about my giving you a picture 
 
 " You will tell him, of course t " suggested 
 journalist John. 
 
 She met him with her best weapon, her 
 smile. 
 
 " Never ! " she declared. 
 
 And even Haig's Puritan conscience did 
 not enforce objection. 
 
 " You mustn't even let on how you got it, 
 I'm afraid," she pursued. " Father, I dare 
 say, wouldn't finally mind, but I fear 
 mother is rather old-fashioned about such 
 things, and if father heard how you got it 
 he might let the cat out of the bag." 
 
 " I sha'n't even tell them at the office how 
 I came by it." 
 
 There was a pause which she again saved 
 from embarrassment by her manner of direct 
 appeal to bare facts. 
 
 " It's an absurd convention," she ex- 
 plained, " and everybody knows everybody 
 else is lying, but they all say to each other 
 4 41
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CJESAR'S 
 
 that they can't imagine how the papers get 
 hold of all they print about them." 
 
 She had managed, by the imagining of a 
 common secret, to put him completely at his 
 ease ; had overcome both his natural and his 
 artificially enforced shyness. 
 
 " It's like children playing * pretend,' " he 
 suggested. 
 
 " Exactly," she agreed. 
 
 " I am learning my profession." 
 
 " Oh, for this part of it you couldn't have 
 come to a better school ! " 
 
 " And yet the best newspaper men never 
 believe in schools of journalism." 
 
 " Well, this one is so practical, you see. 
 And now you'll want the picture." 
 
 He looked at her with his odd, contempla- 
 tive smile. 
 
 " Come to think of it," he said, " that was 
 my mission." 
 
 " Then if you'll let me I daren't trust 
 even the servants in the deed I'll run up- 
 stairs and get it." 
 
 She rose, but John's eye had been caught 
 by a photograph on a table at her side. 
 42
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 " Must you go for it! " he asked. 
 
 She followed his glance. 
 
 " Oh, that's an old one 1 " she cried. " I 
 couldn't let you have that." 
 
 She reached for it, but he had been too 
 quick for her. 
 
 " If you will allow ine," he appealed, and 
 took the picture. 
 
 It was, as she had said, an old, or rather 
 a young one perhaps five years old. It 
 showed a slim girl, a schoolgirl, indeed, with 
 a sweet face, ingenuous, almost wistful, and 
 something he could not say what about it 
 that, as he looked up at the original for con- 
 firmation, he found missing, or supplanted 
 there. For a flash he felt the loss of it, but 
 then she stooped to examine the picture and 
 he felt her breath for a flying instant on his 
 trembling hand. 
 
 " If I may say so," he, however, seriously 
 persisted, " it is very lovely." 
 
 "It's a fright," she retorted, and disap- 
 peared. 
 
 He stood alone then, with the photograph 
 in his hand, and again he began to fall a 
 43
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 victim to its peculiar charm. What was it? 
 What was this subtle quality that spoke 
 straight to all that was best in him from out 
 those pictured girlish eyes? What had that 
 flash of light travelled from the burning sun 
 through sheer space, for all the millions of 
 miles, to catch in that particular instant and 
 fix upon the sensitive plate? Just the face 
 of a child, a face peeping through the half- 
 opened door of womanhood, joyously ex- 
 pectant, and delightfully awed by the dim 
 disclosures that, with innocent wisdom, it 
 guessed were lurking there. He felt the spell 
 none the less keenly for his inability to grasp 
 its processes. 
 
 Five years ago! Why, then he was he 
 was The sealed and forgotten springs 
 of his heart, the lost wells of love, gushed 
 into his eyes and mastered him. Foolishly, 
 impulsively, he bent his head as if to kiss 
 the printed lips. 
 
 Whether or no she saw him he could not 
 divine, but at that moment her voice, at any 
 rate, sounded from the doorway. 
 
 " I don't think it's very nice of you is it? 
 44
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 to be so much pleased with what I used to 
 be and not with what She stopped 
 
 abruptly. Daring at last to steal a glance at 
 her, he thought she even blushed a little. 
 But she soon went on easily : " If you've 
 quite done, however, perhaps you'll look at 
 this." 
 
 The newer picture had, certainly, its 
 points of merit, even of superiority. In fact, 
 to the more tutored observer, it was just that 
 quality of superiority in the expression of 
 the photograph, as of the present girl her- 
 self, that would have been the single detract- 
 ing influence. But in such things John was 
 not tutored. For him the later phase of his 
 planet was so brilliant as to obliterate, for 
 the time, the very memory of what it had 
 superseded. 
 
 " Yes," he granted, " I think I do like this 
 one better." 
 
 " It's surely more suited to what your 
 paper wants it for." 
 
 "Ah yes, it is my paper that wants it, 
 isn't it f" 
 
 She passed this by. 
 45
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 " I can have it back, can't I? " she asked, 
 as if by way of afterthought. 
 
 " Why I I suppose so," he stammered. 
 " You see, I'm so dreadfully new at these 
 things that I don't know what the cus- 
 tom is." 
 
 " I really ought to have it," she explained. 
 " I don't think it's very pleasant to think of 
 one's photograph lying about a newspaper 
 office " 
 
 " Oh, it wouldn't do that ! " he assured 
 her. If there was any question of this sort, 
 he resolved that he would have the picture 
 for himself. 
 
 " But that's not my only reason for want- 
 ing it returned. It's the last of the lot, and I 
 forgot to order any more to-day, and I faith- 
 fully promised Bishop Osgood to give him 
 one not later than to-morrow. He confirmed 
 me, and he wanted the pictures of all that 
 class. He got most of them at the time of 
 it all, you know but for one reason or an- 
 other I've been putting it off from time to 
 time." 
 
 "Bishop Osgood?" 
 46
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 " Yes. Do you know him T But of course 
 you do. Everybody does know him." 
 
 " I am his nephew. Just at present I am 
 living with him." 
 
 She looked her pleasure. 
 
 " His nephew! I didn't know he had one. 
 I didn't remember hearing him speak 
 
 "Probably not. I've been I've been 
 away from him quite far away for a num- 
 ber of years." 
 
 " Then you are Mr. Osgoodt " 
 
 " No. My name is Haig John Haig. 
 The bishop is only my uncle by marriage, 
 though he's really been much more to me 
 than that. Even though I've seen so little of 
 him for so long, he's been everything to me." 
 
 " I can easily understand how he should 
 be. I think he is the best man alive." 
 
 Her tone was spontaneous, sincere. Haig 
 could have taken her in his arms then and 
 there. However, he escaped the difficulties 
 naturally attendant upon such a step, and 
 reluctantly reverted to more practical topics. 
 
 " The bishop is, in fact, so good to me," 
 he said, " that I'm sure he'll even, if neces- 
 47
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 sary, forgive me for keeping your picture 
 from him for a little while longer." 
 
 For a man ten years buried this was a 
 draught of success, but there was this bit- 
 terness in the cup: it brought them to their 
 parting. He left her with her suggestion 
 that, as the bishop's nephew, he would see 
 her soon and often, and, as he passed from 
 the light of her home into the darkness of the 
 nearly deserted street, he began dimly to 
 discern how much that hope already meant to 
 him. 
 
 John Haig was not given to introspection. 
 He was far too emotional for the acquire- 
 ment of that enervating habit of mind. The 
 advent of a sudden desire or the coming of a 
 pressing necessity drove him not to thought 
 but to action. It was this temperamental 
 aptitude which, in his early youth, had led to 
 his downfall, and even in prison he had but 
 accepted the most comforting theory ad- 
 vanced by others, and lived for that alone. 
 Circumstance, however, could force upon him 
 a conclusion, and that conclusion he would 
 make an integral part of a faith for any sin- 
 48
 
 ENTER A GIRL 
 
 gle article of which he would have suffered 
 martyrdom unquestioningly. That was what 
 had happened this evening, and that was why 
 he bent glad returning steps towards the Ex- 
 press office, thrilled with the belief that he 
 had just been vouchsafed another revelation 
 of the divine. 
 
 He had come, almost literally, from the 
 tomb. After a sleep of horrid dreams that 
 had effaced the memory of men, he had been 
 resurrected to a life every detail of which 
 was strange to him. His heart was again the 
 white tablet loved of imagery. He had gone 
 to his work with large ideals and high hope, 
 and the somewhat sordid reality that had 
 confronted him at the outset had contained 
 even for his near-sighted enthusiasm the 
 promise of speedy disillusioning. Then, for 
 the first time in a decade, he had talked with 
 a pretty and not unsophisticated girl in 
 whom the element of the fashionable would 
 have been, to him, bewildering at any time. 
 The sheer fact that, as he had just seen her, 
 she was a more or less dazzling embodiment 
 of crude, though polished, femininity was, by 
 49
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 the very force of its splendid disguise, the 
 determining power in his enchantment. 
 Prison discipline was still so far potent that 
 he must translate all passion in the terms of 
 spirit, but passion, though of an exalted sort, 
 this girl had certainly inspired. 
 
 Upon the whole, he decided that he would 
 postpone with Bishop Osgood his intended 
 discussion of the ethical status of Billy 
 Gwynne. 
 
 50
 
 IV 
 
 A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 
 
 EVEN to the most violent of passions 
 things have sometimes an annoying way of 
 not happening, and, for the first few days 
 succeeding the evening of his initial experi- 
 ence in journalism, it seemed to John Haig 
 as if he were doomed to disappointment in 
 his originally dreaded theory concerning the 
 haunting influence of his Acrasia's family 
 name. From the office no assignment sent 
 him again into her world; while, in the few 
 moments which his work allowed him with 
 the bishop, loyalty upon the one hand and a 
 boyish and beautiful perception of the holy 
 character of this new tenderness upon the 
 other, forbade him both designed and casual 
 mention of the person and persons who most 
 possessed his thoughts. 
 
 But though there was a lack of the precise 
 51
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^SAK'S 
 
 sort of work lie just now so desired, work of 
 every other sort was by no means wanting. 
 The paper must have been, as Ben Donald 
 had said, short-handed, for, within the week, 
 this cub reporter had tasted of some of the 
 most mature fruit that grows upon the very 
 various branches of the anomalous profes- 
 sion's many-knotted trunk. The pleasing re- 
 sult was that John had speedily acquired 
 something of the savoir-faire which is the 
 whole secret of the work. His regular shift 
 was supposedly the usual one from the first 
 hour in the afternoon until the last in the 
 night ; but all newspaper " days " are arbi- 
 trarily formal, and Haig's evident willing- 
 ness shortly resulted in lending to the allotted 
 time a marvellous elasticity. His hours were 
 frequently lengthened indefinitely and at 
 either end, until, upon one occasion, he began 
 work with an expected police raid at four 
 o'clock of one morning and ended it with an 
 unlooked-for stabbing affray at two of the 
 morning following. 
 
 He was not, of course, intrusted with 
 work which required either experience in the 
 
 52
 
 A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 
 
 collection of facts or skill in their presen- 
 tation, but he had satisfactorily covered 
 enough assignments, of qualities sufficiently 
 diverse, to be justified in his feeling, as he 
 drew his first ten dollars on the following 
 Friday, that he was well on the way to becom- 
 ing conversant with this one division of jour- 
 nalism and to be considerably tired in body 
 and not a little sickened in soul. 
 
 From his ill-advised position he was com- 
 pelled to observe that the press was indeed a 
 mighty instrument, but he was driven by a 
 similar force to confess that it was not ex- 
 actly the sort of powerful engine which both 
 fiction and fancy had painted it. He did not 
 see how any good was to be done the public 
 and he knew that none was to be done the 
 finer instincts of any of the individuals im- 
 mediately concerned by his ringing as he 
 had a day before been ordered to do at a 
 squalid house to ask a husband why his wife 
 had cut her lover's throat an hour earlier. 
 Like all the employe's of a newspaper, from 
 the new scrub-woman in the press-room to 
 the supposedly seasoned city editor, he began 
 53
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE (LESAR'S 
 
 to feel that he could conduct the journal then 
 making use of his valuable services on lines 
 far more successful than those which it was 
 at present pursuing, and he returned to his 
 lonely chair in the local department devoutly 
 thankful for the chance to rest that had been 
 offered by Mr. Fealy's telling him to " stay 
 around the office on emergency duty." 
 
 Generally speaking, this is the newspaper 
 euphemism for doing nothing at all, but on 
 this occasion the fates had decreed otherwise. 
 Haig had not been " waiting " for fifteen min- 
 utes when the unwonted stillness of the office 
 was broken by a heavy footfall and the sound 
 of a half-whispered conversation from the 
 city editor's room. 
 
 " Nobody but that new man," John heard 
 Fealy's voice pronouncing. 
 
 " What does he amount to ? " asked a tone 
 that was strange. 
 
 The answer was lost to the ear, but its 
 tenor was supplied by the quick rejoinder: 
 
 "Well, he'll have to do this time. Just 
 now it looks as if this thing won't keep." 
 
 Then Haig's name was called, softly, he 
 54
 
 A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 
 
 thought, and with more consideration than 
 theretofore, and he passed into the presence 
 of the head of his department. 
 
 Fealy was chewing his accustomed quid, 
 his face was more flushed, his blue eyes 
 keener than ever. Beside him stood a tall, 
 stout man with a blond mustache and a 
 hurried air, to whom, as Mr. Thring, 
 the editor-in-chief, Haig was rapidly pre- 
 sented. 
 
 "We've got a very delicate job for you 
 to do," began Fealy, looking through and 
 through the reporter, " and if you do it all 
 right it may mean a good deal for you." 
 
 " There's no need of concealing from you, 
 Mr. Haig," the hurried man put in to his 
 colleague's ill-concealed chagrin, " there's no 
 need concealing from you that this is a thing 
 for a much more experienced man. But 
 there's nobody else about ; the tip's exclusive, 
 and we've reason to believe the person we 
 want you to see is just going to get out of 
 town as fast as he can. He doesn't know of 
 the warrant yet, Fealy, but of course he'll 
 get wind of it somehow, if he's guilty and 
 55
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 against the gang, so we believe he means to 
 chuck the whole thing by running away." 
 
 " You've read the story we had this morn- 
 ing," asked Fealy, " on the rumours about 
 something crooked in the contract for the 
 new jail? " 
 
 Haig had read the head-lines carefully 
 enough to permit of his now nodding assent. 
 
 " Well, we understand that a warrant's 
 just been sworn out on the quiet for the chief 
 contractor, a fellow named " 
 
 " Elridge," supplied Mr. Thring. 
 
 " Yes, Elridge. The charges are fraud, 
 conspiracy, and bribery or something of 
 that kind. He isn't sure about the warrant, 
 but he's thinking of skipping. It's queer that 
 he should we can't make that out but we 
 get it straight that he is. Meanwhile, we've 
 come into possession of that. Cast your eye 
 over it." 
 
 He carefully handed Haig an envelope 
 from which the reporter withdrew a slip of 
 note-paper. It was evidently a letter, but 
 was without any heading, written in a hur- 
 ried hand and post-marked, as Mr. Thring 
 56
 
 A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 
 
 explained, the day before the award of con- 
 tracts. John read: 
 
 " Dear Belle : Got that city job I was tell- 
 ing you about, but we certainly had to work 
 for it and pay out a lot. We had the other 
 envelopes opened, and it will cost us some- 
 thing for every bidder and a lot for councils. 
 However, will be able to see you then a day 
 earlier than I expected, so look for me by the 
 same train the day previous. Yours aff. 
 F. X. E." 
 
 " What a fool he was to write that ! " Haig 
 ventured to comment as he returned the con- 
 victing note. 
 
 " Young man," said Mr. Thring, " when 
 you've been as long in this business as I have 
 you won't be surprised at anything, especial- 
 ly if it's something a man does for a woman. 
 Just once too often in his life every man's a 
 fool for some woman." 
 
 But Fealy was anxious to get to work. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Haig," he ordered, " you take 
 the envelope only. It may come in handy. 
 What we want you to do is to nail Elridge, 
 5 57
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 if possible just as he's about to go, and get 
 some sort of an interview before he clears 
 out. Understand? Nobody else is likely to 
 get it, and if you can land it, it will be a 
 big beat, and ought to stir up politics 
 in the morning. Get into his office somehow, 
 and if he doesn't want to talk, make him 
 talk." 
 
 " But be careful," added Mr. Thring, " to 
 be perfectly honest with him and not to mis- 
 quote him. We want to be square and we 
 don't want any libel." 
 
 " His office," continued the city editor, " is 
 somewhere in the Van Vendig building " 
 
 " Fourth floor, I think." 
 
 " Yes, fourth floor. Get it now, and hur- 
 ry up, and be sure you don't talk to any one 
 about it, not even any one else in the office. 
 It'll be a big story." 
 
 And Fealy dismissed his reporter with a 
 great slap on the back. 
 
 Haig, rushing out with a pocket full of 
 
 copy-paper, remembered those rumours, in 
 
 fact, but indistinctly, and had, he reflected, 
 
 replied somewhat at random when Fealy had 
 
 58
 
 A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 
 
 asked if he had read them. The city, he 
 knew, had begun to build a new jail, and it 
 had been whispered that the man who secured 
 the centract had not been the lowest bidder. 
 There had been ill-defined scandal connected 
 with all public work since the present politi- 
 cal machine had come into its complete con- 
 trol, but the favoured contractors had all been 
 men whom it was more or less easy to con- 
 nect with the administration, and another 
 point of difference there had escaped no 
 detail on which the struggling opposition 
 could lay hold. Now, however, the Express, 
 which was a machine paper as, indeed, were 
 all the local journals, save the ineffective 
 Courier had reason to believe that it had 
 unearthed a scandal, which was rare news, 
 and which could not be laid at the door of its 
 own faction, since the last revolt against 
 boss rule had resulted in temerity enough 
 in the administration apparently to allow 
 of the jail being attended to in the correct 
 fashion. Finally, the suspected man was 
 a stranger whose residence and business 
 interests, of which little could be discov- 
 59
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 ered, were all in another city and another 
 State. 
 
 A big story, indeed, but, for a still some- 
 what shy young man just beginning his sec- 
 ond week of newspaper work, a story not 
 without its difficulties. How he was to han- 
 dle it Haig could not guess. As he threaded 
 his way through the busy streets, he thought 
 of a thousand schemes, but, one after the 
 other, they all perished in the planning, until 
 he found himself in the narrow stone hall- 
 way of the place he sought and, with his 
 finger on the call-button of the elevator- 
 shaft, desperately determined to leave the 
 decision to chance. 
 
 Unlike its neighbours, the ground-glass 
 door, before which he then was shortly paus- 
 ing, had printed upon it the name of no firm, 
 nothing, in fact, but its number. Below this, 
 however, a simply, but carefully lettered 
 card had been placed between wood-work and 
 glass, and thereon were the words: 
 
 F. X. ELRIDGE, 
 
 Contractor and Builder. 
 60
 
 A LEGATE OF THE PRESS 
 
 The time for preparation having come 
 and gone in vain, Haig's fine instinct for 
 action asserted itself and, without weighing 
 the consequences, he opened the door and en- 
 tered unannounced. 
 
 61
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 THE room was small but bright, with two 
 windows opening upon the air-shaft at the 
 farther end, a deserted typewriter-desk and 
 a table-desk considerably littered with let- 
 ters and an open ledger or two in the centre. 
 Blue-print plans of the new prison were the 
 only attempt at decorating the walls other- 
 wise enhanced merely by the marks from the 
 striking of many matches. There was a desk- 
 chair, a few other chairs, and a telephone in 
 one corner. The floor was bare, and Haig 
 started at the noise made by his first step 
 upon it. 
 
 Simultaneously with the opening of the 
 front door, and because, no doubt, of the 
 sound made thereby, another was thrown 
 back opening upon an inner office, and some 
 one peered out towards the reporter with a 
 curious little snort of surprise. 
 62
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 The man was between Haig and the light, 
 but the reporter noted that so much of him 
 as could be seen was short and stout and puf- 
 fy, dressed in dark blue serge of extravagant 
 cut, and with a round fiercely coloured face, 
 carefully curled small black mustache, snub 
 nose, low brows, and rat-like dark eyes that 
 revealed, even when seen in this way, the 
 soul of a coward skulking behind the ill-suit- 
 ing features of a bully. 
 
 " Hello ! " said this person. " I thought 
 I'd locked the door." 
 
 "I should have knocked," Haig suavely 
 apologized, "but I did not know that your 
 business hours were over so soon." 
 
 " They're not over," the man brusquely 
 replied, " but I've got some very private busi- 
 ness to attend to." 
 
 "Oh, then, I'd better not take up your 
 time." 
 
 And Haig, with a smile which he meant 
 to be knowing, made as if to back out. 
 
 His unwilling host was clearly of a sus- 
 picious turn. 
 
 "Not at all," he hastened to rejoin. 
 63
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 " That is, I suppose I can spare you a min- 
 ute or two if it's very important. What can 
 I do for you I " 
 
 Haig took the cue, banged the front door 
 behind him, and strode to the desk in the 
 centre of the room, making sure, as he did so, 
 that there was no one else in the apartment 
 beyond. 
 
 " Why," he said smilingly, " give me, of 
 course, as you so kindly suggested, a minute 
 or two." 
 
 The stranger hesitated, bit his mustache 
 with a flash of singularly white teeth, and 
 then came forward to the other side of the 
 desk. 
 
 He was all that John had guessed and 
 more. Across his broad waistcoat was 
 stretched an unnecessarily heavy watch- 
 chain, his hands were thick, and his fingers, 
 between two of which he held the still smok- 
 ing end of a cigar, were adorned with one 
 large ring cut by a connotative old English E 
 and another bearing a diamond somewhat too 
 generous of size and water. 
 
 John looked at him squarely, but he did 
 64
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 not shift from the reporter the rude glare 
 which the latter was beginning to acknowl- 
 edge he fully deserved. 
 
 " Are you Mr. Elridge ? " he, however, 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Mr. F.X. Elridge?" 
 
 " That's my name." 
 
 " The man who has the contract for the 
 new jail? " 
 
 " Yes, yes ! How many times must I tell 
 you!" 
 
 John was growing as unnecessarily angry 
 as his victim was annoyed, but his emotion 
 took the ugly form of perverse geniality. 
 
 "You don't have to tell me ever again," 
 he said. " It's a pleasant day, Mr. Elridge." 
 
 He had still not the remotest idea of how 
 he should set about the matter in hand, and 
 he was fencing, consequently, for an opening. 
 
 The contractor straightway supplied it. 
 
 " I don't suppose you came here to talk 
 about the weather," he snapped. "And if 
 you're not very busy, I am. What do you 
 want ? " 
 
 65
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 Here was the issue. Haig drew a deep 
 breath, kept his gaze steadily upon the con- 
 tractor and, seriously enough now, began: 
 
 " Mr. Elridge, I don't blame you for talk- 
 ing this way, but I have to tell you something 
 unpleasant something really very ugly 
 and I honestly don't know exactly how to be- 
 gin." 
 
 Elridge's glance grew wild for a moment 
 and then dropped. His right hand fumbled 
 with some papers on the desk. He sat down, 
 the cigar falling unregarded from his fingers.. 
 But, so long as there was a chance to ex- 
 hibit bravado in its stead, he was not of the 
 fibre to show his terror. As Haig drew a 
 chair opposite him he looked up, therefore, 
 at once. His words were commonplace 
 enough. 
 
 "No trouble at the jail, I hope?" he 
 asked. 
 
 John measured his reply. 
 
 " You will have no trouble with the jail," 
 he said " just yet." 
 
 "What in thunder do you mean? " 
 
 Elridge rapped out the words in a panic, 
 66
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 and the next instant was palpably ashamed 
 of them. But the next instant was too late ; 
 Haig was quickly following his advantage. 
 
 "I see you understand," he pursued. 
 " Well, then, to tell the truth, Mr. Elridge, 
 there was a warrant sworn out for you this 
 afternoon before Magistrate I think it was 
 Magistrate Jordan." 
 
 The contractor started, but immediately 
 grew cautiously overcontemptuous. 
 
 " Poof ! What's the charge ? " 
 
 " There are three charges : fraud, con- 
 spiracy to defraud the city, and bribery." 
 
 Elridge rose slowly, and walking to the 
 window, looked out for a while, his hands, 
 deep in his pockets, loudly rattling some coin. 
 
 John bided his time and was finally re- 
 warded. 
 
 Elridge turned. 
 
 " Well," he said, " of course I'm not going 
 to talk to you. It's all confounded nonsense, 
 and you know that as well as I do. All I want 
 to do just now is to get the preliminaries over 
 with." 
 
 He stepped towards the telephone and 
 67
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 raised a hand to take the receiver from its 
 hook. 
 
 " Wait a moment, please, Mr. Elridge ! " 
 cried Haig. 
 
 The fellow wheeled upon him sharply. 
 
 " What for? " he blustered. " I want to 
 get my bail and my lawyer. Of course, I'll 
 waive a hearing. I must hurry up and ar- 
 range things. I've more important matters 
 to think of than a lot of shyster political 
 tricks. Go ahead and read your warrant." 
 
 " I was afraid you'd made some mistake," 
 said Haig, blandly once more. " I haven't 
 any warrant." 
 
 " Why, what " 
 
 "I said only that one had been sworn 
 out." 
 
 Elridge almost fell into his chair. He 
 looked at Haig blankly. Then suddenly his 
 whole face blazed into relief, into action. 
 
 " Oh ! " he laughed hysterically. " Then 
 you're from Billy? Why in thunder didn't 
 you say so? Well, they'll never serve their 
 warrant. I'm just ready to scoot, and they 
 can't prove anything on Billy without me. 
 68
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 But why did he send such a stupid ass as 
 you? " 
 
 "I think you again misapprehend me," 
 corrected John. "I am not from 'Billy,' 
 whoever he is." 
 
 " What I Then who the devil are you 
 from?" 
 
 " The Globe-Express." 
 
 " Huh ? Oh, no ; no you're not. The Ex- 
 press would be with us if it was really on." 
 
 "As to that, I don't know anything. I 
 was sent here by men who ought to be better 
 informed than I am on such matters by Mr. 
 Fealy, our city editor, and by Mr. Thring, 
 our editor-in-chief." 
 
 " Oh, no you don't ! You're from the 
 other side. You're from the Courier." 
 
 Here was a puzzling state of affairs, but 
 for answer Haig displayed his new police- 
 card. 
 
 " Well, what does the Express want, any- 
 how? " asked Elridge. 
 
 "An interview," John replied. "I was 
 sent here to get it, and I've had the word of 
 the men I mentioned though I suppose 
 G9
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 that's no business of yours that they intend 
 to print it to-morrow morning." 
 
 " Then I don't know what's happened. 
 But I can't stop to worry over your fool pa- 
 per. I'll have to cut. And anyhow, you may 
 just lay to one thing: you won't get any in- 
 terview out o' me if I have to kick you down- 
 stairs." 
 
 " Thank you," said Haig, " but I fancy 
 I've got about all that's necessary." 
 
 Elridge, the rat-like eyes now bulging 
 from his head, rushed upon the reporter with 
 apoplectic cheeks and trembling forefinger, 
 which he shook in John's unmoved face. 
 
 "Print it!" he yelled. "Print it, then, 
 and be damned ! Every word'll be libellous, 
 and I'll bankrupt your paper and have you 
 all in jail before I'm done with you. I only 
 wish you would print it ! " 
 
 "We will, Mr. Elridge, we will. But 
 don't talk about libel." He waved a bit of 
 paper in the air. " You remember your let- 
 ter to Belle?" 
 
 The contractor snatched at and secured 
 the paper, but Haig had suffered another in- 
 70
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 spiration, and was already following a dar- 
 ing plan of campaign. 
 
 " That is only an empty envelope," he 
 said, calmly enough. " The letter, I am sorry 
 to say, is at the office. You see, we know all 
 about it. Come now, I'll tell you what I'll do. 
 I know there's bigger game in this than you, 
 so I'll 'phone Fealy, and I think I can ar- 
 range it that if you'll come away from here 
 out of danger and give me a signed statement, 
 I'll agree not to use a word of this story 
 that is, the part of it that I know about 
 until you're safe at least out of the State." 
 
 Something in his air must have carried a 
 degree of conviction to the breast of the pan- 
 ic-stricken Elridge, for the man fell at once 
 into a fit of tripping pledges, expostulations, 
 and excuses, from the total incoherence of 
 which Haig escaped to the telephone, where 
 he was soon in animated conversation with 
 his delighted city editor, to whom he made as 
 clear as possible the state of the case. 
 
 " This man," he concluded, in a desperate 
 effort to conceal the disgust which was fast 
 overmastering his excitement, " says he'll 
 71
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 give up a written confession I'll see that it's 
 as detailed as possible providing we pass 
 our word not to print the thing for two 
 weeks. He wants that much additional 
 chance to get away." 
 
 " All right," came Fealy's answer. " If 
 we don't do as he says we're sure to lose a 
 beat, and if he sticks to his bargain we ought 
 to get a good one. Be sure, though, to see 
 that he don't fake you. You can promise him 
 anything for me just so long as it'll get the 
 story. Take him to a private room at the 
 Hamilton, and don't spare expense." 
 
 Thus, within fifteen minutes they were in 
 a cab, and by the time the hour struck, El- 
 ridge, in the crimson-plush parlour of a 
 down-town hotel, had snatched up his suit- 
 case and was handing Haig a hurried but 
 lengthy document. 
 
 " You promise me two weeks'? " he asked. 
 
 " Two weeks," John made answer. 
 
 " Well, you see that I have to trust you. 
 It's all up to you. Here. Look this thing 
 over; see if it's all there, and then I must 
 bolt." 
 
 72
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 Haig had been suffering from a moral 
 reaction, and had refrained from superin- 
 tending the writing. He was beginning to re- 
 cover from the tempestuous attack of that 
 intermittent fever technically known as the 
 news sense, and was rather ashamed of the 
 almost involuntary and certainly thoughtless 
 part he had played in the whole wretched 
 drama. But now that he was in for it, there 
 remained an obvious, if unpleasant, duty to 
 be performed in behalf of his employers. He 
 must see that Elridge had stuck to his part 
 of the bargain. 
 
 He took up the damp, scrawled sheets. 
 Considering the man's emotion, he had been 
 wonderfully clear and marvellously exact as 
 to detail. The confession, even though un- 
 supported and that of a runaway, carried 
 conviction along with it. Its story ran at 
 first very much as he had begun to expect it 
 should. The other contractors had been 
 bought off, their envelopes opened, the bids 
 changed, and several members of the city 
 councils sealed, with golden wafers, to help 
 and silence. All this was explicit. Names, 
 6 73
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CJESAR'S 
 
 witnesses, and often dates were supplied. 
 And then, at the close, with a similar terrible 
 exactness, with a like multitude of careful, 
 shameless detail, with the same unmistakable 
 note of authenticity, there followed a state- 
 ment calculated to convince even John Haig 
 that Elridge had been all along acting under 
 the personal direction of another man; that 
 he had been, in his every crime, merely this 
 man's representative; that he had been only 
 the hand that executed the orders of an ut- 
 terly splendid and unscrupulous brain. The 
 principal was Billy Gwynne. 
 
 Haig had been skimming through the pa- 
 per until he came to that. He doubted his 
 eyes ; read back several paragraphs, saw the 
 inevitable approach of the revelation, and 
 then finished the account word by word. 
 
 As he ended the consequences of the thing 
 were blazoned before him. The wealth of 
 circumstance, the thousand chances of cor- 
 roboration, the mention of places and dates, 
 left, in his bewildered mind, no room for 
 doubt. The world, he fancied, would, with 
 all the force of its old love for tearing the 
 74
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 mighty from their scats, be convinced far 
 more easily and speedily. 
 
 He held out the paper. 
 
 Elridge was at a loss to gather his mean- 
 ing. 
 
 " Here ! " commanded Haig. 
 
 "What do you meant" 
 
 " Mean! I mean I want you to take back 
 this paper of yours and tear it up before my 
 eyes and then go." 
 
 For a moment Elridge gazed at him with 
 open mouth and empty eyes. Then Haig 
 could see the light of understanding flare 
 into the vulgar face, and the man, with a 
 gurgle of wild delight, snatched the paper 
 and crunched it between his hands. 
 
 The next instant, however, his whole ex- 
 pression had changed, and he was smoothing 
 out the document, carefully, deliberately, on 
 the table. 
 
 " What are you about? " asked John. 
 
 " Just this," said Elridge, turning in half- 
 defiance. " If your paper won't use this, 
 some other one will. It's worth five hundred 
 dollars if it's worth a cent." 
 75
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 " Oh, I guess we'd use it all right if we 
 got it! But do you mean to say that you 
 want it to be used ? Or would you sell it only 
 for more than I've offered you? Heavens, 
 man, you surely don't mean that you want it 
 to appear ! " 
 
 "Want it to appear? Of course I do 
 now. No, I don't ask any more than to get 
 out of this. But I do intend that this thing 
 shall be used. You can bet your life I do. 
 What do I owe Billy Gwynne, that I should 
 run away with his dirty work all on my shoul- 
 ders ? I guess he thinks this is a smart trick 
 of his, but I'll show him whether it is or 
 not!" 
 
 " You must be drunk ! How's he played 
 any trick on you ? " 
 
 " Oh, don't take me for such a fool ! I can 
 see through this easy enough. Something's 
 gone wrong at the front, and Gwynne 
 thought he'd scare me and get me to skip 
 so's the whole thing 'd be put on me. Well, 
 I'll skip all right, but I'll fix things first so's 
 he'll only wish he could skip too ! " 
 
 The fellow was leaning on the table, his 
 76
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 body shaking, his face distorted with malice. 
 He gasped for breath and then, as he ran on, 
 a sense of conviction burst down the evident 
 motive of what he said, and swept upon Haig 
 with a wild flood of certainty. 
 
 " Look here," the man continued ; " you've 
 got your paper to think about, haven't you! 
 You say they'd use this, and if they sent you 
 out for it I guess they will. You look like the 
 sort that do their duty. Well, who's your 
 duty to, eh? Isn't it to the sheet you're work- 
 ing for! You can't throw them down now 
 you can't afford to. You'd lose your job in 
 a minute. This thing's a big item. It means 
 the showing up of about all that's rotten in 
 this town and there's plenty of that. I'm 
 gettin' away, but I'm only a sort of State's 
 evidence. You can easy prove every word of 
 what I wrote. And if Billy Gwynne gets into 
 trouble, it'll be about the first time the real 
 criminal had to suffer instead of the poor 
 ass he gets to work for him." 
 
 Haig's brain was running like a mill-race. 
 The man, whatever his motive, was, in the 
 abstract, right. John's duty was to his em- 
 77
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 ployers. If he thought ill of the work they 
 offered him he could leave it. But he could 
 not leave it without such a notice as he 
 would have expected from them, and in 
 the mean time he must furnish faithful 
 service. 
 
 That was enough for a man of action. He 
 put out his hand. 
 
 " Give it here," he said. 
 
 Elridge read his purpose in his face. 
 
 " You'll print it? " he asked. 
 
 Haig shuddered at the cunning of the 
 tone. 
 
 " I'll do my duty," he replied. 
 
 Elridge handed him the confession. 
 
 " You don't know how much I thank you 
 for all " 
 
 "Don't thank me," said John; "thank 
 your own rotten soul. If you want my opin- 
 ion of you, it's that you're a Judas. Now 
 get out." 
 
 The fellow still had it in him to attempt 
 to bluster. 
 
 " Look here, sir ! " he cried. " I'd have 
 you know that I may be a tool, but it was 
 78
 
 IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 
 
 for better men than you, men with some 
 nerve, and I'm not going to have you 
 
 " You'd better get out," said Haig calmly. 
 " If you don't, I'll give you something that 
 will lay you up till that warrant's served." 
 
 Elridge leaped to the door and through 
 it. He thrust his head again into the room. 
 
 "Don't forget; you said you'd give me 
 two weeks," he whined. 
 
 Haig was lighting a cigarette. 
 
 " Two weeks," he replied, and held the 
 burning match in his fingers until he heard 
 Elridge's footsteps clattering down the 
 stairs. 
 
 79
 
 VI 
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 FOR a man who hated thought as much as 
 John Haig hated it, the next quarter-hour 
 was a difficult one. For some minutes, in- 
 deed, he determinedly thrust from him all 
 consideration of the multitude of questions 
 that nevertheless seemed hammering at the 
 frail deal-door of the room. He sat at the 
 marble-topped table and traced its anaemic 
 pale-blue veins until they sprang into a hope- 
 less tangle under his very eyes. He counted 
 over and over again the articles of cheap fur- 
 niture the cane-bottom chairs set squarely 
 against the walls, the orthodox horse-hair 
 sofas, the screaming lithographs in frames of 
 white and gilt and each time he arrived at 
 a different result. He marvelled at the red 
 plush carpet, and lost himself in the labyrin- 
 thian mazes of the yellow wall-paper. He did 
 
 80
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 anything, in short, save the thing that he 
 knew he must, sooner or later, do. And then, 
 at last, the clang of a car-bell from the street 
 woke him to the fact of the life of which he 
 was now an inevitable portion, and enabled 
 him to bring himself together through the 
 resolve that he would not leave this gaudy 
 place of detention just as he could not 
 escape from his hideous state of indecision 
 until he had definitely fixed upon the course 
 which he was to pursue. 
 
 To make certain of his position, he first 
 reread Elridge's confession, and thereby did 
 away with every lingering hope. The result 
 of the publication of the fellow's admissions 
 was too clear to admit of a doubt, and the 
 cat's-paw who had written it was by this time 
 well on the way to freedom. 
 
 Why was he! Who had allowed him to 
 escape, and upon what authority? The 
 thought struck Haig like a blow. He even 
 rose, and, before he had sufficiently recov- 
 ered from the shock to realize the futility of 
 the action thus involuntarily begun, made a 
 step or two towards the door. Here was, in 
 81
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 truth, a novel view of the matter and a late 
 one. Though in so doing he had but fol- 
 lowed the precedents of ordained justice in 
 its attitude towards State's evidence, his 
 power, whether or no he had been right in 
 daring to sit as a judge, at most did not ex- 
 tend to the dismissal of a confessed, even if 
 minor, criminal. Nor could he find, as yet, 
 excuse on the ground of mere obedience to 
 orders, since he knew that the next question 
 about to present itself had to do with whether 
 he should obey those orders in their funda- 
 mental significance and surrender that con- 
 fession to the dragon of the press. He took 
 refuge, therefore, in what, though a seeming 
 weakness, was still most likely the simple 
 truth. He had been governed throughout the 
 afternoon, first by a series of impulses re- 
 sulting from professional ignorance, and lat- 
 terly by a confusion consequent upon his sud- 
 den and unexpected discovery. For what 
 was past he could scarcely, then, with justice, 
 hold himself to blame. Past it at any rate 
 was, and the least criminal clean gone. 
 There now remained the rest of the gang, 
 82
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 and with them the consideration of a far 
 greater difficulty, the difficulty, in a word, of 
 the greatest criminal of them all. 
 
 Haig got up and strode to the window, 
 lighting another cigarette and seeking 
 strength from the busy panorama of the 
 strenuous street. 
 
 What, after all, he asked himself, was 
 William Gwynne to him! The probable fa- 
 vour of the introductory letter to the paper 
 was obviously not here to be considered. 
 The man was therefore at most the father 
 of an attractive girl whom Haig had seen but 
 once. Perhaps he did love her, but what of 
 that! It was the girl he loved, and love and 
 business not to say love and justice were 
 two entirely separate things. Besides, he 
 stood here, he did not doubt, with his hand 
 upon the knob of a door which he had but to 
 throw open in order to reveal the crimes of 
 the men who were robbing the city and be- 
 traying their public trust. If he only turned 
 his hand, these men would meet their just 
 deserts. If he refused, if he but burned one 
 little scrap of paper, the loss of which could 
 83
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 so easily be accounted for and, though he 
 never thought of that, so well paid for in 
 another quarter then the thieves would con- 
 tinue in their high estate for the runaway 
 would surely be made a scape-goat among 
 soft sounds and pleasant sights and beautiful 
 faces that loved them. 
 
 There, alas, was the rub. It was his first 
 personal experience with the practical work- 
 ing of the doctrine of vicarious atonement. 
 His own crime he had committed when sin- 
 gularly alone in the world, and the four walls 
 of his prison had shut him in before he could 
 learn of any consequent suffering to his own 
 blood relatives in a distant State. But now 
 he saw that, the wide world over, the inno- 
 cent must suffer with the guilty and for 
 them, must, in fact, suffer far more than 
 they. He revolted from the gigantic barbar- 
 ity of it, he sickened at the realization of the 
 broad sweep of the great universal laws 
 which make for their shadowy goal with so 
 relentless a disregard of all they crush in 
 their passage. Everywhere he seemed to see 
 the negation of the individual to the moral 
 84
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 syllogism, everywhere the sacrifice of the one 
 to the many. 
 
 And what, at last, of this one, the one 
 whose face rose up to him there and pressed 
 against his own the warm red lips of lifet 
 Dream lips they could not seem, charged 
 though they were not with their sudden 
 laughter, but with unfamiliar pleading. The 
 picture grew until it racked his soul. Her 
 fingers tore at his heart-strings, her eyes con- 
 victed him. Those lips to plead ! That face 
 had never known a sorrow, never yet had 
 looked on shame. To what, then, and why 
 was he condemning it? By what right did 
 he, as a god, sit all this day in judgment who 
 still bore upon his pallid face the mark of the 
 jail! 
 
 But with a tremendous effort he put the 
 thought from him. Whatever else went 
 down, duty remained. Privately he was, 
 argue as he might, an employe" acting under 
 definite rules. So much of those orders as 
 had been morally doubtful had, he reasoned, 
 been already executed. He could not see how 
 such faults could in any wise invalidate what 
 85
 
 followed, all of which he conceived to be 
 righteous enough. If he did not like his work 
 he could give it up, but not in the midst of 
 an assignment, not by withholding that of 
 which he could plainly never have gained 
 possession save through his employers. The 
 confession belonged to them to use as they 
 saw fit. The responsibility was no longer his 
 own. Having acquitted himself of his task 
 he might, if he thought the work unworthy, 
 leave it, but not without giving to those now, 
 by his own consent, in authority over him the 
 warning he would have expected of them. 
 Meanwhile, he must furnish faithful service. 
 On the other hand, he realized that his 
 duty had a public bearing and command 
 upon him. Thus considered, his part would 
 enter into the matter not at all. Here was 
 only a duty to be done by a man who had 
 paid the penalty for his own crime, had 
 started with the slate cleaned by ten years 
 from a private wrong, against men who lived 
 and moved luxuriously and battened, not on 
 any one person, but upon the whole public. 
 He had betrayed a private confidence, they 
 86
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 the trust of a cityful. The rich and power- 
 ful must be as amenable to punishment as 
 the poor and the weak. They would have as 
 fair a chance as he had had. Afterward he 
 must do what little he could he did not see 
 the egotism of it to alleviate the wrongs of 
 the innocent sufferers; now he must do his 
 duty. 
 
 He crammed the hateful paper into an 
 inner pocket and returned to the office of the 
 Globe-Express. The other men were begin- 
 ning to gather from their afternoon occupa- 
 tions, but Haig was no sooner seen than he 
 was sent to the room of the city editor. 
 
 Fealy met him with beaming smile and 
 outstretched hand. 
 
 "Well, my boy!" he cried, "you've got 
 it!" 
 
 " Yes," said Haig shortly. 
 
 " I congratulate you ! I congratulate you 
 on landing the biggest story that's broken 
 loose in this town for five years! There 
 aren't many old hands could 'a' done it, and 
 I'll see that you're rewarded accordingly. 
 Now, then, tell me all about it." 
 87
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 Haig, instinctively withholding the names 
 of all others concerned, complied as well as 
 his thorough disgust with the whole matter 
 would permit him. 
 
 Fealy watched him closely through the 
 narrative, following every word, interject- 
 ing a salient question or two, and ever 
 and anon rubbing a pair of delighted 
 hands. But towards the end he grew im- 
 patient. 
 
 " So you went to the hotel? " he finally in- 
 terrupted. 
 
 " Yes, we went there," continued John. 
 "We got the room " 
 
 " And he wrote the confession? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "A full one?" 
 
 " So far as I could see he didn't omit a 
 single necessary detail." 
 
 " Well, then, let's have it." 
 
 There was a suggestion of greed in the 
 man's outstretched claw that made Haig 
 grow suddenly cautious. 
 
 " You're not going to use it at once? " he 
 asked. 
 
 88
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 " Certainly. We're saving three columns, 
 starting with two on the first page. Hurry 
 up ; let's see it." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Fealy, you I thought that, 
 over the 'phone, you gave me to understand 
 that you weren't going to use it for two 
 weeks." 
 
 " Oh, what's that got to do with it? Let's 
 have the confession." 
 
 " It's got everything to do with it. El- 
 ridge wouldn't have given up if I hadn't 
 promised not to use the stuff for a week." 
 
 " Well, I can't quibble with you. Let me 
 have the story." 
 
 Haig saw that he was in for a fight, and 
 his nostrils expanded with delight at this 
 final relief from a strain which had become 
 well-nigh unbearable. He had, however, as 
 he replied, perfect control of his voice : 
 
 " Excuse me," he said, " but this isn't a 
 case of quibbling. By your authority I 
 promised this man something, and because I 
 promised him he entered into a contract with 
 me." 
 
 Fealy, between awakening indignation 
 7 89
 
 and a genuine amazement, hammered the 
 table with his red fist. 
 
 " Look here, you young fool 1 " he shouted. 
 " I don't allow my reporters to talk to me in 
 that way, and I'll have you know it at once ! 
 You've landed a good story and it's gone to 
 your head, so I'll be easy on you this one 
 time, but it's got to end right here. Give me 
 that confession." 
 
 " No," said John Haig. 
 
 Fealy sprang to his feet with a bound 
 that shook the whole frail room, sent his 
 crashing chair to bits on the floor behind 
 him, and swept a pile of ancient papers 
 in a cloud of dust to the reporter's very 
 shoes. 
 
 For a moment he could not speak at all. 
 His face was purple with anger, his eyes 
 snapped fire, yet behind it all there was evi- 
 dent a sense of unreality, a seeming in- 
 ability to understand the possibility of such 
 flat disobedience of orders. Expecting a tor- 
 rent of vituperation, Haig stood bravely to 
 his post. But the torrent was withheld. 
 Suddenly the city editor mastered his pas- 
 90
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 sion, and in a voice measured though shaken 
 said: 
 
 " Mr. Haig, you will give me that story at 
 once, and then go out of this office for good. 
 We do not want you about here any more." 
 
 " Very well," responded John. " I'll go, 
 but I'll take the story along with me." 
 
 Then the torrent descended. It was all 
 the worse for the temporary delay, and it 
 was sufficiently violent to meet every require- 
 ment of the occasion. Fealy damned the re- 
 porter to the nethermost hell, and when he 
 paused it was but for breath. 
 
 " You're a thief," he succinctly concluded, 
 " a common thief that's what you are ! That 
 story belongs to us, and if you take it out of 
 this room I'll see that you're arrested." 
 
 " The story," replied Haig, hot with the 
 sting of the last insult, " doesn't belong 
 to you until a week from to-day. In fact, I 
 don't know that it belongs to you at all, and 
 I'm sure you couldn't arrest me for doing 
 what I please with it. At any rate, I know 
 you wouldn't dare to stand the showing-up. 
 But if I'm a thief, what do you think you 
 91
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 are? You've got this thing on certain pre- 
 tences, and I propose to see that they're not 
 false ones. At first I'd have given you the 
 story if you'd just have promised again not 
 to use it till the right time. Now, I know that 
 if you can't be straight with Elridge you 
 can't be straight with me. With this thing in 
 my pocket I can get on any paper in town, 
 and you know it. You're a cheat, Mr. Fealy ; 
 you're the kind of man I wouldn't play cards 
 with, and I'm sure I'm as glad to be quit of 
 such company as you say you are to have 
 me go." 
 
 He was about to turn on his heel, but al- 
 most at once Fealy began again, this time 
 along a new line of attack. 
 
 The man well knew the value of the story, 
 and saw that for the present, at least, he was 
 in Haig's hands. He accordingly made the 
 one play whereby he could avoid an ultimate 
 loss of this important piece of news. 
 
 " I may have been hasty, Mr. Haig," he 
 
 said, "but you'd better let me talk to you. 
 
 It's this way, you see: A reporter is like a 
 
 soldier, and of course his superior officer 
 
 92
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 can't have any insubordination. That's all 
 there is about it. Now, a soldier, too, must 
 obey orders, and so must a reporter. He's 
 got to do what he's told, and not ask any 
 questions. He's not to blame for obeying or- 
 ders. If the orders are bad it's only the man 
 who gives 'em who's to blame. Well, I'm the 
 man who gives the orders in this shop. You 
 hand me over that confession that's the or- 
 der now. You don't know what use I'm going 
 to make of it. I'll even go so far as to let you 
 off of the writing a line about the thing. 
 Then, you see, if anybody's to blame, it's 
 me." 
 
 Haig despaired of making himself clear. 
 However 
 
 " Mr. Fealy," he said, " I don't see it that 
 way. If there's a bad law it isn't a citizen's 
 duty to obey it, and even if a reporter is like 
 a soldier which I don't believe he is I can't 
 see how a soldier can think that he's got to 
 obey orders that make him do criminal 
 things." 
 
 " But you agree to obey orders when you 
 come on a paper," argued Fealy. " Every re- 
 93
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 porter who takes a job on a local staff agrees 
 to do what he is told to do, and the city edi- 
 tor who takes him on agrees to take all the 
 blame." 
 
 " If I wrote a libel I'd be as open to arrest 
 for it as you'd be." 
 
 " Oh, well, then, look at it from another 
 way. This fellow Elridge is a rascal. You'll 
 only be handing him over to justice by print- 
 ing the thing as soon as possible." 
 
 " Then a quicker way would be to go out 
 and warn the police, and the quickest would 
 have been not to have given him the first 
 chance of escape." 
 
 " But you can't think that you can be held 
 to a bargain that you practically made under 
 pressure." 
 
 "I wasn't under half the pressure he 
 was, and he lived up to his part of the 
 contract." 
 
 " But he's a criminal, and you don't have 
 to keep faith with a criminal. Why, the de- 
 tectives do this sort of thing every day." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Fealy, I'm not a detective, I'm 
 a reporter. I may be a poor one, but I'm 
 94
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 not a detective, anyhow. The two jobs are 
 mighty different, though you seem to be get- 
 ting them mixed up right along. When I 
 make a bargain I stick to it as long as the 
 other fellow does." 
 
 " Then you're compounding a felony ; 
 you're letting this fellow get away." 
 
 " They were your orders at the start, and 
 for the rest, I'm just following a method of 
 the courts and the police you like to set up 
 as examples of squareness in this sort of 
 thing. I let him turn a sort of State's evi- 
 dence so as to get the bigger fish." 
 
 For Fealy this statement contained a bit 
 of fresh news. 
 
 " You mean to say," he asked, " that there 
 are bigger fish? " 
 
 Once more an instinctive nicety kept Haig 
 from mentioning any name other than that 
 already known to Fealy, but he replied: 
 
 "About the biggest in the puddle, I 
 judge." 
 
 " And you've got the details there? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 95
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 " I can't tell you until two weeks from to- 
 night." 
 
 But again Fealy's news-sense got the bet- 
 ter of his discretion. 
 
 " Oh, hang your morals ! " he cried. 
 " See here, I'm boss here, and I want that 
 story. Am I going to get it or not, that's the 
 question? " 
 
 " I want you to listen to me for a minute, 
 Mr. Fealy. I want you to hear my side of 
 this case. The story will keep as well as 
 not. If that warrant was sworn out secretly, 
 nobody'll be the wiser for a week at least, and 
 even if the other papers do get on, you can 
 print the same thing they print you'll get 
 the same news from the same source and 
 then you can spring this beat on them when 
 the time's up. I promise you it'll keep, and 
 I promise you that, from your point of view, 
 it's big enough to be worth your while. I 
 don't want to be nasty; all I want to do is 
 to keep my bargain. It's a fair one, and I'll 
 nurse this thing in the mean time and verify 
 it, so that it will be all the better in the end." 
 
 He had hardly finished, and Fealy had 
 96
 
 DOCTORS DISAGREE 
 
 not had a moment in which to frame a very 
 evidently angry reply when there was a noise 
 at the door, and Mr. Thring, with his usual 
 air of uncertain hurry and innocuous detach- 
 ment, entered the room. 
 
 " Well, how's the story! " he asked, saun- 
 tering up to the desk. 
 
 Haig at once descended from his high key, 
 but Fealy remained at top pitch. 
 
 " Why, this fellow says he promised El- 
 ridge to hold the thing for two weeks, and re- 
 fuses to give it up." 
 
 " Mr. Fealy ordered me to promise him," 
 corrected Haig. 
 
 "It was the only way to get the story," 
 explained the city editor. 
 
 Mr. Thring nervously fumbled with some 
 coins in his high-cut pocket. 
 
 " Hum-m," he said. " That's a pity." 
 
 " A pity? " gasped Fealy. " Why! " 
 
 " Because, if we made a promise to the 
 blackguard, of course we'll have to keep it." 
 
 97
 
 vn 
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 WHATEVER else might be said of him, 
 Billy Gwynne was essentially a product of 
 the latter part of the nineteenth century, a 
 creature of contemporary conditions. In any 
 previous age the man would have been im- 
 possible. Under imperial Rome he would 
 have been a colonial governor; in mediaeval 
 Germany he would have been a robber-baron ; 
 and under the first French Empire he might 
 even have developed into a Talleyrand; but 
 at no other time preceding the present could 
 he have been precisely Billy Gwynne. 
 
 Physically he was a man of commanding 
 height and breadth, always carefully dressed 
 and to the best advantage. He had gray hair 
 and mustache, heavy eyebrows of the same 
 colour, which contrasted strongly with a face 
 of uniform crimson, and sharp gray eyes 
 98
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 that nevertheless conveyed the general im- 
 pression of kindliness. But he was a person 
 of too wide an experience and too broad a 
 knowledge of the world to allow these trifling 
 superficialities to become an adequate ex- 
 pression of his genuine self. 
 
 William Stuyvesant Logan Gwynne was 
 his real name, and his birth had been all that 
 the name implies. He was the youngest of 
 four sons born into one of the oldest and best- 
 connected families of the city, even of the 
 country. It had also, at one time, been one 
 of the most wealthy families, but that day 
 had passed a generation earlier, and the 
 young brothers had been brought up behind 
 the scenes of poverty-stricken pride. They 
 had been taught that this was for them far 
 more honourable than the convenient riches 
 of their embarrassing friends, and they had 
 been nurtured on the theory that the only 
 fit and worthy way for them to redeem the 
 family fortunes was to marry wealth of a 
 respectability equal to that of their own pov- 
 erty. Above all, they had been taught to 
 dread as their final shame the slightest con- 
 99
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 tamination of bourgeoisie, and nothing, they; 
 had always been told, was quite so bourgeois 
 as politics. This lesson three of them had 
 learned so well that, being puny and unat- 
 tractive youths, they had died bachelors 
 within a short time after their parents, quite 
 as poor and as proud and as lonely as they. 
 
 Not so William. He had mastered a les- 
 son of a very different sort; one, in fact, 
 which he was afterward reported to have 
 summed up in the phrase that he had, early in 
 life, got his " belly full of shabby gentility." 
 Certainly he developed, in the first flush of 
 boyhood, a remarkably persistent instinct 
 for what is commonly known as the main 
 chance. In the pursuit of that goal he never 
 bothered about the companions with whom 
 he had, on the way, to associate, and when he 
 would return home from an unheard-of por- 
 tion of the city with his pockets filled by 
 other boys' marbles, the knowledge of the 
 sort of lads upon whom he had preyed was 
 far more painful to his family than the sim- 
 ple fact of his tendencies towards gaming. 
 Neither fact, however, either then or later, 
 100
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 ruffled the equanimity of William. His games 
 of chance, judging from their invariable re- 
 sults, were games that he had thoroughly 
 mastered, and, having by some freak of ata- 
 vism been born with the power of attracting 
 and using men, he so consistently developed 
 his talent to its extremest limit that, by not 
 inquiring too closely into the nature of the 
 material he used so long as he could safely 
 use it, he had some years since become some- 
 thing possible only in the present era, and 
 rare enough even there a successful gentle- 
 man-political boss. 
 
 So far as Society was concerned, he had 
 always struck it squarely between the eyes. 
 He believed that a Gwynne had to be ac- 
 cepted as a Gwynne per sc, and Society paid 
 tribute to his perspicacity by kissing the 
 hand that dealt the blows. 
 
 The first and worst of these blows was 
 his marriage. Had all other things been 
 equal, Billy Gwynne would naturally have 
 preferred to choose a woman unmistakably 
 of his own set. But other things were just 
 then by no means equal. There had been in 
 101
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE C^SAK'S 
 
 the army of finance a general panic, which 
 had left dowerless the some half-dozen girls 
 who would otherwise have been in every re- 
 spect eligible, and there was fortune and 
 power to be had by an alliance with the 
 daughter of a certain soap-manufacturer 
 turned senator. Gwynne had himself suf- 
 fered not a little in the slump of the market. 
 Consequently he did not hesitate. He chose 
 for fortune and power and soap. 
 
 The result, as always, proved his wisdom. 
 Louise Divins was a quiet, pleasant-looking 
 woman, a woman, indeed, almost too " prop- 
 er " for the proper sphere whereinto she was 
 thus translated. A bit old-fashioned, the 
 death of her father, however, soon made up 
 for all her shortcomings, and left to his only 
 child the entire sum total of a most substan- 
 tial property. 
 
 The receipt of this little addition did not 
 change Gwynne's course in life. Bather it 
 confirmed it ; went, in brief, towards making 
 it more severely certain. Consequently, upon 
 the birth of Phyllis he did gather up again 
 and easily enough the loose ends of his 
 102
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 social existence, but he went deeper and 
 deeper into politics. He went, to tell the 
 truth, so deep that he was never seen to rise 
 above the surface of the ocean of publicity. 
 And that was what he wanted. His ambi- 
 tion was to sit, like Neptune, safely beneath 
 the tempests of the wave-tops, there to con- 
 trol from his sequestered throne tempest and 
 current as well. The name of William 
 Gwynne seldom appeared in the lists of cam- 
 paign committees. It was never seen among 
 the " spellbinders," much less upon a ticket. 
 Yet the hand of Billy Gwynne never let slip 
 its hold of the reins that drew tight the bit in 
 the mouths of the public horses, and his whip 
 was ever silently playing over those horses' 
 heads. At the door of his large office in the 
 most elaborate business building there was 
 no card to indicate that the lessee engaged in 
 any occupation whatever. But the anteroom 
 was always thronged with a motley gather- 
 ing, and from the innermost chamber went 
 forth that still small voice which predeter- 
 mined every political movement in the city, 
 from the election of a mayor and the grant- 
 103
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 ing of a franchise to the appointment of a 
 suburban policeman or the dismissal of a 
 janitor from a coloured school. Gwynne' s 
 lieutenants included every municipal and 
 State office-holder in the town, and the rank 
 and file of his army spread from the main 
 offices of the great corporations until it was 
 finally lost in the shadows of alleys and of 
 tenements. How the man had gained his ab- 
 solute control nobody could precisely tell. 
 Nobody would or could directly connect him 
 with any one movement of the machine. But 
 everybody knew that the machine was run 
 to please him, and Billy Gwynne knew who it 
 was that ran it. 
 
 This was the method that made it possible 
 for the man to maintain the respectable fig- 
 ure which was his secondary delight. Soci- 
 ety feared him and was both unable and un- 
 willing to prove evil against him. He was 
 successful, pleasant, and, above all, he was a 
 Gwynne. Society refused to believe that so 
 seemingly perfect a gentleman could be an 
 unscrupulous jobster, and accordingly re- 
 joiced that one of its members should be di- 
 104
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 vinely commissioned to redeem municipal 
 politics. Bishop Osgood would not, for his 
 part, think that so devout and charitable a 
 churchman could be anything that was at all 
 wrong, and so made much of him always, and, 
 on this Monday evening in particular the 
 Monday following Haig's violent interview 
 with his city editor had him and his family 
 to dinner. 
 
 It was a small party. Besides the 
 Gwynnes there was only Marsden Payne 
 a stout, healthy, happy young heir to mil- 
 lions and recipient of Mrs. Osgood's over- 
 flowing affections the bishop and his wife, 
 of course, and Haig. 
 
 John was eager for another sight of Phyl- 
 lis and for a meeting with her father. The 
 few days which had passed since his inter- 
 view with Elridge had not been easy ones. 
 Mr. Thring's dictum that the Globe-Express 
 kept its promises had secured him a tempo- 
 rary secession of hostilities ; but this was at 
 best only an armed peace, and its result had 
 been but a growing nervousness and a gen- 
 eral disgust. Fealy had not a word to say to 
 8 105
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 him except in overloading him with work and 
 sending him upon the most nauseating as- 
 signments. Only the night before, the story 
 of the secret warrant and Elridge's escape 
 had somehow leaked out, and the morning pa- 
 pers were full of double-leaded speculation, 
 while John, worn by hours of mental torture, 
 knew that he held the key to the situation 
 safely buttoned against his breast. 
 
 Phyllis greeted him with civil pleasure, 
 even with a degree of personal delight, for 
 her picture had appeared in form enough 
 flattering and in place sufficiently prominent. 
 She had, moreover, all the outsider's inter- 
 est in the romantic profession, and she 
 was now at once taken with the appearance 
 of this slim, straight, pale young man, quiet 
 of manner and faultless of dress, who 
 formed so great a contrast to the redolently 
 eligible and assiduously attentive Marsden 
 Payne. 
 
 The latter, however, was too zealous an 
 admirer to allow her either before or dur- 
 ing the dinner more than a word with Haig, 
 and, as if not content with this, when the 
 106
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 cloth had been removed and the women 
 had left the candle-lighted room, he pro- 
 ceeded, while touching a match to his cigar- 
 ette, to administer another shock to the re- 
 porter. 
 
 " That's a queer affair, Mr. Gwynne," he 
 began, " about that fellow Elridge." 
 
 Haig shot a swift glance at the politician, 
 but Gwynne, raising a steady glass to his 
 lips, was only mildly interested. 
 
 " Very odd," he granted, " from what I 
 could gather from the papers." 
 
 " I am afraid," said the bishop, " that it is 
 only another form of the old story of cor- 
 rupt politics. It is a pity we can't have more 
 men like you, Mr. Gwynne, interested in our 
 public affairs." 
 
 " Thank you. But I hardly think this can 
 be called a political matter. The charges 
 weren't printed, of course, and the whole 
 story was very vague, but it looks to me more 
 like mere business rottenness. If the man 
 had been hand in glove with corrupt politi- 
 cians he wouldn't have felt the need of run- 
 
 ning away." 
 
 107
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 Haig leaned well over the table. 
 
 " Not unless they had a pretty strong case 
 against him," he suggested. 
 
 "But he did stand in with some politi- 
 cians," persisted Payne. "I dare say you 
 must have met him now and again, Mr. 
 Gwynne?" 
 
 Gwynne was cutting a cigar-end. 
 
 " Now and again," he carelessly assented. 
 
 "What sort of a fellow did he seem to 
 be!" 
 
 "I didn't see enough of him to judge. 
 Commonplace, I suppose, or I'd have remem- 
 bered him better." 
 
 Haig drew a long breath. This man must 
 be madly confident. 
 
 "I can't help hoping they won't catch 
 him," he ventured. 
 
 Gwynne smiled. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked. "I hope, Mr. 
 Haig, you're not one of those sentimental 
 people who always feel sorry for a man just 
 because he's caught stealing." 
 
 " Oh, I don't think John's that," the bish- 
 op nervously interposed, " but I confess that 
 108
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 I myself always have some sympathy in these 
 cases." 
 
 " One always feels that it's only the 
 scape-goat that's caught," remarked Haig 
 dryly. He was peevishly intent upon making 
 Gwynne feel. 
 
 "And we never know what temptations 
 he has met with," added Bishop Osgood. 
 
 Gwynne's red face grew a shade redder. 
 He turned to the churchman. 
 
 " It is all very well for you to feel that 
 way," he said. " It does you honour, of 
 course, and all that, but, as a practical man, 
 I can't see why, if a fellow's guilty, he 
 shouldn't suffer. That's what the law's for. 
 If there are bigger criminals in the thing, 
 hook them too, but that's no reason why the 
 little scoundrels shouldn't get their deserts." 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " cried Payne. 
 
 " I'm not denying that " began the 
 
 bishop. 
 
 " Nor I," interpolated John. 
 
 " But I must admit," the clergyman con- 
 tinued, his placid blue eyes narrowing incon- 
 gruously, "to more sympathy for the little 
 109
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 fellows, as they call them. They're generally 
 so much weaker." 
 
 There are few things so delightful to the 
 best laymen as baiting a cleric with his own 
 precepts, and in the good-natured discussion 
 which followed this declaration, Bishop Os- 
 good needed all the support which John, 
 amazed at Gwynne's words, and hurt by the 
 unintended slurs of Payne, could give him. 
 
 At last it was Haig who thus grew a trifle 
 ruffled, 
 
 " Your attitude," he said, addressing his 
 two adversaries, "is as one-sided as you 
 think ours. The small criminal is easier 
 caught than the big one, the offender against 
 person runs a thousand chances of detection 
 to each one risked by the offender against the 
 public. Both ought to be punished, of course, 
 but you accept the big one just because he 
 isn't caught, and all pounce on the little one 
 just because he is." 
 
 " You can't want us to take him up after 
 he's caught," laughed Gwynne. 
 
 " You'll logically have to, sooner or later, 
 after he's served his term." 
 110
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 " Certainly not," rapped out Payne. 
 
 " Why," urged John, " he's paid the pen- 
 alty, hasn't het" 
 
 " And come out worse than he went in." 
 The boy had graduated from his college three 
 years before, but there was still much of the 
 sophomore about him. " I was reading," he 
 continued, " only this morning, the latest 
 figures of criminal recidivism, and they 
 showed, instead of the old twenty-six per 
 cent, over fifty-nine for crimes against per- 
 son, and nearly eighty for crimes against 
 property." 
 
 " Then the fault is ours," said the bishop. 
 " If we say prison is the place to reform a 
 criminal, we should see to it that prisons re- 
 form." 
 
 " That theory is all right," interposed 
 Gwynne, " but it's dangerous in practice. It 
 gets to be sentimentalism. Most of the ex- 
 periments of that sort have made jail pleas- 
 anter for the men who go there than the liv- 
 ing they got outside." 
 
 " The thing was never practised so much 
 as it is to-day," persisted Payne, " and yet 
 111
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 there never was so large a percentage of re- 
 cidivism." 
 
 John pushed his cigarette-ash angrily into 
 the plate before him. 
 
 " There's something wrong with it all," he 
 cried inconsequently. " There's something 
 wrong, and as long as people look at it the 
 way you do there won't be any remedy. So- 
 ciety experiments for century after century, 
 and finally decides that such and such a 
 crime deserves such and such a punishment, 
 and then when the man's taken the medicine, 
 Society says it's not enough." 
 
 But the bishop was professionally a man 
 of peace. 
 
 "I'm afraid," he said, "that the fault 
 must be in the individual, not in society. 
 The thing you're speaking of naturally hap- 
 pens in some cases, but not in all. When it 
 does happen, it must mean that the man is 
 more guilty than was thought, and society's 
 repugnance is an instinctive sense of this. 
 Society, after all, is a part of the world's 
 plan, and in that way it may be said to be 
 divine. Why shouldn't it, then, be vouch- 
 112
 
 AFTER-DINNER CRIMINOLOGY 
 
 safed such a sense, an instinctive social con- 
 science, in some way we cannot understand! " 
 
 Haig looked at his uncle in amazement, 
 but before he could reply the bishop had 
 risen, and as they passed out of the room 
 Gwynne was saying: 
 
 " Anyhow, the law's for punishment. It's 
 not for coddling. When a man's guilty you 
 can feel pretty sure he's not too good for 
 anything that happens to him." 
 
 113
 
 VIII 
 
 AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT 
 
 CLEARLY, thought John with some bitter- 
 ness, he had formed a habit of receiving 
 revelations. Here, at any rate, was another 
 one. Keeling under Payne's brutal exposition 
 of the common attitude towards the criminal, 
 and startled by his uncle's attitude of conces- 
 sion towards society, he had no chance to 
 conform with it in spirit, as a necessary re- 
 sult of social conditions, before he was struck 
 with the words of Gwynne. More than they 
 had to do with his own ethical standing in the 
 just then imminent world of fact, they 
 amazed him, characteristically enough, in 
 their relation to the confession of the miser- 
 able Elridge. Was it possible that a man 
 who could so bear himself under cross-exami- 
 nation upon the fellow's flight was really the 
 runaway's partner? And, above all, was it 
 possible that a man who could conclude such 
 114
 
 AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT 
 
 a conversation with so sweeping a statement 
 seemingly so sincerely uttered, could be him- 
 self a criminal! 
 
 Haig was not the sort to bear in the pres- 
 ence of their subject the strain of such con- 
 siderations. He was glad to find any relief 
 from them ; he was delighted to find that re- 
 lief in Phyllis. He could forget it all the 
 moment he met her smile, could forget the 
 very relation in which she stood to his rob- 
 ber-chief, and could grasp with innate social 
 skill the chance that led Payne to another 
 end of the drawing-room, there to offer the 
 customary civilities to the placid little Mrs. 
 Gwynne and the beaming and stout Mrs. Os- 
 good, already attended by the bishop and his 
 remaining guest. 
 
 Yet, as he showed the way to a conveni- 
 ently sequestered window-seat, he was more 
 serious in tone than the apparently trifling 
 occasion warranted or Phyllis could well ac- 
 count for. The girl, however, was as recep- 
 tive as most girls of her class, and even more 
 than commonly adaptive, so that she quickly 
 and easily caught his mood. 
 115
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 She was dressed in white, with an entranc- 
 ingly abortive suggestion of the fashionable 
 cut to the corsage and, as he drew back the 
 curtains, she raised, to brush a random curl 
 from her slim, unadorned neck, a girlish arm 
 of pure and graceful proportions. 
 
 " So you were pleased with your pic- 
 ture ? " he asked almost funereally. 
 
 "In the paper? Indeed I was! The 
 Globe-Express made most of the girls look 
 rather horrid a month ago, but this one quite 
 flattered me." 
 
 He sat down beside her on the narrow 
 cushions. He had to sit close, and, in order 
 to lean forward, he must even place on the 
 window-sill an arm in tantalizing proximity 
 to her lithe white shoulders. 
 
 " I'm glad you liked it," he said. " And 
 now, I suppose, you'll be asking when it's to 
 be returned." 
 
 She looked up smiling. 
 
 " I haven't yet." 
 
 He drew still closer. 
 
 " Then you don't I mean, I mustn't send 
 it?" 
 
 116
 
 " You might bring it." 
 
 " I should like the mission, but not its mo- 
 tive." 
 
 "But the photograph belongs to Bishop 
 Osgood, you know." 
 
 " I am one of his family just now, and I 
 will see that it is delivered to this house and 
 remains under his roof. Isn't that enough to 
 promise? " 
 
 They were both smiling now, but, for 
 all that, none the less serious in their 
 play. 
 
 "You don't seem to think," she pouted, 
 "that he wants it!" 
 
 " He can't help wanting," Haig returned ; 
 " but I know some one who wants it more." 
 
 She tried vainly to laugh away his mean- 
 ing. 
 
 " It does seem," she admitted, " after 
 your courage in coming to me for it, and the 
 diplomatic way you got it, and and all the 
 nice things you've said about it since, that 
 you deserve some reward." 
 
 " Oh, I don't claim to have deserved any- 
 
 thing!" 
 
 117
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 "Isn't merely doing one's duty enough 
 to deserve some recognition? " 
 
 He took the words for what, with the 
 shock of a return, they then meant to him. 
 
 " I have wondered about that," he said, 
 " about that question of duty a good deal 
 lately. It's all very well for people to talk 
 about the beauty of doing one's duty, but the 
 real beauty isn't in the doing, it's in the abil- 
 ity to decide on what one's duty is. Once 
 you've decided it's all plain sailing, only the 
 world is all such a tangle that whenever there 
 arises the necessity of what we call per- 
 forming a duty there are always presented 
 to us two or three possible courses, all lead- 
 ing in different directions, yet any one 
 of which might be interpreted as the du- 
 tiful one at the expense of all the oth- 
 ers." 
 
 He spoke with so much feeling that she 
 looked up wondering. Moral questions had 
 always seemed very simple to her, because 
 she had never been called upon consciously 
 to answer any. 
 
 "But," she asked, with grave naivete*, 
 118
 
 AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT 
 
 " it's always your duty to do the thing that is 
 right, isn't it?" 
 
 Ilaig smiled indulgently, but lost nothing 
 of his seriousness of tone. 
 
 " That's only another way of putting 
 the question," he forbearingly explained. 
 " What's right at one time isn't always at an- 
 other, and several very different things may 
 be right at the same time just as you happen 
 to look at them." 
 
 " Well, I think there's always one that 
 must be the right one for each person." 
 
 " If we can only find it, yes. But here's a 
 case in point: Suppose that I'd been sent 
 by my paper to your house the other night to 
 get your photograph for something you 
 wouldn't have liked to have it used for 
 would it have been my duty to get it? " 
 
 " If you could," she laughed. " I sup- 
 pose if it was something that they had no 
 right to have it for, you wouldn't be bound to 
 get it. But then, you see," she concluded 
 with woman-like practicality, " it wasn't." 
 
 John looked at her admiringly. His own 
 hatred of ethical hair-splitting instantly re- 
 119
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE OESAR'S 
 
 joiced in this downright rejection of his quib- 
 bles, and his whole aesthetic and masculine 
 sense grew suddenly glad in the sight of her 
 splendid womanhood in just her. 
 
 He suited his words to the tune, ready 
 enough, however, for unpracticality of an- 
 other sort. 
 
 "Do you know," he said, "that you are 
 the first girl I met in all this city? " 
 
 She raised her delicate brows. 
 
 " And do you know," he pressed the point, 
 " that you are as yet the only one ? " 
 
 "What, in all this time?" 
 
 " In this age of a week or more." 
 
 "Ah! but you'll soon remedy that," she 
 said with the instinctive feminine miserli- 
 ness. These women understand one an- 
 other ! 
 
 "I shouldn't want to spoil it," he de- 
 clared. 
 
 She laughed. She was already used to 
 pleasant words, but there was that quality, 
 she was dimly, almost sweetly aware, to his 
 earnestness which was winning her. 
 
 " A reporter, you see," he proceeded with 
 120
 
 AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT 
 
 all the wisdom of the new man, " is a lonely 
 sort of a fellow, so that I don't know that I 
 could remedy it soon even if I wanted to 
 and I don't. It's work until all hours in all 
 sorts of unlikely places, and hard work, too. 
 He hasn't a chance to meet many nice people, 
 so that those he does know mean a great deal 
 to him a very great deal." 
 
 The heavy curtain threw a grateful shade 
 about them, but above them hung suspended 
 from a dark grill-work a grotesque Oriental 
 lamp that cast a soft red glow over her face 
 and tinted her neck and shoulders as the sun- 
 light, he remembered from his far-off boy- 
 hood, tints the undulating crests of snow- 
 clad hills at dawn. Out of the shadow of 
 her hair her eyes glowed. 
 
 The rest of the party were sitting with 
 backs forgetfully turned beyond still other 
 shadows, beyond the low sound of his voice. 
 He seemed very much alone with her, so 
 much alone that all his doubts and struggles 
 of an hour earlier belonged to a different 
 life, were quite forgotten. Irrelevantly he 
 remarked the sensation. 
 9 121
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 "Far away?" she repeated, adopting, 
 however, much of the hush that was on his 
 own voice. " Only the length of the room." 
 
 " A thousand miles," he declared. 
 
 His words meant much, and she knew 
 it. There was a little pause in which he 
 took from her lap her fan that was fast- 
 ened to her girdle by a thin short chain 
 of pearls. The contact was personal, in- 
 timate. He opened the silken thing 
 gently, reverently, and with a hand that 
 trembled. 
 
 " A room's length or the world's length," 
 he finally pursued, with eyes fastened on the 
 fan, with deep, low voice that shook ; " either 
 may be the other as you wish it." 
 
 He looked up at her slowly. 
 
 Her lips moved mechanically ; her dreamy 
 gaze was towards the rest of the party, out 
 wistfully past them, past the room, past all 
 things material. It was fixed, he suddenly 
 knew, upon her girlhood. 
 
 "As we wish it," she whispered, and as 
 she spoke she had conquered, for the mo- 
 ment, time and fate. She was the girl of that 
 122
 
 AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT 
 
 earlier picture he had first seen and loved at 
 her home. He felt now that he had loved it 
 all along. He did not know why; he knew 
 only that he loved it. 
 
 " I shall send you the photograph to-mor- 
 row," he said. 
 
 She thought that she had offended him, 
 and the thought hurt her. Their eyes met. 
 There was a tenderness in his that she mis- 
 took for the throbbing symbol of his wound ; 
 for a moment she struggled between pride 
 and pain, and, as she looked, pain con- 
 quered. 
 
 " Then you don't want it? " she asked. 
 
 He closed her fan and returned it to its 
 place. The touch of her dress thrilled his 
 voice. 
 
 " I want more than that," he began. 
 Then, violently, he pulled himself together. 
 " I want," he went on, " that other picture 
 that first one, please if I may." 
 
 She understood now far better than did 
 
 he, and, although even she could not have 
 
 said why, her hazel eyes filled. But she 
 
 smiled bravely, and, facing things as they 
 
 123
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 were, made a single generous concession as 
 she rose to join the others. 
 
 " You may have it," she said, " upon one 
 condition." 
 
 He stood reluctantly beside her. 
 
 " And that? " he wondered. 
 
 " Is that you don't, as I have already said, 
 send " 
 
 " But come ? " he interrupted. 
 
 " Empty - handed," she concluded, " at 
 three o'clock." 
 
 But he was as jubilantly intent upon the 
 letter as the spirit. 
 
 " Then I am to have both? " 
 
 She nodded across the room, and his eyes 
 followed her meaning. Under that imperi- 
 ous inclination and from their little corner in 
 fairyland, the good bishop, the volatile Payne, 
 Gwynne, his pellucid wife, and the expansive 
 Mrs. Osgood seemed indeed but a very stupid 
 party. 
 
 "Have them?" said Phyllis. "Why 
 not? With all my admiration for your un- 
 cle and his wife, haven't you saved me," she 
 waved a little bejewelled hand of explanation, 
 124
 
 AFTER-DINNER SENTIMENT 
 
 and added, " from that! And now," she con- 
 cluded, " guide me back across all these ter- 
 rible thousand miles." 
 
 " From the garden of Hesperides," said 
 John. 
 
 She guessed at the reference and smiled, 
 but Haig still lingered. 
 
 "It is a thousand miles, then?" he per- 
 sisted. 
 
 " The very world's end," she laughed. 
 
 She had sternly resolved against all folly, 
 but in the very instant of her triumph she 
 mutely suffered a spiritual surrender. For, 
 to make assurance doubly sure, she herself 
 raised a firm arm to push aside a bit of the 
 curtain that might be made to serve a fur- 
 ther impediment to their departure. In so 
 doing her hand touched his, bent upon a simi- 
 lar errand, and though the next moment she 
 was hurrying, almost fleeing to her father, 
 there had flashed, nevertheless, from one to 
 the other that message which, thus conveyed, 
 is the ultimate confidence. 
 
 125
 
 IX 
 
 THE USE OF A DAUGHTER 
 
 IT was characteristic of him as a man who 
 disliked all forms of mental acrobatics that, 
 once this sort of thing had been forced upon 
 him, Haig, until circumstances had rung 
 down the curtain upon the close of the epi- 
 sode, could not lastingly rid himself of his 
 part in the performance. He found, then, 
 at once, that the few minutes of ease which 
 he had enjoyed with Phyllis were only an 
 entre-act, and no sooner had he left her than 
 the whole thing began over again. 
 
 What was the meaning of this fearsome 
 riddle of right and wrong ! All men, Jimmie 
 Kicker upon the one hand and Marsden 
 Payne upon the other, seemed to regard the 
 evil as lying not in the crime, but in its de- 
 tection. He realized that things had gone 
 too far for him to turn for help even to the 
 126
 
 THE USE OF A DAUGHTER 
 
 bishop, for the bishop had plainly displayed 
 alarming symptoms of concession to the ap- 
 parently accepted view. He saw, too, that all 
 men must finally fight these battles alone; 
 that in the dark deeps of their own souls they 
 must control the tremendous springs of 
 action. But what he could not see was that 
 he was entering upon the struggle more than 
 commonly handicapped by convention; that 
 where others had the experience of half a life 
 to guide them in their choice, he had an ex- 
 perience of only a day for their every year. 
 The claw of fate had fixed upon him early; 
 ten years of prison had wiped out every help- 
 ful memory of the actual world, and had left 
 him, timid and ingenuous, with his feet fixed 
 upon tottering ideals false to established 
 fact, born afresh into life at the age meant 
 for maturity. 
 
 One lesson, however, he had learned from 
 his brief period of ease, the lesson of the 
 sufferer relieved by the hypodermic needle. 
 He turned to Phyllis as some mutilated 
 wretch to morphine. And he found his solace 
 as secure. 
 
 127
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE C^SAK'S 
 
 The day following that of the dinner he 
 managed easily to find time from a stupid as- 
 signment to call upon her at the very instant 
 of appointment, and he was rejoiced to find 
 that she had set an hour when they were rela- 
 tively sure to be undisturbed. The girl's 
 manner was forcibly that of delight. Speed- 
 ily exhausting common acquaintances, they 
 were forced to talk of only safest general- 
 ities. But it was none the less evident that 
 they both enjoyed the interview which for 
 one, in both bringing peace and securing a 
 return, well served the double purpose of an 
 opiate. 
 
 In most respects a harmless one enough, 
 the analogy still held in the after-effects, for 
 from his second draught John awoke to the 
 torment consequent upon the moral attitude 
 in which he stood to the girl's father. When 
 he was with her he forgot her nearest kin 
 along with all the rest of the world, but the 
 moment she was out of his sight he was tor- 
 mented by all the seven devils of doubt and 
 remorse. From this there was but the single 
 escape of another glimpse of her, and that 
 128
 
 THE USE OF A DAUGHTER 
 
 they both managed so well that, in spite 
 of Phyllis's already multitudinous engage- 
 ments, not a day passed but they somehow 
 met. 
 
 For some days the girl held him at arms' 
 length, this strange new sort of a man, who, 
 she always dreaded, was about to forsake 
 the general for the personal. Yet daily she 
 came, as even he could see, more and more to 
 wish not to keep him from her. Then, after 
 an afternoon's automobiling through the city 
 park, he awoke to the knowledge that it was 
 Wednesday evening; that the two weeks of 
 Elridge's, of his own, of Gwynne's grace, 
 would be up on Friday, and that on the mor- 
 row his city editor, and even Mr. Thring, 
 would demand the confession for publication 
 in Saturday's paper. 
 
 Though to the new reporter there had, of 
 course, seemed nothing amiss, he had been, 
 for the past two weeks or more, keenly aware 
 that his position at the office was most anoma- 
 lous. Fealy passed him in the halls without 
 speaking, and continued to give him the most 
 trying hack-work assignments. Once Mr. 
 129
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^SAB'S 
 
 Thring in going through Haig's room by a 
 tortuous course to his own, had so far recov- 
 ered from his star-gazing to touch him on the 
 arm and inquire smilingly about his work, 
 and that, John knew, was a tacit assurance 
 that there was one man on the paper who 
 could and did stand between him and dis- 
 missal. But save for that incident his way 
 was dark. 
 
 And now the critical moment was about to 
 arrive. Fealy had said no word to him all 
 that day, yet the fact was terribly plain. He 
 left the office on the stroke of midnight and, 
 omitting his accustomed solitary glass of 
 beer, denied himself his car in an appeal to 
 hard walking and the keen night air. 
 
 In an instant he was again plunged into 
 an ocean of uncertainty. For the thousandth 
 time he asked himself his duty. He had read 
 that all things were subservient to love ; that 
 honour sacrificed upon love's altar meant a 
 finer honour gained. He might even yet burn 
 that incriminating paper, seek other employ- 
 ment, and win his heart's desire. But he was 
 not yet the man to be deceived by such trans- 
 130
 
 THE USE OF A DAUGHTER 
 
 parent sophistry. He was still too new to 
 the world to accept the world's logic. 
 
 He had walked far past his home. All 
 about him the city was quiet, the streets were 
 desolate. Only his hurried, aimless footsteps 
 woke clattering echoes among the blind 
 houses which sprang up at either hand. Yet 
 out of the night there rose at last one that 
 kept him reluctant company, that clung to his 
 coat and held him back. Phyllis, in dumb 
 appeal, hung about his knees. He would not 
 look. Her hands rose to his arms; he 
 dragged her girlhood along in the dust after 
 him. Her hands were slipping to his never ! 
 They touched his ; they held him. It was the 
 touch that he had encountered at the curtain. 
 
 With a groan he wheeled about. He knew 
 what he was doing, knew all that it meant. 
 He would lose Phyllis there was a painful 
 satisfaction in the realization of that stroke 
 of reluctive justice yet he would make this 
 one concession to his conscience ; he would go 
 next morning to Bill Gwynne's office and 
 warn him. In the relief of emerging at last 
 from his struggles with the strange current 
 131
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 of doubt to his familiar firm earth of cer- 
 tainty, calm in his inevitable sense of security 
 in arriving at a definite conclusion of what- 
 ever sort, he went to bed and slept soundly 
 until nine o'clock. 
 
 Two hours later he was being shown into 
 a large, well-furnished, well-lighted room on 
 the second floor of a great office-building, into 
 the cheerful holy of holies of Billy Gwynne. 
 
 As Haig advanced over the deep soft 
 rugs, the politician, in immaculate frock coat, 
 rose from a roll-top, ordered desk beside a 
 window that looked out on the city's busi- 
 est thoroughfare, and advanced with out- 
 stretched hands and red face which concealed 
 every trace of surprise beneath a well-as- 
 sumed mask of conventional pleasure. 
 
 John did not shake hands, but Gwynne 
 was tactician enough so to let his own arm 
 fall that any observer, had there been one, 
 must have failed to note the little awkward- 
 ness. 
 
 " I dare say you don't remember me " 
 
 began Haig. 
 
 " Perfectly, my dear sir, perfectly," 
 132
 
 THE USE OF A DAUGHTER 
 
 G wynne pleasantly assured him. " You're 
 the good bishop's nephew, Mr. Haig. Sit 
 down." 
 
 John took a chair near the arm of the 
 desk, and Gwynne resumed his former place. 
 
 " I suppose," the latter continued, " that 
 you are here on business of the paper. How 
 are things going on down there? How's 
 Fealy and Thring, and how's little Jimmy 
 Kicker? They're all friends of mine on the 
 Globe-Express. I don't like to recall fa- 
 vours, but you may remember that I helped 
 a little in getting you there." 
 
 But, once there was a pressing need for 
 action, Haig was not the man thus easily to 
 be brushed aside. Gwynne's influence in se- 
 curing his position had not been forgotten in 
 his recent worries, and he now cheerfully 
 admitted it. Yet 
 
 " It's only partly on newspaper business 
 that I'm here," he added. " I don't really 
 know that you can call it newspaper business 
 at all. I'm sorry to hear that you think 
 Fealy's a friend of yours, for I've come to 
 tell you just the other thing." He looked 
 133
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CAESAR'S 
 
 over his shoulder at the distant entrance of 
 the room, and concluded with the question: 
 " We're not likely to be overheard! " 
 
 Gwynne's heavy eyebrows contracted to a 
 sudden keenness. He pushed a button in his 
 desk, and the burly clerk who had shown 
 Haig in now appeared as if by magic at the 
 doorway. 
 
 "I don't want to be disturbed, Barton," 
 the politician calmly explained, " until I push 
 the buzzer again." 
 
 The clerk disappeared as quickly as he 
 had come, and Gwynne pursued : 
 
 " Now, Mr. Haig, you can go ahead." 
 
 John went ahead. 
 
 " I don't want you to ask my reasons for 
 telling you what I'm going to tell you," he 
 said, speaking faintly and clearly, but rap- 
 idly. " I know what it is. It's a dirty trick 
 I'm playing my paper, and it is not the 
 square thing morally, but I'm doing it for 
 reasons of my own. Two weeks ago we got 
 the tip there was a warrant out on the quiet 
 for the contractor Elridge. He was going to 
 skip, and I was the only one to get him for 
 134
 
 THE USE OF A DAUGHTER 
 
 an interview before he ran away. I got him. 
 I promised him two weeks' grace if he'd give 
 me a confession, and he gave it wrote it 
 out. They wanted to see it at the office, but 
 I knew Fealy'd use it right away if I gave it 
 up, so I kept it to myself. No one's had a 
 sight of it yet but me, but it's got to go into 
 to-morrow's paper. It's detailed, and in a 
 way that I don't think anybody can mistake 
 it implicates you." 
 
 135
 
 A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST 
 
 BILLY GWYNNE bent forward, slowly 
 drew from his pocket a case of cigars, and 
 presented it to the reporter. Haig waved it 
 nervously aside, and Gwynne, with a murmur 
 of apology, carefully selected and lit a mild 
 Manila. Then he leaned back again, comfort- 
 ably crossed his legs, and through a fragrant 
 cloud of blue smoke gazed at the young man 
 with an air of puzzled amusement. 
 
 " Mr. Haig," he at last said, " you are a 
 very young man." 
 
 John's jaw dropped. 
 
 " A very young man," continued Gwynne 
 musingly. " And what is more, you are not 
 very promising at newspaper work. Here 
 you have been in this town for about three 
 weeks isn't it? and yet you come to me 
 with a story like this." 
 136
 
 A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST 
 
 Haig was plunged forthwith into a sea 
 of confusion. Was it, after all, possible 
 that he had made some great mistake? 
 He did not pause to consider the ques- 
 tion. There was something that irritated 
 him on the surface, and that is what al- 
 ways demands of us the more instant at- 
 tention. 
 
 "I don't see," he stiffly rejoined, "what 
 my age or business ability has to do with the 
 matter in hand." 
 
 Gwynne grew more serious. He with- 
 drew his cigar and, snapping forward in his 
 chair, shook a heavy forefinger at his vis- 
 drvis. 
 
 " It's got," he said, " just this to do with 
 it: Any one with any perception of the sort 
 needed in your work would have known bet- 
 ter than to act the way you've done. Great 
 Lord, man! Don't you see how it is? Your 
 people, you say, haven't seen this confession, 
 as you call it. They haven't an idea whom it 
 implicates. You've risked your job by refus- 
 ing to give them any. Well, do you suppose 
 that if they had an idea, or if I'd an idea 
 10 137
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE (LESAR'S 
 
 that they'd had one, there'd be a single pa- 
 per in this whole city would dare to print 
 such stuff about me? Why, man alive, don't 
 you know that they're all, or nearly all, on 
 my side? " 
 
 The blow caught Haig squarely. It threw 
 him to his feet. He grasped spasmodically 
 at the arm of the desk. 
 
 "But," he cried, "it's true!" 
 
 Billy Gwynne raised his bushy eyebrows 
 until they were lost in the meeting with his 
 hair. He smiled. He said nothing; he only 
 smiled. But that smile explained the whole 
 situation. 
 
 John Haig's little idealization of a moral 
 humanity crumbled beneath his feet, and he 
 sank back into his chair with a sad, small 
 gasp. 
 
 Meanwhile, Gwynne was narrowly study- 
 ing the white, clean-cut face before him. Had 
 he been a man of different experience he 
 might not have formed the erroneous judg- 
 ment which now resulted from this scrutiny, 
 but he was not in the habit of coming into 
 such contact with what he would have stig- 
 138
 
 A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST 
 
 matized as sheer Quixotism, and he acted at 
 once accordingly. 
 
 " But don't let this worry you, Mr. Haig," 
 he encouragingly began. " You may not be 
 suited to newspaper work, but there seems to 
 be another sort of work to which, as I might 
 have known, you're suited pretty well. 
 Your real faults are youth and greenness, 
 and those you'll get over all in good time. 
 You've done what might have been a con- 
 foundedly clever thing only it wasn't. Now, 
 I'm not offended. Don't think that I'm of- 
 fended in the least. I've found that it doesn't 
 pay to get offended in this life. So I'm going 
 to make a proposition to you. I'll admit, be- 
 tween us two here, that that confession, to 
 give it your own name for it, is worth some- 
 thing to me, even if you can't use it. You 
 see, I'm perfectly fair fairer than you were. 
 I tell you that you've not got the weapon that 
 you thought you had, but I admit that it's a 
 weapon of some kind, and one that I'd rather 
 have my own fingers on. That's why I'm 
 going to ask you your price." 
 
 John was still in a confused and storm- 
 139
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 tossed condition, but he was not of the men 
 whom the emotion of surprise can affect to 
 the point of dulness. There was therefore 
 real indignation in his voice as he rapped out : 
 
 " My price ? " 
 
 Once more Gwynne smiled indulgently. 
 He had, he thought, met with this kind too 
 often before to be deceived by a greenhorn. 
 
 " Exactly," he calmly responded. " Now, 
 don't let us waste time, Mr. Haig. I have 
 several more important things to do this 
 morning. We'll suppose, for the sake of ar- 
 gument, that you've said all that a man ought 
 to say to such an offer, and so we'll get down 
 to business. How much do you want for 
 handing over that confession to me ! " 
 
 " I am not in the habit of selling myself, 
 nor of having other people bid for me." 
 
 There was a ring about the statement that 
 forced Gwynne upoji another and safer road. 
 
 " Why, I don't suppose that you are, Mr. 
 Haig. You don't look it. I know, of course, 
 that you're a gentleman, and I dare say that 
 I needn't remind you that I am one, too. I 
 would hardly, then, offer you such an insult 
 140
 
 A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST 
 
 as you seem to have supposed. I beg pardon 
 for speaking in a manner that you could mis- 
 interpret. That's square, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Well, then," asked Haig, only half-molli- 
 fied, " what are you trying to get at! " 
 
 "Life is life, Mr. Haig. We've got to 
 help each other or none of us would ever get 
 along in this world. Of course, I'm in a posi- 
 tion to help you, for your job won't be worth 
 a week's notice just as soon as that pleasant 
 city editor of yours gets a chance to fire you. 
 Well, you're in a way of doing me a favour, 
 too. Why shouldn't we make a fair trade! 
 That's all I want. You don't seem to know 
 much about my position in this city 
 
 " I know it pretty well, thank you." 
 
 " Then I'm relieved from boring you with 
 details. If you understand my position, you'll 
 know that I can fix things up here for about 
 what I want and about what you want. But 
 I could take that paper out of your pocket, I 
 suppose, and you wouldn't have much of a 
 chance of proving a word of it in the courts. 
 Instead of that, I've met you at the house of 
 a very dear friend of mine, a great and good 
 141
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 man, Mr. Haig. I see that you're a young 
 fellow with brains and ability to get on. 
 That's the kind of man this city wants. We 
 need them, for the public good, in our offices." 
 
 John picked up his hat from the floor and 
 rose to leave. He spoke quietly. 
 
 " You may go to the devil, Mr. Gwynne," 
 he said. 
 
 " I wouldn't, if I were you, take this pose, 
 Mr. Haig ; I really wouldn't." 
 
 " Good-morning," said John. 
 
 "Mr. Haig!" 
 
 Gwynne had risen to his feet. His tone 
 was sharp, but not one whit excited. Some- 
 thing in it made John turn. 
 
 "Well! "he asked. 
 
 The politician was standing upright, his 
 face redder than Haig had yet seen it, but, 
 to all other appearances, he was perfectly 
 composed. 
 
 " I don't want you to misunderstand your 
 position in this matter," he said gravely. 
 " Believe me, I was sincere in all that I said. 
 But I'm really beginning to think that you 
 were sincere, too. You were, weren't you? " 
 142
 
 A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST 
 
 " I certainly was." 
 
 " Huh I Well, you've told me not to ask 
 you why you took this step, and if it wasn't 
 for the reasons I naturally supposed, then I 
 can't see what the devil it was for. However, 
 it evidently was for something else, so I 
 won't press you." 
 
 " It wouldn't matter if you did." 
 
 " I'm beginning to think it wouldn't and 
 there I'm paying you a compliment, even if 
 you don't know it. Now, Mr. Haig" he 
 coughed gently and relit his cigar " I want 
 you to see how things are before you run 
 away and do anything rash. I'm not going 
 to make you any further offers those I have 
 made stand for the present, but you don't 
 seem to like them, so I'm not going to 
 make any more. But there's something 
 I'd have you know." His eyes lit up with 
 sudden feeling, and he brought his fist 
 down solidly upon the desk. " You've got 
 to understand this: you can't hurt me, 
 whatever you do, for the simple reason 
 that my oath is a great deal better than 
 yours." 
 
 143
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 Haig was unable to bear quietly another 
 word. The calm insolence of the man, his as- 
 surance and, above all, the sense that his atti- 
 tude was more or less justified by fact, stung 
 John with every syllable that was uttered. 
 His conceptions of right and wrong had been 
 receiving silently, during the past few days, 
 wound after wound. But this was too much. 
 He had had no previous idea of making pub- 
 lic the confession through other channels 
 than the columns of his own paper; in an- 
 other mood he might even have welcomed the 
 closing of those columns against the article as 
 a righteous escape from his moral difficulty; 
 but Gwynne's offers of a bribe had driven out 
 of his mind all considerations save those of 
 this insult. He turned upon the politician 
 savagely. 
 
 "How can that be?" he cried. "You 
 have position here, I know, and you seem to 
 have all sorts of power, but I guess I can 
 soon enough prove to you that in this country 
 one man's word's as good as another's, Mr. 
 Gwynne ! " 
 
 Gwynne was also fast losing his temper. 
 144
 
 A MODERN BANQUO'S GHOST 
 
 As he had intimated, he did not often grow 
 angry, because he thoroughly understood 
 most of the men with whom he had to deal, 
 but he always lost his temper when he had 
 to do with a man whose motives were beyond 
 the political intelligence. For the present he 
 nevertheless spoke with his habitual pla- 
 cidity. 
 
 " Is it? " he asked. " Is my word no bet- 
 ter than that of a branded jail-bird! " 
 
 Haig recoiled. His pallor deepened; his 
 nerveless fingers let his hat fall with a queer 
 thud to the floor. He noticed, as his eyes 
 aimlessly followed its curving course, that it 
 rolled back upon the rug on which he was 
 standing, and he observed that the rug was 
 red. Then the full meaning of the man's 
 words rushed upon him and he faced about. 
 
 " You're a coward," he said. " You're a 
 coward, and you're trying to hide behind a 
 few dirty words. How do you know any- 
 thing about me, and what does it matter what 
 you know? " 
 
 " How do I know it ? I thought you seemed 
 pretty well to have forgotten that you owed 
 145
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 me your bread and butter. Why, your uncle 
 told me all about you, of course, when he got 
 me to get you on the paper." 
 
 "My uncle?" gasped John. 
 
 " Certainly. You don't suppose he's the 
 dishonest sort of man who would ask me to 
 recommend a fellow without telling me all 
 about the chap? Oh, I know all there is to 
 know about you, Mr. Haig, and I must say 
 you're mighty thankful for my keeping 
 quiet ! " 
 
 But from this palpable bid for gratitude 
 Haig turned promptly. 
 
 "I guess I squared myself with yea by 
 coming here at all this morning," he replied. 
 " If my uncle did tell you this about me and 
 I can begin to see now how he would then I 
 may as well add this : that I'm not ashamed of 
 myself, and that if I didn't let any one know 
 about my what has happened to me, it was 
 because it wasn't any one's business." 
 
 " I don't think the office will agree with 
 you there. I never heard of such absurd 
 foolery! Not your employers' business that 
 you've been in jail ? " 
 146
 
 " That's what I say. If I'd broken jail it 
 might have been a different thing it would 
 have been different. But haven't I done all 
 that the law requires of me! Well, then, I'm 
 as good in the eyes of the law as anybody else. 
 And that's not all. I tell you, Mr. Gwynne 
 and I mean what I say that if I'm at all 
 right you're all wrong, for if my paper's em- 
 ploying a thief that's been caught and served 
 his term and come out clean, your precious 
 city's employing a thief that hasn't been 
 caught, and that's keeping on robbing it ! " 
 
 Gwynne broke into a laugh of genuine 
 surprise. He was beginning at last to under- 
 stand this young fellow. It seemed too good 
 to be true, but he was sincerely amused with 
 the chance of the novelty. 
 
 " Upon my soul," he said, " I really think 
 you consider yourself more socially eligible 
 than I am." 
 
 Haig leaned upon a chair-back. 
 
 " I don't consider," he replied, " that 
 there's any comparison." 
 
 He watched the face of the politician 
 closely, and of what he now saw taking place 
 147
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 there lie could have no doubt. It was the 
 routing of a surprised uncertainty by the 
 honest acceptance of an astounding fact. 
 
 " Why, God bless my soul," said Gwynne 
 at last, " you've been in jail ! " 
 
 148
 
 XI 
 
 EXIT A REPORTER 
 
 HAIG left the office without a word so 
 quickly, in fact, that he was gone before 
 Gwynne could recover from his surprise. He 
 got into the street. He wanted to mix with 
 the crowd, to lose himself among these myri- 
 ad lives and forget, if possible, this thing 
 which he had heard. 
 
 But he could not forget it. It lurked at 
 every corner, it fell from every lip that gave 
 to his ear fragmentary words as he passed 
 hurriedly by. It kept dinning in his head 
 with every step he took, until he was forced 
 to meet and consider it. 
 
 At first it was of only the injustice of the 
 code that he was sensible. So this, at last, 
 was the prevailing view! What, then, was 
 punishment if it was not reparation? Men 
 had drawn upon the whole experience of 
 149
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 their race to enact and exact either the just- 
 est or the severest penalties, and then, when 
 the penalties were paid, usurious society 
 screamed for more. Was it blood-mad, this 
 earth of men? What, else, was the logic on 
 which it builded? The overt crime of it, 
 to tell him in so many words, here, there, 
 everywhere, that his shame was not that 
 he had done wrong, not even that he had 
 been detected in the doing of it, but that he 
 had committed the enormity of paying the 
 price. 
 
 He reflected with a terrible bitterness that 
 had he chosen the easier course, as it had 
 been for him to choose, he could have made 
 only a material restitution to those whom he 
 had wronged; could have avoided the law, 
 and, removing from the scene of his down- 
 fall, have remained, to all appearances, the 
 man that most men were. And he would 
 have done so had it not been for the mag- 
 niloquent advice of a parson who had noth- 
 ing himself to lose, would have saved, as 
 the Chinese have it, his face and that, it' 
 seemed, was the important thing would 
 150
 
 EXIT A REPORTER 
 
 have rescued not only ten years, not only 
 the half of splendid youth, but his whole 
 long life. 
 
 At first he could have cursed the bishop 
 for his blindness and his false counsel, but 
 soon he was far more inclined to pity him. 
 For the bishop was a man of conscience, and 
 he, too, must shortly awaken to the conse- 
 (Jttences of his advice ; must, sooner or later, 
 bow his neck to the social yoke. Nay, Haig's 
 memory, quickened by his new knowledge, 
 reviewed the past several days, and asked 
 sharply whether his uncle had not, so long 
 ago as the evening of the return, already 
 awakened. With vivid distinctness and with 
 new meaning it recalled the good man's atti- 
 tude in the discussion following his little din- 
 ner-party ; it seized upon and ticketed a mul- 
 titude of casual words and unconsidered ex- 
 pressions, at first but half-noted during the 
 past three weeks, and all of these it finally 
 capped with the triumphant fact of what his 
 uncle had told to Gwynne. No, here was in- 
 deed an idol fallen, an idol that had stood so 
 high and tumbled so low that its inevitable 
 151
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 overthrow could rouse no emotion save that 
 of pity. 
 
 Inevitable indeed. For Gwynne was rep- 
 resentative. Upon that as upon all that 
 logically followed there could no longer be 
 any uncertainty. There came back to Haig 
 even a corroborative recollection from his 
 earliest childhood a picture that had hith- 
 erto lain all these forgetful years in some 
 dusty attic, some Genevra-chest of his brain 
 the memory of a pale-faced, stooping figure 
 he had once seen skulking along a back lane 
 of his village, and from whom his pinafored 
 companions had unsteadily fled in terror be- 
 cause, they said, the thing had been in jail. 
 
 He caught a glimpse of his own face re- 
 flected, among a dozen others, in a store-win- 
 dow, and his resentment gave way to terror 
 as he remarked that it was the very face of 
 that lost village lane. 
 
 He rushed he knew not where anywhere 
 so long as it was out and away from the busi- 
 ness portion and into the least-frequented 
 streets of the city. He would have fled, if he 
 could, to the untrodden wilderness. For he 
 152
 
 EXIT A REPORTER 
 
 was afraid. He was no longer a man among 
 men; he was an outcast he had been in jail. 
 AVliat though the world loathed him only be- 
 cause he had obeyed the world! It did loathe 
 him; worst of all, it must. He was an out- 
 cast, he repeated; the tokens of his shame 
 were plain upon him, and he was suddenly, 
 and for the first time in his life, ashamed to 
 show his face to strangers. 
 
 The terror of the mood lasted for hours. 
 Its underlying principle was destined never 
 wholly to pass away. But at last its inten- 
 sity temporarily exhausted itself by very su- 
 peraction, and habit, so speedily acquired 
 and so strong to sway, prompted him to look 
 at his watch. 
 
 It was three o'clock; he had been due at 
 the office at one, and he was miles away. 
 
 He took a car, but there was a block on 
 the line, and it was half-past four when he 
 arrived. He was not now, however, so much, 
 worried about his tardiness as he was curious 
 to discover what Fealy would have to say 
 when he read the Elridge confession. He 
 was at the last too tired, both of body and 
 11 153
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^ESAB'S 
 
 mind, to think of affairs more important, and 
 he entered the city editor's room almost 
 jauntily. 
 
 Fealy was there. He was clearly waiting ; 
 clearly, too, he had been waiting for some 
 time, and was neither used to nor fond of 
 the pastime. 
 
 "You're half a day late, Mr. Haig," he 
 growled. 
 
 John noticed that the perpetual cigar was 
 more than commonly gnawed. 
 
 "I'm sorry, sir," he replied. "I'll see 
 that it doesn't happen again." 
 
 "Well, let's have your precious paper." 
 
 Haig produced it from his breast-pocket. 
 Fealy snatched it like a bird of prey, and 
 then, to the reporter's unconcealed astonish- 
 ment and dismay, thrust it into his own coat. 
 
 "Why, don't you want to read it over? " 
 asked John. 
 
 " I don't imagine we'll have much use for 
 it. It's turned out to be a fake, Mr. Haig, 
 and if you'd have been honest about it you'd 
 have saved the paper a good deal of trouble 
 and yourself a sight more." 
 154
 
 EXIT A REPORTER 
 
 The situation began to grow clear to John, 
 but he was too worn out to care much. He 
 had completed the performance of his duty 
 to his employers. It had ceased to be a pain- 
 ful and had become a doubtful duty, but he 
 was unable long to consider it one way or 
 the other. 
 
 " Have you my assignment ready ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 Fealy must have expected some protest, 
 and had his wrath prepared. The protest 
 not being forthcoming, he was all the more 
 sincere in his anger. 
 
 " Assignment f " he fairly roared. 
 "You're impudent one week, make fools of 
 us all the next, and then have the nerve to 
 come here at 4.30 in the afternoon " it 
 was a quarter after by the clock, but that 
 was a detail " and ask me if I've got your 
 assignment! No, Mr. Haig, I haven't 
 got your assignment and I never will 
 have." 
 
 John's lips tightened. 
 
 " Do you mean," he asked, " that you've 
 discharged me ? " 
 
 155
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 " I certainly do. I can't have men coming 
 in to work at all hours." 
 
 " Very well, Mr. Fealy, only let's under- 
 stand one another. I know, of course, that 
 the reason you're getting rid of me is in your 
 pocket " 
 
 "Get out of here!" 
 
 " And I consider that you have stolen it." 
 
 " Stolen it ! Well, I know what you are, 
 and I don't want you around this place ! " 
 
 Haig withdrew with what trace of dignity 
 was left him by the shock of his new view 
 of life. That shock had spared him just 
 sufficient reserve force to maintain some ap- 
 pearance of dignity before the snarling beast 
 in the city editor's office, but there it ceased, 
 and a strange thing appeared in its stead. 
 John knew that he could not defend his posi- 
 tion before Mr. Thring; he realized far too 
 fully the immense force against him, yet 
 there was left an odd desire for what justice 
 the world allowed the justice of his two 
 weeks' notice. He was suffering so much 
 from the moral code that he wanted whatever 
 of base balm it might contain, and he re- 
 156
 
 EXIT A REPORTER 
 
 solved to beg since he could not fight for 
 that. He accordingly conceived and at once 
 executed a plan that would have been impos- 
 sible to him twelve hours before. It meant 
 that his pride was, for the time, at least, 
 completely stunned. 
 
 Mr. Thring was writing an editorial with 
 a crayon pencil in a den very like to and not 
 much better than Fealy's. He looked up, as 
 Haig entered, with vague surprise. 
 
 John stated his case briefly and succinct- 
 ly, but with a note in his voice that sounded 
 like a whine, a note which, try as he would, 
 he could not then eradicate. 
 
 When he had ceased Mr. Thring, who had 
 not looked up again during the whole recital, 
 continued silent for a moment, making dots 
 with his pencil on a sheet of pulpy copy-pa- 
 per. At last he said: 
 
 " Why didn't you say this to Mr. Fealyf " 
 
 " He didn't give me the chance." 
 
 "Well," continued the editor rather 
 querulously, " he's the man you ought to say 
 it to." 
 
 There was another pause. Thring hated 
 157
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 scenes, but, seeing at last that the thing had 
 to be done, he spoke as kindly as possible. 
 
 " It seems that you ought to have the two 
 weeks' notice, though of course there's no con- 
 tract, nothing that the law would recognise. 
 But that's Fealy's business, and he's dis- 
 charged you right off. I can't meddle with 
 his department, you know. However " he 
 paused and wrote a few unintelligible lines 
 on a scrap of note-paper which he handed to 
 John " I guess I can do this. There's an 
 order on the business-office for this week's 
 pay and the two weeks following." 
 
 He was not used to speaking so much. It 
 annoyed and embarrassed him. Besides, he 
 knew that worse must shortly be demanded 
 of him. 
 
 And it was. 
 
 " But then I've the right to earn this," 
 John still had managed to protest. 
 
 Still Thring did not look up. He could 
 not now had he wished to. As it was he 
 thanked Heaven that he could not, and re- 
 plied : 
 
 " Not under the law. The truth is, Mr. 
 158
 
 EXIT A REPORTER 
 
 Haig, I I think you ought to be satisfied with 
 this. I can't argue the point, but, you see, 
 it appears there are things in your past 
 life And you know a paper of our stand- 
 ing can't afford to employ I'm very sor- 
 ry, and I'm really surprised that such a man 
 
 as Bishop Osgood " 
 
 But before he was further lost in the maze 
 of his emotions he learned from the corner of 
 his eye that the reporter now a reporter no 
 more had shrunk from the room, and he 
 was enabled to settle back, with a sigh of re- 
 lief, to his editorial. 
 
 159
 
 xn 
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 THE next thing of which John was dis- 
 tinctly conscious was the realization of being 
 in his uncle's study, and of having, impul- 
 sively, somewhat helplessly, laid the whole 
 case before the churchman. It was a mean- 
 ing thing that, whereas he had once consid- 
 ered it an honour to come to this source for 
 counsel and assistance, he now, in so far as 
 he was capable of experiencing any subsidi- 
 ary emotion, confessed it at the outset as an 
 appeal spiritually hopeless and materially 
 degrading. 
 
 The bishop, on his part, was much dis- 
 tressed and more disturbed. First of all, 
 however, he refused, of course, to believe 
 that the confession could have been sincere 
 if it inculpated so exemplary a Christian as 
 Mr. Gwynne. From this sentiment John was 
 160
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 too weary to dissent, but there were conclu- 
 sions far more pressing to combat, and with 
 these he was, at first confusedly, forced to 
 deal. For Bishop Osgood was keenly aware 
 of his responsibility. He had for some time, 
 as Haig had surmised, observed its ap- 
 proach; he had even come to regard it as 
 logical, if not, indeed, as inevitable ; yet now 
 that it was here he was none the more ready 
 to treat with it. 
 
 He admitted and defended his revelation 
 to Gwynne. As he had at that time regarded 
 the affair and he said this in a tone which 
 covertly implied that he now regarded it far 
 differently he could not, he pointed out, con- 
 scientiously, have asked a recommendation 
 under false colours. If Gwynne had with- 
 held the full knowledge from John's employ- 
 ers, that was Gwynne's fault, not the bish- 
 op's, and had been committed, the latter was 
 sure, out of sheer, though mistaken, kindness 
 of heart. It was, moreover, proof positive 
 of the politician's innocence in the final detec- 
 tion. 
 
 All this and more, though he considered 
 161
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CJESAR'S 
 
 it sophistry, Haig let dumbly pass. The 
 mere fact of not having at first to talk rested 
 him, and as he rested, something of strength 
 gradually returned. Listening to the bish- 
 op's words he found that he had half-ex- 
 pected them. He did not, just then, care. 
 He knew that the present most important 
 point must at last be reached, and at last it 
 was. 
 
 " Of course," began the bishop, with some 
 degree of hesitation, not to say reluctance, 
 " all this is most unfortunate, yet I can't see 
 that it arose from any but the best intentions 
 on the part of all concerned, excepting, of 
 
 course, Mr. what's his name, your city 
 
 editor! who is naturally unspeakable. So " 
 he tried bravely to smile "we must just 
 make the best of it and begin all over 
 again. Life, you will find, is mostly made 
 up of beginnings-over; here am I at my 
 age, for instance Now, we can't, just at 
 present, be choosers. You've you've had 
 some experience in banking. Well, I 
 know very intimately Mr. Parton. He 
 is at the head of one of the largest banks 
 162
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 in this city, and I'll see if I can't get you 
 with him." 
 
 It is a cynical sign-post indicative of how 
 little we are advanced upon the last stage of 
 evolution, a significant indication of how 
 strong is yet our brute inheritance, that the 
 lower emotions are in most men still, at the 
 time of test, the strongest. A month earlier 
 the bishop would never have made his now 
 easy proposition; a day earlier John Haig 
 would never have made the reply which at 
 this instant sprang ready to his lips. The 
 one rag of his old garment which then seemed 
 to remain clinging to him was the conviction 
 that he could not depend for at least his di- 
 rect support upon such a man as Bishop Os- 
 good here proved himself to be ; that he must 
 earn, somehow, his own bread and butter. 
 Yet, rightly or wrongly, he was an outcast, 
 and, rightly or wrongly, he must hide the 
 mark. He hung his head, but spoke with cal- 
 culation : 
 
 "A bank?" he repeated. "Why, you 
 know they wouldn't take me there." 
 
 " I am coming to that. I was certainly 
 163
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE (LESAR'S 
 
 right in telling Mr. Gwynne everything, as 
 you, I took it for granted, were aware of my 
 course and would, at any rate, certainly have 
 agreed in it. But we both we both seem to 
 have held a a bit too high an opinion of 
 the world. People seem to look at these 
 things very differently from the way we sup- 
 posed they should from the way we looked 
 at them. I, who have lived so long among 
 men, should have known it. Indeed, they are 
 so strenuous about it that I admit you've 
 cause for complaint against my ignorance as 
 quite unjustifiable. But I've all my life been 
 contented to keep myself shut up in what ap- 
 pears to have been a world of my own devis- 
 ing, and, as I've intimated, I'm only just be- 
 ginning to see how wrong I was in such blind 
 action. I was so much a man apart that I 
 thought my world was that of right. Oh, this 
 incident has taught me a bitter lesson ! I can 
 see now that I was all the while committing 
 by my very attitude a sin of pride to think 
 if I considered it at all that the vast ma- 
 jority of minds, quite as good as mine, 
 hadn't, after all these generations, arrived 
 164
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 at a clearer view. I've so kept myself to 
 myself alone that Pin as yet unfitted intel- 
 ligently to follow their reasoning, but I can 
 at least submit to it now that I see clearly 
 my former false position. The great prevail- 
 ing standards against all sin must be in some 
 way the more or less direct expression of the 
 divine will. ' Vox populi ' you understand. 
 Yet, in your case, I know so well that you're 
 all right, and that you're an exception, that 
 it wouldn't be necessary, it wouldn't even bo 
 right, to make a clean breast of them that, 
 in short, I'll I'll not mention the past to Mr. 
 Parton. You see how perfectly I trust you." 
 Whatever were the other five parts of this 
 somewhat wandering and otherwise unclassi- 
 cal oration, the conclusion, at any rate, was 
 weak. Yet, though John saw that, he saw 
 also that his uncle felt it just as keenly, and 
 so, partly from pity, and partly from more 
 selfish sentiments, reached by the appeal of 
 the conquestio, he accepted its offer with un- 
 feigned gratitude and, as some further reply 
 was required to bridge the embarrassing 
 chasm of moral surrender, he devoted what 
 165
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 energy he had gathered together towards dif- 
 fering, here and there, with the bishop upon 
 the side issues. 
 
 " I think," he none the less ingenuously 
 submitted, " that you go a little too far in 
 your acceptance of the verdict of the crowd. 
 I admit that we went too far the one way 
 heretofore, but now, it seems to me, we're in 
 danger of going a little too far in the other 
 direction. There is certainly something 
 wrong with the obtaining attitude. It may 
 not be for us to right it, or even to say where 
 it is, but there's something wrong somewhere. 
 To begin with the prisoners themselves, you 
 can't tell what sort of men they are by the 
 way they behave in jail, and so you haven't 
 any way to judge whether or no they'll be 
 dangerous when they get out. The habitual 
 criminals are the best prisoners, and the 
 worst criminals are often the most religious." 
 
 " Where we were fundamentally wrong," 
 replied the bishop, " was in our conception of 
 the law. It's true that the law is just the 
 codified logic of ethics, and so has a sanction. 
 But it is also simply an expression of popu- 
 166
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 lar opinion. It is public opinion that makes 
 ethics, and ethics make the laws. But laws 
 are not the expression of the whole of public 
 opinion, and what remains unexpressed is 
 the great body of the unwritten law which we 
 failed utterly to take into account." 
 
 " But then the law ought to be the com- 
 plete expression." 
 
 " So should all men be perfect. They will 
 be some day, but we haven't developed that 
 far yet. The race, and with it, of course, the 
 law, is progressing towards perfection, and 
 that is the best we have at present a right to 
 ask of it. Such as it now is, it pretty gen- 
 erally appeals to our logical conscience and 
 conscience comes from God." 
 
 " But all men, wherever it comes from, 
 haven't the same highly trained conscience." 
 
 " Then, as we must all make for righte- 
 ousness, the most conscientious must make 
 the less conscientious obey through fear of 
 punishment." 
 
 " Why, that's the old lex talionis! " 
 
 " Certainly. The savages among us must 
 be treated as savages. Except so they are 
 167
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 not safe; they can't appreciate any other 
 way." 
 
 Haig, at all events, was appreciating his 
 unfitness for argument. He sought to turn. 
 
 " Well," he said, " if the law's imperfect 
 because it's of man, the ethical sense at least 
 ought to be perfect because it's of God, you 
 say, and whether the legal punishment is too 
 light or whether it is too heavy, the punish- 
 ment of popular opinion ought to fit the 
 crime. Now, popular opinion deliberately 
 puts the whole burden of the matter on the 
 shoulders of the law, so it ought to stand 
 by what the law says. It chooses a faulty 
 agent, but it is a choice and should be abided 
 by. When the law's done with a man, society 
 ought to be satisfied." 
 
 The bishop sadly shook his head. 
 
 "My dear boy," he replied, "that's all 
 very well in theory, but not in fact. In fact, 
 we don't, any of us, live for ourselves alone. 
 We can't even things being as they are 
 live only for those who love us. We must 
 live for the whole race, for each and every 
 one of God's creatures. In these matters, 
 168
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 then, you must , in so far, sink yonr individu- 
 al ity and inquire what is best for the race. 
 Now that race, you may depend upon it, 
 knows better, as a race, than any one mem- 
 ber of it, and by the race-conscience divine- 
 ly inspired, as an integral part of the high 
 motive in the great drama certain customs 
 are ordained, and in it certain instincts are 
 engendered. You may rely on it, I say, that 
 they are right." 
 
 " In every case ? " 
 
 " When they are outgrown they are cast 
 off, easily and naturally, for new ones. Your 
 case, as I've said, is an exception. But all 
 these instincts are from the many for the 
 many. Consequently, you can't expect those 
 who are unacquainted with the details of an 
 exception to admit it as an exception, or to 
 drop other affairs to inquire into its merits. 
 You know and I know that yours is one. The 
 only proper thing for us to do, the only right 
 way, as I have said, and the only way we can 
 hope to succeed and I'm beginning to think 
 that success and right are usually, at the 
 goal, hand in hand is simply not to offend 
 is 169
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CAESAR'S 
 
 the many by letting them know anything 
 about it." 
 
 " And that is why you counsel silence ? " 
 
 " It is. This has been a blow to us both, 
 but every blow of this sort has its lesson. 
 Our duty in this world is to submit to the 
 corrections of Heaven and try to see their 
 reason." 
 
 " I don't see the logic of this one." 
 
 " I've told you. Think over what I -have 
 said. You must not get morbid and feel that 
 you've lost anything by this accident. What 
 have you lost? You're the same man at this 
 moment who has sat here and talked to me 
 before to-day. We are always in motion in 
 this life; the spiritual world is just as much 
 in motion as the material, and if you have 
 not changed for the worse, it is pretty cer- 
 tain that you have changed for the better." 
 
 " How can that be ? " asked John. 
 
 The bishop hesitated, but only for the 
 twinkling of an eye. 
 
 " Well," he replied, " haven't you indeed 
 gained an invaluable knowledge of the real 
 world? Haven't we both? And isn't it the 
 170
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 real world, after all, in which we and all men 
 must live? However fine the stand we tried 
 to take, it was a false stand, and now at 
 last we plant our feet on the firm basis of 
 fact. Fact is just another word for unpleas- 
 ant truth, but because a truth is unpleasant 
 does not by any means prove that it's wrong ; 
 indeed, it seems more and more to me to be 
 an evidence of its righteousness. I am speak- 
 ing, of course, abstractly and of the world of 
 decency." 
 
 "But," said John, "I have always 
 thought that a falsely conceived nobility 
 could be, and generally must be, finer than 
 an ignoble truth. I've always felt that a sub- 
 lime fallacy is truer than a worldly fact, and 
 that to regard ethical things in any other 
 sense was to regard them with a sense of 
 cunning." 
 
 " But, my dear boy, you are calling little 
 things by big names. I am sure that you 
 will agree with me that you are at any rate 
 no worse than most men, and that you will 
 not be regarded as worse so long as you 
 maintain the civil silence which the mature 
 171
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 thought of generations has, for some reason 
 or other, determined is best. I think you 
 know me well enough to be sure that I 
 would not for worlds counsel you to any 
 wrong " 
 
 " Oh ! " John protested, " I'm sure of that, 
 of course. And don't please don't think 
 that I blame you in any way for all this. I 
 suppose we've each in our own manner suf- 
 fered from a common delusion and both in- 
 curred a common awakening." 
 
 The churchman nodded. 
 
 " Exactly," he replied. " Reason from 
 that and you will see that I am right at last, 
 and that the world isn't a very wrong place. 
 To look at the situation, too, from a practical 
 side: Who, in the final summing up, knows 
 of your past? Besides you, only an uncle 
 who will not tell; a politician who, even 
 judged by your standard, has no longer the 
 requisite inducement ; a just man who would 
 not, and a miserable brute whose word could 
 not affect you one way or the other." 
 
 " Then you'd advise me not to question 
 any longer the good or evil of prevailing 
 172
 
 THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR 
 
 laws? I see. Well, I dare say you're right. 
 At all events, Pm just now removed, as you 
 point out, from the necessity of questioning 
 them. I haven't the inclination to do so, 
 either, and Pve too severely learned that to 
 try it is dangerous and useless. It all seems 
 to come to this: that one might as well be a 
 utilitarian in this life, since, be the laws 
 whatever else they choose, they're inbred and 
 omnipotent." 
 
 " They are. The rest will come in time. 
 Of course, all this has been a terrible shock, 
 but there is only ill to be had by dwelling 
 upon that side of it now. Now, in fact, it is 
 necessary only to add that you have centred 
 your hopes too exclusively upon one thing. 
 My dear John," the bishop concluded, t_shall 
 I tell you the reason of all unhappiness? It 
 is because we focus our hopes. We focus 
 our telescopes upon one star, and that goes 
 out and we are left in darkness.) Though all 
 the myriads of heaven blaze, they can blaze 
 then not for us. Do not focus upon any one 
 star to the exclusion of the rest. Sweep 
 the whole heavens, and so, though a thou- 
 173
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 sand stars go out, there will still, for you, be 
 delight in a hundred thousand. Be as provi- 
 dent with your hopes as you are with your 
 gold. The wise man distributes his savings 
 among many banks." 
 
 174
 
 XIII 
 
 SIR ORACLE RICKER 
 
 HAIO slept that night and the fact was 
 significant. It stood, of course, chiefly for 
 exhaustion, but it was not without a modicum 
 of the acquiescence which is the most con- 
 vincing sign of failure. He had suddenly 
 been thrust back, down the hill of his old de- 
 sire, and he had lost in the fall something of 
 the power that would have enabled him once 
 more to take up the weary task of Sisyphus. 
 He awoke mentally, of course, to no realiza- 
 tion of this, but the lack of comprehension 
 for any save material change was in itself 
 one of his gravest symptoms. He bathed, 
 and he came from the cold tubbing with a 
 real zest to undertake what the bishop had 
 called beginning over ; but he had received a 
 blow which made it impossible for him yet to 
 return to the former view that would have 
 175
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 regarded such a beginning as a compromise 
 and something worse. 
 
 Of Phyllis, however, he was thinking not 
 a little, and there was the most significant 
 feature of all. He did not feel even the need 
 to justify his new attitude towards her. He 
 was in a healthy physical glow and a mental 
 glow, less healthy, perhaps, but all the more 
 imperative. He needed her now, he felt, 
 more than ever. What though she was the 
 daughter of Billy Gwynne? John was a citi- 
 zen of the world. Without doubt she was the 
 pearl among women, but he was as fit to win 
 her as could, if he tried, fall no farther short 
 of deserving her than any of those to whom 
 the contest was open. His practical consid- 
 erations did go so far as to weigh, for a brief 
 moment, the matter of his past in its relation 
 to the girl, but he easily dismissed the sub- 
 ject with the thought that there was plenty of 
 time for telling her his secret. He would tell 
 her, of course, but not at once. He failed, 
 therefore, to note that, according to the 
 image of her which was then in his mind's 
 eye, he was loving not, as once, the schoolgirl 
 176
 
 SIR ORACLE RICKER 
 
 that she had been, but the woman that she 
 was. Yet as he thought of her his whole soul 
 filled with an odd tenderness. He forgot, so 
 far as he was then concerned, that he had 
 adopted the conventional attitude, and deter- 
 mined, with this single return to his original 
 position, that he was at any rate as good as, 
 if not better than, her father. How she could 
 be the daughter of this politician he could 
 not guess. He knew only that he loved her, 
 that he needed her, that he must have her 
 to-day, now, and that in some near to-morrow 
 he must win her forever and forever. 
 
 At breakfast the bishop tentatively put 
 forth the suggestion that they should wait a 
 day before they approached the financial 
 stronghold of Parton and Company, and 
 Haig found himself strangely willing to wait. 
 It might all come in good time; he was no 
 longer to play a hand in the great game of 
 life; he had earned, he half -defiantly de- 
 clared, a little rest. 
 
 After luncheon he could even go out for 
 a stroll. It was his one purpose to fill out, as 
 best he might, the hours before those during 
 177
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE (LESAR'S 
 
 which he was most likely to find Phyllis 
 at home, and his steps half-mechanically 
 carried him in the direction of the Gwynne 
 house. 
 
 Half-way there he was forced to pause 
 before the apparition of Jimmy Ricker, fresh 
 upon his afternoon assignment, but keen for 
 gossip, descending greedily upon John, and 
 grinning his too strikingly fresh-toothed 
 smile. 
 
 " Hello ! " cried Ricker, joyously solici- 
 tous, like the best of us, after a friend's mis- 
 fortune. " What was the trouble with you at 
 the office? I heard a little gab about it. 
 What was the fuss ? " 
 
 " Oh," replied Haig with astonishing ease, 
 " I had a little difference of opinion with 
 Fealy." 
 
 " Ain't he a skunk, though? " cried Jimmy 
 enthusiastically it was his favourite sub- 
 ject. " Didn't I tell you to watch him? " 
 
 "It was a case," John reluctantly ad- 
 mitted, " of his watching me." 
 
 " Oh, well " Ricker waved all hair-split- 
 ting "he's a skunk, anyhow! Didn't you 
 178
 
 SIR ORACLE RICKER 
 
 ever hear what he done to met Didn't you! 
 Why, they was all talkin' about itl" The 
 little fellow plunged into a long account of 
 his own wrongs, and for some short time Haig 
 allowed his thoughts to wander, comfortable 
 with the assurance that he would escape the 
 cross-examination which he had begun to 
 fear. 
 
 But, at the conclusion of Ricker's narra- 
 tive, John had no sooner expressed a per- 
 functory condolence than Jimmy, with the 
 true " news-sense," fired at him the repeated 
 question : " But what was your fuss about, 
 anyhow! " 
 
 John, in his new character, considered. 
 There was nothing to be gained by antagoniz- 
 ing the absurd city editor. Were he silent, 
 he might bide his time for revenge, whereas, 
 should he speak at present, he was certain 
 that this well-meaning gossip would see to it 
 that his words reached the office. 
 
 " W'ell," he said at last with an effort at 
 diplomacy, " Fealy didn't like the way I cov- 
 ered a story that he sent me out on." 
 
 But Jimmy was nothing if not direct. 
 179
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 " Say," he persisted, " something about 
 the Elridge case, wasn't it? " 
 
 This time Haig replied in a tone which 
 partially silenced even Ricker, though, as he 
 might have guessed, he was but adding fresh 
 fuel for future wonder. 
 
 " Yes," he snapped. 
 
 The true reporter never shows himself 
 more than partially abashed. Ricker took a 
 new tack. 
 
 " Seen what we've got about him this 
 morning? " he asked. 
 
 "About whom?" 
 
 " Elridge, of course." 
 
 Haig shook his head. He had not seen it, 
 and did not just then care what it was. 
 
 " Well, say, he's jugged this time." 
 
 In John's heart interest awoke with a 
 start. 
 
 "He's what?" he asked. 
 
 " Arrested." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know, but you can bet it's 
 safe! He's got it right at last. That's 
 straight." 
 
 180
 
 SIR ORACLE RICKER 
 
 "But I thought they didn't know where 
 he was." 
 
 "Didn't they, though? Oh, he's not been 
 nabbed here ! They've caught him in his own 
 State. Coin' t' railroad him sure. Happened 
 last night. My, I tell you it's a great game 1 " 
 And Jimmy winked as if he partially under- 
 stood the truth. 
 
 The wink startled John even more, but he 
 nevertheless managed to inquire: 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 " Why don't you see ? he'll never have 
 a chance to talk about these people over here 
 now. He was arrested for another thing 
 some deal, or something, of his up there." 
 
 In Kicker's tone there was a genuine and 
 innocent admiration for the genius who had 
 conceived this stroke. 
 
 "You don't mean to say," asked John, 
 " that ' these people ' were back of it of the 
 arrest, I mean? " 
 
 Ricker laughed mildly. 
 
 "Bet yo' life! Good eye, eh?" Then, 
 evidently seeing that there was nothing more 
 to be learned from Haig, the reporter broke 
 181
 
 off with : " Of course, you can't prove it, that's 
 the beauty of it ; but I know how these gangs 
 work. Well, I've got to get around here to 
 a blamed ministers' meeting; old friend of 
 mine, Dr. Bellows, goin' t' blow off. Fine old 
 chap. Ever met him? Salt of the earth, I 
 tell you. Next time I see you, I'll tell you 
 about a funny experience I had with him a 
 couple of years ago. So long!" 
 
 182
 
 XIV 
 CUPID'S coupfi 
 
 IT could not be possible. Even Haig could 
 not believe it possible that Elridge's unlucky 
 confession was behind the piece of news 
 which Kicker had just imparted. Yet the con- 
 versation served, at any rate, to recall 
 Gwynne to his memory, recently occupied 
 only with considerations of the fellow's 
 daughter, and John's blood was able once 
 more to warm to the boiling-point. 
 
 So far as any ethical advancement was 
 concerned, his anger, of course, meant noth- 
 ing. Rather it meant a further retreat from 
 his former position, for it was blind, unreason- 
 ing, revengeful. "Whatever had brought it 
 into his life, its controlling motive was hate, 
 the hate of a dog that a man has beaten, but 
 failed spiritually to subdue. Yet its sheer 
 violence finally so focused upon the man 
 183
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 alone as to divorce him entirely from all the 
 rest of the world, and allow John, two min- 
 utes later, as he passed Phyllis's house, to 
 greet that young lady at her carriage-door 
 with perfect equanimity. 
 
 " You are going I " he asked, accepting 
 her little gloved hand. 
 
 She leaned through the door held open by 
 a stolid coachman. 
 
 " You weren't, I suppose ! " she laughed. 
 
 " Whither thou goest " began John. 
 
 li Oh, not until you're asked ! " 
 
 " I had hoped " 
 
 "You wouldn't have hoped if you'd 
 known my mission." 
 
 " And that is " 
 
 " Shopping." 
 
 " How delightful ! I have never yet set 
 out with a woman upon a shopping expedi- 
 tion." 
 
 " Then that accounts for your queer point 
 of view." 
 
 "It isn't pleasant?" 
 
 " I like it." 
 
 " But I mean for the man." 
 184
 
 CUPID'S COUPfi 
 
 " You are always thinking of yourself. I 
 might have known. Well, if you want to 
 see whether or no men are justified in their 
 horror of it, there is only one way to 
 learn." 
 
 " I should like to find that way." 
 
 " Very well, jump in ; but I warn you that 
 experience is a hard mistress, and you'll find 
 it a bore waiting in the carriage." 
 
 " Oh, I don't owe experience a penny for 
 tuition so far in life! And as for the tire- 
 some part of it, I consider that it's better to 
 be bored waiting here and there for five min- 
 utes at a time than everywhere for the whole 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Then hurry ! I always insist on prompt- 
 ness when I'm shopping." 
 
 He got in beside her at once; the door 
 next instant closed behind them, and with a 
 delicate clinking of the harness, the horses 
 began their rhythmical course over the 
 smooth asphalt. 
 
 It was a crisp autumn afternoon, and the 
 carriage was a closed one. The windows 
 were open, to be sure, and through them 
 is 185
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 came all the noises of the city ; came, too, little 
 kaleidoscopic glimpses of the crowds. But 
 to both the young people inside all these 
 things were very far away, were only dis- 
 tant echoes, were flotsam and jetsam washed 
 by the careless tide upon their desert isle. 
 They were alone and together. 
 
 Haig had forgotten everything but that; 
 Phyllis was herself fearfully playing with 
 the gladness of it. Both were allowing them- 
 selves to be more serious than ever before 
 since the night of the bishop's dinner. 
 
 John thought of this and, after an instant, 
 began : 
 
 "Do you know, we're just a thousand 
 miles away again? " 
 
 She made her last attempt at levity. 
 
 " What a man of distances ! " she laughed. 
 " I had no idea you were what your papers 
 call ' travelled.' " 
 
 " Not my papers, please. I'm out of all 
 that now." 
 
 "Out of it?" 
 
 John began to foresee another explana- 
 tion, and merely nodded. 
 186
 
 CUPID'S COUPE 
 
 " What ! " pursued Phyllis, " you're no 
 longer with the Globe-Express!" 
 
 " No longer. I've " he hesitated an in- 
 stant and then added "I've determined to 
 go into a bank." 
 
 "How prosaic! What ever led you to 
 believe that your talents didn't run towards 
 journalism? " 
 
 " My employers." 
 
 " And you took their word after having 
 heard mine to the contrary 1 " 
 
 " Ah, now, if they had heard your word ! 
 But, after all, there are no newspapers in the 
 Hesperides." 
 
 "And that's where we are now? Then 
 the Hesperides must be duller than I'd have 
 thought from this. There'd be no interesting 
 reporters to ask one for one's picture." 
 
 "I shall introduce newspapers at once," 
 vowed John. 
 
 "I hope so. But here's my first shop. 
 I'll be only a moment, for I want, honestly, 
 to hear more about the garden." 
 
 She was gone with a stronger puff of air 
 from the opened door that brought him back 
 187
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 to America with a sudden flutter of lingerie 
 that solaced his exile. Her last remark was 
 so sincere that, for her part, she seemed, in 
 the store, to hurry a great deal, though to 
 John the time was long enough. 
 
 Haig's return, however, was only tempo- 
 rary. He was for a moment in the every-day 
 life, but the next he had retreated, chafing at 
 the delay, far into his fancy. 
 
 When she did reappear he noticed that she 
 was giving more than commonly detailed in- 
 structions to the coachman. 
 
 " Now," she said, settling herself beside 
 him, as they again set off, "I'm going to 
 prove to you that I am interested in your 
 strange country. I've been wrong enough to 
 tell Thomas to drive us round about, and I've 
 given up the rest of my shopping." 
 
 John attempted a mild protest, but she 
 cut him short. 
 
 " Please," she said. And though she was 
 smiling, the touch of her gloved hand upon 
 his sleeve and the very serious eyes that 
 were looking into his restored him easily 
 enough to the mood he so desired. 
 188
 
 CUPID'S COUPE 
 
 Of troubles with one's employers and the 
 question of a living wage she had never 
 known, and so never thought to inquire of 
 him, but his later tone had once more half- 
 discovered to her the sweet something which 
 she was at last trembling to hear. 
 
 Haig, on his side, was anxious enough to 
 begin. He was intoxicated by their proxim- 
 ity, by their privacy. There was in it, he felt, 
 something delightfully tacit, and this delight 
 of it drove from his conscience all memory of 
 the past. Under her gaze he felt just now 
 no embarrassment in laying bare what was 
 then to him the one important secret of his 
 heart felt only that he must speak to her 
 about it all as a child, and, swelled with the 
 first sense of mastery, loved her the better 
 for her innocence of it. 
 
 "My country!" he repeated. "It's a 
 land where only two people can live at a 
 time, I'm afraid, but where they live for- 
 ever ; ' a land where all things always seem 
 the same,' and from which those two can 
 look out across the blue waters to the 
 horizon, ' heart handfast in heart,' and never 
 189
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 wish to take ship for the hidden world be- 
 yond." 
 
 Love makes all men poets, and John was 
 speedily carried away by the creative im- 
 pulse. He lost himself and Phyllis among 
 the images he called easily forth to their 
 need ; he found waiting at his lips poems that 
 he had forgotten ever to have read. He rose 
 almost to real art, and his companion, follow- 
 ing him with wistful eyes already tired of 
 this world, with hand that she had forgotten 
 to withdraw from his arm, rose also and lost 
 herself in his flight. 
 
 It was thus with surprising suddenness 
 that they found themselves stopping again, 
 this time before Phyllis's home. Both were 
 startled, but Haig, as a man, recovered by 
 far the more quickly. It was at the tip of 
 his tongue to seize the instant, to make in so 
 many words the declaration with which they 
 had both been playing, but he hesitated for 
 one brief moment. Then the tiger had de- 
 scended, the door had again been flung open, 
 and as John leaped out and shouldered 
 about, himself to help his companion, he 
 190
 
 CUPID'S COUPE 
 
 caught a glimpse of Billy Gwynne advancing 
 from far down the street. 
 
 " It was a pretty fairy-tale," said Phyllis. 
 
 " It was the truth," was all that John 
 could then reply. 
 
 191
 
 XV 
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 HAIG had no trouble in getting into the 
 bank the trouble was to stay there. If the 
 employment had come to him while he was in 
 his earlier attitude towards life, his assur- 
 ance would have safely carried him through 
 both its drudgery and the unpleasant mem- 
 ories which it awakened. But now things 
 were different. He had had a taste of an 
 easier life, and he had accepted the conven- 
 tional standard. He was a man who had in 
 his life something of which he must be 
 ashamed, a past which he must hide, and the 
 now hard and uncongenial work combined 
 with the surroundings to make secrecy daily 
 more difficult. 
 
 From nine o'clock in the morning until 
 one in the afternoon, and again, after a brief 
 period allotted for luncheon, until the bal- 
 192
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 ance was found at five, or sometimes at 
 seven, he sat in a damp-smelling, echoing, 
 sepulchral room, deep behind a wire cage, on 
 a high stool at a higher and sloping desk. 
 There, under a brilliant incandescent lamp 
 that burned amid the gloom however brightly 
 the sun might be shining outside, he added, 
 from beneath a green eye-shade, with neat 
 pen but stiffened fingers and swimming brain, 
 long columns of dancing figures in a great 
 blue- and red-lined book. For a man accus- 
 tomed to most humble occupations the hours 
 would have been easy enough, but for any the 
 work would have been hard. It was a con- 
 tinuous strain; the position of the body was 
 unnatural, and the faculties must be ever con- 
 stantly alert at their best. Time was when 
 Haig's body insensibly accustomed itself to 
 these conditions, and his mind, while regard- 
 ing other things, could at the same time be- 
 come a mere counting-machine. But that 
 time was past. He was now often not one 
 hour at his desk before his back ached, his 
 hand grew cramped, and his head throbbed 
 with pain. 
 
 193
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 Yet he kept on. About him he saw 
 younger and better-fitted men filling higher 
 positions, and older ones who, after years of 
 this incessant grind, had managed to gain 
 and could just gain only such a place as his 
 own. But he shut his teeth together and kept 
 stinging eyes and weary fingers to their task. 
 He had attacked the world in his own way 
 and been beaten. Now, he said, he had 
 adopted what seemed to be the world's own 
 methods, and was resolved to make thereby 
 his way to the front. 
 
 Not that the situation was without its ob- 
 vious consolations. His evenings were at 
 last all his own, and the bishop's influence 
 had opened to him many doors, through one 
 or other of which he passed nightly into the 
 presence of Phyllis, who swiftly grew from 
 girlish uncertainty, beneath his eyes, to a 
 sweet maturity of thought. As yet he had 
 not been able to recover the chance he had 
 thrown away in her carriage, but he could 
 nevertheless gain from her enough silent 
 messages to allow him to bide, in peace, his 
 time. He was not yet worried over the ques- 
 194
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 tion of the wherewithal. As he had once 
 been too idealistic, he was now too common- 
 sense to bother about that. There, and there 
 alone, Billy Gwynne again assumed his natu- 
 ral relation, in Haig's mind, to his daughter. 
 The politician was perfectly well able, as he 
 himself had said, to put the clerk in the way 
 of all that was necessary, and the politician 
 owed the clerk all that he could give. 
 
 Unavoidably the father and suitor met, 
 but upon such occasions the former was sim- 
 ply his social self and the latter a man of 
 so much and so easily the same type as to 
 arouse in Gwynne's mind a puzzling doubt as 
 to whether, after all, this was a Don Quixote. 
 Not that he cared to give the matter much 
 thought. Too many other things of more 
 moment claimed that busy gentleman's atten- 
 tion. His family was not in the class that 
 leans towards breakfast-table confidences, 
 and, keen as he might have been in most mat- 
 ters, he was too closely confined by his own 
 conception of morality to guess that, after 
 the interview in his office, such a man as Haig 
 could so adapt and misapply it as to seek his 
 195
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CAESAR'S 
 
 daughter. He had merely found it neces- 
 sary, through John's own fault, added to a de- 
 ceptive manner of approach, to recall certain 
 things to the young man's mind. Beyond 
 that single occasion the fellow's personal his- 
 tory did not interest him. So long as he did 
 not meddle with Gwynne's affairs, Haig, as 
 a well-certified and properly conducted per- 
 son, might fight, unhampered by him, his own 
 battle in the great social war. Gwynne, at all 
 events, was too much of a gentleman, he 
 would have told you, to interfere. 
 
 Meanwhile, John was becoming well ac- 
 customed, if not to his new work, at least to 
 his new point of view, when it one evening 
 unexpectedly received an authoritative con- 
 firmation. He was hurrying away from the 
 bank after a particularly hard day and, 
 upon rounding the corner of a side street as 
 a short-cut for the bishop's, was hailed from 
 a doorway by an unfamiliar voice. 
 
 "Hello!" 
 
 Haig looked up. Before him stood an un- 
 certain individual, heavy, broad-shouldered, 
 a man with a stoop that had not yet degen- 
 196
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 erated into a slouch ; a face which, though ob- 
 viously never intellectual and always coarse 
 of feature, must yet once have been flushed 
 and fat and good-natured, but was now 
 peaked and drawn, with pale, timid eyes and 
 thin, bloodless lips. The voice had been 
 strange to him because John had never be- 
 fore heard it raised to conversational pitch; 
 the face he remembered at once as that of a 
 man who had, during a part of Haig's term 
 and up to the time of his departure from the 
 jail, occupied a cell in the same tier with him. 
 
 " Hello ! " he replied, and put out his hand 
 with just a shade of embarrassment. He 
 was glad to see the fellow, a little afraid, per- 
 haps, to be seen with him, and altogether dis- 
 turbed by the reminder of other days. In the 
 end, the sense that this was a common suf- 
 ferer won the uppermost place. 
 
 There was a moment's silence. The 
 stranger shuffled his heavy feet uneasily. At 
 last he tried to laugh. 
 
 "Well," he said finally, "you see I'm 
 out." 
 
 " How long? " asked John. 
 197
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE OffiSAB'S 
 
 " Three days. I got the regular good-con' 
 time off, of course." 
 
 " Well " Haig hesitated. He had seen 
 
 this man every day for close upon five years, 
 the latter half of his prison years ; they had 
 done each other all those thousand little clan- 
 destine kindnesses which made their life at 
 all endurable, and yet he did not know his 
 fellow's name. 
 
 " I guess I'll answer to Newton," said that 
 person. 
 
 John read his meaning with a glance. 
 The renewed association quickened his per- 
 ception and revived the prison directness. 
 In jail, if you do not wish entirely to miss the 
 chance of speaking, you must say exactly 
 what you mean. There is no time for false 
 modesty. 
 
 "Why didn't you stick to your real 
 name ? " he asked. 
 
 " No, thanks. I'm going in for the square 
 the other thing don't pay but I'm not a 
 sucker all the same. I'm wise enough yet, 
 an' I guess all my other names are too well 
 known." 
 
 198
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 "But I've kept mine." 
 
 " Oh, that was different ! You were never 
 out for the regular thing. You're on the 
 square, too, aren't you!" 
 
 John flushed, but nodded. 
 
 " I knew you were. I've been looking for 
 you." 
 
 " Anything particular? " 
 
 Again Newton shuffled his feet. He 
 looked about nervously. 
 
 "Can't we get a drink some'eres?" he 
 asked. 
 
 John led the way to an empty back-room 
 in a lonely saloon, and they sat down at the 
 blackened table under a low roof. 
 
 " Whisky! " asked Haig. 
 
 " Not on your life ! I'm afraid of the 
 stuff; it always raises the devil with me. 
 Give me a beer." 
 
 They drank for a minute or more in si- 
 lence. Then 
 
 " Well ? " John suggested. 
 
 Newton took his meaning easily enough. 
 
 "It's this way," he said, still evidently 
 unused to the effort of sustained conversa- 
 199
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 tion. " The day before I left we had a new 
 moke in that used to have something to do 
 with this town. Well, that was the day after 
 the fire. You saw about the fire ! " 
 
 " No," said Haig, anxious only to get on. 
 
 " Oh, that was a big time ! Whole north- 
 west wing burned. But I'll tell you all 
 about that later. We were shy on room, and 
 so as I was a good-con' man and this mug 
 was a greeny, they doubled us up for the 
 night." 
 
 Newton took a long pull at the beer and 
 John began a devil's tattoo on the table. 
 
 " Well," the former at last continued, " we 
 got to talkin' all night. There was lots he 
 wanted to know about the place, an' lots I 
 wanted to know about what was doin' out- 
 side. An' it turned out he knew you." 
 
 "Who was he?" 
 
 " I'm comin' to that I'm comin' to that. 
 He said you were on the level an' you'd stood 
 by him the best you knew how, an' he wanted 
 to do you a good turn now his game was up. 
 See?" 
 
 " You must mean Elridge." 
 200
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 "Yes, that was him. So he manages to 
 get me a line to his lawyer, an' I stops off 
 there once I'm out an' gets a letter the 
 lawyer-chap had, an' I'm to give it to you." 
 
 "A letter!" repeated the bewildered 
 John. 
 
 Newton at once took the defensive. 
 
 " I don't know nothin' else about it. The 
 lawyer-chap said it was all on the level, an' 
 he seemed straight, so it wasn't no business 
 o' mine to read it." 
 
 "Where is the letter!" 
 
 Newton's thick but deft hands plunged 
 into an inner pocket of his cheap black coat 
 and produced an envelope, which he tossed 
 across the board. 
 
 Haig opened it and read these words hur- 
 riedly scrawled in lead-pencil upon a sheet 
 of common note-paper : 
 
 " Have squared Josephs. Will have roll 
 for your friends Dearing and Cole to-mor- 
 row." 
 
 The missive was unsigned; it was crum- 
 pled and torn ; evidently it had been thought- 
 14 201
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 lessly tossed aside and then recovered. But 
 the writing itself was clear, and as there 
 flashed across Haig's brain the memory that 
 Bearing and Cole were the two contractors 
 whom Elridge, in his bid for the city jail, was 
 supposed to have " bought off " so was the 
 writer. 
 
 " So even this man writes letters," he said 
 
 with forced calm. " To think of Gwynne 
 
 .What fools they are ! What fools ! " 
 
 Newton detected the concealed emotion, 
 but misconstrued it. 
 
 "It wasn't my fault," he protested. 
 "What's the row? I thought the lawyer- 
 chap was on the level. I I wanted to help 
 you." 
 
 Haig regarded him steadily, smiling now. 
 The man's white face was all earnestness, all 
 concern. His light eyes quickened with anx- 
 iety. The kindness, the blind sympathy, 
 touched John. 
 
 " There isn't any trouble," he said. " It's 
 
 all right. I'm much obliged to you. I was a 
 
 little surprised at first. I couldn't see how 
 
 this thing could be of any use to me, right 
 
 202
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 away. But I see now it may perhaps be 
 sometime." 
 
 A few weeks before he would not have 
 seen, but now things were different. Now 
 he was playing the game according to the 
 rules, and a trump card, however unrequired 
 for the trick just then on the board, was al- 
 ways worth holding fast to. He replaced the 
 note in its envelope; he slipped it carefully 
 into his wallet. 
 
 Newton heaved a sigh of relief. 
 
 " Well, I'm glad it's all 0. K.," he said. 
 " You seemed to take on so I thought maybe 
 I'd put my foot in it." 
 
 " Not at all. This won't be of any use 
 just now, but it's a good thing to have a 
 very good thing and I'm ever so much 
 obliged to you for coming all the way here to 
 do this for me." 
 
 He looked at the man, smiling again, but 
 Newton's face changed from white to red. 
 His eyes dropped to the stained table, and he 
 twitched his glass nervously. 
 
 " I guess I didn't come just for that," he 
 finally admitted. 
 
 203
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 Haig waited. 
 
 For a moment more Newton trifled with 
 the beer-glass ; then, gently rocking it to and 
 fro with unsteady hand but gaze intent, he 
 continued : 
 
 " You see, this is the way of it : I'm out 
 now an' I don't mean to get back. The graft 
 don't pay. I want to be square, but how the 
 devil can I? I'm known; I've got a rotten 
 bad slate an' a bad name. There ain't any 
 reference for me, an' you can't get much 
 work 'thout one. I could 'a' gone to one o* 
 those gospel-missions, but I want t' forget 
 my record, an' they won't stand for any keep- 
 ing quiet when they get you a job. I could 
 'a' broke stone or something o' that sort a 
 year or two ago, but I've got this damned 
 cough now, an' it makes me too weak. So 
 you see I I thought p'raps " 
 
 The effort was too much for him; he 
 stopped, giving a push to his glass that sent 
 the beer spilling over the table. 
 
 John rose suddenly to his feet. Newton 
 was another Haig to him. He understood 
 him too well to doubt his sincerity. He 
 204
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 even dropped into something of his man- 
 ner. 
 
 " Come ahead ! " he cried, trying hard to 
 laugh. "I've been up against your very 
 game; I know it through and through, and 
 I'll guarantee to get you a job inside of an 
 hour." 
 
 For Newton one glance sufficed. He had 
 sought his old prison-fellow as an equal, as 
 a friend, with all the true republicanism of a 
 convict, and he had not come in vain. He put 
 out a hand of thanks to John. 
 
 Then a strange thing occurred. Haig 
 saw the proffer and hesitated to respond. 
 The next instant, however, and before even 
 Newton's quick eye could have detected the 
 reluctance, an odd something rose into 
 John's throat, the sudden badge of shame 
 swept across his face, and he gripped the 
 man's hand heartily. 
 
 "Do you think," he asked, still striving 
 for the lighter notes, " do you think you could 
 stand such a berth as a sexton's ? " 
 
 " Take care of a church ? " gasped New- 
 ton. 
 
 205
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CAESAR'S 
 
 " Only a small affair, a little chapel down- 
 town. I'm sorry," Haig continued, seeing 
 how far his companion was taken aback, 
 " but, just at present it's the only thing I 
 happen to know of. Of course we'll stick 
 together, and I'll keep my peelers out for 
 something better all the while." 
 
 " Oh, it wasn't that," Newton reassured 
 him. " Board an' lodging's all I'm after just 
 now. It just seemed such a funny game 
 me in a church ! " 
 
 "Why not? " asked Haig almost sharply. 
 " I'm in one almost every Sunday, and I'm 
 sure you've gone often enough with me be- 
 fore now." 
 
 " Oh, up there ! That was different. We 
 had to." 
 
 " Well," continued John more gently, " if 
 you're straight now, that's the place for 
 you." 
 
 He was so satisfied with his own compro- 
 mise that he was intolerant of any doubt in 
 others. 
 
 " I guess you're right," admitted Newton. 
 
 " Of course I am." 
 206
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 " I'd do it, anyhow ; you can bet on that. 
 I'm not choicy. I only was thinkin' 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Supposin' they'd know, you know ? " 
 
 " Why should they? As long as a man's 
 square his past life's his own business. I'm 
 going to introduce you to my uncle, who's 
 who's a bishop, and I think he can fix things. 
 I heard him speak of this job only last night 
 at dinner. All you've got to do is to keep 
 straight, and I know you'll do that, all right. 
 The rest's my own affair." 
 
 " Yes," said Newton dubiously, " but the 
 only real way's never to get jugged in the 
 first place." 
 
 " What's done's done," protested Haig, 
 ruffled once more, and driven to that last 
 refuge, the adage " and the least said, soon- 
 est mended." 
 
 He did not like these expressions of an 
 attitude he deprecated, and, having delivered 
 himself of the final platitude, he turned the 
 conversation into those more practical chan- 
 nels where argument, which he always de- 
 tested, must give place to less futile things. 
 207
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 Once at the house, he made straight for 
 his uncle's study, where, in a mullioned bow- 
 window, Bishop Osgood was reading the De 
 Imitatione. 
 
 As Haig entered first, the devotee rose 
 smiling. They had not, of late, been seeing 
 much of each other; there seemed to have 
 been a tacit understanding whereby each 
 should gracefully regard the other's present 
 discomfiture by some such arrangement, and 
 so, no doubt, the clergyman's smile was a bit 
 quizzical. But it was, at all events, well- 
 bred, and 
 
 "Well," he began, as John, now that he 
 was here, involuntarily paused. " How's it 
 gone to-day I " 
 
 As he spoke he caught sight of Newton, 
 half-hidden by a kindly shadow, and came a 
 few steps forward. 
 
 " Uncle," said John, " this is Mr. Newton, 
 an old friend of mine." 
 
 The two men nodded. The former con- 
 vict was again about to offer his hand, 
 but Haig, as if unseeing, stepped impul- 
 sively between the two and, as Newton's 
 208
 
 THE DEAD SPEAK 
 
 movement was unnoted by the bishop, con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " He comes here from another city, and 
 he wants some sort of work. Of course, I 
 can answer for him, and I thought he'd make 
 a first-rate sexton at Mr. Marvin's new mis- 
 sion. I remember you said he needed a good 
 man." 
 
 The bishop was still of a somewhat un- 
 suspecting nature; he had not yet had his 
 eyes opened quite as far as they might be. 
 He was nervous, moreover, in John's pres- 
 ence, anxious to atone for, or at least cover, 
 this by any reasonable favour, and above all 
 desirous to escape the once so valued private 
 conversations with his nephew. Thus it hap- 
 pened that he then greeted Newton pleasant- 
 ly, arranged to get him, next day, a position 
 as caretaker at the little chapel in the slums, 
 and said good-bye, with no further thought 
 of inquiring into the condition of either of 
 his pensioners. 
 
 209
 
 XVI 
 
 A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE 
 
 THERE had been a theatre-party, with 
 Mrs. Gwynne in the role of an ideal chaper- 
 on, which had ended at Phyllis's home, and 
 after which John, with the stubborn deter- 
 mination of a half -formed plan, had held on 
 until all the other guests had taken their 
 leave, and even the mother of his sweetheart 
 had somehow insensibly vanished. 
 
 Yet now that after his week of waiting he 
 stood, the door propitiously open, upon the 
 very threshold of action, Haig felt neverthe- 
 less tremulously unprepared for entrance. 
 He was, indeed, not at all certain as to the 
 manner best fitted for the crossing of the sill. 
 When he had first met her he would not have 
 paused to consider any questions of etiquette, 
 but now he thought of himself always as 
 changed. Put suddenly before him an un- 
 210
 
 A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE 
 
 expected need for action and he would still 
 plunge forward as impulsively and as as- 
 suredly as of old ; but introduce the slightest 
 element of suspense, and he would hold back 
 trying to plan both words and movement. 
 This might last but for a brief period, yet 
 he still retained all his former inaptitude for 
 scheming and, bitterly denying the slightest 
 sign of weakness, he would at once lose him- 
 self in anger with his mental perturbation. 
 
 They were seated in the library on the 
 second floor the affair had been a small one 
 and most informal and even John's share 
 of the conversation had been borne glibly 
 enough while others were present, but once 
 they were alone a nervous little silence ob- 
 tained. John was vowing himself to his 
 course, and Phyllis was woman enough to 
 know it. 
 
 The girl, however, was, in the nature of 
 things, less able to bear the pause, and was 
 thus, with one of her timid attempts at the 
 commonplace, the first to break it. 
 
 "So you are miles away again?" she 
 asked. 
 
 211
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 Sadly fearing that he had been overwork- 
 ing the figure, he must yet grasp, perforce, 
 its slender opportunity. 
 
 " In the garden of Hesperides," he an- 
 swered. 
 
 "That's unkind," said Phyllis, "for we 
 have a garden here of our own not a Greek 
 one, to be sure, or even a German one, you 
 
 know but a garden Well, you can see 
 
 it from that window at your back." 
 
 John turned as if he had been struck. 
 Behind him were a pair of swinging win- 
 dows. With instant inspiration he rose and 
 flung them open. 
 
 " Come," he demanded, " you invite com- 
 parison." 
 
 " Hardly that," she disclaimed, " only 
 inspection." 
 
 But she followed him out upon a little 
 hand-railed iron balcony, and he drew the 
 stained windows behind them. 
 
 It was one of those strangely artificial, 
 almost theatrical nights which are supplied 
 only by the balmy winters of our Middle At- 
 lantic States. The air was still, but stimulat- 
 212
 
 A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE 
 
 ing ; cool, yet one which in any other quarter 
 of the globe would be proper to autumn. It 
 seemed, too, of that luminous green quality, 
 so rich at all times, and in these latitudes so 
 rare. The sky was no longer a canopy. In- 
 stead, it conveyed that impression of space 
 which is so poignant on a clear night when 
 the moon has resigned its power to the living 
 multitudes of stars. Above the lovers these 
 palpitated in myriad legions from the near- 
 est planet to dim distant dust of worlds. Far 
 to the eastward red Mars was overtaking 
 pale Saturn close to where, just above the 
 horizon, glowed King Jupiter. 
 
 Dimly both man and girl felt that the 
 planets were throbbing with speech, with 
 music, were alive with a message for these 
 two who seemed alone in all the universe be- 
 neath them. Their earnest light washed the 
 bare limbs of the trees below, spiritualized 
 them with cold flame from the altar. It sub- 
 dued on the balcony the rococo background 
 of the dimly lighted, cool-coloured window, 
 threw into purified relief John Haig's still 
 honest face and, as the lover looked at Phyl- 
 213
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 lis, played round about her a shaft of light 
 from the volcanic core of space that made 
 cryptic her filmy pale draperies and en- 
 hanced the whiteness of an ungloved arm, of 
 virgin shoulders, and slim throat. Her whole 
 lithe girlish figure was etherealized, and her 
 parted lips, her delicate features, her chest- 
 nut hair, all caught the strange light, and 
 radiated her awe of it. Her great hazel eyes, 
 upturned, reflected it. 
 
 The silence was this time one that neither 
 wished to break. Phyllis was again the girl 
 of the earlier picture, and John, feeling only 
 that he loved her in whatever guise, feared 
 at first to touch her lest she should vanish 
 into the starlight. Yet now his earlier form 
 of indecision had disappeared, and when he 
 kissed her she neither spoke nor shrank from 
 him. 
 
 He took one of her hands between both 
 of his own. 
 
 "You have known it always," he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 She looked up in his grave, clear-cut 
 face. 
 
 ' 214
 
 A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE 
 
 " Always," she answered. 
 
 " And you know that you will know it al- 
 ways ? " he asked. 
 
 And " Always," she again replied. 
 
 Her arms twined tight about his neck. 
 They were firm, warm, living arms; they 
 thrilled him, but the contact brought both 
 lovers back to the world, and they drew apart 
 instinctively for a moment, a little frightened 
 by all that they had done. 
 
 For a moment only. Then John mas- 
 tered it and drew her with him. If they were 
 back to earth, the earth was all the dearer 
 for these new selves of theirs. He held her 
 close again, close against him, their lips to- 
 gether in one of those kisses that tell of a 
 long hunger, of thirst, of delay turned sweet 
 in this consummation. He felt her arms once 
 more straining about his shoulders, he felt 
 her breast tossing upon his own. What was 
 any world now? What were all the worlds? 
 It was this, this that he had been waiting for 
 from the very beginning of time this red 
 mouth, this living woman and her love for 
 him. 
 
 215
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 With a laugh of strength John broke the 
 spell of the night. 
 
 " I thought," he said, " those tiresome 
 people would never give me this chance to 
 tell you." 
 
 She guessed and made the reply he most 
 desired. 
 
 " So did I," she confessed. 
 
 "And then," he continued, kissing her 
 with every word, " I was afraid when the 
 chance did come." 
 
 " Was I so very terrible? " 
 
 " An ogress." And he kissed her again 
 just to prove it. " I think," he continued, " I 
 have never been so afraid of you before." 
 
 " Not that first night when you came, you 
 know, for the picture f " 
 
 " Then least of all. I I loved you from 
 that instant. I wonder if you could know 
 what you were to me then? " 
 
 She could not, but, woman-like, she 
 wanted to. 
 
 " More than now? " she pouted. 
 
 "No," he began, "not just at that 
 
 time " 
 
 216
 
 A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE 
 
 For one tremendous instant he hesitated, 
 no longer. At times such as these it was not 
 yet in him, once well under way, long to 
 pause. Why should he trouble her with a 
 thing that, according to either his old or new 
 standard, it was best she should never knowT 
 He knew that, with Gwynne's letter in his 
 pocket, there was not one chance in a thou- 
 sand of her ever learning the truth. Not 
 that it would matter if she did. He was 
 sure, as her warm hand touched his own, 
 that she loved him too well for that. But 
 there was no good reason why he should 
 ever inflict her with the knowledge, least 
 of all why he should inflict her now. There 
 was truth, of course, and truth Well, 
 he would tell her, but upon a future occa- 
 sion. 
 
 " But just at that time," he went on and 
 Phyllis was far too rapt to attach impor- 
 tance to the pause " I had been very much 
 alone in the world for a long while. I was 
 always very much alone, for that matter. 
 And then I had come into a new city, a 
 strange one. I hardly knew a soul. I didn't 
 15 217
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 understand my work; it was very different 
 from what I'd expected, and I was well, I 
 was lonesome." 
 
 She pressed his hand and began to ask 
 him a thousand questions, some few of his 
 past life, but most of his present heart, and 
 all of these he managed to answer with truth 
 and to her satisfaction. Together then they 
 traversed, incident by incident, their meet- 
 ing, their words and thoughts on this occa- 
 sion or on that, up to the present momentous 
 evening. 
 
 "And when those people," said John 
 they both were pitying the unloved rest of 
 the world "when those people did leave I 
 couldn't bring myself to tell you in there 
 where they'd been; they'd left too much of 
 themselves about the place." 
 
 Phyllis laughed reminiscently. 
 
 "Was that," she asked, "why you 
 jumped so at my suggestion of the gar- 
 den?" 
 
 " Was that," responded John, " why you 
 made it?" 
 
 " I shall never tell you," she declared. 
 218
 
 But, even in the starlight, he could see her 
 blush. 
 
 " At any rate," he persisted, " you almost 
 overdid it, for when we got out here, so aw- 
 fully alone, you you somehow looked so un- 
 earthly that I was more afraid than ever. I 
 never saw you as beautiful I never did, and 
 you are beautiful, you know you are. Body 
 and soul you are the most beautiful woman 
 in the world." 
 
 He believed it, and from weak pretestings 
 she shrunk to silence, and listened with head 
 thrown back and half-closed eyes to all his 
 song of her. But at its close she trembled 
 for them both. Haig thought that she was 
 cold, and she knew that it would be useless 
 to attempt to undeceive him, and so fol- 
 lowed him silently back into the softly lighted 
 room. 
 
 Once inside between the familiar book- 
 shelves and seated near the great study- 
 table heaped with magazines, the conven- 
 tional again resumed over both something of 
 its sway. 
 
 " Do you know, sir," she asked, " that you 
 219
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 have omitted one unimportant detail of your 
 love-making ! " 
 
 " No doubt. I'm glad it's not more. You 
 see, I'm new at it." 
 
 " Thank you, so am I." 
 
 " Oh, I didn't mean that ! " He kissed her 
 hand across the table. 
 
 " Now tell me," he added, " what have I 
 overlooked? " 
 
 " You have overlooked asking me." 
 
 " Then I'll say it now: Please? " 
 
 " Well, you sha'n't go without your pun- 
 ishment. I say yes wait a bit ! with a con- 
 dition." 
 
 " YouVe only to name it." 
 
 " That we're not to let this be known until 
 next season." 
 
 " A whole year ! " 
 
 "Just that and not a soul. Don't be 
 cross. Oh, John ! " she bent forward for 
 his kiss "you know the waiting is just as 
 hard for me. But we must. You under- 
 stand. Why won't you understand? I'm 
 why, I'm just ' out.' " 
 
 "You've been out long enough for me," 
 220
 
 A DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE 
 
 protested John. He was all of a man now. 
 " I don't see why you should want to go about 
 with " 
 
 Phyllis stopped him promptly. 
 
 " And don't be a goose," she added. " It's 
 not expected, this sort of thing, just at once 
 that's all. It's it's not done, you know." 
 
 The words were vague, but the tone told. 
 John understood her at last. He even appre- 
 ciated. The world, he tried hard to convince 
 himself, was already playing its part not 
 only in his views, but in his emotions as well. 
 
 They talked it all over, of course, but he 
 agreed easily. After all, he reflected, she 
 was right according to the standard of youth. 
 She had before her the happiest season of a 
 young girl's life, and she had the clearest 
 right to make the most of it. Besides, as a 
 man, he wanted to see her brilliant, success- 
 ful, desired. He wanted, though he did not 
 guess it, to be able to watch her admired and 
 courted by Payne and the other young men 
 of her set, and yet to be able to say to him- 
 self that she was his. In that time of waiting 
 he would see scarcely less of her, and he 
 221
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 knew how enchanted would seem their stolen 
 moments alone. 
 
 " And now," she at last concluded, " we've 
 begun badly. What's happened to mother 
 I can't imagine, but you should have been 
 gone, Mr. Haig, long ago." 
 
 " God bless Mrs. Gwynne," said John. 
 
 " Amen," said Phyllis. 
 
 " And," added Haig, " God bless our se- 
 cret, too." 
 
 She nestled against him and raised her 
 lips to his. 
 
 " It will be all the sweeter, dear," she as- 
 sured him, " because it is a secret and be- 
 cause it is ours." 
 
 222
 
 XVII 
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 " THE bishop would like to see you in his 
 study, sir." 
 
 Thomas, the demure, made this statement 
 with his accustomed placidity. 
 
 John turned from his dressing-table, his 
 fingers still busily engaged with a refractory 
 collar. 
 
 "All right," he replied as the man re- 
 treated. " Tell him I'll be down just as soon 
 as I get into my clothes." 
 
 The first two delicious weeks had passed, 
 and he was standing amid a heap of dis- 
 carded shirts and convicted ties, dressing be- 
 fore keeping an engagement with Phyllis. In 
 the interval everything had gone well. He 
 had seen just enough of her, of course, to 
 want more. He had been walking with the 
 gods. His mind, engrossed only with the 
 223
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 splendid successes of his heart, had passed 
 from its attitude of acceptance of the world's 
 standards to a perfect forgetfulness of both 
 the world and its opinions. He had no 
 thought except for Phyllis. 
 
 And yet love had brought him back. With 
 his brain whirling to the tune of her latest 
 words, his fingers must have regained some- 
 thing of their old cunning. A week before 
 the cashier had come to him to talk of an 
 advancement in place and salary of a sort 
 which made him well content to bear his year 
 of waiting for Phyllis before making appli- 
 cation to Gwynne. The prospect was good, 
 so good that it cast a still deeper shadow over 
 all that was behind him, and though he still 
 had an occasional dread of his past in its rela- 
 tion to his sweetheart, he managed easily to 
 postpone its consideration with the unan- 
 swerable argument that Phyllis would the 
 more readily understand his position when, 
 at the end of her provisional year, he could 
 show her, together with his sin, the sincerity 
 of his repentance and the work that it had 
 wrought through his business prosperity. 
 224
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 So completely was he wrapped in his prevail- 
 ing mood that he was able to meet his uncle 
 with frank cheerfulness to the end that the 
 bishop was enough relieved heretofore to 
 adopt a similar pose. Not that the good for- 
 tune had stopped short at Haig himself. Far 
 from that, it seemed that for his very friends 
 it had proved to be contagious, and only on 
 the yesterday Newton had ventured to ap- 
 pear at the bank, a most respectable, almost 
 clerical figure, with the information that he 
 had so well pleased his rector as to be re- 
 luctantly handed over for sexton to a larger 
 church in one of the best sections of the city. 
 It was thus small wonder that John now felt 
 at liberty to enter his uncle's study whistling 
 an air reminiscent of his lately and splendid- 
 ly renewed acquaintance with the theatre. 
 
 No sooner, however, was he inside than 
 the tune died away on his lips. 
 
 The bishop met him at the door and shut 
 and locked it behind him. The early dark- 
 ness had fallen, and the green-shaded drop- 
 lamp on the broad writing-table provided the 
 only light. 
 
 225
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 " Sit down," said the bishop, and it was 
 then that John's negro melody ended in the 
 middle of a bar. 
 
 With drooping jaw, he meekly obeyed the 
 order for order it unmistakably was and 
 collapsed expectantly into an easy chair at 
 one side of the table. 
 
 The bishop drew up his arm-chair oppo- 
 site and made a feint of searching among the 
 pages of an unfinished sermon. John greed- 
 ily noted that his white hands trembled until 
 the episcopal ring cast queer rays upon the 
 fluttering manuscript. He saw also that the 
 once mild eyes were sparkling with excite- 
 ment, that the mouth was twitching the whole 
 patriarchal beard, and that the entire face 
 must have altered with his own point of view 
 during the last several weeks. 
 
 For Haig the start was sudden. 
 
 " I'm sorry," he said weakly, " to have 
 kept you waiting, sir." 
 
 Immediately the bishop found the letter. 
 
 Clearly he had been pausing for a cue of 
 
 whatever sort. One hand pushed away the 
 
 papers from the red baize of the table-top, 
 
 226
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 the other held aloft a note which John, at 
 once upon the defensive, saw was written in 
 a hund that was strange to him. 
 
 " If that, sir, was all that you had to be 
 sorry for," the bishop declared, "we might 
 cry quits at once." 
 
 "I didn't know I'd offended you in any 
 other way. I'm sorry if " 
 
 " Sorry, sorry I You're actually using the 
 word before you know what you've done! 
 And I really believe " Bishop Osgood 
 brought it out with a veritable gasp " that 
 you don't know ! " 
 
 " I am quite at a loss." 
 
 "Well, upon my word, upon my word, 
 sir! You've insulted my cloth; you've de- 
 ceived me ; you've attacked the very church ; 
 you've brought scandal upon one of my most 
 excellent ministers; you've placed me not 
 to mention yourself in the most equivocal 
 of positions; you've caused me no end of 
 trouble, and now you sit there in unruffled 
 evening clothes, and you tell me that you 
 don't know what you've done! I don't be- 
 lieve it." 
 
 227
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 John caught the contradiction, but he had 
 been too much weakened by his changed life, 
 and was too startled by the suddenness of all 
 that the bishop had said and the way in 
 which he had said it, to indulge in any nice 
 quibbling. The avalanche of accusation 
 swept him completely away, and, as he rolled 
 over with it, he could only ejaculate: 
 
 "I tell you I can't imagine what I've 
 done." 
 
 "Am I not telling you?" thundered the 
 clergyman he was always the better preach- 
 er the more he was moved. " I'm trying to 
 give you the whole catalogue of your offences 
 if you'll only allow me." 
 
 John had not the least desire to interrupt. 
 He now waved a faint hand of acquiescence. 
 
 " I got this letter this morning," pursued 
 the bishop, with flaming face and shaking 
 voice. " You were out, of course, and I at 
 once looked up the writer. It's from Dr. 
 Morton, of St. Elizabeth's, one of our best 
 men, in one of our most respectable parishes. 
 Well, I only got back a half-hour ago." 
 
 The name of the church awakened a mem- 
 228
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 ory in John, and, as his uncle continued, he 
 began vaguely and doubtfully to understand. 
 
 " Some time ago you brought a a person 
 into this house into my house and gave 
 me your word that he was a deserving man. 
 I got him a place on the strength of what you 
 said. Of course, it never occurred to me to 
 doubt your word, and so I gave mine for him. 
 He was transferred only yesterday to St. 
 Elizabeth's, and now it turns out that he's a 
 thief!" 
 
 The concluding word brought John up 
 with a jump. His first sensation was one of 
 pain to learn that Newton's repentance had 
 been either so feigned or so weak; his next 
 and more natural was of hurt and indigna- 
 tion at the insult dealt his friendship; but 
 the last and enduring was contrition that he 
 should have been so ready to accept the man 
 as another of his own kind, and that, ever 
 since, he had been so wrapped up in his own 
 happiness as not to have kept track of the fel- 
 low and so saved the bishop from this annoy- 
 ing contretemps. 
 
 "I'm awfully shocked to hear this," he 
 229
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 declared. " I'm hurt, too, to think that you 
 could suspect me of recommending a crooked 
 man; but, of course, uncle, you're excited, 
 and all I want to do just now is to fix the 
 matter up for you and shoulder all the re- 
 sponsibility myself." 
 
 His tone was so frank, so sincere, that the 
 bishop's face cleared a little towards sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " Then you didn't know? " he asked. 
 
 " Why, uncle ! But there, we'll straighten 
 that out later. At present what I want to 
 say is this: I'll go to Dr. What's-his-name 
 and tell him how it all happened, and, as I've 
 a little money put by, I must insist on being 
 allowed to make good the amount Newton 
 took. I suppose it couldn't have been very 
 much?" 
 
 It was now upon the bishop that there 
 descended the shade of bewilderment. 
 
 " Very much I " he repeated. " He didn't 
 take anything." 
 
 " He Why, didn't you say he was a 
 
 thief?" 
 
 " So he is. One of the vestrymen who 
 230
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 came to this city only three years ago, but 
 who's one of our best-known lawyers, de- 
 feuded him in your own State against a 
 charge of burglary only about four years 
 ago, and lost the case." 
 
 John's eyes opened wide. He was silent 
 for an instant, but in that instant something 
 of his old strength was vouchsafed to a cour- 
 age temporarily, though only partially, reha- 
 bilitated by the recent days of happiness. 
 He rose to his feet, his own voice now shak- 
 ing with indignation. 
 
 But the thing was too monstrous at once 
 to be believed. He must first make sure. 
 
 " And so," he asked, " you call Newton a 
 thief! " 
 
 The bishop was too blinded with the pas- 
 sion of the moment to catch the drift of this 
 question. 
 
 " Well, a burglar, then," he replied. " It's 
 worse, if you come to that." 
 
 " My God ! " gasped John. 
 
 "How dare youf " cried the bishop, and 
 then left the sublime to jerk forth: 
 " Where're you going? " 
 231
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 " Out of this house," said John. " I don't 
 belong here, and I don't pretend to under- 
 stand its ways." 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " I mean that what's sauce for me's sauce 
 for Newton as long as he's square. If he's 
 a thief, why, what am I, what's your nephew 
 whom you recommended everywhere 1 ? I 
 ought never to have gone to jail in the first 
 place. I ought never to have accepted your 
 absurd theories afterward. I ought never to 
 have tried to get back among men once I had 
 been in prison, and I ought never to have 
 stayed under your roof a minute after I saw 
 how you took my kissing my aunt. The 
 whole thing's been a farce, a contradiction of 
 nature. You had me go to jail because you 
 said it was my duty to society, and once I'd 
 paid the debt I'd start clean. We both found 
 we were wrong. I don't blame you for that 
 except that you'd had more experience of life 
 than I'd had. But then we decide that it's 
 all right if a man means well and keeps his 
 jail life dark. On that theory you get me a 
 place. Oh, I'm obliged to you for that, only 
 232
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 I don't understand your point of view, and 
 so I'm going, for it seems that when I try the 
 same theory on you it doesn't work." 
 
 " Then you did know this about New- 
 ton!" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "And you recommended " But the 
 
 bishop stopped. For the first time he saw 
 the weakness of his position. Hurriedly he 
 shifted. " But, my dear boy," he continued, 
 " this is a vastly different matter." 
 
 " I don't see it," said John. 
 
 " You were an educated man." 
 
 " And you got me a position in a business 
 that requires some education. Newton was 
 an uneducated man, and I got him a job that 
 didn't require any education. No, uncle, if 
 the rule holds good for one man in one grade, 
 it holds good for another in another." 
 
 "But you could have been more frank 
 with me. You forget my relationship and 
 my views." 
 
 " As for the relationship, the secret wasn't 
 mine; and as for your views, your present 
 attitude shows that I was justified in keeping 
 16 233
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 silence. However, I admit that then I was 
 quiet only because the secret wasn't mine. 
 I thought, then, that your views coincided 
 with those you yourself had put into my 
 head." 
 
 "But the position was out of the ordi- 
 nary." 
 
 " So's a position in a bank for a man 
 with my record." 
 
 " Still, I think you might have told me." 
 
 " So might you have told Parton. But 
 you had tried that with Fealy or with 
 Gwynne and you saw it wouldn't work." 
 
 " Tut, tut ! Besides, if Dr. Morton had 
 known he might have warned his people. It 
 would then have been only a proper church 
 charity." 
 
 "It would have been a brutal exhibi- 
 tion." 
 
 "Nonsense! The Church, you know 
 
 There's the whole point. We can't have re- 
 flections cast upon the Church. That is dif- 
 ferent, I tell you, from regular business." 
 
 But John was one of those men, generally 
 of few words, who know no limits of speech 
 234
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 when once they have given way to their 
 thoughts. He blazed again. 
 
 " I'm tired of that, sir 1 " he broke out. 
 "I'm sick and tired of that! What's the 
 Church worth if it's got to hide behind that! 
 I'm losing faith in it for one. What's re- 
 ligion for, anyhow, if it can't help us here! 
 I've seen it fail twice in my own case and 
 work just once and that was as far out of 
 the world as you can get without being dead 
 in a jail." He reaped the whirlwind as he 
 spoke, and rose from doubt to certain antag- 
 onism. " And yet," he went on, " you set it 
 up as a practical guide for living, and then 
 when it fails you'd tell me that its business 
 is not with this life, but the next. Either 
 your precious Caesar is right or he's wrong. 
 There's no half way. Either my crime de- 
 served ten years, or more, or less. I was 
 willing to serve fifty if the law said so, but 
 it said only ten, and I serve that and come 
 out to this ! It's not that I've been crooked ; 
 it's not that I've been caught ; it's just simply 
 that I've done what Society's told me to do 
 gone to jail. And your Church backs it all 
 235
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^ESAE'S 
 
 up with its mouthing about Caesar getting 
 his due. Where does our due come in? 
 That's what I want to know. Or don't we 
 have any '? Does the modern discovery of the 
 individuality amount to anything or doesn't 
 it f Haven't we any rights as human beings ? 
 Haven't we any claim on justice or the State ! 
 Or do you go back to the dark ages and say 
 that we lose all that through crime! " 
 
 The bishop managed to get in two words : 
 
 " You're mad ! " he shouted. 
 
 " No doubt," retorted John. " They call 
 this a sane world, but I tell you it's all mad, 
 mad, mad! It's lived so long and so long 
 breathed and had its being in an atmosphere 
 of madness that it couldn't bear the atmos- 
 phere of truth. The distorted forces of na- 
 ture must have worked up through the soil 
 into our bodies until we're a race of gibber- 
 ing lunatics who delight in nothing but cruel- 
 ty. It seems to be the one law of action and 
 principle of justice; it's the breath in the 
 nostrils. Blood that's all people want, and 
 because they haven't got the courage of their 
 own lust, because they're afraid of the red 
 236
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 blood of the body, they've got to content 
 themselves with the blood of the soul. 
 Faugh, it stinks to heaven! Oh," he went 
 on, for the bishop had also sprung to his feet, 
 and was making a violent but vain endeavour 
 to interrupt, " oh, I'm not done, and I will 
 finish, too I I'm going once and for all to tell 
 you what I think of the whole affair. I'm 
 sick, I say, of all the rot about the Church 
 and society. How can people talk about a 
 debt to society! Society 1 What, in Heav- 
 en's name, has society ever done for me? 
 It's tricked me and betrayed me, first and 
 last. It sets up a false standard of value 
 and then cheats at the weights. It's a farce, 
 a mask, a whited sepulchre, an arbitrary law 
 of the powerful for the protection of the pow- 
 erful in wrong. All men are liars; all men 
 thieves. The strong fight the weak and the 
 strong win, but the distinction's only a dis- 
 tinction of strength. Force, timid and cun- 
 ning, has surrounded itself with a maze of 
 formulae, set up watchers, sent out its spies 
 in the garments of holiness. It'll call one 
 the Church and the other the law. It's or- 
 237
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 dained customs and promulgated codes and 
 statutes, and the whole form of these it calls 
 Society. But back of it all there is just one 
 thing: force working by means of cunning. 
 Well, I've torn off the masks to my own sat- 
 isfaction, and I've found the law a tyrant and 
 the Church a hypocrite. The Church! I'm 
 done with it ! " 
 
 Had the bishop been on the debating-plat- 
 f orm he would have been prompt to move the 
 previous question, or equally prompt to point 
 out that the fallacy of all this raving was 
 pathetically obvious, because John was rea- 
 soning from a single instance to a general 
 rule. But as Haig was the inevitable result 
 of an individual will at war with a universal 
 law, the necessary scape-goat turning to- 
 wards the burning sands, so, too, was his uncle 
 the creature of an environment and the con- 
 sequence of an accumulated race-experience. 
 Each the product of the same rule, each was 
 absolutely right and utterly blameless, but 
 neither could see that the other was living and 
 acting in the one way logical for him to live 
 and act, and the clergyman could realize only 
 238
 
 A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 that he was in his own house instead of a hall 
 of debate, and that he had there been forced 
 to listen, from his own nephew, to an attack 
 upon his own faith. He spluttered a moment 
 with indignation and surprise, and then 
 cried : 
 
 " I think you had better go 1 For my part, 
 I shall not listen a moment longer to such 
 blasphemy ! " 
 
 But there was to be no opportunity. 
 Even to the last the bishop was destined not 
 to get in his word. John had already un- 
 locked, opened, and passed out of the door. 
 
 239
 
 XVIII 
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 HAIG strode to his room, thrust a few 
 clothes and all of his money into a suit-case, 
 wrote a note to Phyllis, rang for a messen- 
 ger, and then made straight for Newton's 
 last address. 
 
 He found the man under the roof of a 
 bourgeois boarding-house, a small, sad-col- 
 oured room with pale paper on the walls, and 
 an ill-smelling lamp in a gaudy shade. New- 
 ton, strong, and almost rosy again, stood in 
 the midst of a heap of clothes before an open 
 trunk. As John entered he turned with his 
 arms full of stray garments, a sullen anger 
 blazing in his eyes. 
 
 It pleased John to be categorical. 
 
 " What are you at I " he asked. 
 
 " I'm done with it," muttered Newton. 
 
 " You mean you're going to cut it out 1 " 
 240
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 " Yes, sir I I'm goin' to cut them all out, 
 the whole thundering hypocritical gang of 
 them." 
 
 "And run awayf My uncle's just told 
 me all about it, you know." 
 
 " Oh, I'd 'a' guessed that, all right. Trust 
 one o' them to gab I That's what started the 
 whole rumpus. Yes, I'm goin' to leave the 
 town." 
 
 " No, you're not," said John. " Sit down." 
 
 Newton perched upon the edge of the 
 metal-covered trunk, the clothes falling to 
 the rag-carpeted floor. John sat on the bed. 
 
 "Now don't be such a fool, Newton," 
 he said. " Look here, I'll tell you what hap- 
 pened to me, and then you can judge for 
 yourself what you ought to do. I came to 
 this place and my uncle got me a job on a 
 paper. He'd told a fellow all about me, and 
 that finally got me fired. Then he was sorry 
 and fixed me up in the bank this time with- 
 out telling them. Well, I had a fight with 
 him just now when I found out that he wasn't 
 willing to treat you in the same way. So I've 
 left there going to send for the rest of my 
 241
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 things to-morrow. But I won't leave this 
 town. I won't say I'm licked. I didn't when 
 I lost my first job, and I don't see why you 
 should." 
 
 Newton, however, was defiant. 
 
 " Oh," he began, " what in thunder's the 
 use? These black parsons will pat you on 
 the back when you're jailed because that's 
 their business, but once you're out they won't 
 touch you they won't look at you the minute 
 they're on. I'm sick of 'em, I tell you, the 
 whole mob. I'm known here now, but I'll 
 have a little chance some'eres else, an' I'm 
 goin' there. What's the odds? They can't 
 do no more 'an send me up again." 
 
 " You don't mean that you're going back 
 to the old line to grafting again? " 
 
 There are distinctions in the ancient pro- 
 fession. Newton turned up his nose at the 
 term which John had been at such pains to 
 use. 
 
 "Grafting?" he said contemptuously. 
 " What do you think I am, anyhow? A reg'- 
 lar gun? No, sir, my line's gopher-work." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 242
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 " Crackin' peters bustin' safes." 
 
 John smiled in spite of himself. 
 
 "But you're not going to take that up 
 again, are you! " he asked. 
 
 " Why, cert'n'y. I got to live, I guess, 
 just as much as them gospel-preachers. An* 
 I don't consider I owe a single one o' th' jays 
 a single thing. There's nothin' too rotten 
 for me to do to them and, by God, I'll be 
 square with the whole shootin'-match before 
 I get through with it you can just bet your 
 sweet life on that." 
 
 John was speedily regaining his former 
 mood. He laughed. 
 
 " Stuff! " he said. " You've got it in for 
 one man or only two or three at most 
 and so you want to take it out of the whole 
 class." It was so easy for him then to be 
 logical ! " But, anyhow," he continued, " how 
 do you think you can do it? You can't, you 
 know, and that's flat. You told me yourself 
 that you'd like as not be recognised any- 
 where, and that your record was against you. 
 Why, Newton, you've got to be straight 
 whether you want to be or not ! " 
 243
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 " Oh, it's easy enough to talk ! " protested 
 Newton. 
 
 " Well, it'll be harder for you to do any- 
 thing but what I tell you to. Isn't that 
 right?" 
 
 " There'd be heavy chances, but I've got 
 to live, I say." 
 
 " Sure you do, but so do I, and I'm doing 
 it. Look here. Not so many people are on 
 to you in this town not as many as are on 
 to me. I'll see that you get a job some- 
 where or other and sooner or later. In 
 the meantime, you bunk with me. Will you 
 doit?" 
 
 He would have put out his hand only that 
 he had a genuine horror of appearing senti- 
 mental among men. But Newton understood. 
 He looked up at Haig with a light in his face 
 that the latter had never seen there before, 
 a glimmer which Newton strove at once to 
 hide by a half -return to his earlier tone. 
 
 "Yes, I will," he almost savagely as- 
 sented. " But I want you to understand. It's 
 this way: I'm out of the thing because I'm 
 afraid to go back to it just now, and that's 
 244
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 the only reason. I'll be straight enough, I 
 guess, but I tell you right now it's not be- 
 cause I've any use for these black gospel- 
 sharks. Sect" 
 
 John looked at him and smiled again. He 
 was anxious to welcome any glow of real 
 courage in the fellow, however perverted. 
 
 " That's all right," he said. His own 
 mood, never deeply religious, though once 
 highly if falsely ethical, was ready to join, 
 in a measure, such a revolt, and he then and 
 there quietly dismissed the question of re- 
 ligion from his thoughts forever. The mo- 
 ments of ultimate acceptance or rejection in 
 matters of faith generally come to us all in 
 so subtle a form that we are only semi-con- 
 scious of their presence and almost ignorant 
 of their result. " I'm not much on that game 
 myself," John admitted. " But, as you say, 
 we've got to live, and it seems to be the right 
 thing to live square. Now, I need a place to 
 sleep in as much as you do. However, I'm 
 afraid it will have to be more up-town than 
 this for me. Get those things into your trunk 
 and come help look." 
 
 245
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 Newton complied readily enough at last, 
 and after some search in the better portion 
 of the town they secured an abiding-place in 
 the house of a tall, raw-boned woman with a 
 red face, a beak nose, and glistening eye- 
 glasses, who assured them that she and her 
 husband, Mr. Ebbit, took only a few lodgers, 
 and that but because they had only one child 
 and could not use the whole house. 
 
 In the midst of her tale about her an- 
 cestry and social connections Haig finally 
 got her out of the way, and found the place 
 to his satisfaction: two rooms, opening the 
 one from the other, outrageously furnished, 
 to be sure, and hung with framed prints that 
 had first appeared as supplements to some 
 Sunday newspaper, but bright, airy, and 
 with possibilities for comfort. 
 
 In these rooms the pair managed to live 
 for several days. John attended as usual to 
 his duties at the bank, saw Phyllis whenever 
 he was able, and was, all in all, rather 
 pleased with his present situation. He tried, 
 but with little success, to find some sort of 
 work for Newton, and the latter spent his 
 246
 
 days in answering want advertisements and 
 his nights in reading the papers. The man 
 was rough and taciturn, but cleanly, and, in 
 his stiff way, sincerely grateful. 
 
 Haig had, indeed, cause for happiness. 
 He was in love with a beautiful girl who 
 loved him in return, and he was seeing just 
 enough of her. He passed through all the 
 stages common to his disease save those of 
 doubt and jealousy. He never mistrusted 
 her affection, never thought but that he was 
 as much to her as she to him. 
 
 And to him she was everything. The 
 parting kisses of her clinging lips were with 
 him as warm as at the moment of their giv- 
 ing, until their memory was erased by the 
 renewing of the actual caress. Each meet- 
 ing was dearer than the last. To him they 
 two seemed together to be travelling continu- 
 ously towards an ultimate and ideal unity 
 whereof each stage appeared as the goal, 
 only to give place to the surprise of a yet 
 more convincing succession. 
 
 He had known, practically, no other wom- 
 an. To him Phyllis Gwynne was not only 
 247
 
 a woman: she was woman, the first and the 
 last, the alpha and omega of emotion. He 
 had been so lonely when he met her, he was 
 little as he questioned it so even more 
 than lonely now. His whole nature was a 
 tarnished flower full open, reaching impo- 
 tently, but not vainly, upward for the dew. 
 He wanted, he yearned for, what all men 
 want and yearn for, and what only the happy 
 few are destined ever to obtain the Woman 
 .Who Understands. He had found her, he 
 was sure, the fated one in all the stretch of 
 time, so perfectly that only one, that crass 
 words were needless, were indeed now mal- 
 apropos in the search for a definition, and 
 would soon be in the nature of an insult to 
 the foreordained event. Thus it was that, 
 when the rare occasion arose, he convinced 
 himself that he need be in no haste to tell 
 her of himself and his past. He went to her 
 again and again with the words upon his 
 lips, and when, as always, they faltered and 
 were dumb, he soothed his soul with the as- 
 surance that she knew and loved him, and 
 that this was enough, since love was a spirit- 
 248
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 ual thing beyond the necessity of the ma- 
 terial agency of articulation. 
 
 He was thrilling with the tender memory 
 of his latest parting and the consequent 
 promise of a speedy meeting for the tardy 
 night when, on a particular morning some 
 days later, he chanced, on looking up from 
 his now speeding work at the bank, to no- 
 tice a stranger whom Mr. Drake, the cash- 
 ier, was apparently showing through the 
 place. 
 
 The guest was a short, wiry, fox-faced 
 little man, with dark skin, quiet clothes, and 
 a quick, sharp glance that caught Haig's and 
 flashed, it seemed, into instant recognition. 
 He tossed a word to his guide, and made at 
 once for John's desk with outstretched hand 
 and a smile which the clerk, feeling sure that 
 he had never before seen the fellow, instinc- 
 tively mistrusted. 
 
 " How d' 'e dot " chirruped the stranger. 
 
 John had removed his shade, and as he 
 
 looked up the light from the desk-lamp fell 
 
 full upon his face. He saw that the person 
 
 who addressed him was studying him keenly, 
 
 17 249
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 and, he never knew why, he kept his pen in 
 his hand. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ? " he asked. 
 
 The fox-faced man never removed his 
 eyes from the face of his interlocutor. He 
 was so unnaturally unembarrassed that John 
 annoyedly felt his hand fall to trembling, 
 and noticed a drop of ink splash on the im- 
 maculate page of the great ledger before 
 him. 
 
 " Don't you remember me f " responded 
 the stranger. 
 
 The tone of civility was a shade overdone. 
 
 "I think you've made a mistake," said 
 John, coldly enough. He was delighted to 
 find that his stupid nervousness had not ex- 
 tended to his voice, and so he made to turn 
 firmly to his work. In so doing, however, he 
 caught a look of surprise in the coachman-* 
 like face of Mr. Drake and hesitated. 
 
 " Why, I'm Jim Tout, and aren't you Tom 
 Bigelow? " asked his persecutor. 
 
 " No," replied Haig, with all the dryness 
 which he could assume, "that is not my 
 name." 
 
 250
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 Mr. Tout appeared to be politely non- 
 plused, but not enough so to discontinue his 
 scrutiny. 
 
 " Oh ! " he apologized, " I beg your par- 
 don. Most remarkable resemblance I ever 
 saw in my life, most remarkable ! I took you 
 for a man I used to know in Chicago fifteen 
 years ago." 
 
 He retreated at last, obscured by a boun- 
 tiful shower of similar commonplaces, simi- 
 larly unsatisfactory, and keeping his eyes 
 wide open to the last. 
 
 Haig took up his eraser, both puzzled and 
 distressed. He had not yet been able to quiet 
 himself for a fool when, not five minutes 
 later, one of the bank messengers touched 
 him on the arm and he jumped spasmodically 
 clear of his high stool. 
 
 " Mr. Drake wants you in his office, Mr. 
 Haig." 
 
 John mentally paralleled this summons 
 with his last into the presence of Bishop Os- 
 good, and the likeness did not soothe his 
 nerves. He hurried, nevertheless, to the 
 ground-glass door in the partition which 
 251
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 separated the shrine of the cashier from the 
 outer temple of the counting-room and 
 pushed it open. As he did so he stepped 
 upon a rubber mat which rang out a peal of 
 electric bells that he had once known, but 
 had now so far forgotten as to be fright- 
 ened by. 
 
 Drake, fat, pasty-faced, and red chop- 
 whiskered, sat at his mahogany desk, and by 
 him sat Mr. Parton, the president, a giant 
 with the severe countenance of a Roman 
 senator. Haig had somehow expected to find 
 the inquisitive Tout there, but he was no- 
 where to be seen. The cashier majestically 
 motioned his obedient clerk to a stiff, high- 
 backed chair. 
 
 There was a pause, during which Drake 
 looked solemn inquiry at his superior. Par- 
 ton, however, only nodded grimly, and the 
 cashier was compelled to seek a temporary 
 refuge by ostentatiously clearing his throat. 
 
 "Mr. Haig," he at last began, "I that 
 
 is, we have a very unpleasant thing to say 
 
 to you. You are most satisfactory here so 
 
 far as your work is concerned, and you know, 
 
 252
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 for that matter, that I have even spoken to 
 you about about 
 
 He looked appealingly again at the presi- 
 dent. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense, Drake, nonsense ! " broke 
 in Parton sharply. " He's all right that way, 
 of course, but what's the use of beginning 
 there f Mr. Haig " he turned upon the 
 clerk " there has just been here a bank-de- 
 tective who says he's sure you're the Haig 
 he knows of who has served a term in jail 
 for embezzlement. Have you or haven't 
 you ! " 
 
 John rose sharply to his feet. An instant 
 and he blazed defiance ; the next and the grip 
 of the world had choked the protests out of 
 him and had tossed him limply back into his 
 seat. 
 
 Drake was the breed of dog whose only 
 victims are wounded birds. He pounced upon 
 this one. 
 
 " Come, come, Mr. Haig," he sharply 
 echoed, " have you or haven't you I " 
 
 John made every effort to regain his self- 
 control. He clutched at the memory of his 
 253
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 interview with Gwynne, but he was no longer 
 the same man. The room swam about him 
 and his head sank. He could not utter a sin- 
 gle word, and it seemed hours before either 
 of his tormentors spoke. 
 
 " Oh, well ! " said Drake at last and a 
 furtive glance told Haig that Parton, with 
 broad back turned, was closely examining the 
 wide expanse of ground-glass door " oh, 
 well ! This is an admission, I suppose. Any- 
 how, Tout knows his business; the name's 
 the same; he never mistakes a face, and he 
 declares your picture's in the Rogues' Gal- 
 lery." 
 
 John looked up in a new horror. 
 
 " In the " he began to repeat. But 
 
 the terrible novelty of the thought was too 
 much for him, and with the harrowing groan 
 of a beaten man he let his face fall to hiding 
 between his hands. 
 
 " So, you see, you'll have to go," con- 
 tinued Drake. " We can't have people here 
 whose picture's " 
 
 "Shut up!" 
 
 It was Parton who had spoken. He had 
 254
 
 EXIT A BANK CLERK 
 
 wheeled about with genuine anger in his bois- 
 terous voice. 
 
 " Don't be such a brute, Drake," he con- 
 tinued more quietly, but none the less ear- 
 nestly. " You never did know anything but 
 dollars and cents. Suppose you leave me to 
 end this." 
 
 He waited until the door had closed upon 
 the cashier, and then 
 
 " I'm quite as sorry about all this as you 
 can be, my man," he said with well-meant 
 patronage. " I can't conceive what your 
 uncle could have been about, I can't, indeed." 
 
 John wanted to interfere in the bishop's 
 behalf, but he seemed to be listening in a 
 dream wherein the president's voice just 
 reached him from a distance over which he 
 could not hope to reply. It monotonously 
 ran on: 
 
 " This thing is, of course, a purely form- 
 al precaution. I've no doubt in the world but 
 that you're perfectly all right now only, 
 business safety depends entirely upon just 
 such precautions as these, and you must see 
 for yourself that we couldn't afford to have 
 255
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 you, just as Mr. Drake tried to say, about 
 here. That sort of protection is the whole 
 foundation of safe business principle, and, 
 much as I'd like to keep you, there's no room 
 for personal feeling, or sympathy, or or 
 anything of that kind where there's money 
 concerned. There's nothing in the world so 
 touchy or delicate as money. Now, any- 
 thing else that I can do for you, I'd be glad 
 to do, and if I can give you a recommenda- 
 tion anywhere anywhere at all I'll be only 
 too glad to do it." 
 
 He paused, and John at length found 
 trembling words. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, " but I don't see 
 how I could ask you. The only thing you 
 can do for me now is to have the boy get my 
 things so I can get out of here without 
 going into the other room." 
 
 256
 
 XIX 
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 THE Rogues' Gallery! That was the 
 thought that stung. He had forgotten, in his 
 optimistic ignorance, that such a thing ex- 
 isted. Now, his revolted imagination easily 
 conjured up for him something far worse 
 than the reality. He, his father's son, was 
 posted there, then, catalogued and docketed, 
 with a printed narrative of his crime; his 
 face, said once to be so like that of the 
 mother whom he had never seen, was hung in 
 a public place for every vulgar eye to gaze 
 upon and revile, displayed in every city in 
 the land as that of one of the vultures against 
 whom the watchers beside this dead corpse, 
 Society, must beware. It would be seen and 
 remembered and recognised together with 
 that of the latest-caught " confidence-man." 
 It had been recognised. It was there for 
 257
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 that. Oh, no doubt, he thought, life being 
 what it was, the watchers were right enough 
 to stand him also in their Toussaud-chamber 
 of living horrors! Even Haig's jaundiced 
 brain must admit so much. But his life need 
 never have been what it was. Admitting the 
 inevitability of an unfriended boy's dazzled 
 misstep, it still remained true that, had not 
 Fate marvellously disguised in the person 
 of a weak and shallow cleric imposed upon 
 his shame and ignorance with the most clum- 
 sily marked cards, he could have compro- 
 mised with wrong and escaped all this. He 
 could have held up his head among men had 
 he but shut his ears against the pitiless logic 
 of right. 
 
 The injustice of it! Again and again, 
 until his heart grew sick and his head 
 throbbed to bursting, he went over, as he 
 skulked through the back streets homeward, 
 the rebellious litany of despair. They had 
 demanded the price decreed by the ages, and 
 he had paid it with ten sweating years of his 
 life for what? 
 
 But, in the face of the necessity for daily 
 258
 
 11 SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 bread, even the mood of revolt could not last 
 long. With the shock of a sincere surprise, 
 it came suddenly back to him that he had now 
 no means of support. It was characteristic of 
 the man that this should be one of the last 
 thoughts to occur to him, yet, having arisen, 
 it was equally characteristic that he should 
 find that there was no laying it. He must 
 get work of some sort and that right soon. 
 There had been, of course, one or two tenta- 
 tive advances from his aunt, but, for all his 
 wretchedness, go back as a pensioner upon 
 the bishop, John as yet would not. Nor could 
 he accept the nauseating though well-meant 
 patronage of the bank president. These two 
 and one other shred of self-esteem he found 
 that he had managed to retain ; he would not 
 seek out Gwynne as the broken thing of the 
 politician's Delphic prophecy; he would de- 
 mand a position when he did seek him, but he 
 would seek him only in the role of a man 
 who was even then earning honestly his own 
 sustenance. To these tatters of honour he 
 clung wildly. Nay, he even proceeded un- 
 consciously to weave a whole false cloak of 
 259
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 them and to wrap it, with all the violence of 
 the poor and proud, about his shivering soul. 
 
 So completely, however, was he shattered 
 by this latest blow of fate that, until the 
 greater fear of meeting a more exacting ac- 
 quaintance drove him into the house, he 
 dreaded to face Newton. But Newton, he 
 was relieved to find, was out, and he lay 
 down upon the bed, every nerve shriekingly 
 taut. 
 
 When his room-mate did come in it was 
 as one wearied from vain seeking. To Haig 
 he appeared more than commonly worn out. 
 He looked, indeed, like a man who had come 
 to the end of his string and who knew it. His 
 face was pale and lined. The mouth drooped, 
 the lips were tired lips; the cheeks were 
 flabby, the eyes a slow despair. There was 
 no need for him to say that his quest had 
 again proved fruitless. 
 
 He sank dejectedly into a chair and Haig, 
 thinking to offer such comfort as is to be had 
 of common suffering, sketched briefly his 
 own case at the bank. To his surprise New- 
 ton's face never relaxed its calm. 
 260
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 " So you see," John endeavoured cheerily 
 to conclude, " I've got to begin on the same 
 way you're travelling." 
 
 " Then God help you," growled Newton. 
 
 But his words were far stronger than his 
 tone, which was a mere perfunctory expres- 
 sion of his mental inertia. 
 
 " But what do you think of it? " persisted 
 John. He was determined to rouse the man, 
 and for some reason this accomplished the 
 end desired. 
 
 Newton banged the arm of his chair. 
 
 " Think of it! " he repeated. " Why, I've 
 been expecting it! I'm only just surprised 
 it's taken so long." 
 
 " You say that you've been expecting it ? " 
 
 Newton broke forth madly. 
 
 "Sure!" he cried. "What else! They 
 say we're different from other men, and they 
 try to prove it with a tape-measure. I tell 
 you I'm as much a man as any of them! 
 They won't let us be crooked and they won't 
 have us straight. What do they want us to 
 do? Jump in the river? Why don't they 
 give's a life-term for everything, or string 
 261
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 us up like they used to do, and be done with 
 it! God A'mighty, you were out of it 'cause 
 you had a pull oh, you didn't think so, but 
 you had but I tell you there 're things goes 
 on in every jail an' the keepers knows it, 
 all right as makes it no use just no use 
 for any one after he gets out! Do? I'll tell 
 you what we'll do, we'll either go back to jail 
 or we'll starve ! " 
 
 John tried to laugh, but failed. In the 
 moment he selfishly saw that his own plight 
 was even worse than Newton's, and vaguely 
 indicated its complicating factor. 
 
 Immediately with the confession came 
 temporary relief. 
 
 " Of course," he said, " the realization of 
 her sympathy is a lot to me, and with all the 
 universe against us she and I stand alone, 
 but perfectly safe behind the wall of our love. 
 She's she's the Woman Who Understands." 
 
 Newton had followed most of the ha- 
 rangue but lamely. Now, however, he looked 
 keenly at the speaker. 
 
 " Does she ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well, she would, if she knew," Haig con- 
 262
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 fusedly explained. " I must at last tell her, 
 of course. I can tell her everything easily 
 then." 
 
 With a great joy he looked from his weak- 
 ness to lay his bloody head upon the firm 
 bosom of her kindly strength. Even now he 
 thought that, leaping space, the exultant fact 
 of their relations sufficed beyond the capa- 
 bilities of cruder vehicles to make her feel 
 it all. She was there there with pulses 
 beating in tune to his own, shielding him 
 with gracious gesture beneath the great, soft, 
 all-sheltering mantle of her love. 
 
 He was certain of this, and yet he could 
 not tell Newton. He feared but tried to get 
 the man's opinion, and, failing to make him 
 speak a word, he conceded so much as to 
 write to her that he had been called out of 
 town to remain, as a matter of fact, until 
 he had caught, in town, that awful jack-o'- 
 lantern, Something-To-Do. Here was a con- 
 cession to the material. No matter, it was 
 but temporary. Meanwhile, it was just his 
 certainty of her that enabled him to write the 
 note, and he did write it with the satisfying 
 263
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 subconscious assurance that it was she alone 
 who so bound him to his older and higher 
 ideals of life as to make it possible now to 
 take up weary arms again and renew the los- 
 ing battle here, in this city, on the same grim 
 ground. 
 
 The letter once mailed, he returned with 
 hope high. 
 
 " I'm not ready to starve quite yet," he 
 said. " Let's see the papers." 
 
 Newton tossed him an armful. 
 
 "Wish you luck," he muttered. "I've 
 been to every place there." 
 
 " Hum," grunted Haig, running through 
 the columns with an eye practised from his 
 ledgers. " They don't seem to want any 
 book-keepers to-day, that's a fact." 
 
 Nor did they the next day, nor the next. 
 They seemed, indeed, to want nothing that 
 was, as he put it, in his line. He bought all 
 the papers and followed the want advertise- 
 ments more and more carefully. Then he 
 awoke to the sense that he must simply ex- 
 tend his line, must take, in a word, whatever 
 he could get. Thus, after a study of the 
 264
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 closely printed pages, he would start out 
 every morning to answer all that offered. 
 
 Newton would hopelessly go over the pa- 
 pers with him, and they would divide the city 
 into halves, spending their evenings in writ- 
 ing to such advertisers as concealed their 
 identity, or otherwise required a letter. But 
 gradually Haig became impressed with the 
 feeling that his companion's search was be- 
 ing conducted perfunctorily, and merely as 
 a concession to his benefactor's feelings. 
 The man was quite hopeless, and was, de- 
 spite his rough attempts at kindness, of too 
 simple a nature to conceal it. He was obvi- 
 ously studying John's mood and making a 
 tremendous effort to accommodate himself 
 thereto. He was willing to a degree which 
 at times became oppressive; he spared him- 
 self nothing in his endeavours, but, though 
 John felt all this to a point that aroused him 
 to real friendship, he saw also the underlying 
 conviction of his more experienced fellow, 
 and the contagion spread gradually to his 
 own soul. 
 
 It was a season of hard times, and bona 
 18 265
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 fide positions were rare. At hand there were 
 to be had ten men for every one place, and 
 small need was there to advertise for appli- 
 cants. But beamers, cutters, machine- 
 hands, paper-hangers, salesmen the two 
 outcasts went doggedly through the weary 
 lists from A to Z. One thing only they came 
 to rule out all calls for canvassers. These 
 positions John found generally wanted solic- 
 itors for books which could never sell, and 
 many a vague but promising advertisement 
 ended in the rickety " office " of some sub- 
 agent for such a publication. 
 
 Yet Haig gritted his teeth and kept on. 
 He resolved not to see Phyllis until he had 
 something anything now so that it was some- 
 thing to do, and to this determination, to- 
 gether with those concerning Gwynne and the 
 bishop, he managed still to adhere. The 
 very soreness of his straits had lent to his 
 weakened character a hate of the world, and 
 an oath to force from it its debt of daily 
 bread which, added to his secure faith in his 
 sweetheart, served the want of more substan- 
 tial resolve. 
 
 266
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 Yet for whatever positions he found open 
 he could not qualify. The demand, such as it 
 was, was all for skilled labour, and so things 
 went with the castaways from bad to worse. 
 They sought to economize first by cutting 
 their rations to two and then to one meal a 
 day, while by hard degrees, John descended 
 the scale until he would have gone for a sta- 
 ble-boy rather than acknowledge defeat. He 
 would now try anything but surrender. 
 
 " Here's something promising," he re- 
 marked one morning, as he read : 
 
 " Wanted : Young man for responsible 
 
 clerical position. 
 "Must be neat. Twenty-five dollars a 
 
 week possible." 
 
 " Well," said Newton, " if it's promising 
 it's a liar, that's all." 
 
 "Why so!" 
 
 " 'Cause it ain't possible, that's why. It's 
 another o' them fake book-agents." 
 
 "How do you know!" 
 
 " Was in last week. I looked it up. You 
 must be forgettin'." 
 
 267
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 And he was right. In spite of the fact that 
 all want advertisements read so alluringly 
 alike, a little exercise of the memory proved 
 that nearly every one which appeared that 
 day was a repetition of some one which John 
 had hopefully weighed and despairingly 
 found wanting at some time or other during 
 the past ten days. What remained were of 
 a stamp too hopelessly familiar to induce in- 
 vestigation. The next morning it was the 
 same, save that the new ones were still fewer 
 and worse. On the third day there were no 
 new ones at all. 
 
 That morning Newton was clumsily ner- 
 vous. He fidgeted about the room like a 
 caged polar bear in a midsummer circus. 
 
 For a while Haig watched him furtively 
 from behind a newspaper. He himself was 
 nervous, and every sudden movement of his 
 companion startled him. He would not yet 
 despair of their situation, but he was grow- 
 ing very tired. 
 
 Finally Newton made a little sound of 
 drumming upon the window-pane. 
 
 It was the last straw for Haig. 
 268
 
 " What the devil's the matter with you? " 
 he broke out. 
 
 Newton turned. It was the opening he 
 had been longing for. He was most at home 
 in such moods precisely so interpreted. 
 
 " Just that," he said angrily. " Just what 
 you're showin'. Look here, I may be all 
 kinds of a lobster, but I'm not a born sponge, 
 and I won't be one, either. See!" 
 
 John saw, and his temper changed to one 
 more generous. But at last Newton had 
 caught his pace and so forbade interruption. 
 
 " We've been at this long enough. I ain't 
 a-goin' on livin' on you forever, an' you 
 ought t' know it. I ain't that kind, thank you, 
 Oh, there ain't no use bluffin' no more! I'm 
 on all right. Great thunder, how could I help 
 bein'f Your money can't last forever, an* 
 I'm not a-goin' t' help eat it up. I don't know 
 what you take me for, but I'm no fool, an' I 
 know there ain't nothin' in this huntin 1 
 around fer a job, an' you know it, an' I'm 
 goin' t' cut. By the Lord, this time I mean 
 it!" 
 
 For answer John tossed him a cigarette 
 269
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 and began with the strongest of masculine 
 arguments. 
 
 "Now, don't be a fool, Tom," he said. 
 
 "Naw, I won't be, you bet. Ain't that 
 what I'm a-tellin' you? " 
 
 John looked into the hot, wicked face, and 
 read the depth of good feeling which the man 
 was trying so hard to conceal beneath his 
 anger. Here at last was the friend he had al- 
 ways felt was sleeping somewhere in the 
 strange caverns of Newton's curious identity. 
 
 " Smoke up," he ordered, and as the 
 man, from habit, obeyed, he continued : "I 
 know you mean it all right, but it's no go. 
 Look here, haven't I done my best for 
 you?" 
 
 " That's it," cried Newton, " an' I don't 
 thank you for thinkin' I'd keep on lettin' you 
 now. I've done it a sight longer than I ought 
 ter as it is. I ain't no lobster." 
 
 " Wait a bit. I have done the best I could, 
 haven't If" 
 
 Newton descended to the sullen stage that 
 always masks the embarrassment of the un- 
 emotionally ignorant. 
 
 270
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 "I tell you I ain't no lobster," he re- 
 peated. 
 
 " Then you'll do me a favour in return 
 for what little I've been able to do for 
 you." John's voice shook with real earnest- 
 ness. " Do you think I want do you think, 
 man, I want to be left alone to face this 
 thing! " 
 
 With an unpremeditated gesture he 
 threw open his coat, and Newton's quick 
 eye caught his meaning: his watch was 
 gone. 
 
 But Haig had miscalculated by just one 
 point. The sight warmed his fellow again to 
 all the former revolt. 
 
 "That's it! That's it!" he reiterated. 
 "I'll not stand for it I" 
 
 But Haig was too much in earnest to be 
 daunted. He was frankly moved by just the 
 motives he had indicated. He had found at 
 last a friend even Phyllis could not, in the 
 present crisis, be that to him and that he 
 could not afford to lose at the very summit 
 of misfortune. Least of all could he bear, 
 from blank fear of the moral effect upon his 
 271
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 own forces, the sight of his ally flying from 
 the battle. 
 
 He walked to the window and put his two 
 tremulous hands on the man's heaving shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 " Tom," he said, " I want you by me. 
 Don't run away now. You've got to stay to 
 help me out." 
 
 Newton's eyes showed suspicion of this 
 logic. 
 
 " No," he muttered. 
 
 " But you've got to." 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Please, Tom." 
 
 " No." 
 
 But this time the negative was fainter; 
 the man was wavering. 
 
 Hotly John pressed his advantage. 
 
 " You must," he insisted. " I wouldn't go 
 back on you like this. If you'd asked me, I'd 
 have done it for you." 
 
 Newton looked hard at the floor. 
 
 " How much you got ? " he finally asked. 
 
 "Oh, that's all right!" 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 272
 
 " SOMETHING TO DO " 
 
 "Fifteen dollars. But listen. That'll 
 pay our way out of here and into a a 
 cheaper place, and I'll make the effort of my 
 life for the rest of the week. I'll take any- 
 thing, as you know for my own sake. Let 
 me have just till the end of the week, and if 
 I don't get anything by that time I won't ask 
 you to stay. Or just wait for to-day, Tom; 
 I I need you." 
 
 Newton listened with knotted forehead, 
 but the final appeal won the day for Haig. 
 
 " All right," he at last mumbled, and 
 John, laughing, flung on an overcoat and 
 dashed out. 
 
 In three hours he returned. He had 
 found a place, he said, and, upon being 
 pressed, he added that, after soliciting al- 
 most from door to door, he had secured em- 
 ployment as a clerk in a poor grocery-shop 
 far down town. But Newton's ideas of work 
 had always been too vague, and had lately 
 been too dulled, to draw any fine distinctions 
 of grade. He accepted calmly, therefore, the 
 invitation that went with Haig's announce- 
 ment, especially as John insisted that he 
 273
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 would soon be able to find a position for Ms 
 friend in the same shop. They made ready 
 immediately for a move to cheaper quarters, 
 and, once this was accomplished, Haig al- 
 lowed himself his reward : he set out to find 
 Phyllis. 
 
 274
 
 XX 
 
 CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 AT last John's plans were definite. After 
 all the weary waiting the doubts were dis- 
 proved which he could at last confess to hav- 
 ing harboured; the battle was won. He was 
 to get, it was true, the splendid sum of five 
 dollars a week, but that was not the point. 
 The point was that he should at last earn 
 some money, however little. He had exalted 
 above all other ideals the respectability of 
 the wage-earner. To that he had pinned his 
 new conceptions of self-esteem, and because 
 of that he could now, at the end of a week, 
 go to Gwynne and make his contemplated de- 
 mands for some sort of substantial political 
 preferment. 
 
 Again he was walking upon the air. Dur- 
 ing his season of misfortune he had severely 
 allowed that single letter which he had writ- 
 275
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 ten at its beginning to cut him off from all 
 sight of Phyllis, and an unformed sense of 
 chivalry, added to a strange new pride in im- 
 posing upon him the feeling that he must not, 
 even by further writing, intrude his sorrows 
 upon her while his foot was still sore from 
 the tread of the black ox. But nothing could 
 prevent his living all the while upon the 
 thought of her just as, in jail, he had once, 
 and for so much longer, lived upon the vain 
 thought of atonement. Now, while winter 
 was at its height in all the world about him, 
 the spring of hope blossomed swiftly in his 
 heart towards the full-blown summer of cer- 
 tainty. He could explain easily enough his 
 long silence ; indeed, his parting note had, he 
 reflected, sufficiently prepared her for the ex- 
 planation. The one thing that troubled him 
 was the chance of finding her just then at 
 home. 
 
 But at first he felt that chance was now 
 consistently favouring him. As, with swell- 
 ing impatience, he neared the house, he saw 
 some persons being shown out. He paused 
 until they had half-descended the steps, and 
 276
 
 CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 then, unable longer to keep the leash upon 
 his emotions, he hurried past them, brushed 
 by the startled servant, and stepped into the 
 deep-coloured reception-room where he had 
 first met her. 
 
 She was just about to leave it, was stand- 
 ing alone in the full glare of the lights from 
 the big chandelier, clad again in that gown 
 of filmy blue, and regarding him with great, 
 startled eyes that, as he rushed forward, let 
 fly, nevertheless, a challenge which arrested 
 him midway. 
 
 " Phyllis ! " he cried. 
 
 She looked at him steadily. Then her 
 eyes closed and she swayed a little, but, as 
 he thereupon once more stepped forward, a 
 firm hand waved him gently back. She spoke 
 one word, in a strange, abstracted voice, an 
 empty echo of her once familiar tones, new 
 and far away. 
 
 " Well ? " she asked, and again, as he in 
 turn hesitated and grasped at the frail sup- 
 port of a gilded chair, " Well? " 
 
 For the first time in his life terror laid 
 hold of Haig and mastered him. He was 
 277
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 throttled in the sudden and relentless gasp 
 of his vague appreciation of all that had 
 happened. He could not think; he knew 
 only that he was face to face with his ulti- 
 mate tragedy, and that he was afraid of it 
 afraid. 
 
 Woman-like, however, Phyllis was about 
 to begin with her lesser complaint. 
 
 " This is rather unexpected," she said 
 with that nervous coldness which her sex in- 
 variably employs to disguise its greatest 
 warmth. " You return, it seems, even more 
 suddenly than you go." 
 
 The minor difficulty John welcomed as a 
 genuine escape from the greater. 
 
 " But, Phyllis," he protested, " I wrote 
 you before I left; I explained that I had 
 to go." 
 
 "Yes," she replied with closely studied 
 emphasis. " You wrote before you went." 
 
 " Oh ! " he cried with a sadly miscalculated 
 relief, " was that it 1 " Then, on the instant, 
 he saw in her face the failure of this feint, 
 and, his ignorance of woman preventing him 
 from guessing why it had failed, he blindly 
 278
 
 CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 continued: "But, my dear, I couldn't write 
 again, I couldn't, really." 
 
 In vain. He paused, and aa her eyes 
 still hardened there fled from him once 
 more all his resolutions towards detailed 
 disclosure. There was, even he could see, 
 only the paramount necessity of present 
 reconciliation. Everything else could wait 
 nay, must wait upon that. In full panic 
 he lunged wildly, seeking the weakness 
 that there must, he felt, be somewhere in her 
 guard: 
 
 " Oh, Phyllis, I beg you to believe me in 
 this ! I can't explain just yet there are sev- 
 eral things that I must explain some day soon 
 but I can't explain them now. I can only 
 promise you that they are things that you 
 will understand easily enough then, and I ask 
 you, dear, ask you to love me still and to 
 trust me this once." 
 
 For another moment she looked steadily 
 at him, looked at him with a glance which cut 
 deep into his breast. But 
 
 "No," she said. "I've had enough of 
 trusting." 
 
 279
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 Again that bewildering sword-play of at- 
 tack. 
 
 " What do you mean? " he appealed to 
 her in dazzled agony. " Have I ever asked 
 you to trust me? Have I, ever since I first 
 knew you " it seemed so long ! " put you to 
 this or any test? Tell me, have I? " 
 
 " Test? " she repeated in fine scorn. " Is 
 there has there ever been any need of that? 
 .What cause has there ever been for any test 
 of me?" 
 
 Hopelessly he admitted to himself that 
 he had been too precipitate; despairingly 
 he attempted calmly to gather all his 
 force for the more logical method of ad- 
 vance. 
 
 " But, Phyllis," he insisted, " can't you see 
 that this is really all simply absurd? You 
 know me; you know that I love you. Why, 
 then, do you refuse to trust me in so entirely 
 simple an affair?" 
 
 She was twisting between her white hands 
 that same frail bit of a fan. 
 
 " That's it," she answered, steadily re- 
 garding her play. " Do I know you? .That's 
 280
 
 just it, you see. Oh! " a woman to the last, 
 she broke away from the abstractions into a 
 passionate appeal to the concrete " Do you 
 realize to what you have subjected me? Do 
 you realize it? You couldn't ask me this if 
 you did not even you ! " She flashed it at 
 him angrily, and, as her glance compre- 
 hended his blank stare : " But you don't, I 
 see," she said amazedly. " You don't. I 
 wonder how you could have failed to count 
 upon this, but it seems that you somehow 
 haven't. Well " she finally let him have it 
 " what are these horrible lies they are telling 
 about you? " 
 
 Then he realized it easily enough. Here 
 also the truth was to confront him. His hesi- 
 tation, his cowardly delay yes, he could see 
 now that it was cowardly ! had lost him this 
 last chance of defeating the prejudice of the 
 world. 
 
 But, upon the coming of certainty, terror 
 fled. He had a horror of the unknown, the 
 tangible he would fight upon any ground. 
 Shame for his deception was against him, but 
 the hurt of that was speedily overthrown in 
 19 281
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 the exaltation, in the real glory of defeat 
 courageously met and borne. 
 
 He paused an instant only, but in that 
 pause her face, though he was now wholly 
 unable to read it, passed from anger to sor- 
 row, and when she broke the silence, ere 
 words came to him, it was with a last forlorn 
 appeal to hope. 
 
 "Well," she repeated, broken on the 
 wheel of her contending emotions, " what are 
 these horrible lies f " 
 
 Understanding made him cautious; he 
 wished to confirm it to a certainty. 
 
 " They have told you," he asked now 
 steadily enough, " just what? " 
 
 Her head in her hands, she sank upon a 
 near-by ottoman. She could not face him with 
 the accusations because she loved him, and 
 so feared that she might read confession in 
 his gaze. 
 
 There was another silence. 
 
 At length Haig repeated his question. 
 
 "Why," she then said, still shutting out 
 all sight of him, " they are all talking about 
 you. They gloat over it because the bishop 
 282
 
 CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 is your uncle and be brought you here. They 
 say you've been a criminal. I have had to 
 stay here and listen to it all all and you 
 God knew where! There is nothing they 
 haven't said. Oh, John, they have even said 
 you'd you'd been in jail!" 
 
 He made towards her, but she would not 
 suffer him until he had replied. His face 
 was so calm, his jaw so squared, that, now 
 she dared a look, she saw in him only 
 righteous anger, and ventured again to 
 vent her nervousness upon her fan, sitting 
 very straight, but very white, upon the otto- 
 man. 
 
 John paused, then, full before her, and 
 answered with his eyes squarely upon her 
 face. 
 
 " They said I'd been a criminal, did they, 
 and that I'd been in jail? " 
 
 She nodded gravely. The words sounded 
 worse, if that were possible, from his lips 
 than from hers. 
 
 " Well," he said, " those were not lies." 
 
 He watched her pitilessly. Her mouth 
 tightened a little as if from physical pain. 
 283
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 The fan broke in two pieces and one fell on 
 the floor. He waited, but she did not speak. 
 She did not even sob. She only looked at 
 him, through him, past him. Pride might be 
 much, right might be much, but for the mo- 
 ment love was more than either. He bore it 
 as long as he could, and then gave way to 
 the old terror of it all. 
 
 He ran upon her, calling her name and 
 grasping her hand, but she sprang up and 
 aside, tearing her hand away with a shiver 
 of loathing and a look that he could not this 
 time misinterpret. He forgot at once the last 
 retreating glimmer of his deception, and 
 dealt only with the hardness of his own 
 estate. 
 
 " Why ? Why ? " he cried out to her. " What 
 have I done to deserve this? I went wrong. 
 I stole money. I admit that all of it. But 
 I could have got away from the consequences 
 if I'd wanted to. Instead, I was sorry for 
 what I'd done. I took all the medicine, every 
 drop of it. I was ready to receive the punish- 
 ment that they'd fixed on as the right one. I 
 took it, I say. I served ten years. Do you 
 284
 
 CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 hear me 7 Ten years! Do you know what 
 that means! Ten years the best ones out 
 of my life, ten years at hard work, deservedly, 
 with thugs and murderers for my neighbours 
 and companions. Well, I was kept up by 
 just one thing: by my resolve to accept the 
 punishment to the bitter end just so that I 
 could do right, just so that I could come out 
 a clean man and make a fresh start. I might 
 have lied and cringed and I'd never have had 
 to go to jail at all, but I wanted to be square 
 to be squared. And what have they done 
 for me in return! One man, who's worse 
 than I ever was, tells me he's better than I 
 am because he's never had the honest courage 
 to face his wrong; a second, who was a liar 
 and a cheat, fires me from the paper because 
 I'd done what I ought to do; another won't 
 allow me in his bank because I've obeyed the 
 same code of laws that makes it possible for 
 him to have a bank! Even the man who 
 taught me all and brought it all upon me 
 even he turns me out of his house because 
 I've adhered to the teachings of him and his 
 Church! Are you going to be like the rest? 
 285
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 You know me better than any of them. Are 
 you going to turn from me, too ? " 
 
 He ended in a voice broken by sobs of 
 self-pity, but Phyllis, though above her cor- 
 sage her vivid breast was heaving, remained, 
 true to her blood and breeding, dry-eyed to 
 the end. 
 
 " I didn't know you ! " she replied. " It's 
 just as I thought. I didn't know you. 
 Square? Do you call it square or high- 
 minded to deceive me the way you've done? 
 Was that in line with all the fine things 
 you've just been ascribing to yourself? 
 Why, your whole acquaintance with me 
 has been one black lie from beginning to 
 end!" 
 
 But John was more seriously poisoned by 
 the weeds of the world than he had guessed. 
 He rose, hat in hand. 
 
 "It's not that," he said slowly. "You 
 could easily see how I'd hesitate about tell- 
 ing you, and you must know that I'd have 
 told you some day. But it's not that. It's 
 not that I haven't told you. You wouldn't 
 have let me near you in the start if I had. 
 286
 
 CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 It's that I was in jail. You're just like the 
 rest." 
 
 " Whether I'd have let you go on if you'd 
 told me in time ! " she returned. " That's 
 nothing to do with it. It was your plain duty 
 to tell me, happen what might to yourself. 
 But instead everybody in the world seems to 
 have known it before I did." 
 
 " Yes," he said, turning to go. " ' Every- 
 body knew.' That's it. But there's more 
 than even that," he added bitterly from the 
 shadow of the doorway. " There's just what 
 I said there was. You may think it's because 
 I didn't tell you. But it's really all because, 
 to right what was wrong, I've done what was 
 right. It's because I've been in jail." 
 
 287
 
 XXI 
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 His insensible fears had been right; this 
 was, indeed, the ultimate tragedy. 
 
 He left her house crushed by the ordeal. 
 Unconsciously, he found, he had been keep- 
 ing in his heart one little corner consecrated 
 to his earlier ethical convictions. Now the 
 high priestess had forsaken the shrine. 
 
 He went back to his new lodging, a miser- 
 able, sloping-roofed, brick-walled garret in 
 the roughest quarter of the city, and, for the 
 second time in the past few weeks, was re- 
 lieved to find Newton absent. He sat down 
 on the low edge of his ramshackle bed and 
 tried hard to think it over. 
 
 Logical thought, however, was slow in 
 coming. He was sensible of only one feel- 
 ing: the desire to run away. This last blow, 
 he believed, had torn asunder the weak life- 
 288
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 raft on which he had escaped from the wreck 
 of his manhood. He had no longer any de- 
 sire to live. He wanted only to crawl into 
 some hole into any corner and hide. But 
 even that, he bitterly realized, required 
 money without money a man might not de- 
 cently even die and he had now next to 
 nothing. For the nonce only the coward was 
 left in him. With the faith of Phyllis he felt 
 that he could easily have fought on ; without 
 it he simply ceased to care. One thing alone 
 was left him the false pride, born of insane 
 hatred, that forbade an appeal to Gwynne. 
 Yet the bishop was left, and, upon the 
 thought, his debased soul drove him to his 
 uncle's door. 
 
 The servant was palpably embarrassed. 
 
 " I'm very sorry, Mr. Haig," he apolo- 
 gized, " but Dr. Osgood isn't in." 
 
 " Nor my aunt? " 
 
 " Nor Mrs. Osgood, sir." 
 
 " Well, where is my uncle, and when will 
 he be back? " 
 
 The servant collapsed. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. John," he began, " you've al- 
 289
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 ways been kind to me, but it's orders, sir, 
 positive orders this very day, and as much 
 as me job's worth, sir!" 
 
 Haig turned away with a bitter heart. It 
 was not so much that he had so lowered him- 
 self as that he should have been so patently 
 expected to do it. But there again arose his 
 pride. Very well, he could wait. Tramp 
 he would not. He could wait a month or two 
 a year, if necessary. By that time he could 
 surely have saved his fare elsewhere, and 
 then he might somehow get into another land. 
 
 He went to bed, but not to sleep, and was 
 broad awake when, with the first gleam of the 
 daylight, Newton entered. 
 
 " You're late," John ventured, seeing that 
 some word was expected of him. 
 
 Newton slouched into a corner and there 
 deposited a great bundle that he had just 
 been able to get under his arm. 
 
 " Got a job," he elucidated, " an' started 
 right in on it." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Night-watchman in a factory up-town. 
 You've got to let me pay off what I owe you 
 290
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 in a day or two. But I'll tell you all about 
 the job in the morning." 
 
 The explanation was destined, however, 
 never to be forthcoming, for John was at last 
 too sleepy just then to insist, and was up 
 early next morning to begin his new work at 
 the store. Thereafter, as their hours so 
 varied, and as Tom never again referred to 
 his business, his companion, half-respectful- 
 ly, asked no questions. 
 
 He went about his work with a bold des- 
 peration which he welcomed for courage. 
 He stood behind the grimy counter in the 
 low-ceilinged shop and shovelled into the 
 scales, for slatternly women and ragged chil- 
 dren of all colours, sugar, coffee, and rice, in 
 the smallest imaginable quantities at the 
 smallest imaginable price. This from seven 
 in the morning until close upon midnight. 
 There were times when he welcomed the hard 
 work if only for the few hours of quiet sleep 
 which it was at last certain to insure. 
 
 Of Newton he saw less and less. The man 
 was generally in bed when he got up, and 
 never returned until long after John was 
 291
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 wrapped in slumber, and for several days 
 the only long conversation between them was 
 one in which they nearly came to blows over 
 Haig's refusal to consider Newton in his 
 debt. 
 
 But the already accustomed order was 
 not long to last. Haig was one day at work 
 in the store when, about noon, Tom entered, 
 flung a copy of the Globe-Express on the 
 counter, pointed a grimy finger to a certain 
 item, and, without a word of comment, re- 
 tired through the doorway of the shop. 
 
 Comment was, indeed, superfluous. John 
 picked up the paper and read the explanation 
 easily enough. 
 
 The paragraph was a brief one in the 
 day's summary of society news. It read : 
 
 "Announcement is made of the engage- 
 ment of Miss Phyllis Gwynne to Mr. Mars- 
 den Payne. Miss Gwynne is one of the most 
 charming of this season's debutantes, and the 
 first to fall captive to the wiles of the little 
 god. She is the daughter and only child of 
 William Stuyvesant Logan Gwynne. Mr. 
 Payne is also a member of one of the city's 
 292
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 best-known families, and is a man of inde- 
 pendent fortune." 
 
 John laid down the paper and turned 
 from its vulgar phrasing to measure five 
 cents' worth of tea for a fat negress. He 
 was pleased to note that his hand was quite 
 steady. 
 
 It remained so all day. He worked hard, 
 but in a dream, and when he went home he 
 was tired out too tired to be able to rouse 
 himself to the unreasonable torture which he 
 knew was awaiting the return of a clearer, 
 consciousness. 
 
 It was bitter cold, a night in early Febru- 
 ary, when the winter, as if angered by its en- 
 forced tardiness, had settled calmly down to 
 do its worst. Haig's teeth were chattering as 
 he entered the garret. The sloping roof al- 
 lowed of an upright position along but one 
 side of the room. There stood his camp-bed. 
 Newton had insisted upon sleeping at the 
 other side by the draughty bit of a window 
 let into the bare bricks close to the floor, 
 where he had to take his clothes off while in 
 a sitting posture. His own clothes John was 
 293
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE OESAK'S 
 
 just then too tired to take off at all. He 
 would rest awhile, he said, and undress later. 
 He rolled up his shabby coat and placed it by 
 the window to protect Newton, when he 
 should turn in, from the air that swept 
 through the crazy frame. Then he drew the 
 blanket about him, blew out the ill-smelling 
 lamp that stood on the floor by his pillow, 
 and, before he knew it, had fallen into an un- 
 easy doze. 
 
 He was awakened by the cold. The first 
 suspicion of morning light was already frost- 
 ily quivering through the garret, but so un- 
 certainly that he was more confused than if 
 he had opened his eyes upon complete dark- 
 ness. He could just make out that Newton's 
 bed was still empty, and he was vaguely wor- 
 ried. He was chilled to the bone and hungry, 
 but too sleepy to get up. 
 
 For some time he lay thus. Then there 
 was a sound of footsteps on the perilous 
 stairs. The sounds were hurried and uncer- 
 tain ; strange, too, they seemed, and cautious. 
 He lay with half -closed eyes, tensely alarmed. 
 
 The door opened and a figure stole in. It 
 294
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 was an unfamiliar, wilted sort of a figure, 
 bent double and breathing hard. But he 
 knew it for Tom's. It took a tip-toeing step 
 into the room, paused, turned, bolted the 
 door, and then dragged itself towards the 
 bed with a strange shambling movement. 
 Haig concluded that Newton must be drunk. 
 
 John had never seen him thus before, 
 and understood, therefore, the other's clumsy 
 attempts at getting to bed unobserved. He 
 wondered how often this had happened of 
 late, but he resolved that the etiquette of 
 the under-world would rule against the un- 
 fair advantage of even unintentional eaves- 
 dropping, and so he lay quiet. 
 
 Newton sank upon the cold floor, his head 
 fallen among the scant covers of his mattress. 
 For some time he lay thus, and John was just 
 considering whether or no to get up and un- 
 dress him when the man began that operation 
 for himself, in an awkward position, slowly 
 and with many groans. Once he cried out, 
 an odd, sharp cry, and again there was a 
 sound as if a shirt were being torn, a bit 
 at a time. At last Newton tumbled over 
 295
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 on the mattress, the operation evidently 
 complete. 
 
 There was a long period of silence, broken 
 only by the hard, repressed, but tolerably 
 regular breathing of Newton. John tried to 
 go to sleep once more, but there seemed now 
 to be something that laid its fingers on his 
 eyelids and held them inexorably open. It 
 seemed to him that the room had grown still 
 colder, that some power was keeping the 
 dawn in leash, and, chilly as was the atmos- 
 phere, it grew also uncannily oppressive. 
 
 "John!" 
 
 It was Newton's own voice, thinned a 
 trifle, but so familiar that Haig leaped half 
 out of bed. His heart beat violently, and 
 a dampness broke out upon the palms of 
 his hands. Yet he managed to control his 
 voice. 
 
 "What is it! "he asked. 
 
 " Light the lamp, please." 
 
 Never thinking of the strangeness of the 
 request, he obeyed, and rose expectant of he 
 knew not what. 
 
 " Leave it there," continued that odd 
 296
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 voice. " I don't want the light in my eyes, 
 but I want to see you. Come over here and 
 sit down where I can. Look out for your 
 head! That's it. I want to tell you some- 
 thing." 
 
 John crawled to the pallet-side and curled 
 up on the bare, rat-eaten floor, shivering with 
 the cold. He sat facing Newton, and could 
 just make out the fellow's features, which 
 seemed peaked more than ever before, and 
 very pale in the half-light of the dawn. Then 
 he glanced at the outline of the figure be- 
 neath the light covers and shivered, not from 
 the cold. There was something unnatural 
 about the thing and the way the clothes clung 
 to it. 
 
 " Look at me up here," commanded 
 Newton promptly. 
 
 John obeyed, wondering, alarmed. 
 
 "What's the trouble!" he asked. 
 
 " I'm sick." 
 
 John started to rise. 
 
 " I'll get a doctor," he said. 
 
 " Sit down," said Newton for all reply, 
 and there was that as of some greater knowl- 
 20 297
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE C^ESAK'S 
 
 edge in the way he said it. Only when Haig 
 resumed his former position did the man re- 
 lax enough from his accustomed surly tone 
 to add : " You won't do anything of the 
 damned kind. No doctors for me." 
 
 " But what is the trouble ? " John man- 
 aged to persist. 
 
 " I'm done." 
 
 "Done?" 
 
 " Yes, done cleaned out goin' t' hand in 
 my checks goin' t' croak." 
 
 He spoke with an impersonal aloofness 
 such as a hospital surgeon uses of a pauper 
 patient. 
 
 Again Haig tried to remonstrate. 
 
 " Nonsense," he said. " But if you really 
 feel bad," he added, " you must let me get a 
 doctor." 
 
 " Nothin' of th' kind, I tell you. Say, see 
 here; I've done a couple o' little favours for 
 you, haven't I? " 
 
 John nodded. 
 
 " Well, then, do this for me. I'm tellin' 
 you straight that no doctor could do anythin' 
 for me an' the less o' one we have about 
 298
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 here the better for both o' us. Gimme your 
 hand." 
 
 He stretched out a thin, bloodless palm 
 that looked, in the twilight, queer and new 
 and weak. It was almost a woman's hand 
 or a child's but, when John's met it, the 
 supple fingers closed on his like a vise, and 
 held him so tightly that he nearly screamed. 
 
 " There," remarked Newton more com- 
 posedly. " Now if you go you've got to drag 
 me along with you." 
 
 " But what's the matter? " cried John for 
 the third time. " What is it! " 
 
 "Will you promise not to go for a doc- 
 tort" 
 
 " Why should I promise! " 
 
 " That's why," said Newton, and gave a 
 twist to the arm that made John drive his 
 teeth into his lip to keep from shrieking. 
 
 " Oh, I promise ! " he wailed. 
 
 " On your honour! " 
 
 " Yes, yes. Let go ! " 
 
 Newton dropped the arm and fell back for 
 a moment or two, too weak to speak. At last 
 he muttered: 
 
 299
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CAESAR'S 
 
 " I fell and twisted something or other 
 inside of me. I've done it once or twice be- 
 fore, and the doctor himself said he'd be no 
 good next time. So there ain't no use of any 
 medicine now. I know what I'm talkin' 
 about. A man knows, I guess, when it gets 
 to be the real thing. I know better than you, 
 anyhow; it's not you that's croakin', it's me." 
 
 Again John shivered. 
 
 " Let me go ! " he begged. 
 
 "No. Didn't you promise me? You've 
 given me your word you wouldn't go, an' now 
 I'll give you mine it wouldn't be no use not 
 the least. Don't you suppose I'd have you go 
 in a minute if it was ! " 
 
 "But you might be mistaken; you must 
 be!" 
 
 He clung to the desperate hope of it, but 
 Newton was firm with the firmness of the 
 sick. 
 
 " Eot ! " he snapped. " I guess I know, I 
 tell you. The other doctor said, anyhow, 
 there wasn't anything to do but lay still." 
 
 They remained there quiet again for 
 a while. Then 
 
 300
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 "Guess you'd better put that light out," 
 said Newton. " Daylight's a-comin'." 
 
 It was coming at last, very slowly as yet, 
 but surely, almost implacably. John blew out 
 the lamp with a great blast of steaming 
 breath, and returned to his place at the bed. 
 The pale, cold light stole in through the 
 frosted pane and gradually, gradually, like 
 the remorseless, careful artist that it is, 
 drew the picture of Newton's face upon the 
 pillow. 
 
 It was a new face to John, as he had ex- 
 pected, like yet unlike the one which he had 
 known through the worst of his troubles, 
 which had always been, present or remem- 
 bered, with him in these latter days, rough, 
 but sincere and he knew it now loved. 
 But this face was not rough. The coarse 
 lines were softened; they vanished as he 
 looked, and in their place there grew upward 
 another set, a sketch in charcoal and Chinese 
 white, a thin, refined face that might, he 
 thought, have been that of a gentleman, but 
 a face, nevertheless, that bore plainly the 
 vindication of its owner's diagnosis. 
 301
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 Haig watched it fascinated, silent. The 
 great, calm eyes looked back at him from out 
 of deep bluish shadows. They understood 
 him, read him, but they did not waver, and 
 he, for his part, could not shift his gaze. 
 
 The man was going to die this man, 
 whose living hand he held, whom he had 
 known so briefly but so intimately, whom he 
 had caught a glimpse of so short a time ago 
 in the very flower of health. Death was new 
 to John. When his father died far away 
 from him he had felt its touch, but its con- 
 summation, and far less its approach, he had 
 never before witnessed. He could not now 
 realize it. He felt that something was ex- 
 pected of him, something sudden, large, melo- 
 dramatic, but he could not in any way rise to 
 the situation. He was devoured only by an 
 awesome curiosity. What was this presence I 
 How, he wondered, did it feel to die? Must 
 he some day lie thus and wait it, and did all 
 men wait it thus easily? He gripped the 
 bedclothes. He tried to steady himself, to 
 concentrate his thought to action upon some 
 little kindly ministration, but in vain. He 
 302
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 trembled at the blasphemous impudence of 
 his wonder, but he could not check it. 
 
 " Give me your hand again," said Newton 
 at last. 
 
 John obeyed quaking, and realizing that 
 he feared this thing which was occurring. 
 
 " Don't be afraid," Newton smilingly pro- 
 tested in a thin but normal tone. " I won't 
 twist it this time." Then, as they touched 
 hands : " We've been pretty good friends, 
 sort of, haven't we ? " he asked. 
 
 John nodded with an unfamiliar gravity. 
 
 " We're not the same sort," Newton went 
 on, " an' we haven't seen as much of each 
 other as girls would, but we've hit it off 
 pretty well, eh? " 
 
 Voice and words were almost cheerful, 
 but in the eyes John caught the fleeting shad- 
 ow of a timid, questioning love. To his own 
 eyes the tears sprang with a rush of selfish 
 relief. His shoulders shook with the sobs. 
 
 " Oh, don't do that," protested Newton, 
 with real feeling. Then, more sharply, " Cut 
 it out, I say," he added, " or I'll just keep 
 quiet." 
 
 303
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S 
 
 Haig managed so far to master himself as 
 to check the convulsions, but, as Newton 
 calmly, objectively continued, the tears went 
 on flowing freely and unheeded. 
 
 " Men are different from girls, I guess, 
 about them things," Tom reflectively pur- 
 sued. " They don't somehow feel the same. I 
 b'lieve women show it more an' don't feel it 
 as much. I'll tell you what it is, John, I don't 
 think, when it comes to big things, that wom- 
 en counts." 
 
 Haig saw the rude comfort so barely con- 
 cealed, and acknowledged it with a renewed 
 pressure of his fingers. 
 
 " They don't count," repeated Newton 
 wisely. " I've known 'em lots of 'em all 
 kinds. I've loved one of 'em. You mightn't 
 b'lieve it, but I have loved her just as hard 
 as you could. An' I'd have done anythin' to 
 have had her with me any time up t' yester- 
 day, but I'm givin' it t' you straight, s' help 
 me God, I am I wouldn't want her now. 
 Girls don't understand an' men do. That's 
 the dif'rence. Women'll laugh a lot or cry 
 a lot bless 'em! but they just don't know, 
 304
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 an* what a fellow wants is some one that 
 knows see! Women don't size up to th' big 
 things, an' I wouldn't trade mine for say 
 you to die alongside of." 
 
 A slight spasm shot through him and dis- 
 torted his mouth, but before John could in- 
 terpose a question he was speaking easily 
 once more. 
 
 " Now," he said, " what you want t' do is 
 t' find another friend an' another woman. It 
 may be hard t' find the friend, but there 
 won't be no trouble 'bout the woman. You're 
 a good fellow an' can do it, easy enough. 
 Women like you, an' they're all alike, ev'ry 
 one o' 'em take my word for it. It's women 
 a man loves, but it ain't so much men that he 
 likes ; it's a man. 
 
 " I ain't goin' t' talk about how much I'm 
 obliged t' you," he pursued, " for all you've 
 done for me. Don't say No ; I ain't a-goin' t' 
 talk about it. What's the good? I tried t' 
 get a graft so's I could help pay it all back, 
 but first you wouldn't let me, an' now I'm up 
 against it with a ' thank you very kindly ' 
 an' that's all. I ain't no hand at preachin', 
 305
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 neither, an' I never did take stock in fellows 
 that got good when they came to croak, but 
 there's one thing I've been thinkin' a hell of 
 a lot about for a good while, an' meant to tell 
 you before. I couldn't then, but somehow 
 things seems different now. It's this : We've 
 thought it was hard lines for 'em t' send us 
 up an' then treat us as if we hadn't squared 
 ourselves. But I've got t' thinkin' the trou- 
 ble's in us. I believe you may go to jail till 
 you rot, but you ain't square till you're 
 sorry." 
 
 A shaft of anaemic sunlight shot its 
 startled way into the room, and Newton sat 
 half-way up in bed. 
 
 " There," he said reproachfully, " I'm 
 keepin' you from your work. There was a 
 lot I wanted to say along that line, an' there 
 was something about what I wanted you to 
 do afterward. But I'm forgettin', an', 
 anyhow, you must get to the store now." 
 
 John thrust an arm about his friend an 
 arm, on the instant, firm enough. 
 
 "Why," he protested, "you don't sup- 
 pose, do you, I'd leave you now?" 
 306
 
 THE KISS OF DEATH 
 
 " Sure," said Newton cheerfully. 
 " Work's work. It's got to be done whoever 
 lives or dies. You've had a hard enough time 
 gettin' this job. You mustn't lose it now. 
 That old Jew's a screw an' I guess just at 
 the last a fellow doesn't know whether he's 
 alone or not. Let me lie back again." 
 
 " I won't go," said John. 
 
 " You must," persisted Newton. 
 
 He spoke with vigour, and then, as if con- 
 sequent upon the effort, as if even in this he 
 wished to serve his friend, the end came sud- 
 denly. Another spasm contorted the face. 
 The man struggled again to a sitting posture. 
 He gasped for breath. But he brushed aside 
 impatiently John's proffered support, and, 
 panting loudly, held out his hand. 
 
 Haig gripped it. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Newton. 
 
 John's dry lips moved noiselessly. 
 
 Newton tried to smile, but his face was 
 twisted like a gargoyle's. His eyes closed, 
 snapped open, stared. His jaw fell, his knees 
 shot upward beneath the covers. A little 
 line of dark crimson appeared at the pale 
 307
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE C^ESAK'S 
 
 corners of his mouth ; it overflowed upon his 
 chin. There was a furtive movement of the 
 free hand; the grasp of the other tightened 
 in a sudden mighty clinch that made John 
 yell with pain. And with that cry ringing 
 among the low rafters, Tom Newton col- 
 lapsed gently, almost slowly, upon his pillow. 
 However ignorant a man may be of death, 
 he knows it when he sees it, and John, after 
 one moment of suspense, closed the horrid, 
 empty eyes. Then he drew back the blanket 
 to compose the dead man's limbs, and, in so 
 doing, wrenched a rough bandage and dis- 
 closed a blue-black bullet-hole in Newton's 
 breast. 
 
 308
 
 XXII 
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 As he stood there horror-stricken there 
 came loud steps upon the stair and a hurried 
 rattling at the door. 
 
 John dropped the blanket like one de- 
 tected in a murder. Instinctively he shrank 
 into a corner, but, as the rattling continued, 
 he speedily realized that the panels could 
 offer no lasting resistance to attack, and at 
 once strode forward and slipped back the 
 bolt. 
 
 " Ricker ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " What's left ! " panted the nearly ex- 
 hausted reporter, flashing his teeth in a ner- 
 vous grin. " I've got bad news for you." He 
 came a step into the room. " What's that? " 
 he cried suddenly, pointing to the thing upon 
 the bed. But then, turning as quickly, 
 " Never mind," he added, " I'd better not 
 know. I'm running enough risks as it is." 
 309
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 " But what's the news? " asked John, once 
 more a-tremble. 
 
 " Been doin' police. Early this morning 
 heard a job I thought you might be mixed 
 up in from what they said at the Front, an' 
 been hunting you ever since." 
 
 "A job?" 
 
 " Sure. Oh, for Heaven's sake don't try a 
 bluff now ! You haven't time." 
 
 "But what was it !" 
 
 " That stiff of a sexton you were mixed up 
 with was recognised robbin' a house just 
 as I was quittin' work at Central Station the 
 news came in an' it was Billy Gwynne's 
 house, an' old Gwynne blazed a hole into him. 
 Billy somehow recognised him. He got away, 
 but he left a lot of blood." 
 
 "My God!" 
 
 John spoke in a slow, toneless bewilder- 
 ment. He sank into a corner with his face 
 towards the wall. 
 
 But Jimmy was in no mood for this. 
 
 " Here, here ! " he cried, striking Haig 
 sharply upon the back. " This won't do ; 
 there ain't time, I tell you! If I can find 
 310
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 where this fellow lived, you can gamble on 
 it the cops can, too." 
 
 John turned with a vacant, stupid gaze. 
 
 "What shall I dot" he asked mechani- 
 cally. 
 
 " Get out," snapped Ricker succinctly. 
 " Get out right away. Where's your coat I 
 Got any stuff here to leave a track of you I " 
 
 His tone at last moved Haig to nervous 
 action. For an instant he was his old self. 
 
 " Stand outside," he ordered ; and then, as 
 Jimmy, nothing loath, started to obey, he 
 added upon quick second thought, " Here. I 
 guess you'd better not be seen leaving with 
 me. You'd better go. You've done a sight 
 more already than I could have asked of you. 
 I hadn't anything to do with this, but that 
 won't matter as long as it looks as if I had. 
 You've been you've been a trump. But I 
 can't thank you now for your own sake. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 There was a quick grasping of cold hands, 
 and then Ricker fled. 
 
 John hurried about the room, dumped 
 most of his belongings into the rude fire- 
 311
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 place and set a match to them, paused a mo- 
 ment gently to tie a bandage about his dead 
 friend's stiffened jaw and then, with one last 
 quick look at the gruesome result, drew -the 
 blanket over the face and ran down the 
 stairs. 
 
 But he was not running away. There had 
 burst up in his breast what he knew now to 
 be the last flame for justice. He would make 
 one more appeal to the fates, and by their 
 decision he would abide. 
 
 He had been cool enough to thrust into 
 his pocket a document Gwynne's letter to 
 Elridge that Newton had given him which, 
 rightly used, might still prove his salvation. 
 Had he had time to reflect, he might not 
 greatly have cared to be saved, but the climax 
 had all been so sudden and so startling as to 
 obliterate the artificial self from his mental 
 tablets and to leave only the primeval in- 
 stincts in action. 
 
 He made straight for Gwynne's office, and 
 
 not until he had rattled vainly at the door did 
 
 he realize how young the day still was. But 
 
 even then he did not hesitate. He went at 
 
 312
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 once to the house and sent up his own name 
 " on important business." 
 
 He waited an unconscionable time in the 
 familiar reception-room, but the place was so 
 strange and tawdry to him in the morning 
 light, and his present emotions were so 
 strong, that he could scarce recognise and 
 much less associate it in memory with the 
 scenes of his immediate past. 
 
 He was pacing the room like a caged lion, 
 filled with every sort of fear, anger, and im- 
 patience, when at last he caught a sound in 
 the hallway and turned just in time to con- 
 front the immaculate politician. 
 
 " Mr. Haig," cried this person, beaming 
 with the proper pleasure. " I am delighted." 
 
 He advanced smiling, suave, and, as ever, 
 self-contained. 
 
 " Thank you," said John, as he shrunk 
 from the hand and sank into the seat which 
 Gwynne rather ceremoniously offered him. 
 He felt coursing through his veins a novel 
 sort of desperate courage, given its being by 
 the very manner of the man, and he rushed, 
 therefore, at once to the point. "I hope 
 21 313
 
 THE THINGS THAT ABE CESAR'S 
 
 you'll be as pleased at the end of this in- 
 terview as you are now," he continued. 
 " I've come, you see, on another delicate 
 mission." 
 
 Grwynne raised a pair of politely puzzled 
 eyebrows. 
 
 " Delicate missions," he ventured, " seem 
 rather if I may say so in your line, Mr. 
 Haig." 
 
 " Perhaps," John grimly admitted. " But 
 this one's more than commonly important. 
 I've got a lot to say, but I'll be just as brief 
 as I can, and I beg that you'll try to be pa- 
 tient. On my part I won't take up a minute 
 more of your time than I can help. I'm 
 threatened, I've got to tell you, with a very 
 serious charge, a charge that you can pre- 
 vent, and that you, better than anybody else, 
 ought to know I'm in no way guilty of. I 
 want you to recollect all that you know of me. 
 I want you to remember, in short, the time I 
 visited you in your office and how I refused 
 any of the rewards, I believe you called 
 them which you offered me. And I want 
 finally to ask you if you don't think that was 
 314
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 the act of an honest man put to a supreme 
 testt" 
 
 Gwynne twirled his glasses about upon a 
 wide black tape. 
 
 " My dear sir," he began, " there was 
 never any question of " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Gwynne," broke in John, " let's 
 dispense with all that! We're both men of 
 the world and can talk to each other as such. 
 If there wasn't then any question of my hon- 
 esty, there's a mighty big one now that you'll 
 be shortly called upon to answer. With one 
 word you can answer it and quiet the whole 
 matter." 
 
 " I have not," the politician assured him, 
 " the remotest idea of what you're pleased to 
 refer to." 
 
 John, regarding him sharply, was con- 
 vinced. 
 
 "Very well," he granted with an effort. 
 "Then I'll tell you. It's this: Last night 
 your house was entered by a burglar, a man 
 who is well known to the police and has at 
 least once before served time for a somewhat 
 similar offence. You shot him and hit. He 
 315
 
 THE THINGS THAT AEE CESAR'S 
 
 managed to get away and return to his lodg- 
 ings. He thought he was unobserved, but he 
 was mistaken, and he will undoubtedly be 
 traced to his living-place. That place he 
 shared with me. I won't tell you why, or 
 what I thought of this man and still think 
 of him. I only want you to say what I'm 
 sure you must be certain of that I was in 
 no way concerned in this or any other of the 
 man's crimes." 
 
 Gwynne was listening with a surprise 
 clearly unassumed. At the end he had but 
 one awed comment to offer: 
 
 " Great Lord ! " he gasped, " you don't 
 mean to say you're going to give him up I " 
 
 John clinched his hands ; his eyes flashed. 
 
 " Hardly ! " he thundered, and then, as a 
 look of frank relief overspread the features 
 of the politician, he added : " I suppose I 
 ought to tell you that I couldn't give him up 
 even if I wanted to." 
 
 " Has he skipped ? " asked Gwynne. 
 
 " He is dead," said John. 
 
 Gwynne' s mouth opened to form a sudden 
 question, and then stiffened. His eyes grew 
 316
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 wide in fright. He passed a hand across 
 them and took a few nervous turns up and 
 down the room. At the end of his walk he 
 stopped short before John's chair, his hands 
 clasped behind his back. His face was vis- 
 ibly softened. 
 
 " Mr. Haig," he began, " I don't mind tell- 
 ing you that you've gone up in my opinion 
 several pegs. I generally know men, and 
 when you sprang this story on me I really 
 thought for a minute that you were here to 
 peach. I can't tell you how relieved I am. I 
 have to add only one thing: of course I 
 know I was quite within my rights in shoot- 
 ing this fellow, but it's a big business, killing 
 a man, and if you prove to be correct in say- 
 ing that he's really dead, why, naturally, that 
 ends the case. It would be preposterous to 
 suppose that you were in any way concerned 
 in it." 
 
 John had waited with head lowered and 
 teeth set, ready for a fight. As he listened 
 his antagonism fell from him, and, at the con- 
 clusion, he rose, fumbling in his pockets. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Gwynne," he said. " I 
 317
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 know what that means you'll do at the Front. 
 There's no need of the case ever going past 
 the coroner. I guess I pretty generally mis- 
 understood you " 
 
 " We've misunderstood each other," cor- 
 rected Gwynne. 
 
 " Well, that's a pleasant way to put it. 
 At any rate, I feel I've done you an injustice. 
 There's now no use in concealing from you 
 that I thought you'd throw me down on this 
 if you could, and I'd come here to fight you. 
 But you've been everything you should be, 
 and I'm ready to hand over my ammunition." 
 He drew out a letter and held it between his 
 trembling fingers. " We have buried the 
 hatchet, I take it ? " he added. 
 
 Gwynne spread out his hands. 
 
 " My dear sir ! " he sufficiently exclaimed. 
 Then, for greater lucidity : " It remains only 
 for me to call up police headquarters and 
 then to give this unfortunate man a quiet and 
 decent burial." 
 
 " Then," said John, " here's your letter." 
 And he prepared to leave. 
 
 " My letter ? " asked Gwynne. 
 318
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 He took the note; recognised it with the 
 mere flutter of an eyelid; made sure by a 
 second glance of its authenticity; stowed it 
 hurriedly away, and turned his quick eye 
 upon his visitor. 
 
 " I don't want to keep you," he apologized, 
 " and you mustn't feel that I consider I've 
 any great title to ask you the question, but I 
 should rather like to know how you came by 
 this." 
 
 " No one else has seen it," John assured 
 him. "It was sent me, in return for a 
 favour, by the man you wrote it to, and 
 I think I have a right to do with it as I 
 choose." 
 
 " Hum. And so you give it to met " 
 
 Haig nodded. 
 
 For another moment Gwynne regarded 
 him in silence. 
 
 " Upon my soul," he ejaculated, " I don't 
 know you yet! But I'm sure of one thing, 
 you may be certain: whether you're devilish 
 good or devilish deep, I'm more obliged to 
 you than I care to say, and you're, in either 
 case, one of the few kinds of men I admire 
 319
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 and need. May I ask one last favour of you, 
 then!" 
 
 John assented. 
 
 "It's only to wait here for ten minutes. 
 I'll be back, no doubt, in really less than 
 that." 
 
 It was a good quarter-hour, however, be- 
 fore he reappeared, and to John the time 
 seemed thrice that long. He was at first be- 
 wildered and then suspicious, but, just as he 
 was making ready to fly, Gwynne was there 
 once more, a visible confutation of his unjust 
 doubts. 
 
 "Fm sorry to have kept you," he ex- 
 plained, " but there were one or two things 
 that I had to arrange. Now, Mr. Haig, this 
 time I'm not going to ask you your price, but 
 I am going to repeat that you've won my ad- 
 miration, and that you've honestly and hon- 
 ourably put me so far in your debt that any- 
 thing I can do for you anything at all 
 won't seem too much. No don't speak. I 
 must hurry away, but you must wait here a 
 little and think it over. It's a bit sudden, I 
 know. I want only to add that I now under- 
 320
 
 THE GRATITUDE OF KINGS 
 
 stand thoroughly all" he spoke with be- 
 nevolent but significant emphasis " all that 
 you want, and, as I've said, I don't think you 
 can ask anything that I'll consider I can't 
 gladly do for you." 
 
 With a rush of blood to his face, with a 
 tingle of the nerves in his finger-tips, Haig 
 took the meaning. He gasped at what he 
 thought the monstrosity of it, and, as he won- 
 dered open-mouthed, there returned to him 
 the memory of that paragraph in the paper 
 of the day before, and the silent misery that 
 had followed the sight of it. Then the shock 
 had dulled him, and later the subsequent 
 tragedy had forbidden its intrusion into the 
 foreground of his mental life. But now he 
 took, as from afar, his whole view of the 
 thing; slowly, painfully, but still from afar, 
 for there was yet he thanked Heaven left 
 him this grain of self-respect. 
 
 " No, Mr. Gwynne," he said, " no, thank 
 you, there is nothing nothing further which 
 you can do for me." 
 
 But Gwynne had left the room. 
 
 321
 
 XXIII 
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 AND as Haig turned to hurry after the re- 
 treating politician Phyllis barred the way. 
 
 She stood between the curtains, a hand 
 upon each, a pathetic, white-faced figure, 
 which nevertheless looked him in the eyes 
 with steadfast appeal. 
 
 John started back. 
 
 " I heard you," she explained in a low, 
 monotonous voice. 
 
 " You heard me ? " he repeated. " I I 
 beg your pardon. I had no idea I assure 
 you that I had no idea at all " 
 
 " That I was eavesdropping? Well, I 
 might not call it that but I make no denials. 
 You spoke rather loud But no, I don't 
 make denials, for, after all, what does it 
 matter since, although I heard you, I am 
 here?" 
 
 322
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 John's heart leaped as he regarded her. 
 Love with something that was near kin to 
 hate fought for the possession of him. All 
 his pent-up desire contended with his new- 
 born anger to drive him mad and to force a 
 return to the primeval manhood. 
 
 " Then," he said brutally, " if you heard 
 me, you understand how I regard this matter 
 you understand it better than I could tell 
 you to your face, no doubt, for, there's no 
 denying it, I'm still a coward." 
 
 As if to ward away the cruelty of his blow 
 she put up a trembling little hand. 
 
 " Don't," she said feebly, and leaned 
 against the door-post for support. 
 
 He was still unappeased. 
 
 " I have spoken," he returned, " the 
 truth," and added, somewhat more generous- 
 ly, " I'm sorry it hurts you, but that's usually 
 the way with truths. I can't conscientiously 
 take back one word of it." 
 
 Phyllis spoke with a slight return of 
 strength and spirit. 
 
 " I want you," she answered him, " I want 
 you to listen to me. I'm not asking you for 
 323
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 your mercy. Don't suppose that I am. I am 
 asking you only for justice " 
 
 " That's one of the many things that are 
 not to be had in this world," growled John. 
 
 She did not regard his reply. 
 
 " I know you've condemned me," she hur- 
 ried on. " I know that you think I've done 
 something wrong, something shameful, and 
 I can almost admire you for standing so by 
 your colours but that gives me all the more 
 hope and right to ask that you don't condemn 
 me unheard." 
 
 John smiled grimly. 
 
 "And I?" he cried. "Who has ever 
 granted me that right? Least of all have 
 you ! " 
 
 "You forget," she replied steadily. 
 " That is just the point. You had a thou- 
 sand chances and took none of them." 
 
 He brushed aside her argument with a 
 gesture of impatience. 
 
 "Where's the use of talking any more 
 about it?" he asked. "Can't you see that 
 we'll never understand each other ? " 
 
 "Perhaps," she granted him. "But at 
 324
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 all events I'm going to give you the oppor- 
 tunity to understand me. You may not care 
 anything about me I don't see how you 
 could care and lie but I'm not going to have 
 you think that I'm guilty of of what you 
 think me guilty of." 
 
 " That's a woman forever," he replied. 
 " They must eternally associate confidence 
 with love. As a matter of fact, love has no 
 more to do with confidence than it has to do 
 with politics." 
 
 " Confidence is indispensable, at all 
 events, to happy love." 
 
 " Happy love ! " he retorted. " How could 
 I know anything about that! From my ex- 
 perience I should say that love had about as 
 much to do with happiness as it has with 
 confidence." 
 
 " Just so much." 
 
 " Well, perhaps you know now. What I 
 am sure of is that it has nothing to do with 
 truth. And I know that because, as you 
 stand there now, I love you ! " 
 
 " Then," she cried, " you can understand ! 
 Can't you see how it was? The first shock 
 325
 
 THE THINGS THAT AKE CESAR'S 
 
 to me really was that you had deceived me. I 
 couldn't think that it was true till you con- 
 fessed it yourself, but then the shock was 
 that you had kept it all from me, while you 
 were saying with the same breath that you 
 loved me. It was more than wrong, too, it 
 was foolish, for, as you see now, I might 
 have saved you everything. But, above all, 
 it was wrong, and that is what I first felt. 
 Later you were away again. Nobody knew 
 where you were, and I knew only that you'd 
 gone away saying that you didn't care any- 
 thing about me. When you could deceive me, 
 I said, you couldn't love me. I only took you 
 at your own word, and so I was the readier 
 to accept the position of all the world. It's 
 only what I've been brought up to. Can't 
 you see what it means'? I did come then to 
 think that you were bad, and that I could 
 never love you again." 
 
 She had taken a step forward towards 
 him and was pleading with an ingenuous 
 grace, enhanced not a little by the fact that 
 as yet she was utterly unconscious that it 
 was indeed love and not justice that she was 
 326
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 asking. She hesitated an instant and then 
 pursued : 
 
 " I was wild with grief. I didn't go out 
 to lots of places that I should have gone to, 
 and I cried myself to sleep night after night. 
 Then Marsden Payne told me that he loved 
 me. I've known him ever since I was a little 
 bit of a girl, and I was crazy with grief and 
 pride. I think what I most wanted was to 
 have people believe I didn't care, and so I I 
 took him." 
 
 John had been listening with the mixed 
 feelings which had assumed possession of 
 him upon this first new sight of her, but, as 
 she proceeded, the pity that is the better part 
 of love for women had gradually overcome 
 the pride which is the larger portion of all 
 anger. He was ready to surrender complete- 
 ly when she mentioned the name of Payne. 
 At that he stiffened into rebuke. 
 
 "Well," he said conclusively, "you've 
 taken him." 
 
 She looked into his unyielding eyes and, 
 with a little stifled sob, flung herself upon his 
 breast. Her pride, which had served her so 
 327
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 ill so long to deceive herself, could not last 
 in his sight. 
 
 " John, John ! " she cried. " Forgive me I 
 Please, please forgive me! I wasn't going 
 to tell you ever but I no sooner said * Yes > 
 to him than I knew it was only you that it 
 never, never, could be anybody else as long 
 as the world lasts 1 " 
 
 She threw her arms about his neck, but 
 Haig, although he shook with inward strug- 
 gle, would not respond in kind. Above all 
 his other emotions, and mastering them all, 
 there came upon him, as if with her touch, 
 the discovery that all the while he had never 
 fundamentally retreated from his original 
 position as a claimant of clearly established 
 rights before the tribunal of the world. 
 Through his every disappointment with its 
 superficial effects, he had kept, deep in his 
 heart, to his appeal for those rights. Even 
 in his last weak visit to the bishop's he saw 
 now a hatred for that frailty; even during 
 his employment in the bank he had not gone, 
 as he had to his own soul pretended, over to 
 the enemy. No, the choice had not yet finally 
 328
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 been made; it was to be made this day for- 
 ever, and it was Phyllis who was pressing 
 upon him the issue. 
 
 Apart from the material difficulties, he 
 reflected that to concede to her would be to 
 concede all. 
 
 " You thought as every one else did," he 
 repeated. 
 
 " Only for a little while, dear, only for a 
 little while, though it did seem years to me." 
 
 He looked down at her and trembled. He 
 even permitted himself momentarily to dally 
 with the danger. 
 
 " Why, from your own point of view," he 
 vainly remonstrated, " it's impossible ! Your 
 world knows the truth about me, and con- 
 strues it accordingly. And you are of your 
 world." 
 
 " No, no," she sought to assure him. " I 
 know now that you only deceived me for 
 what you thought was best. But I'm afraid 
 I gave you a wrong impression about the 
 others knowing. I meant only the bishop and 
 Mrs. Osgood. They seemed a great many 
 when I didn't know it at all." 
 22 329
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 " Then the others " 
 
 " The bishop said you'd gone away on a 
 long trip and I said so, too. There's an- 
 other thing I didn't mean to tell you! But 
 you see, I'm telling you now." 
 
 In his heart John knew that he loved her, 
 and he would rather a thousand times that 
 she had not loved him than that, loving him, 
 she should, instead of offering to fight beside 
 him, proffer a bribe and tempt him to a 
 treason. 
 
 But Phyllis, changed as he had changed 
 her, was still too much of her own faith so 
 much as to suspect these shades of distinc- 
 tion. For her it was enough if he would come 
 to her and could come above the doubts of 
 the world. She continued : 
 
 " Why, if papa takes you up and he says 
 he owes you all he can do it's a mere pay- 
 ing of a debt, dear no one can believe a 
 word of the slander. It never got beyond 
 mere suspicion, anyhow, and this would end 
 it at once." 
 
 " Fealy " began John. 
 
 "Oh!" she caught at his thought, "it 
 330
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 hasn't got any farther with the newspaper 
 people or the bank. The newspaper people 
 can easily be told that they were mistaken 
 that papa was, too ; and as for the bank, Mr. 
 Drake was to be here this morning early 
 he may be here now to see papa on some 
 especially private business, and could be told 
 almost at once." 
 
 " But I would know what they thought." 
 
 " You'd know what they thought what- 
 ever you did; you knew it before, so far as 
 the newspaper was concerned, and they'd 
 think far less if you did as I ask, John. 
 Don't you see that they can't say a word 
 about it? Nobody will ever know nobody. 
 O Jack, Jack! I never thought that I'd 
 come to ask a man to love me, but I want you 
 to love me, I want you to ! " 
 
 She raised her lips, but with a mighty 
 effort he regained his control. 
 
 " What does that matter? " he asked. 
 
 She released herself and looked up at him 
 in real awe. 
 
 " Matter? " she repeated. 
 
 "Yes, what does that count!" 
 331
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 She straightened herself instantly. 
 
 " Then," she said, " you want to tell me 
 that you don't care anything about me 1 " 
 
 He looked at her longingly. 
 
 " I care for you," he replied, " more than 
 I ever did before." 
 
 She gave a short, small cry of joy. 
 
 " But then why " she hesitated. 
 
 "Because," he annoyedly explained, 
 "haven't you just said that you'd engaged 
 yourself to Payne ! " 
 
 " Oh," she could laugh at it now, " what 
 a goose you are! Don't you know that's a 
 woman's privilege ? " 
 
 Considering his former attitude towards 
 her, he was marvellously righteous. 
 
 " It's nobody's privilege to break their 
 word." 
 
 "But I don't love him!" 
 
 " You knew that when you told him that 
 you did. Besides, he probably won't mind 
 that." 
 
 " But you came first, Jack." 
 
 " Yes, but you had broken with me when 
 
 he came along." 
 
 332
 
 PROSPEROUS ART 
 
 " Well, I'll break with him now. I'll write 
 him at once only too gladly." 
 
 " Yes, ' too gladly.' But you've passed 
 your word, and you haven't been released." 
 
 " It's for the woman to do the releasing, 
 please. And, anyhow, Jack Oh, you don't 
 understand these things ! " 
 
 A sudden revulsion swept over him. 
 
 " No," he cried, " I don't ! I don't under- 
 stand it! You can't love me. No woman 
 could love a man and think of him as you 
 have thought of me. I don't believe that I 
 can really love you, after all, because of the 
 way I have had to think of you. We say we 
 love each other now, but what does that sig- 
 nify? Only that we're carried away by the 
 time and the circumstances. They can't last 
 forever. And in the future what would the 
 memory of all that's dead and gone be to us 1 
 More than a dead memory ! No," he groaned, 
 " it can't be ! I wish to God it could, but it 
 can't be ! " 
 
 He made again for the door, but she 
 would not have him go. Like every woman 
 who has once flung away her pride, she could 
 333
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE C^SAK'S 
 
 not have recovered it had she so wished. She 
 clung about his neck and plead with him, pas- 
 sionately, incoherently, but persistently. 
 
 He would not be moved, yet still she clung 
 to him. He shook himself free, and her arms, 
 as in that early vision of her in the street, 
 slipped from his neck to his waist, to his 
 knees, to his feet. And as he at last flung 
 wide the door she had half-risen only for 
 one parting word: 
 
 " Grant me," she said with outstretched 
 arms, " one thing. You said we were moved 
 by the circumstances of the moment. Don't 
 don't say Yes or No until to-night I " 
 
 He looked back at her, hesitated, rushed 
 for her and devoured her in a great embrace. 
 He felt that if he gave in to her it would be 
 not because he wished to make his peace with 
 the world, but because the world offered 
 Phyllis as a prize, because the hook was 
 baited with a woman. A woman once more ; 
 no longer the only one. He was kissing, he 
 thought, his own frenzy, his own dream, bid- 
 ding good-bye to his ideal of women, but 
 feeding, at the same time, his primitive and 
 334
 
 PEOSPEEOUS AET 
 
 even stronger passion for this one woman in 
 his arms. 
 
 Then, with her question still unanswered, 
 he ran out of the room, out of the house, and 
 made for home. 
 
 Home ! Eegardless of all danger ready, 
 indeed, to welcome any battle that was open, 
 hard, physical he almost slammed, but 
 scorned now to lock, the quivering door. Yet, 
 once inside, he paused and looked about the 
 place with an involuntary shudder. A few 
 square feet of rat-eaten floor; a dirty, 
 draughty window ; a miserable fireplace ; low, 
 black rafters, and a rough brick wall: this 
 was his home. And that still form upon a 
 disordered mattress that was its only other 
 tenant. 
 
 Here, then, he finally determined, was the 
 turn of his fortunes at the last. This was 
 more the cross-roads of his destiny than ever 
 the day he left the jail. Whichever way he 
 turned and with whatsoever of pleasure or 
 bitterness, lie was now sure that he made to- 
 wards moral defeat. The battle was over and 
 335
 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE CESAR'S 
 
 lost. He went to the pallet by the window 
 and looked long and searchingly at the un- 
 answering features refined by the delicate 
 fingers of death. He dropped the blanket 
 and, sinking upon his own bed, tried hard to 
 see his way in vain. One only of two things 
 remained now for him to do: to curse God 
 and die as Newton had died, or to join again 
 and forever the ranks of the world and re- 
 ceive forever the world's golden pay. 
 
 THE END 
 
 336
 
 MR. STOCKTON'S LAST NOVEL. 
 
 Kate Bonnet. 
 
 The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter. By 
 FRANK R. STOCKTON. Illustrated by A. I. 
 Keller and H. S. Potter. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50, 
 
 "A capital story." London Times. 
 
 " A rattling good story." New York Sun. 
 
 " A sweet and charming story." Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 " A delightfully cheerful book." New York Tribunt. 
 
 " Most ludicrous story of the year." New York Journal. 
 
 "Just the book to make a dull day bright." Baltimore Sun. 
 
 "One of Stockton's most delicious creations." Boston Budget. 
 
 "Alive, wide-awake, bold, hesitate-at-nothing story. "-Boston Herald. 
 
 "A bright and entertaining tale full of exciting incident." London 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 " A characteristic blending of interesting realism and absurdity." 
 New York Life. 
 
 " Full of love, incident, adventure, and true Stocktonian humor." 
 Nashville, Tenn., American. 
 
 " Even with the charming heroine in tears, the reader remains 
 cheerful." New York Outlook. 
 
 " Nothing so fresh, picturesque, and amusing has been presented for 
 a long time.' New York Press. 
 
 " A story of adventure written in Mr. Stockton's characteristic 
 vein." New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " The funniest part of the story is the serene gravity with which the 
 author chronicles events." San Francisco Argonaut. 
 
 " The appearance of a new book by Frank Stockton stirs one to an 
 agreeable flicker of anticipation." New York Literary Digest. 
 
 " It is charming, and no one but Mr. Stockton could have written 
 it." JULIAN HAWTHORNE, in the Minneapolis Tribune. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 RECENT FICTION. 
 
 Heralds of Empire. 
 
 By A. C. LAUT, Author of "Lords of the North." izmo. 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 A story that tells of the days of Charles II, of the refugees of Boston Town, of Puri- 
 tanism and Witchcraft, and of Radisson, that picturesque adventurer who juggled 
 empires and who changed allegiance as readily as he would change his coat. There is 
 a tender love romance running through the tale that reaches a satisfactory conclusion. 
 The language is the quaint English of the period, making the book all the more charm- 
 ing on that account. 
 
 Deep-Sea Plundering^. 
 
 By FRANK T. BULLEN, Author of " The Cruise of the 
 Cachalot," "The Apostles of the Southeast," etc. Illustrated, 
 izmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 Mr. Bullen, who has proved himself a past master of deep-water literature, afford* 
 in these pages a series of brilliant and often dramatic pictures of the sailor's life and 
 adventures. While the picturesque enters into his book, he deals also with the stern 
 verities of fo'c'sle life, and he brings before the reader strange and bewildering phases 
 of deep-water adventuring which will lay firm hold upon the imagination. The thrill- 
 ing experiences that the unknown sailor faces as a mere incident of his daily life, and 
 the hardships he encounters, are pictured with the vividness and insight that the author 
 of " The Cruise of the Cachalot " always realizes so forcibly and inevitably in his bril- 
 liant pages. 
 
 Many Waters. 
 
 A Story of New York. By ROBERT SHACKLETON. i zmo. 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " An exciting tale, and its hold on one's interest is quite magnetic." Philadelphia 
 Item. 
 
 " Written in good newspaper English; terse, dramatic,and plunging straight ahead, 
 with none of the sweet-scented labyrinths of soliloquy in which the average professional 
 litterateur halts 1 to rest." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 A Damsel or Two. 
 
 A Novel. By F. FRANKFORT MOORE, Author of " The 
 Jessamy Bride," "A Nest of Linnets," etc. i zmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 _ An officer and a gentleman and a Napoleon of finance are two types contrasted in 
 this interesting story of modern London, suggesting some of the "promotions" and 
 consequent entanglements of recent years and involving a tale of love and loyal friend- 
 ship. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 RECENT FICTION. 
 
 The Man Who Knew Better. 
 
 By T. GALLON, tuthor of "Tatterley," etc. Illustrated by 
 Gordon Browne. 8vo. Cloth, {1.50. 
 
 "The best Christinas story that has appeared since the death of Charles 
 Dickens. . . . It is an admirably written story, and merits warm welcome and 
 broad recognition." Baltimore Sun. 
 
 Under the Skylights. 
 
 Jy HENRY B. FULLER, author of "The Chevalier of Pensicri- 
 Vani," "The Cliff Dwellers," etc. I zmo. Deckle edge, gilt 
 top, 1 1. so. 
 
 The charming humor, delightful flavor, and refined quality of Mr. Fuller's 
 work impart a peculiar zest to this subtly satirical picture of the extraordinary 
 vicissitudes of arts and letters in a Western metropolis. 
 
 The Apostles of the Southeast. 
 
 By FRANK T. BULLEN, author of "The Cruise of the Cachalot," 
 "Idyls of the Sea," etc. I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " Mr. Bullen writes with a sympathy and pathetic touch rare indeed. His 
 characters are living ones, his scenes full of life and realism, and there is not a 
 page in the whole book which is not brimful of deepest interest." Phila- 
 delphia Item. 
 
 The Alien. 
 
 By F. F. MONTRESOR, author of " Into the Highways and 
 Hedges," etc. izmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 '' May be confidently commended to the most exacting reader as an absorb- 
 ing story, excellently told." Kansas City Star. 
 
 While Charlie Was Away. 
 
 By Mrs. POULTNEY BIGELOW. i6mo. Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 MB. Bigelow tells a wonderfully vivid story of a woman in London "smart" 
 life whose hunger for love involves her in perils, but finds a true way out in 
 the end. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 RECENT FICTION. 
 
 A Nest of Linnets. 
 
 By F. FRANKFORT MOORE, author of "The Jessamy Bride," 
 "A Gray Eye or So," etc. Illustrated, izmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 "That 'A Nest of Linnets * is bright, clever, and well written follows as a 
 matter of course, considering that it was written by F. Frankfort Moore." 
 Philadelphia Telegraph. 
 
 The Eternal City. 
 
 By HALL CAINK, author of "The Christian," "The Manx- 
 man," "The Bondman/* "The Deemster," etc. izmo. 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " A powerful novel, inspired by a lofty conception, and carried out with 
 unusual force. It is the greatest thing that Hall Caine has ever attempted." 
 Brooklyn Eagfe. 
 
 The Teller. 
 
 By EDWARD NOYES WESTCOTT, author of "David Harum." 
 Illustrated, izmo. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 The publishers of "David Harum" have the pleasure of presenting the 
 only other story written by the lamented Edward Noyes Westcott. Mr. West- 
 cott's business life lay with practical financial matters, and in "The Teller" he 
 has drawn upon his knowledge of life in a bank. 
 
 When Love Flies Out o' the Win- 
 dow. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. I zmo. Cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. 
 "The attention of the reader is held from start to finish, because the whole 
 plot is original, and one can not tell what is going to happen next." Wash- 
 ington Times. 
 
 The Beleaguered Forest. 
 
 By ELIA W. PEATTIE. i zmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 "'The Beleaguered Forest' is not a novel it is a romance; it is not a 
 romance it is a poem." Chicago Post. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 RECENT FICTION. 
 
 Some Women I have Known. 
 
 By MAARTEN MAARTENS, author of "God's Fool," etc. With 
 Frontispiece. I zmo. Cloth, 1.50. 
 
 " Maartcn Maartens stands head and shoulder* above the average novelist 
 of the day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative power." Batten Beacon. 
 
 The Wage of Character. 
 
 By JULIEN GORDON, author of " Mrs. Clyde," etc. With Por- 
 trait, izmo. Cloth, 1.25. 
 
 Julien Gordon's new novel is a story of the world of fashion and intrigue, 
 written with an insight, an epigrammatic force, and a realization of the dra- 
 matic and the pathetic as well as more superficial phases of life, that stamp the 
 book as one immediate and personal in its interest and convincing in its appeal 
 to the minds and to the sympathies of readers. 
 
 The Quiberon Touch. 
 
 A Romance of the Sea. By CYRUS TOWNFND BRADY, author of 
 " For the Freedom of the Sea," " The Grip of Honor," etc. 
 With Frontispiece. 1 2mo. Cloth, 1.50. 
 
 " This story has a real beauty ; it breathes of the sea. Fenimore Cooper 
 would not be ashamed to own a disciple in the school of which he was master 
 in these descriptions of the tug of war as it was in the eighteenth century between 
 battle-ships under sail." Nfw York Mail and Exfrtu. 
 
 Shipmates. 
 
 A Volume of Salt -Water Fiction. By MORGAN ROBERTSON. 
 author of " Masters of Men," etc. With Frontispiece. 12 mo. 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 When Mr. Robertson writes of the sea, the tang of the brine and the snap 
 of the sea-breeze are felt behind his words. The adventures and mysteries of 
 sea life, the humors and strange complications possible in yachting, the inner 
 tragedies of the foks'l, the delightful adventures of Finnegan in war, and the 
 original developments in the course of true love at sea, are among the vivid 
 pictures that make up a volume so vital in its interests and dramatic in its situa- 
 tions, so delightful in its quaint humor and so vigorous and stirring throughout, 
 that it will be read by sea lovers for its full flavor of the sea, and by others as a 
 refreshing tonic. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 BOOKS BY C C HOTCHKISS 
 
 The Strength of the Weak. 
 
 I zmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 The delightful outdoor quality of Mr. Hotchkiss's novel forms a charming 
 accompaniment to the adventurous happenings of the romance The author 
 has found some apt suggestions in the diary of a soldier of the New Hampshire 
 Grants, and these actual experiences have been utilized in the development of 
 the tale. The story is one of love and daring and American courage, and the 
 varying outdoor scenes which succeed each other as the tale unfolds provide a 
 picturesqueness and zest which show the increasing power of an author whose 
 previous books have won for him a large circle of admirers. 
 
 Betsy Ross. 
 
 A Romance of the Flag. I zmo. Cloth, $ i . 50. 
 
 "A novelized drama, and a right good one, too, with plenty of stir, patriot- 
 ism, and love." Neio fork World. 
 
 11 ' Betsy Ross ' reaches the American ideal in fiction. It is the long- 
 ?ooked-for American novel. Stirring, intense, dealing with great native 
 characters, and recalling some of the noblest incidents connected with our 
 national history, it is the one novel of the time that fulfills the ideal that we 
 had all conceived, but no one had before accomplished." Philadelphia Item. 
 
 In Defiance of the King. 
 
 I zmo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 
 
 " As a love romance it is charming, while it is filled with thrilling adventure 
 and deeds of patriotic daring." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " A remarkable good story. . . . The heart beats quickly, and we feel 
 ourselves taking a part in the exciting scenes described, the popular breeze seizes 
 upon us and whirls us away into the tumult of war." Chicago Evening Past. 
 
 A Colonial Free-Lance. 
 
 I zmo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 
 
 " A fine, stirring picture of the period, full of brave deeds, startling though 
 not improbable incidents, and of absorbing interest from beginning to end." 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 " A brave, moving, spirited, readable romance. Every one of his pages is 
 aglow with the fire of patriotism, the vigor of adventure, and the daring of 
 reckless bravery." Washington Times. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 BOOKS BY FRANK T. BULLEN. 
 Deep-Sea Plunderings. 
 
 Illustrated, izmo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 Mr. Bullen, who has proved himself a past master of deep-water litera- 
 ture, affords in these pages a series of brilliant and often dramatic pictures 
 of the sailor's life and adventures. While the picturesque enters into his 
 book, he deals also with the stern verities of fo'c'sle life, and he brings 
 before the reader strange and bewildering phases of deep-water adventuring 
 which will lay firm hold upon the imagination. 
 
 The Apostles of the Southeast. 
 
 i 2 m<>. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " Mr. Bullen's characters are living ones, his scenes full of life and real- 
 ism, and there is not a page in the whole book which is not brimful of 
 deepest interest." Philadelphia Item. 
 
 The Log of a Sea-Waif. 
 
 Being Recollections of the First Four Years of my Sea 
 Life. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " So strong, original, and thrilling as to hold captive the attention of 
 the mature as well as of the youthful reader. " Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
 The Cruise of the Cachalot, 
 
 Round the World after Sperm Whales. Illustrated. i2mo. 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 14 It is immense there is no other word. I've never read anything that 
 equals it in its deep-sea wonder and mystery, nor do I think that any book 
 before has so completely covered the whole business of whale-fishing, and, at 
 the same time, given such real and new sea pictures. I congratulate you most 
 heartily. It's a new world you've opened the door to." Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 Idylls of the Sea. 
 
 i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 " Amplifies and intensifies the picture of the sea which Mr. Bullen had 
 already produced. . . . Calm, shipwreck, the surface and depths of the sea, 
 the monsters of the deep, superstitions and tales of the sailors all find a 
 place in this strange and exciting book." Chicago Times-Herald. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 RECENT FICTION. 
 
 The Way of Escape. 
 
 By GRAHAM TRAVERS (Margaret Todd, M. D.), author 
 of " Mona Maclean," " Windyhaugh," etc. i2mo. Cloth, 
 $1.50. 
 
 1 A classic." Philadelphia Item. 
 
 ' Exceptionally good." New York Tribune. 
 
 ' Undeniably clever." London Literary World. 
 
 1 Strong in dramatic incident. " Boston Budget. 
 
 'A work of unusual power." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 1 Vera is a marvellous piece of womanhood." London Star. 
 
 Those Delightful Americans. 
 
 By Mrs. EVERARD COTES (Sara Jeannette Duncan), 
 author of "An American Girl in London," "A Voyage 
 of Consolation," etc. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 "A particularly clever and amusing book." New York Sun. 
 
 " Full of clever, humorous, oftentimes subtle insights into the American 
 character. " Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 My Captive. 
 
 By J. A. ALTSHELER, author of "The Wilderness 
 Road," "In Circling Camps," etc. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 "A spirited and interesting narrative." Philadelphia Press. 
 
 "A mightily interesting little tale of the Revolution. . . . By all odds the 
 cleverest tale Mr. Altsheler has written." Philadelphia Item. 
 
 The Outlaws. 
 
 A Story of the Building of the West. By LE ROY 
 ARMSTRONG. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 " Promises well for the literary career of its author." Philadelphia Press. 
 "Full of life and picturesqueness, spirited and brimming with incident 
 and character." Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 T' Bacca Queen. 
 
 By T. WILSON WILSON. i2mo. Cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 
 50 cents. 
 
 " Human passions are depicted with a vividness amounting to a triumph 
 for the author, and the novelty of the plot, the strength of the characters in 
 the book, and its forceful style will appeal strongly to the reader." Cleve- 
 land World. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 lll III II Ml |!H||I|||||! 
 
 A 001 351 179 5 
 
 S. STRATFORD o 
 tUL&RS AND 
 642-44 SO. MAIN