e
 
 BERTRANO SMITH 
 
 140 Pacific Ave. 
 
 I>ONG BEACH,
 
 2047020
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN.
 
 
 THE 
 
 LAUNCHING 
 
 OF A MAN 
 
 
 X 
 
 
 
 BY 
 
 STANLEY 
 WATERLOO 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "ARMAGEDDON" 
 " STORY OF AB " 
 "A MAN AND A WOMAN" 
 ETC. 
 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY. PUBLISHERS. 
 
 MDCCCXCIX.
 
 Copyright, 1899, by Rand, McNally & Co.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I AT THE UNIVERSITY 5 
 
 II THE RELATIONS OF THINGS 13 
 
 III A BATTLE ROYAL, 21 
 
 IV As TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY, 31 
 
 V THE GREAT BALL GAME, 42 
 
 VI CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR, 51 
 
 VII SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE, 61 
 
 VIII A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN, 70 
 
 IX A NORTHWARD DRIFT, 81 
 
 X AN OASIS IN THE FOREST, 88 
 
 XI SWEET CROSS PURPOSES, 95 
 
 XII " LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY," 104 
 
 XIII " THE WOOIN' O'T," 118 
 
 XIV A WINTER FESTIVAL, 130 
 
 XV " THE CAVE OF SILVER," 142 
 
 XVI IN A NEW WORLD 155 
 
 XVII THE PITY OF IT, 161 
 
 XVIII THE ROOM OF DEAD VANITIES, . 168 
 
 XIX SHOWN THE DOOR, 174 
 
 XX THE RELEASE OF ELSIE, 181 
 
 XXI THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN, 191 
 
 XXII AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE 203 
 
 XXIII THE HOME-COMING, 212 
 
 XXIV IN THE NORTH AGAIN 223 
 
 XXV VAGARIES, 231 
 
 XXVI " WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I," . . . 240 
 
 XXVII " MORE," 255 
 
 XXVIII JOHN HALFDAY'S ERRAND 263 
 
 XXIX THE FOOT RACE 270 
 
 XXX ROSE IN BLOOM 282
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 "J'ai un grand besoin d'un cheval." 
 
 The professor sat before a desk upon a raised 
 platform in the recitation room in which the 
 sophomores were assembled to have trouble with 
 conic sections. Upon the wall behind the professor 
 was a huge blackboard ; between him and the black- 
 board stood a young man holding in one hand a slip 
 of paper upon which a problem was indicated and 
 in the other a chalk pencil. The professor, as he 
 was situated, could not see the blackboard with- 
 out turning in his seat, as he did occasionally, to 
 note the progress of the student with the problem. 
 So it was that he did not see the sentence in 
 moderately bad French which the student had 
 written with a grin and then swiftly obliterated 
 after it had been seen by the laughing class. The 
 sentence conveyed to sympathizing friends the idea: 
 
 "I am in great need of a 'horse'." 
 
 At once half a dozen of the more mathematic- 
 ally gifted became interested in writing upon bits 
 of paper and, in a few seconds, "pat, pat, pat," 
 
 5
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 little wads, deftly flipped and unnoticed by the grim 
 questioner in front, fell at the feet of the man at the 
 board. He picked one of them up, opened it, con- 
 cealed it in the book in his hand, turned again, 
 smiled affably at the class and calmly began his 
 work again upon the problem. A "horse" or 
 "pony" meant a demonstration already in hand, 
 and he was now prepared for the emergency. 
 
 The two men, old and young, professor and 
 sophomore, were such as would attract a degree of 
 attention anywhere, though as different in appear- 
 ance as in age. Each was striking in his way, the 
 professor markedly so. He was a man perhaps 
 fifty years of age and, when a boy, he must have 
 been the most distinctly tow-headed youth of all his 
 region. Now, he was cleanly bald save for a fringe 
 of sandy hair which made more prominent and 
 striking the dome-like forehead. The eyebrows, 
 though light in color, were heavy, and imparted 
 a certain saturnine dignity to his countenance, 
 but the mouth of the professor was his most strik- 
 ing feature. It was large, very large, and two 
 immense white teeth in the front of the upper jaw 
 projected outward and, despite the fact that they 
 were close together, suggested an old white boar 
 who had wandered into the open and was about 
 selecting a victim for those same tusks. It was a 
 stern face, but there was an amelioration to its 
 ruggedness. The close observer could now and 
 then detect a twinkle in the eyes, deep set beneath 
 the looming eyebrows, and the older men in the 
 University, those whose feet were near the mountain
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY, 7 
 
 tops, gave patronizing information to the under- 
 lings to the effect that "Old Syllabus" was very 
 fine indeed. He was loved more than feared, 
 but, even to sophomores, any sort of liking for him 
 seemed, necessarily, an acquired taste. 
 
 Famous upon two continents as a mathema- 
 tician was the professor, and his text-books were 
 among the standards. He tolerated the Greek and 
 Latin professors, and others in the strictly literary 
 field, some even more widely known than he, but 
 he was not of them. How could anything in litera- 
 ure compare with the beauties of an intricate equa- 
 tion? How came it that many in his class, fine- 
 looking fellows, too, cared more for the Iliad than 
 for dalliance with the "Witch of Agnesi," that prob- 
 lem where X and Y disport themselves so gaudily? 
 He was a wonderful man, just the man for the place, 
 and even those who feared but had not yet learned 
 to love were very proud of him as one of the giants 
 of a great university faculty. 
 
 The young man behind the professor, he of the 
 flagrant performance at the blackboard, was a 
 creditable animal. Twenty years of age, dark 
 haired, about six feet in height, deep-chested and 
 big-legged, he was decidedly an athlete and, as his 
 clear face and supple motions showed, one in the 
 best of training. There was no better man 
 physically in all the sophomore class. Mentally, 
 though the features were strong and the head well- 
 shaped, there was a shade less apparent develop- 
 ment than appeared of the body. The lacking thing 
 was to come. There was a laugh in the dark eyes
 
 8 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 and a certain careless air which spoke of the day 
 rather than of the morrow. It was evident that 
 Robert Sargent, for such his name chanced to be, 
 was still, despite his thews and sinews, much of a 
 boy. He was a wholesome object, certainly, as he 
 stood at the board working rapidly, strong of jaw 
 but flush in the appreciation of life, enjoying 
 even his own half-humiliation in calling for the 
 assistance of his grinning but sympathizing class- 
 mates. 
 
 He was a Wolverine, this student at the black- 
 board, and to be a Wolverine is what no man nor 
 woman need feel ashamed for. When white men 
 first trod the forests of the lake-surrounded state 
 named Michigan they found there a creature such 
 as interested them while it created something of a 
 dread. Not "little wolf," as the ignorant think, 
 is the signification of "wolverine," but something 
 of greater dignity, an embodiment of the terrible 
 spirit of the wild life of prehistoric forests. Wonder- 
 ful in its strength and courage, a tree-climber on 
 occasion, not immense of size but with limbs nearly 
 as heavy and claws as great as those of a bear, with 
 a muzzle almost hog-like but with great white fangs, 
 the beast had still an element of the grotesque in its 
 make-up, with its sweeping bushy tail and the broad 
 bands of yellow- white upon its back and shoulders. 
 Woe to the smaller beast or the deer upon which 
 it dropped from some great low-hanging branch or 
 before whom it suddenly appeared in the dense 
 windfalls. And no lion of the Orient, no grizzly of 
 the Occident has such a pedigree, for the wolverine
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY. 9 
 
 has hardly changed his form with the passing ages, 
 and is as he was before all history began. The 
 geologists respect him as deeply as does, to-day, the 
 hunter of the far Northwest, where he is still the 
 "Indian Devil" of the trapper and an enemy not to 
 be encountered carelessly, so bloodthirsty and 
 knowing and ferocious is he. Of all the continent 
 the Michigan Peninsula was the chosen habitat of 
 the wolverine and he struggled long before back- 
 woodsmen drove him from his heritage. So endur- 
 ing was he, so desperately courageous, that his name 
 became a synonym for pluck and prowess, and 
 proudly the people of Michigan accept the nickname 
 which has been given them. It may be because the 
 state lies all between blue water that its air has such 
 a vigor to it, but, as the wolverine had, so the people 
 there have brawn and energy. Therefore, to say 
 truly of this young student at the University that he 
 was a Wolverine does him some credit. 
 
 The questioning of the class came to an end at 
 last and the professor turned to Sargent for an 
 elucidation of the bewildering problem now pre- 
 sented on the board by numerous glaring and caba- 
 listic designs. 
 
 "Go on; make your explanation. " 
 
 There was, as the young man began talking, a 
 decided lack of that fire which appertains to the 
 orator dealing with a subject which he loves. There 
 was nothing impassioned in his manner. Far from 
 it. He, metaphorically, walked in strange ways and 
 as if on eggs, but somehow he emerged from the 
 labyrinth, and, the explanation ended, looked ques-
 
 io THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 tioningly at the professor, who was smiling, more or 
 less sarcastically. 
 
 "Are you quite sure you comprehend it all, Mr. 
 Sargent?" he asked blandly. 
 
 The young man, to whom in mathematics Scylla 
 was as Charybdis, and whose galley had been ever 
 perilously near the rocks, spoke somewhat placat- 
 ingly: 
 
 4 ' It was bungling, I know my explanation. ' ' 
 
 "I cannot find it in my heart to disagree with you. 
 That will do, young gentlemen;" and the class filed 
 from the room. 
 
 Not a jot abashed by the rebuff administered was 
 the young man who had not done well at recitation. 
 There was a laugh as he joined the out-pouring, but 
 such an incident was too common with too many of 
 them to be of much importance. In other branches 
 of study Sargent could hold his own, and the demi- 
 gods in students' eyes are never dependent upon 
 their places in class for their loyal following. 
 
 As the class issued from the building out upon the 
 graveled walk, there emerged from another struc- 
 ture another class, larger in number, but, though 
 noisy, apparently less at home. It was the freshman 
 class of the year. Sargent looked toward it critically 
 and turned as the man beside him spoke : 
 
 "Those new things are lacking in all deportment. 
 When shall we begin our kindly duties in the reform- 
 atory way?" 
 
 "To-morrow, I imagine," was the careless 
 rejoinder. 
 
 "How do you think it will come out?"
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY. n 
 
 "I don't know, "said Sargent, surveying closely 
 the long line of young men whom they were passing 
 and who looked upon the sophomores much as a herd 
 of buffaloes might look upon encircling wolves. 
 "They're a well put-up lot. How, for instance, do 
 you like the look of the fellow in the brown hat? 
 Would you like a grapple with him?" 
 
 "Not I, " answered the other. "You're the man for 
 him, if matters get too personal. He's the best man 
 in the class, they say. He's bound to be in the foot- 
 ball eleven, for he's reported to have been a whale 
 that way in high school. You're in trim, but, if 
 you two meet, I think you'll have your hands full." 
 
 "Well, we'll rely upon luck and the law that new 
 troops get panicky. Were you with the crowd that 
 smoked out one of them last night?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I'm glad of it; I don't like that smoking out. I 
 believe in kindness to children. A rush is different, 
 because the odds are different. Holy Moses! 
 There's a little duffer with a cane!" 
 
 Sargent stepped from his own column and deftly 
 twitched from the hands of a natty young freshman 
 a light rattan which he was twirling in all innocence. 
 "Don't you know that you are impious and im- 
 modest?" the sophomore roared in the ears of the 
 late cane-bearer. "A freshman with a cane! It's 
 a wonder the lightnings don't fall from heaven and 
 lick you up! Young man, I've saved your life!" 
 
 There was a rallying of other freshmen around the 
 plundered one and sophomores ahead came back, but 
 there was no encounter. It was not the time for
 
 12 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 that. There was much jeering, though, and pon- 
 derous announcements by the sophomores as to what 
 the morrow would bring forth, to which the fresh- 
 men responded valiantly, though without the glib- 
 ness born of practice.
 
 THE RELATIONS OF THINGS. 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF THINGS. 
 
 In autumn, when the sky is clear, the scene 
 about one of the largest and greatest universities in 
 the world is assuredly a fine one. The huge build- 
 ings give a dignity to the campus and the sun glori- 
 fies a thousand windows, as it does the reddening 
 leaves of the trees along the broad thoroughfares 
 and upon the distant hills. Nature and man have in 
 their work combined to make a splendid picture 
 even the freshman should be glad in his new and 
 unaccustomed home but, of all there is to be seen, 
 nothing may compare with the young men. They 
 come from the mountains of the far Northwest and 
 from the distant land of grapes and oranges on the 
 western slopes of the Sierras, from Florida and Ore- 
 gon, from every state in the Union, and from Canada ; 
 youth of varying tradition, training and appearance, 
 but all led by the same ambition and destined to 
 attain, by companionship, a schooling perhaps as 
 broadening as that gained from the learned pro- 
 fessors to whom they listen daily. 
 
 Different in gait, in dress, and in pronunciation, 
 are these knowledge-seeking youths. It requires no 
 keen eye to distinguish the Texan from the Penn- 
 sylvanian, or the Californian from the Tennesseean, 
 but, as the four years of study and association slip
 
 14 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 away, the members of the great mass conform more 
 and more in garb and walk and manner, and there 
 goes forth, finally, into the world, a group of reso- 
 lute, clean-cut Americans who think little of state 
 lines and are as lacking in dialects as in prejudices. 
 The influences about them have been such as to 
 make strong men. The breeze across the hills is not 
 more wholesome. 
 
 It was October and the flurry of the opening of 
 the collegiate year was over. The returning 
 students had become domiciled and the new ones 
 who had passed examinations were settled down to 
 the life which was to them a novelty, a life the varied 
 experiences of which were all before them and 
 entered upon with mixed delight and doubtfulness. 
 Already the freshmen had decided among themselves 
 that their class contained material to make it famous 
 in future annals of the University, and lacked no con- 
 fidence that the year of their graduation would be 
 one of importance to the country. Their very 
 existence was, it is true, unnoticed by the seniors, 
 but the juniors were most friendly, and as for the 
 sophomores, they were, at best, but as the dingoes 
 of Australia or the dogs of the Deccan, creatures 
 whose friendship was impossible and who were to be 
 looked upon, at best, with apprehension. In college 
 the adversaries of each class are the classes im- 
 mediately before and behind it, the oppressors or 
 the oppressed. 
 
 Sufficient time had not yet passed for completion 
 of the curt pour-parlers in open air preceding the 
 usual merely surface class vendetta which comes up
 
 THE RELATIONS OP THINGS. 15 
 
 like a mushroom between sophomores and freshmen, 
 but the soil was tilled and waiting- and the harvest 
 promised to be plenteous. ' The crisis was imminent, 
 but affairs among the interests outside of study 
 required attention. There were class elections and 
 Greek letter fraternity matters, and, particularly 
 pressing, the necessity for work by the base-ball, 
 foot-ball, and cricket teams. In the first of these 
 young Sargent was deeply interested. He had dis- 
 tinguished himself the year before and had now 
 been elected captain. 
 
 Foot-ball was growing in favor in the University. 
 There is no better discipline of body and of temper 
 than that gained in foot-ball, and even those who 
 were not enthusiastic over the game often became 
 members of the two half-trained teams who made 
 great clamor in their contests. There existed then 
 no such strict rules as have come to regulate the 
 game of late, and, though accidents were rare, there 
 were many noble contests. Asked what the rules 
 were by a Rugby man who had entered the Uni- 
 versity, the captain of one team responded blithely : 
 "There are none to speak of, save that no man is 
 allowed to use an axe." The ball was sometimes of 
 rubber, and its existence was always brief. 
 
 To cricket pertained more dignity, because of a 
 group of opponents existing outside, and of most 
 admirable metal. These were, almost without 
 exception, middle-aged Englishmen living in towns 
 along the principal railroad line passing through the 
 University town. They had been cricketers in the 
 old country, and their hands had not forgotten their
 
 16 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 cunning, their legs their sturdiness, nor their heads 
 their wisdom in the field. They would come, these 
 graybeards; and the University eleven, reinforced 
 by picked men from the base-ball team, would meet 
 them manfully, but too often with most inglorious 
 results to the rash youngsters. In vain the best 
 bowlers would send the ball whizzing fiercely at those 
 craftily-guarded wickets, in vain the best catchers 
 would hover about the field ; slowly but surely those 
 old farmers and shopkeepers would add to their 
 score, and the showing made was always good. 
 
 But it was when the University men had come to 
 bat and the veteran bowlers were arrayed against 
 them that the youngsters learned what fine work 
 appertains to the game so popular across the water. 
 Those toughened and still keen-eyed old men would 
 deliver balls which conducted themselves in a most 
 sinister and mysterious way. They would come 
 hurtling like cannon shot, they would roll lazily 
 along the ground in a manner most deceptive, or 
 they would start apparently far aside from the wicket 
 and then turn like a serpent and find it surrepti- 
 tiously and suddenly. Most improving to a vaunting 
 spirit were these games with the old British experts, 
 who usually, though not on all occasions, gained the 
 victory. 
 
 And what suppers followed the contests, when the 
 graybeards, flushed with conquest and ale and made 
 affable by much eating and smoking, told such tales 
 of wonderful feats in youth as would have suited an 
 Indian chief about to give his personal history just 
 before a scalp dance !
 
 THE RELATIONS OF THINGS. 17 
 
 These things were all well, but it was the 
 "national game" which commanded the real atten- 
 tion of those students who were training body and 
 mind together at the old University, which placed the 
 captain of the first nine upon a pedestal, the captains 
 of other and minor nines great men, and gave to 
 every member of those organizations a standing 
 which was most enviable. Sargent had won his 
 position fairly and bore his weight of honor with 
 more or less modesty and meekness. He had been 
 a ball-player from his childhood. Born in the coun- 
 try, he had played "two old cat" with other farmer 
 boys, and later, in the bustling town of the Saginaw 
 Valley, where he had prepared for college, he had be- 
 come captain of the high school nine and developed 
 an executive genius which even surpassed his value in 
 the field. He gained a place in the University nine 
 almost immediately after his entrance to college and 
 had done such work in many a hard-fought game as 
 had marked and elected him for the place he held. 
 He was an enthusiast and a hard trainer. "The 
 Czar" they called him. He had clever and brawny 
 youths to handle, among them his room-mate and 
 crony, Sam Lathrop. 
 
 There were daily contests now, between the first 
 nine and the others ; for the season of matches was 
 at hand, and to the sophomores who were among the 
 players even the noble and necessary work of dis- 
 ciplining freshmen lost much of its importance. 
 
 "Bob," said Lathrop one night after an hour of 
 silence between the two while they had been 
 engaged in studies, "a scandalous thing occurred
 
 1 8 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 to-day, something I say it mildly which was a dis- 
 grace to the University and the times! I was 
 coming down town and had reached a place on the 
 walk where repairs were going on, and where only 
 a single plank led over the dust to where the walk 
 was good again. Three large freshmen reached one 
 end of the plank as I reached the other. They 
 glared at me in a most offensive manner, and when 
 I started out across the walk they started as well, 
 one behind the other. We met, and, when I 
 ordered the menials off the plank to make room for 
 me, they laughed in my face ! ' ' 
 
 "What!" said Sargent. "What are you telling 
 me?" 
 
 "They were three to one," said Lathrop, "and big 
 fellows, and they finally made me walk in the dust 
 while they occupied the plank ! Me ! a member of 
 the base-ball nine and a passed sophomore, the first 
 by deserts, the last, I admit, by the skin of my teeth, 
 but still a sophomore! Are the heavens going to 
 fall?" 
 
 Sargent gave a yell of indignation: "It's the 
 outrage of the century ! A sophomore walking in the 
 dust while freshmen keep their boots clean ! What 
 did you do?" 
 
 "Do? I walked in the dust! They were each as 
 big as I and three to one, I tell you. True, I did 
 address the one who seemed to be the leader of the 
 savages, and expressed my intention of eating his 
 heart broiled, within a day or two, but he didn't 
 seem to get into any ague of fright on that account. 
 I tell you they're going to the dogs those freshmen
 
 THE RELATIONS OF THINGS 19 
 
 their minds haven't been improved, nor their 
 morals! We have been neglecting the solemn duty 
 imposed upon us by natural laws. We're morally 
 responsible for the welfare of those creatures, and 
 we've got to teach 'em the great lesson of humility 
 and obedience right away. How about rushing 
 them to-morrow as a preliminary?" 
 
 "There's no question about our responsibility," 
 said Sargent, "and I suppose," he sighed, "that we 
 might as well begin at once the performance of our 
 more or less painful duty. I tell you, though, my 
 brother missionary, that they have a big class, and 
 have, I greatly fear, some most pagan and obdurate 
 spirits among them." 
 
 "But they've never been in a rush!" 
 
 "True, my ardent co-laborer in the vineyard, but 
 they are many, and, as I have noted, mostly heavy 
 beings. It is possible that among the scraps of 
 mathematical wisdom that have chanced to adhere 
 to your memory from much sitting at the feet of 
 Old Syllabus is something to the effect that momen- 
 tum is a product of the mass and velocity of a body? 
 Momentum is what tells in a rush. Now, we are 
 great on velocity, but are we not, relatively, 
 deficient in mass? They have nearly twice as many 
 men as we." 
 
 "What of that? Don't shake any momentum at 
 me! We've got it. A mass is where the particles 
 move together, and the freshmen havn't got in the 
 way of that yet. We'll pass the word in the class- 
 room and later appear with the resistless force of a 
 stampede of bisons. We will scatter the freshmen
 
 20 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 as the wind scatters the leaves, and they'll learn 
 how good and pleasant a thing it is to obey superiors. 
 They ought to be grateful, but I'm afraid they 
 won't be." 
 
 And the two sophomores arranged the details as to 
 the manner in which the "rush" should be engaged 
 in by all the class next day, and then slept the sleep 
 of good digestion. The sky darkened and the rain 
 came down in sheets, and continuous thunder affected 
 the dreams of the warlike L&throp and made him 
 fancy himself already in the midst of the fray.
 
 A BATTLE ROYAL. 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A BATTLE ROYAL. 
 
 The sentiment that freshmen should be allowed 
 to live, if properly subject to the sophomore class, 
 was held by a majority of the sophomores. Warm 
 personal friendships existed between members of 
 the two classes some sophomores had brothers 
 among the freshmen but this had nothing to do 
 with the relations of the forces as bodies. At the 
 gathering instigated by Sargent and Lathrop a fluent 
 sophomore, addressing his classmates, expressed 
 something like the general opinion : 
 
 "The freshman, my brethren," he began, "is, as 
 we all know, a most irresponsible, contumacious 
 and ill-bred creature, normally, when he first makes 
 his appearance in classic abodes. Even the milling 
 of the examining professors fails to reduce 
 sufficiently his obtuseness and unbecoming inde- 
 pendence, or to inculcate that humility which, in 
 time, will become his greatest merit, and make of 
 him a being at least endurable. He is morally and 
 mentally a sort of missing link, with the simian 
 predominating, and whether he shall advance or 
 retrograde depends almost entirely upon the noble 
 missionary work of the sophomore, whose happy 
 fortune it is his privilege to follow in the University. 
 Of course there are gradations, there are freshman
 
 22 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 classes and freshman classes, and I think I may say on 
 this occasion that it is a truth indisputable that the 
 present freshman class in this University is the least 
 docile, the most impertinent and offensive, the most 
 nearly related to the 'beasts that perish' of any 
 that have ever walked on hallowed ground, while, 
 on the other hand, the present sophomore class is 
 one possessed of the highest moral character, the 
 loftiest aims, the most profound sense of respon- 
 sibility, the finest kind of brawn, and the utmost 
 nobility generally, of any sophomore class ever 
 occupying the same oasis! It is the class best 
 qualified for disciplining, redeeming and elevating 
 the freshman class just now so earnestly but inade- 
 quately referred to. Brethren, it has been decided 
 that we must do our duty. This morning, at about 
 eleven o'clock, the freshman class will, between 
 recitations, wend sou' by sou'east along the gravel 
 and plank walk between certain of the buildings. 
 At the same time the sophomore class will, between 
 recitations, be wending nor' by nor'west along the 
 same narrow campus thoroughfare. Shall freshmen 
 occupy a walk while Sophomores are passing? Far 
 from it! We shall come as the wind comes when 
 hay-stacks are rended, we shall come as the waves 
 come when big whales are stranded, and we shall 
 rip up the formation of those callow ones, and teach 
 them wisdom and their rank and ranking ! Are ye 
 ready, my buxom, blooming missionaries?" 
 
 There was a general shout of applause, and it was 
 understood that an outdoor rush was close at hand. 
 Somehow, the information reached the freshmen.
 
 A BATTLE ROYAL. 23 
 
 All night long the rain had fallen and the campus 
 now presented a scene far different from that of the 
 day before. Where had been wide stretches of 
 green, were now two shining lakes which the autumn 
 breeze was ruffling into wavelets. The walk 
 between the University buildings was a gravel one, 
 somewhat elevated, near the center of which were 
 inset parallel walks, along which classes, if peace- 
 ably inclined, might pass each other without annoy- 
 ance. The flooding of the grounds, caused by the 
 temporary stoppage of some outlet at a distance, left 
 the walk, practically, a long bridge across a lake, 
 the waters of which were a foot or two in depth. 
 It was at the center of this accidental bridge that 
 the sophomore and freshman classes must necessarily 
 meet. 
 
 Eleven o'clock came, and from the buildings near 
 each end of the long walk emerged the two classes. 
 The sophomores formed swiftly, not in single file as 
 usual, but in double file, thus occupying the entire 
 walk, and advanced slowly as a solid mass. At the 
 other building there was a swarming and hustling 
 and buzzing among the far more numerous fresh- 
 men, and some time passed before they were 
 similarly ranged, evidently taking the cue from 
 their opponents. 
 
 The sophomores, upon reaching the lake, paused 
 with kindly consideration. They wanted to meet 
 the freshmen where the water was deepest. 
 
 Slowly the forces advanced until each body was 
 encompassed on either side by the water and but a 
 few feet intervened between them. Then each
 
 24 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 paused and the sophomores gathered more closely, 
 each leaning a shoulder against the man in front 
 and straining forward ready for the charge. Head- 
 ing the sophomores were two of the heaviest men of 
 the class, one of them extremely tall, red-haired, 
 wide-mouthed, and truculent of aspect. To him 
 came a sudden inspiration. 
 
 The sophomore advanced some paces to the front, 
 glared wildly at the freshmen, opened his mouth to 
 its widest extent and growled fearfully, at the same 
 time beating his breast with great violence, after 
 the manner of the gorilla of the jungles. He seized 
 a piece of drift wood, which the breeze had stranded 
 by the walk, and broke it with a crash across his 
 knees, then waved the pieces wildly and leaped up 
 and down, gnashing his teeth and emitting howls 
 still harsher and more lugubrious and threatening. 
 It was picturesque, but, as a sophomore in the rear 
 shouted, it was not war. The sophomores gathered 
 themselves together, and charged forward at the 
 yell of command, while the freshmen met them as 
 best they could. 
 
 The onset was irresistible, and, for yards, the com- 
 pact body swept ahead, while the freshmen were 
 cast aside to watery graves of a moment. There 
 were too many freshmen, though, in the rear. The 
 lines upon the walk were too long. There were, in 
 their columns, too many pounds of healthy flesh and 
 bone to be entirely carried away by the sophomore 
 rush. 
 
 Rightly had Sargent declared to Lathrop that 
 momentum was the product of the mass and velocity
 
 A BATTLE ROYAL. 25 
 
 of a body, and while the sophomores had the velocity, 
 the freshmen had the mass. The advancing column 
 slackened its speed, wavered, wobbled, and finally, 
 after maintaining its position for a moment or two, 
 went slowly backward. Meanwhile had come a 
 threatening diversion. Muddy mermen were 
 assaulting the sophomores furiously in the flanks. 
 
 The freshmen, some of them giants, thrown into 
 the water by the first onrush, were scrambling to 
 their feet, leaping fiercely against the sophomore line 
 and from it tearing men down into the water with 
 them. Each such rough abstraction weakened the 
 hitherto solid column, and it waved and swung. 
 The strong men in front grappled with those oppos- 
 ing them and they swayed and surged and then 
 toppled into the water by twos and twos, with 
 mighty splashes. 
 
 More men rushed forward and went off in turn, 
 and so this well-planned rush degenerated into a 
 mighty aquatic hand-to-hand struggle, with fresh- 
 men nearly in the proportion of two to one. It was 
 a battle to become famous in college annals. There 
 were cries and shouts, and the waters, so peaceful 
 and apparently pure, a few moments ago, were now 
 a roily expanse in which men splashed and wallowed 
 and which some of them swallowed in unseemly 
 quantity. 
 
 In all battles, or almost all, there is some great 
 central incident which fixes the attention of the 
 beholders. It was at the moment just described 
 that something individually notable occurred. No 
 sophomore was more loved, or widely known in the
 
 26 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 University than Billy Barnes, and none enjoyed 
 more the excitement of a struggle. He had a 
 peculiar war-cry, all his own, a squall of most pene- 
 trating and far-reaching quality, one which he 
 emitted in times of stress, but sometimes on the 
 slightest pretext, and which had been a stimulus to 
 his comrades in many a conflict. By some strange 
 chance he had not been with his class throughout 
 the morning and he emerged now upon the broad 
 landing at the top of the steps of the Library build- 
 ing, where he had been engaged, utterly uncon- 
 scious that his own class was doing desperate 
 battle. In a fraction of a second he comprehended 
 all. He gave one joyous whoop, followed by his 
 strident battle-cry, then leaped downward and 
 hurled himself into the conflict. He was received, 
 even as he reached the water, in the hospitable arms 
 of a freshman son of Anak, who gathered him in his 
 bosom, leaned forward, and fell at length into the 
 muddy flood holding his prisoner there, lifting his 
 head at intervals of seconds until a gasping sur- 
 render was admitted. Then something limp and 
 coughing was thrown out upon the bank, and Billy's 
 battle of just one minute and a half was ended for 
 the day. 
 
 Meanwhile the freshening western blast hadn't 
 aside "the shroud of battle cast," chiefly because 
 there wasn't any shroud but it had sufficed to fill 
 again the lungs of some scores of men half drowned 
 and released to land, upon parole. Many of the 
 athletes of either party were still upon their feet 
 and struggling, and many more stood dripping on
 
 A BATTLE ROYAL. 27 
 
 either shore, freshmen on one side, and sophomores 
 on the other. Gradually those still engaged deter- 
 mined the issue between man and man, and the 
 struggle came to an end. In such encounter, where 
 the column could be assailed from all sides, it was 
 evident that the freshmen had somewhat the better 
 of it. Providence, as in other instances, in other 
 parts of the world, had favored the heavier battalion. 
 As Lathrop put it regretfully, "the sophomore 
 bowed his haughty head, and tamed his heart of 
 fire," but it was a gallant fray. 
 
 Billy Barnes, now somewhat recovered, came up 
 with beaming face so far as his countenance could 
 be discerned. "This," he remarked thickly, but 
 enthusiastically, as he sought to remove a portion 
 of the mud from his eyes and ears, "This is a red- 
 letter day to be marked with a white stone!" 
 
 The two classes stood thus, glowering across the 
 water, and there were numerous verbal passages at 
 arms, when the argus-eyed Billy discovered among 
 the sophomores some half dozen gentlemen whose 
 garb was in perfect order, unwet and unstained. 
 He walked about them as certain wild beasts are 
 said to walk about their prey before its seizure, and 
 asked of them sweetly how it came that they were 
 in such prime condition. He waxed eloquent, 
 though retaining his purring manner, and intimated 
 softly that gentlemen so natty of appearance must 
 necessarily have been recreant in the time of recent 
 conflict. He intimated also that if anything in the 
 world were desirable in a sophomore class it was what 
 he termed "homogeneity of appearance," and sug-
 
 28 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 gested that a result so desirable could be easily 
 secured. His suggestion was received with wildest 
 shouts. There was a rush upon the infamously dry 
 ones and they were hustled to the water and 
 plunged beneath its murky flood. This punitive per- 
 formance was observed instantly by the freshmen 
 upon the other side, and with a roar they encircled 
 their own recreants, who were in far greater number. 
 It was a fine and edifying performance, a carnival of 
 sanguinary baptism, and all were happy save the 
 unfortunates who had been laggard in the late 
 encounter. 
 
 Among all the dripping heroes who stood upon 
 the sophomore side the muddiest was easily one 
 Sargent, sophomore of might and dignity, captain of 
 the base-ball nine of the University, and, but 
 recently, of such lofty bearing as became his stand- 
 ing. The mighty had fallen, and evidently fallen 
 far. As he stood scraping himself with a convenient 
 piece of shingle, some one wanted to know when the 
 clay bank horse would be in condition for another 
 run, and some one else suggested that there were 
 occasions which called for the use of a hose. Sar- 
 gent's experiences in the battle had been swift and 
 various. One freshman after another he had half 
 drowned and sent to shore in ignominy, when there 
 had suddenly loomed before him the admitted 
 champion of the freshman class, the identical young 
 man to whom he had referred as an exceedingly 
 doubtful subject to practice athletic exercises upon, 
 and who was evidently anxious to cultivate a more 
 intimate acquaintance. They grappled at once and
 
 A BATTLE ROYAL. 29 
 
 swayed and struggled more than knee deep in water, 
 each seeking the first advantage, which, under 
 existing circumstances, meant almost certain 
 victory. No amateur at wrestling, Sargent found 
 engaged with him, but one as apt as himself at all 
 the different feints and tricks, and it was but a 
 matter of merest chance which went underneath. 
 They strained and twisted and became panting and 
 scant of breath, when, suddenly, as they swayed 
 about, Sargent stepped on something slippery, his 
 foot failed him, and a second later he was under a 
 foot and a half of cold water with some one hun- 
 dred and seventy pounds of well-knit humanity 
 above him. He held his breath and heaved 
 valiantly, but it was useless, and he loosened his 
 grip in token of surrender, rising, laughingly, to 
 shake hands with his conqueror and' to wade ashore 
 on his parole, for the time. In later days he had 
 vengeance, with the gloves on, but the acquaintance 
 formed thus roughly with the brawny Levi Maxon 
 was destined to be a lasting and a good one. Just at 
 present, though, Sargent did not place a definite 
 estimate on the circumstance. He was too busy 
 with his garb. 
 
 Not far away, Maxon, as the conqueror of such a 
 man as Sargent, was receiving, with becoming 
 modesty, the acclamations of his classmates, prop- 
 erly due to a champion so notable. 
 
 And the sun dried the combatants for a long half 
 hour, until class time came to all again and they 
 entered the recitation rooms, still steaming. The 
 professors made no comment. Not theirs to regu-
 
 30 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 late the bathing times of their pupils, and, as one of 
 them commented: 
 
 "Who knoweth the way of the wild ass, his com- 
 ing or his going? Lo, all the desert is his path- 
 way!"
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 
 
 A young gentleman with sandy hair, gray eyes 
 and square forehead stood beside the wall of one of 
 the University buildings, holding the end of a base- 
 ball bat against it at an angle and making an 
 explanation in ponderous colloquial terms. There 
 was a twinkle in the eyes of the thick-set gentleman 
 as he talked, for, though a student of more than 
 average ability, he had never shone particularly 
 resplendent in pure mathematics, and now, after 
 long study, he had solved the problem of the "Shad- 
 ing of the Sphere" and was not merely confident 
 that he could face recitation without a tremor, but 
 that he understood the subject so thoroughly that 
 he could make it comprehensible to those of his 
 classmates to whom had come less light. In the 
 course of his remarks he would occasionally assume 
 a heavy air and imitate for the moment the voice of 
 the professor, but the real object of the talk was 
 serious, and, though there crept into the explanation 
 a certain amount of slang, there was an absence of 
 abstruse phrases and the lesson was possibly more 
 comprehensible to the listeners than one from the 
 lips of a wiser man. 
 
 "You hold the bat so," the amateur pedagogue ex- 
 plained, "and you see how the shadow strikes the
 
 32 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 wall, (Eastwood, if you don't keep still, I'll swat you 
 with the bat) and you'll suppose a sphere in the prop- 
 er place, and suppose a lot of other things of which I 
 shall assure you." Then, taking a piece of chalk 
 from his pocket, Mayo made various straight lines 
 and curves upon the wall, and made also certain 
 figures and equations, pausing only to indulge in a 
 magnificent anathema against all things geometrical 
 and all things algebraical. Grotesque as was his 
 manner, he certainly understood his subject, and 
 there was a sigh of relief from more than one who 
 had worked during the long hours of evening and 
 early morning as they perceived the missing link in 
 what had been their chain of reasoning. Analytical 
 Geometry is certainly a terror to those whom Provi- 
 dence has not gifted with the art of following the 
 foggy track from conclusion back to premise. 
 
 Among the beneficiaries of Mayo's address were 
 Sargent and Lathrop, and each blessed himself that 
 he had chanced upon the scene. Neither had set 
 out for the class room prepared for recitation, 
 though there had been hard study the night before 
 and almost a feeling, when the two young men 
 sought their beds, that they had solved the mystery 
 of the equation upon which they would be ques- 
 tioned. The morning found them less confident, 
 and they had come from their rooms not joyously, 
 as to a banquet, but with much fear of disaster. 
 The explanation of Mayo's had opened their eyes, 
 and when recitation came they survived its trials 
 easily. 
 
 The case of the two young men was one by no
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 33 
 
 means unusual among collegians. They, both of 
 them, were pursuing among' their studies some 
 which were uncongenial, and lack of interest in 
 these had resulted in such perfunctory work as 
 must, in the end, bring with it disaster to the 
 student. Mathematics is the most jealous of all 
 mistresses. Her angular face, corkscrew curls and 
 unyielding moods are, in the opinion of that lady, 
 of sufficient attractiveness to command the undivided 
 affection of all wooers, and those who are not 
 ardent soon find her not at home whenever they 
 may call. They may linger round the portal long, 
 but stern conditions must be fulfilled before they 
 are again admitted to her circle. As for Sargent 
 and Lathrop, they had for months discarded hope of 
 obtaining any honorable standing in this study. 
 They had so fallen behind that each felt that, to 
 retain even his place in class, he must make 
 thorough much past work that had been slurred 
 over. 
 
 The popularity of the two men had made what 
 Lathrop called their "decadence" easy. When first 
 the waters had become too deep for them, when, 
 because of laxity of effort, they found themselves 
 behind the majority of their fellows in the studies 
 they* did not like, there had been ready and clever 
 assistance from the well-informed, and for a time 
 all had gone well, upon the surface. But no man 
 can be carried more than about so far in college 
 recitations upon the shoulders of others. He must 
 have within himself some relative knowledge, at 
 least, of the task to be performed. Sargent and
 
 34 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Lathrop had lagged so far behind that upon some 
 occasions they had failed in making a good showing, 
 even with the assistance of learned and good-natured 
 classmates. The explanations became as Hebrew 
 to them, and they were in a bad way. In his heart 
 of hearts, each felt that he had been a laggard and 
 each felt also some slight prickings of conscience, 
 which, for a sophomore, is saying much. 
 
 Of Sargent there is one thing to be said in 
 extenuation of his present attitude. The classes in 
 the literary department of the University were at 
 that time divided arbitrarily into two sections, the 
 Classical and the Scientific, and he, though he had 
 prepared for the first, had become a student in the 
 second. He had made the change, doubtless un- 
 wisely, but there had come upon him, just before his 
 admission to the University, a vanity or ambition, 
 whichever it may be called, to shine in all studies 
 alike, and he chose the course in which he felt him- 
 self the weaker. Impelled by a somewhat boyish 
 confidence and loftiness, he did not realize the 
 magnitude of the work he had taken upon himself 
 and now he was suffering the consequences. The 
 change, though, was destined to affect decidedly his 
 future, and not, in the end, to his disadvantage. 
 On the night after the "Shading of the Sphere" 
 demonstration the two men worked resolutely. The 
 narrow escape had taught each the necessity for a 
 spurt. 
 
 "What time is it?" said Sargent, pushing from him 
 books and papers, and laying his head on his arms 
 as he leaned upon the table.
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 35 
 
 "Two o'clock, " answered Lathrop wearily. "The 
 light is going out. We may as well try to get some 
 sleep." 
 
 In the darkness the talk continued, for the nerves 
 of neither man could be calmed to sleep now, after 
 many hours of clutching, unavailing brain activity 
 without any real success of comprehension, or even 
 apprehension as a reward. 
 
 "It is inhuman, by Jove!" Sargent declared. "I 
 have a mind to give up only that would be cowardly 
 but I feel like a sneak, anyway, what with 'coach- 
 ing' and 'ponying' and all that!" 
 
 "When I think of the folks at home, " returned 
 Lathrop moodily, "I get savage. What would they 
 say if they knew of the straits I am in to pass this 
 examination in mathematics? I can't bear to think 
 of it!" 
 
 "Well," Sargent sighed as he spoke, "if it weren't 
 for father and well, mother too they have both 
 worked hard to send me here if it weren't for 
 them, I would drop the whole thing this minute, 
 fail to-morrow, and be miserably happy over it. As 
 it is I am going on like a sneak for their sakes ; but, 
 once out of this scrape, you may be sure I'll never 
 get into such another. Next year that is if I go on 
 next year I am going to work as I haven't worked 
 yet, and I'm not going to get into such a hole 
 again. ' ' 
 
 "That's just it," groaned Lathrop. "Let me go 
 home this time, and I'll never " 
 
 But the sentence remained unfinished, for Sargent, 
 eager to think and talk upon a more cheerful sub-
 
 36 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 ject, or not talk at all, gave his chum a poke in the 
 region of the ribs which created instant diversion. 
 The two fell to the floor together and in a minute 
 arose, refreshed and invigorated, after a hearty 
 trial of muscular strength. 
 
 The poor fellows were tormented as by fiends 
 over the end of the year's examinations. While 
 they were sure of passing creditably in most 
 branches of study they were both marked by them- 
 selves and their intimates for a slump in mathe- 
 matics. They were making the last desperate 
 struggle to "pass" somehow in this study, by the 
 help of friendly counsel, instruction and labored 
 explanation from Mayo, who was proving now a 
 genius in this direction, and by frantic exertions to 
 "make up" for past heedlessness and preoccupation 
 in class and study room. There were two scared 
 fellows up there in that little bare room where 
 Sargent and Lathrop passed their hours of study or 
 of leisure few enough there were of either. They 
 were both laughing now, but not untroubled. After 
 their tiger-cat roll on the floor the two fellows 
 tumbled into bed to try to sleep until daylight, but 
 sleep was laggard in its coming. 
 
 "I wouldn't care if I could see any use in the 
 whole confounded business," broke out Lathrop, 
 after a few moments' silence. "What do I want 
 what do you want to know of the manner in which 
 lights or shades fall as represented by some harrow- 
 ing equation? What do I care where a light falls or 
 a strain comes as related by 'X' and 'Y', or about 
 the 'steenth 'power' of anything? I tell you the
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 37 
 
 old Inquisition wasn't in it with 'X' and 'Y'. They 
 could give Torquemada and all his 'Familiars' 
 points. The only decent thing I know of about 'X' 
 and 1 Y' is that they have the grace to fall in down 
 close to the tail end of the alphabet. There's 
 where they belong. May witches fly away with 
 them!" 
 
 "That's all right," said Sargent, "I'm with you 
 in your noble emotion; but there's something to the 
 blundering grind. There's something in getting 
 one's brain under subjection, one's imagination 
 harnessed to the indefinable and abstract, and all of 
 a fellow's personal thoughts and feelings submerged. 
 There's something in it, and I wish I had the 
 benefit of it and had been less absorbed in the stiff 
 life we've been living this last year. ' ' 
 
 "Just give me another chance," chimed in Lath- 
 rop, "and see if I don't get hold of things!" 
 
 "If I only knew which particular torture would be 
 applied to me to-morrow" Sargent was weakening 
 again, as his voice showed "I could have some 
 hope. As it is, anything, or many things, may 
 come, and of course the very worst of 'em all will 
 come. Was that candle burned clear out?" 
 
 "Oh! lie still, we've no light, sleep until day- 
 light." 
 
 The first streak of dawn found the two over their 
 table again, and sunrise showed them there still, a 
 harassed pair of young giants, not without hope, 
 but distinctly faint-hearted. 
 
 There was ardent and hurried work in the morn- 
 ing, for the two students had omitted the night
 
 38 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 before those studies in which they were best 
 grounded, but of these they had no apprehension. 
 In them they were well under way and no little 
 interested, and they were soon prepared. A resump- 
 tion of work on the unpleasant feature convinced 
 them that they were letter-perfect, so far as that 
 went, if not fully comprehending. They made a 
 vast resolve that day, after stumbling through the 
 lesson in rather better style than usual, that they 
 would not only work later at night the afternoons, 
 or at best the later portion of each afternoon they 
 still reserved for out-of-door sport but that they 
 would also rise an hour earlier each morning and 
 devote that hour to the subjugation of the monster. 
 This was a glorious resolution, but one hard of 
 fulfillment, for they slept well, these two, and the 
 cool mornings made the bed a delicious place. But 
 they were firmly resolved and made a Spartan con- 
 tract together, one which had a tendency to make 
 their design successful. They agreed solemnly that 
 if either of the two were not out of bed by six a. in. 
 the other, if outside that blissful haven, should 
 have the privilege of emptying the water pitcher 
 over his sleeping friend. That night each, after 
 retiring, fixed his thoughts resolutely upon the hour 
 of half-past five, for each had read much of and 
 occasionally tried to practice this particular feat of 
 making the bodily senses respond in time to the 
 command of a fixed idea. They slept soundly until 
 a little before five o'clock, when Sargent awoke 
 with a start, and, as his reasoning powers returned, 
 exulted with the sense of keen delight in the sound
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 39 
 
 of heavy, even breathing, from the figure in the 
 other bed. 
 
 "It's six o'clock, and I've got him!" he thought, 
 joyously, and his eyes turned to the little clock 
 ticking industriously upon the mantel. The hands 
 showed the time to be five, exactly, and Sargent 
 gave a sigh of disappointment. "I set myself an 
 hour too early," he muttered, and lay back drowsily 
 upon his pillow, resolved to keep awake. The bed 
 was warm, though, the light was yet dim, and lazy 
 nature asserted herself. Within ten minutes the 
 plotter was asleep again, dreaming of his home and 
 friends, of good times in town and finer enjoyment 
 still in the deep woods and along the streams, with 
 dog and rod and gun, and no professors. As he 
 wandered through the forest he reached a stream 
 much deeper than the rest, and, though it was early 
 in the autumn, great cakes of ice were floating 
 with its current. Suddenly the bank gave way 
 beneath him and he was plunged into the icy 
 waters. 
 
 Scientific students of th& mind say that dreams 
 come instantaneously, sometimes a series of inci- 
 dents in a second, as the result of some outside 
 agency. 
 
 Lathrop had slept calmly until nearly six, when 
 he moved restlessly in his bed and seemed combat- 
 ing some impulse which assailed him. Finally, his 
 eyes opened and he lay still, seeking dreamily to 
 realize his own entity. Then, like a flash, came 
 comprehension and memory of the agreement of the 
 night before. He rose cautiously upon his elbow
 
 4 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 and looked across at Sargent, who was sleeping like 
 a baby, with a smile upon his face. He looked at 
 the clock; the hands showed the time to be just one 
 minute after six. 
 
 Slowly and noiselessly, Lathrop slid from his bed 
 and tiptoed across the room to the table where the 
 water-pitcher stood. He noticed that the sharp 
 frost of the night before had formed upon the 
 water's surface feathery cone-shaped flakes of ice 
 reaching toward each other, and his heart was glad 
 within him. Silently he grasped the pitcher and 
 silently approached the bedside of his sleeping 
 friend. He stood there a moment, 'looking down 
 benignantly upon his unconscious victim, and then 
 began carefully the delicate task of turning down 
 the bed clothes. The work required time as well as 
 the exercise of utmost caution, but was at last 
 accomplished. Then, with cruel and deliberate 
 accuracy, the healthy wretch plumped the whole 
 contents of the huge pitcher upon the breast and 
 stomach of his chosen friend, at the same time 
 giving utterance to a whoop specially adapted for 
 the raising of the dead. 
 
 There was an answering yell, if possible more 
 piercing and far-reaching than the one preceding it, 
 and Sargent was uplifted clean over the bedside by 
 the unconscious springing of his shocked body. He 
 gasped, staggered to his feet and stood looking 
 wildly about. Never had human being been 
 awakened more ruthlessly. He recovered his wits, 
 dashed at the roaring Lathrop, who wisely eluded 
 him for the time, and then peace came and the two
 
 AS TO ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY. 41 
 
 men dressed and went sturdily at the work they 
 had planned the night before. 
 
 In a few days the new rising hour became a habit 
 with them and brought its good results. The cost 
 of the dousing episode was two dollars, paid to the 
 mistress of the house, accompanied by a lame story 
 of an accident.
 
 42 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GREAT BALL GAME. 
 
 The reddened leaves had turned to brown and 
 were falling. The green had disappeared from the 
 fields, and the base-ball season of the year was very 
 near the end. It was before the time of college 
 leagues, but the year had been one of triumph for 
 the University nine. Many a gallant club had gone 
 down before them, and the state championship 
 seemed, to the more sanguine, a glory possibly 
 attainable. But one club stood in their way, the 
 great club of the leading city of the state ; and in 
 contest with this antagonist, one game of the series 
 had, so far, been lost humiliatingly, while another 
 had been won by the slightest of margins. The 
 score of the clubs stood even, and it but remained 
 to play the last game of the year to determine where 
 the laurels for the state must go. The University 
 nine had steadily improved Sargent felt sure of 
 that but their opponents were a dangerous lot, 
 athletic veterans and a city's pride, and the idea had 
 existed that even the one game won from them by 
 so slight an overlap was the result of accident rather 
 than desert. But there was hopefulness in the 
 nine, and daily the lithe young players practiced 
 until they were, they believed, in such excellent con-
 
 THE GREAT BALL GAME. 43 
 
 dition as they had never been in before. There 
 were men for an emergency among them. 
 
 The morning of the day of the great game opened 
 in a manner declared by an enthusiast among the 
 turbulent excursionists as ' ' luridly promising. ' ' 
 At least two hundred students were to accompany 
 the ball players on the trip, and they gathered at the 
 railroad station joyously. There was much clamor, 
 which increased as the moment arrived for the 
 advent of the players themselves, who were to 
 appear just before train time, in full uniform and in 
 a band chariot rented from the chief liveryman of 
 the town on all allowable occasions of student state. 
 Much income accrued to that same liveryman from 
 that same gaudy chariot, for there was a disposition 
 among the students to utilize its splendors whenever 
 the slightest excuse offered. As the nine were 
 driven up to the station, broad-shouldered, brown- 
 faced, all grinning amiably while grotesquely assum- 
 ing a lofty demeanor, the air was shattered by a 
 wild impact of applause, and the pets of the under- 
 graduates were dragged from their conveyance and 
 escorted to the parlor coach amid prolonged and 
 blissful howlings. "We must keep their spirits up, ' ' 
 declared Billy Barnes, "coz there's going to be 
 Greeks meetin' Greeks, and they mustn't be shy on 
 ginger! Oh, no." 
 
 The train rumbled from the station, the college 
 yell ascended, and, with college songs and shouts 
 and waving of flags, the country of little lakes and 
 great apple orchards and far stretches of stubble- 
 field was passed and the train drew near the City of
 
 44 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 the Straits, where were awaiting them at the 
 grounds a trained and hardy nine and a multitude of 
 lovers of base-ball, the latter all earnest admirers of 
 the home nine and looking upon the invading col- 
 legians as foolhardy youth whose accidental late 
 success had made them vain, and to whom humilia- 
 tion at the end of the season would be wholesome 
 and beneficial. 
 
 Entrance to the city was accompanied by an inci- 
 dent most spirited and sanguinary. At this time 
 the hackmen of the town were noted far and wide 
 for their rapacity and impudence. They would sur- 
 round a traveler, take his baggage from him by main 
 strength, carry him captive to some hotel and inflict 
 an outrageous charge, which he paid under sheer 
 intimidation. As the advance guard of the students 
 issued upon the pavement from the city station a 
 burly Jehu rushed up to the quiet Mayo, who was 
 not in uniform, and who was carrying a handbag, 
 and, to the collegian's amazement, caught the bag 
 from his hand, and then, seizing him by the 
 shoulders, began hustling him toward a hack stand- 
 ing at the curb. In vain Mayo protested ; the hack- 
 man was determined, but never hackman committed 
 a greater blunder ! There was a swift wrench aside, 
 a terrific blow beneath the ear, and the hackman 
 went over under as clean a stroke as ever felled a 
 man. Never had such a thing occurred in all the 
 history of the drivers about the station. With a 
 shout, they hurled themselves upon the daring 
 Mayo, and in a moment he was lost to sight among 
 them. It was only for a moment, though. The
 
 THE GREAT BALL GAME. 45 
 
 hackmen did not know what awful reinforcements 
 were at hand. There was a rallying cry, a rush of 
 the students now pouring out by scores, and a 
 moment later there were no hackmen to be seen 
 near that railway station, except such as were in dis- 
 tress and gory in a nasal way. 
 
 "Borne down, dispersed, in flight o'erta'en, 
 They cumbered Bannock's bloody plain." 
 
 Pursuing their triumphant way, the students 
 reached the ball-grounds and entered with such 
 hilarious deportment as students manifest on such 
 occasions. From the already thronged benches went 
 up mingled cries of applause and derision. The 
 players went to their dressing rooms, the remainder 
 of the students gathered in a mass in the seating- 
 space reserved for them, the nines finally appeared 
 upon the field, the umpire gave his loud order and 
 the game was on ! 
 
 It is more or less difficult to describe, so that the 
 layman may understand, the phases of a base-ball 
 game, what the players do, and it is to be regretted 
 that the story of this great game should not be told 
 in detail and in the right way, because it was a battle 
 of giants of the game and time. There are, in the 
 ordinary base -ball game, nine innings, and the one 
 force or the other which is in the lead at the end of 
 the nine innings, is the victor. In this game, 
 which, for the year, determined supremacy in 
 the northern part of the Middle West, there were 
 played eleven innings, before the issue was
 
 46 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 decided, so closely matched were the athletic 
 forces. 
 
 The exploits of the individuals of the University 
 nine cannot possibly be told within the space of a 
 single chapter, nor can justice be done to their 
 opponents. Base-ball in those days of only a few 
 years ago was quite unlike the game of the pro- 
 fessionals played to-day. Greater scores were made 
 then and there was more of the spectacular. This 
 is because the rules have changed. In any of all 
 the base-ball clubs of all the country there are no 
 keener eyes, no deeper lungs, no better judgment 
 nor better muscle than were owned by the players in 
 this strong game, though its score to-day reads 
 oddly. At the end of the first inning it stood: 
 University 7, City o. In the second inning there 
 was some clever work by the townsmen, and at its 
 end the score stood University 7, City i. In the 
 third inning the playing was wild and brilliant on 
 both sides, and then the score stood University 10, 
 City 2, and in the next was scarcely changed, the 
 University adding the single run. 
 
 In the next inning developed the strength of the 
 urbanites ; it was a hard fight well fought and there 
 was brilliant playing all round, but the City added 4 
 to its tally, while the University did nothing, and in 
 the sixth the scene was but repeated. The score 
 stood now University n, City 8. The next inning 
 added 3 to the score of each ; then came wild play- 
 ing and brilliant individual work. Some faint idea 
 of what happened, the University standing 19 and 
 the City 17, at the beginning of the ninth and sup-
 
 THE GREAT BALL GAME. 47 
 
 posedly final inning, may be inferred from an 
 account here faithfully reproduced from an edition, 
 some weeks later, of the University paper, pub- 
 lished by the students : 
 
 ' ' The excitement was intense. Cheers and groans, 
 yells of triumph and curses of despair were heard 
 all over the grounds as the playing of the ninth 
 innings went on. Now the City captain conies up 
 to the scorer's table: 'How does the score stand?' 
 'Twenty to seventeen.' 'Three to tie and four to 
 beat. We'll do it we'll do it easy.'" 
 
 Then came another struggle, and the City men 
 did well, for, at the end of the ninth inning the 
 score stood: University 20, City 20, and there must 
 be another inning. To quote again from the Uni- 
 versity publication: "Now the work is sharp and 
 short the friends of the contesting nines at one 
 moment dancing, yelling, throwing their hats for 
 joy, and at the next, with lugubrious faces, sitting 
 in the depths of despair. . . . One tally beats the 
 University, high into the air goes the ball, holding 
 its course close to the foul line toward the left. What 
 a cheer greets the successful batter as he strains 
 every muscle for the home ! But other eyes see the 
 ball not at all, they are gazing at the white figure 
 running with inconceivable rapidity across the field. 
 At length the lines of vision of the City men and of 
 the University men meet as the high fly drops into 
 Mayo's hands. Full fifty yards he runs and then 
 takes the ball almost at his feet. What a yell of 
 triumph from the University men. Again it is a tie. 
 Then came the struggle Titanic." And the Uni-
 
 48 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 versity journal, even in its exuberance of spirits, did 
 not much exaggerate. The inning to follow must 
 be a test. 
 
 Then happened, for a longer time than is required 
 for the ball games of to-day, what was excellent to 
 see. The University nine was of the college athletic 
 sort, which simply means clean, well-built young 
 gentlemen who have practiced vigorously a certain 
 sport, and who, in a straight-away manner, came 
 into a strange land free as gladiators to do their 
 best. What they did that day is part of the inside 
 and outside records of a great University. The 
 story of that contest has been told and re-told many 
 a thousand times. It has been told in the University 
 over and over again as one of its sagas. It has been 
 told where the men live who were there that day, 
 men who have since bred children, and have aided 
 in making the greatest commonwealth of all history. 
 It has been told from sea to sea. 
 
 It had been a tie in the ninth inning, a tie in the 
 tenth inning, and in the eleventh all depended at 
 the final stage, after none had been made by the 
 City, upon what the captain of the University nine, 
 who chanced to be then at the bat, did in the great 
 emergency. It was worth while looking at him 
 then. He was nervous and his hands shook until 
 they picked up the ashen thing, the bat, fit thing 
 for a strong man's hands to clasp. Then he seemed 
 to forget his nervousness. He became another 
 man. He stood poised, keen-eyed, virile, tense, an 
 expectancy of muscle with mind in it, as the ball, a 
 flashing mist, came. He struck once and missed.
 
 THE GREAT BALL GAME. 49 
 
 He seemed dazed a little, but set his teeth. The 
 shadow flitted again, and again he missed. Then 
 his face whitened a little and the muscles and veins 
 stood out well where the bat was clasped. The 
 pitcher, big, steady of nerve, and fine, sent another 
 twisting, invisible sphere toward the man at the 
 bat, and the man, this thing of muscle and thought, 
 seemed to spring all apart as he struck with the 
 home-stroke. 
 
 There was a crack as when lightning has struck 
 something. There was an upward-looking of all 
 eyes. Upon a great green enclosed sward, men, 
 out-fielders, were running like "whiteheads" 
 whatever a "whitehead" may be. Between the 
 bases other men were running. The audience of 
 thousands was composed no longer of anything in 
 particular. It was a bawl! And, when the roar 
 slackened for a moment, high above everything 
 could be heard the ear-piercing squall of Billy 
 Barnes, and his cry: "This is a red-letter day to be 
 marked with a white stone!" No effort of the 
 experts could save the city. The University had 
 won! 
 
 At six o'clock, or later, that evening, among the 
 surging crowd of hundreds of students who came 
 down the main street of the city on their way to the 
 train, was one, young, slender, dark-eyed, red- 
 haired and with a wonderful keenness of perception 
 in his look. In his hand he held a tiny bundle of 
 straws. As he met some solid, middle-aged citizen 
 of the town he would suddenly grasp that more or 
 less venerable personage by the shoulder, thrust
 
 5 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 the straws almost in his face and demand impera- 
 tively: 
 
 "What's them?" 
 
 The maltreated and astonished citizen could but 
 gasp and look bewildered, but relief came to him 
 at once : 
 
 "You don't know! You think they're straws! 
 Well, I'll tell you, them's runs!" 
 
 And so the jubilant young man with his hand 
 holding the straws corresponding exactly in number 
 to the runs the University had made swept down 
 with his comrades to the depot. 
 
 It was a great day for the collegians.
 
 CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR. 51 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR. 
 
 The snow lay deep upon the ground one day in 
 late winter as Robert Sargent took his way north- 
 westward from the University buildings toward the 
 chief entrance to the campus. His recitations for 
 the day were done, and he was not dissatisfied with 
 them. It was rather with himself that he was not 
 content. The season of out-door sports long past, 
 his attention had been more concentrated upon his 
 studies and his prospects; though he may have 
 worked with no more earnestness than before; and 
 his thoughts had more reference to the future and 
 to the reasons which led him to the University at all 
 for the opportunity had suddenly, and through his 
 father's influence, been afforded him of entering an 
 active business life with no more learning than had 
 been gained at the high school. He had chosen the 
 collegiate course, though it had involved something 
 of a sacrifice on his father's part, and now he 
 wondered if it were worth while. Had he chosen 
 wisely? Would the finer education he was seeking 
 bring return sufficient to repay him for all the 
 travail of the present? Was he really gaining learn- 
 ing of the sort which would give him an advantage 
 in the coming struggle with the world? He dis- 
 trusted himself. His course would fit him for some
 
 52 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 such work as engineering, but, save that it promised 
 longer hours out-of-doors and a life of robust 
 exercise, he did not greatly fancy the occupation. 
 As an offset, he really enjoyed his French, and his 
 English Literature. He enjoyed the studies, first, 
 because his tastes ran naturally in such direction 1 , 
 and more because the professor of English Litera- 
 ture had that rare understanding which so many 
 great scholars and teachers lack, an insight into 
 human nature and a keen perception of and sym- 
 pathy with the natural gifts and inclinations and 
 ambitions of those so fortunate as to come under his 
 tutelage. He was of such quality himself that he 
 was loved as have been teachers more famous, for 
 he did not live to attain his full fame. Even at this 
 time, consumption had selected him as one of its 
 victims, and, though he, seemingly, paid no atten- 
 tion to the disease, there was a flush upon his 
 cheeks, made more apparent by the general pale- 
 ness of his face, and sometimes a sudden, weary 
 leaning of the head upon the hand as he sat at his 
 desk during recitations. 
 
 Robert Sargent was walking slowly along the 
 snowy path, deep in the puzzle of his own future, 
 when he heard the sound of a step behind him, and 
 then the salutation : 
 
 4 ' It is as pleasant as it is cold to-day, Sargent. ' ' 
 
 The young man turned and recognized the pro- 
 fessor of English Literature, and then the two 
 walked side by side, the younger rather pleased at 
 the attention paid him. 
 
 "How are you getting along? Are you satisfied
 
 CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR. 53 
 
 with what is coming to you at the University?" said 
 Professor Curtin. 
 
 Sargent hesitated a little, and the professor 
 noticed it. "I'm doing reasonably well, I sup- 
 pose," was the answer which came, finally, "but I 
 wish I were better in some things. I'm not not 
 quite satisfied with my selection of a course. To 
 tell the truth, sir, I think sometimes that I've made 
 a mistake." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 "Why, you see, I prepared for the Classical course 
 and for the Scientific too. It was a good school 
 which I attended. Then, when I entered the Uni- 
 versity, after thinking over the possible openings 
 which there would be for me after leaving, I went 
 into the Scientific section. I can get work at once if 
 I become an engineer, but if I study with anything 
 like literature or law in view, I shall find myself 
 embarrassed when I graduate. The only thing I 
 can do is to take a school and teach somewhere, and 
 that would be purgatory to me ; even such a short 
 experience as would tide over preparatory work for 
 one of the learned professions I should hate to 
 endure. My real interest is all in the studies out- 
 side of mathematics. That is a burden to me. " 
 
 The professor's face showed something more than 
 a common interest. He had he could hardly 
 explain why himself been attracted by the young 
 fellow who, while intellectually one of the most 
 promising of the students, had, at times, a certain 
 boyishness of demeanor which was in sharp contrast 
 with his usual air. Such a contrast, by the way, is
 
 54 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 not so uncommon as might be thought, and is 
 certainly, in most cases, attributable to a good and 
 gifted mother. Where a mother has the qualities 
 which make her capable of becoming her son's con- 
 fidante and friend, he, as he approaches manhood, is 
 likely to retain the boyish way in his communication 
 with her, and, unconsciously, sometimes drops into 
 it with his closest friends outside. No indication, 
 this, of weakness, either. 
 
 Professor Curtin had already become interested in 
 Sargent, and he was a man whose friendship 
 extended beyond the lines of official duty. The 
 frank explanation of what was troubling the young 
 man but drew him closer. 
 
 "Are your evenings all occupied?" he said. 
 "Would you mind coming to see me? We'll talk 
 over things. ' ' 
 
 Sargent was delighted. In the great University, 
 where the number of students was such that every- 
 thing like personal relations between the teachers 
 and those taught, outside of recitations, was out of 
 the question, it was somewhat unusual for a sopho- 
 more to be invited to a professor's rooms upon a 
 social and familiar footing, and Sargent was the 
 more appreciative because Professor Curtin was his 
 ideal and because he felt the invitation to be more 
 than one merely proceeding from good nature. He 
 expressed his thanks and the next night made his 
 call. 
 
 Professor Curtin was a bachelor and occupied a 
 suite of apartments in a residence in the finer part 
 of the town. As Sargent entered and was greeted
 
 CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR. 55 
 
 as an equal, he noted the difference between the air 
 of these rooms and those of other professors of 
 which he had obtained an occasional view, chiefly 
 toward the end of his freshman year, when he had 
 undergone private examination in the attempt to 
 lift a "condition. " In those rooms the atmosphere 
 had been distinctly bookish and pedagogical. Here 
 it was merely that pertaining to a cultivated gentle- 
 man, a man of the world. Many volumes were 
 scattered about, but they were not textbooks, and 
 there were magazines on the tables and paintings 
 and engravings on the walls. There was evidence 
 of the little luxuries a man delights in who knows 
 the fine art of living, though all was simple. It 
 was a soft and enticing armchair in which Sar- 
 gent was asked to seat himself, and the casual talk 
 of the first half hour was of such a nature that the 
 visitor was at ease and expressing himself earnestly 
 regarding the athletic work of the next season. He 
 was amazed at Curtin's intimate acquaintance with 
 the year's progress in the different fields of college 
 sport, and recognized the fact that this quiet man, 
 whom no one supposed to be much interested in 
 such things, had followed closely the fortunes of the 
 different teams and was full of pride in their 
 success. 
 
 "I wish I could have seen the closing base-ball 
 game of the season, the one that gave you the 
 championship," said the professor. "It must have 
 been finely played and the triumph fairly deserved. 
 I can imagine the trip homeward. ' ' 
 
 Here was a subject on which Sargent could grow
 
 56 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 eloquent, and he told the tale of the great day 
 enthusiastically and well. He forgot himself and 
 talked as freely as if the listener had been his own 
 room-mate and the professor, noting him carefully, 
 was evidently pleased. He noted the speaker's lusty 
 proportions and the imconscious grace of strength 
 which characterized every movement, and com- 
 mented, almost with a sigh : 
 
 ' ' It was certainly well done. You gentlemen who 
 played so well should be gratified that you had 
 bodies equal to the need. That is what some of us 
 are denied. But more than in your strength and 
 skill I was pleased with the judgment which seems 
 to have been exercised, the self-possession and the 
 discretion in doing the best that was in you at a 
 critical stage of the game. The gain is not all 
 physical which comes in such contests. There is a 
 mental training as well. You are fortunate that 
 you are fitted for such sports. What made you so 
 strong and supple? Can you tell that?" 
 
 Sargent told of his birth in the country, of the 
 outdoor life with the creatures of field and forest he 
 had led almost in childhood and as a boy, of the 
 fishing and the hunting in later days, and, finally, of 
 the sports while at school for which such life had so 
 well adapted him. As he reached the present in 
 his account, his enthusiasm dwindled. He had en- 
 countered his future now, and he paused somewhat 
 abruptly. 
 
 With what tact the professor invited further con- 
 fidence and secured with more detail than when the 
 two had walked together the story of Sargent's
 
 CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR. 57 
 
 present doubts and apprehension need not be told. 
 It was but the kindly questioning and talk of a man 
 of brain and heart. He spoke as Sargent paused: 
 
 "I can understand your feeling. I once under- 
 went something like the same experience myself. 
 Perhaps I should not advise you, but I can say some 
 things without hesitation. Frankly, I do not think 
 that inclination should alone determine the choice of 
 a vocation. What is easiest for us is not always the 
 best for us, and the mind, in youth at least, is 
 flexible to many ends. Here, I understand, is 
 your situation briefly outlined: You are taking a 
 scientific course, though your tastes are rather 
 literary; your future chances, because of certain 
 relations in the outside world, are better in the 
 engineering field than elsewhere, and you have fears 
 lest you should fail to become a good engineer. 
 That is about your case, is it not?" 
 
 "That is just how I am situated, Professor." 
 
 "Well, I should say this. I have noted pretty 
 closely, I think, your apparent drift of thought and 
 your capabilities. I've been glad of the interest 
 you've shown in the studies pursued with me, and, 
 I'll say freely, I've come to feel an exceptional 
 interest in your welfare. I want you to count me as 
 among your personal friends and let me help you as 
 I can, if you will have it so. ' ' 
 
 Sargent flushed and did not speak at first. It is 
 not a small thing for a college student to become the 
 personal friend of a professor of such dignity and 
 standing as Curtin. The reality of the liking, 
 though, was what most touched him, for Curtin
 
 58 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 was one he had learned to love himself. He found 
 words at last, very bungling ones, and contrived to 
 tell how proud and glad he was. 
 
 "Then," said the professor, "since we are to 
 work and advise together, I'll make a first sugges- 
 tion. Stick to the preparation for engineering. ' ' 
 
 "You really think that best?" 
 
 "Yes; you are equal to it. Meanwhile we'll do 
 what we can in literature. There will be enjoy- 
 ment in it for both of us. ' ' 
 
 The evening was one always delightful in Sargent's 
 memory. There was much more talk. He left the 
 house hopeful and resolved, and in the days which 
 followed worked steadily to a purpose. Difficulties 
 gradually assumed smaller proportions. The great- 
 hearted older man had made him practical. 
 
 Many evenings the two spent together, and the 
 relationship, notwithstanding the difference in age, 
 grew to be almost brotherly. Broader and better 
 understanding of literary things the student gained 
 and his courage was always fortified in his harder 
 work. A "clear style" was one thing the professor 
 insisted upon. A droll thing, somewhat humiliating 
 to Sargent, occurred soon after his return to college 
 at the beginning of the new college year. With 
 pardonable pride, he showed to the professor a 
 heavy manuscript book. In it were most of 
 Macaulay's Essays, carefully transcribed. "I've 
 got them almost by heart," he said; "I've had 
 leisure, while helping my father in his office, and I 
 copied them to improve my style. ' ' 
 
 The professor smiled ; well he knew the fascina-
 
 CLOSE TO A PROFESSOR. 59 
 
 tion Macaulay's rolling sentences and finely culmi- 
 nating paragraphs, full of mellow Latin derivatives, 
 have for young and ambitious students. How 
 charming to the young man was the New Zealander, 
 brooding curiously over the ruins of St. Paul's. But 
 the professor was indulgent, and wise. 
 
 "All work of that sort is good," he said, "though 
 strong Anglo-Saxon is the language we should 
 seek, the language for the world-makers. Shall I 
 tell you what is one of the best bits of writing I 
 ever saw?" 
 
 "I would like to hear of it," said Sargent. 
 
 "There is a friend of mine, one of the faculty, in 
 whose house a Norwegian servant is employed. 
 She had a good education in her mother country, 
 but does not yet grasp knowingly her English. Lately 
 she was absent for a time, and, while away, had 
 need to write a letter to her mistress. It was this 
 letter the professor showed me. It was in English 
 and was almost pure Anglo-Saxon. It was a strik- 
 ing letter, strong and clear and charming to a 
 student. My friend asked the girl upon her return 
 how it came that she had used the English language 
 so well. The girl was surprised: 'I don't under- 
 stand, ' she said. ' I only wrote first as well as I 
 could what I wanted to say; then I found in the 
 dictionary the shortest words I could. I thought 
 that would be simpler. ' 
 
 "That," explained Professor Curtin, "accounted 
 for the good work, the short Saxon words. ' ' 
 
 Sargent said nothing, but he did not forget the 
 lesson. It required time to recover from the
 
 60 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Macaulay habit, but the recovery came. And all 
 such incidents as these were a delight to the two, 
 then, and in later years, to Sargent alone. 
 
 There came a time when Professor Curtin's cheeks 
 grew thinner and redder and when he was racked 
 by coughing. There came a time when Sargent, 
 sitting by the couch of the sick man and wiping the 
 perspiration from his forehead, suffered as one may 
 do for a friend. At last came the parting of the 
 two who had learned to care for each other, when 
 Professor Curtin made a journey to Southern France 
 in vain search for an atmosphere which would give 
 relief, and the end drew near. One day there 
 came to the University the not unexpected news 
 from Cannes of the death of a man who had helped 
 make other men. It was not into the eyes of 
 Sargent alone that the tears came then.
 
 SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE. 61 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE. 
 
 As Sargent applied himself more and more 
 thoroughly to his mathematics, the magnitude of 
 his troubles dwindled but never quite disappeared. 
 As a matter of fact there was really lacking in him 
 the ability to become fully at home in what is known 
 as "pure mathematics," however earnestly he migl\t 
 devote himself to study. There was in him, 
 undoubtedly, as Professor Curtin had divined, the 
 making, by effort, of an engineer, but not of an 
 astronomer. With one professor of mathematics he 
 was growing more and more at ease ; with another 
 he was still ever on the defensive. He was tolerably 
 content, though. One day he was sent out in charge 
 of a body of class-mates to survey the ' ' Cat Hole. ' ' 
 
 In the region near the University were hills and 
 hollows curiously formed. At one place was a little 
 valley with a steep descent from all sides, in the 
 midst of which rose a cone-shaped miniature 
 mountain. This was known as the "Cup and 
 Saucer. ' ' Not far distant was a similar deep hollow 
 wherein was no elevation, but, instead, a broad, 
 irregularly extending pond, which was never dry. To 
 send a student out to survey this odd-shaped water 
 surface and report its area in yards was a favorite 
 device of one professor. It afforded a test which
 
 62 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 was reliable of that particular student's real acquire- 
 ments, for, be it known, the pond, fed by invisible 
 springs, was a most erratic body and rose and fell at 
 regular intervals so that its superficial area remained 
 the same only for a day or two at a time. Had it 
 been otherwise the result of past surveyings would 
 have been easily at the student's command, and his 
 task a normal one. As it was, the result was 
 always uncertain, and the professor's occasional 
 verifications of the work left the student always at 
 his mercy. Surely that pond, the ' ' Cat Hole, ' ' the 
 origin of which name was involved in mystery, must 
 have been placed there by thoughtful Nature purely 
 as a means for promoting the thorough education of 
 the young men of the land. 
 
 Sargent had never examined the "Cat Hole," but 
 he set out blithely, and his orders to his fellow 
 students, who were to act as chain men and rod 
 men and do other work under his austere direction, 
 were issued with a mock pompousness which did 
 him credit as a tyrant. The task was done carefully 
 and the notes taken were most voluminous, and, 
 when Sargent went home that night, he felt that he 
 had not been working blindly and that he was equal 
 to the computation still before him. He wanted that 
 particular survey of the "Cat Hole" to be the most 
 handsome and accurate ever made; he wanted his 
 conclusion put in plain figures, down to square yards 
 and feet and inches, and that night the lamp in his 
 room burned late. He worked carefully and with a 
 clear head, and, before morning came, he had his 
 deductions made and the result of his labor clearly
 
 SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE. 63 
 
 copied for presentation. At recitation the next day 
 he had his reward. The professor conned the 
 report closely and a smile appeared upon his face. 
 "You did that well, Mr. Sargent," he said; "I had 
 the survey made early yesterday morning, but your 
 results are carried out more closely and your survey 
 is the better of the two." 
 
 Sargent was gratified. The next day he failed in 
 recitation in astronomy. 
 
 The weeks passed rapidly and the date of examina- 
 tion day approached again only to find Sargent once 
 more apprehensive. Still elusive was full comprehen- 
 sion of the branch of study which had so worried 
 him, and, as the test day came nearer, the conviction 
 forced itself upon him that ignominy was in store. 
 So close at hand, finally, was the end of the semester 
 that upon" the next day examinations must be held. 
 All day Sargent labored hard with the problems 
 which it was supposed might be given to the 
 students, but with most unsatisfactory issue. The 
 night coming was that of the Junior Exhibition, an 
 event of almost as great magnitude to the sopho- 
 mores as to the juniors themselves, for here was 
 afforded opportunity to harass their natural en- 
 emies. 
 
 Sargent had been active in preparing the some- 
 what ferocious literature circulated on such occa- 
 sions, and it was imperative that he should attend 
 the exhibition. A lady was to accompany him and 
 he did not regret the engagement, for he felt that 
 anything to distract his mind from the whirling 
 problems would make him more calm and clear-
 
 64 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 headed for the morrow. He must face the trial, do 
 his best, hope for the best and take the con- 
 sequences ! 
 
 He sat beside the fair young woman, and in the 
 midst of the exhibition had temporarily forgotten 
 himself and his troubles in watching the performance 
 upon the stage and exchanging comments with his 
 companion. 
 
 It was at a moment of greatest interest when 
 Sargent felt a hand upon his shoulder. He turned 
 in his seat and looked at the clean-cut face of the 
 tow-haired Lathrop, who, in mathematics, as has 
 been told, was only a little better than he. Upon 
 Lathrop 's face was an expression of mingled 
 excitement and anxiety. 
 
 "Come with me at once," he whispered. "Make 
 any sort of an excuse, but come, and say you won't 
 be back, too. Miss Vanne has friends in the next 
 seat they live next door to her I know 'em; and 
 they'll take her home. Don't waste a moment." 
 
 Sargent knew that Lathrop could have come in 
 such manner and at such a time on no trifling 
 errand. He leaned toward the lady beside him, 
 explained and apologized and got permission to go 
 away upon his urgent affair. Hurried arrangements 
 were made to place her with her friends, and after 
 a quick good-night, Sargent left the hall, and, a 
 moment later, he and Lathrop were on the street 
 together. Lathrop seized Sargent by the arm and 
 hurried him along, saying, pantingly, as he did so: 
 
 "We can get the papers!" 
 
 Sargent could not believe his ears. So strict had
 
 SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE. 65 
 
 been the guard preserved over the "examination 
 papers, ' ' that is, the prepared list of problems to be 
 submitted to the class, that, for some years, no 
 inkling of their contents had been secured until the 
 class to be examined had been confined in its room 
 and the papers then given out to each man separately, 
 to do the best he could within a limited time. 
 Sargent was startled. 
 
 "How?" he asked. 
 
 "They are in the professor's desk in his study in 
 his house. I saw him have a package when he left 
 the college this evening and I followed him. The 
 study is on the ground floor, you know. I kept close 
 behind him until he opened his own gate and went 
 into the house, then I jumped the fence into the 
 garden, went up and looked in between the slats of 
 the blinds of one of the study windows. Old 
 Syllabus came in, after taking off his overcoat in the 
 hall. He opened the package he carried, and I 
 could see that it contained the examination papers. 
 He sat looking over them for a while and then went 
 to his desk and put them in. He didn't lock the 
 desk. He's on the stage with the rest of the faculty 
 at the Junior Exhibition now and he surely can't 
 get out, unless something happens, before eleven 
 o'clock. But we've got to hustle!" 
 
 "What's the program?" 
 
 "That's all simple. The house is about deserted. 
 I don't believe the window is fastened down, but, 
 if it is, I've got something to pry it up with. We 
 can get in there in no time, get the papers, go over 
 to Grindlock's and copy them and then return them
 
 66 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 to the desk before Old Syllabus gets back; he'll 
 never know of it, and, as for us, we shall be loaded 
 for bear!" 
 
 A thrill went through Sargent ; he saw an end to 
 his troubles over the examination and was momen- 
 tarily exultant. Then came reflection as to the act 
 he was to engage in burglary, larceny, deceit. He 
 was impelled to refuse, and began, hesitatingly, to 
 express his views, when Lathrop cut him short with 
 a "Pshaw, it's nothing of the sort! It's a fair fight 
 with the professor and has always been so. We're 
 going to steal nothing but some information. It's 
 fair game and you're only splitting hairs. And, my 
 boy, we need those papers badly, you and I!" 
 
 The salve thus applied to his conscience, Sargent 
 admitted the idea of a mere student's trick, as he 
 made himself call it, so pandering to his own desire. 
 It accomplished its work and Sargent yielded. 
 They were approaching the professor's house now. 
 They climbed the fence and cautiously approached 
 the study window. The shutters, left carelessly 
 unlatched by the stern man who never dreamed of 
 an invasion of his residence, opened easily, and the 
 window followed. Lathrop, who had the exact 
 location of the desk fixed in mind, claimed the right 
 to enter and was assisted by his athletic companion. 
 For a few moments Sargent waited anxiously and 
 then Lathrop appeared again and was lifted noise- 
 lessly to the ground. "I've got 'em," he said. The 
 window sash was lowered, the shutters closed, and 
 the two fled noiselessly away and were soon in the 
 rear room of a restaurant a few blocks distant.
 
 SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE. 67 
 
 Little was said between the two young men. The 
 work before them was merely mechanical and they 
 assailed it eagerly. For an hour the pencils flew 
 over the paper, and then, with a long breath, each 
 announced his portion of the task completed. The 
 papers had been copied in their entirety and now 
 must be returned, or all had gone for naught or for 
 worse then naught. 
 
 The two returned to the scene of their exploit 
 and repeated it with but slight variation. Again 
 the blinds were opened, the window raised, and 
 again Lathrop entered the room. He was not gone 
 long, and when the window was carefully closed 
 again each of the two upon the ground breathed 
 more freely, and freer still when they were upon 
 the street. As they emerged from the side street 
 into the principal thoroughfare a gentleman, 
 accompanied by two ladies, met and passed, but did 
 not notice them. It was "Old Syllabus." 
 
 "Thank heaven, we weren't any later!" said 
 Lathrop fervently. Long and arduous work was 
 still before the abandoned sinners. To have in 
 their possession what problems they must solve the 
 succeeding day was a great thing; but how about 
 the solutions? Assistance must be had, and there 
 was but one resource for them. They must make 
 a confidant of Mayo, and demand his aid. First 
 they ate a bounteous supper together for the 
 weight of crime upon them did not affect their 
 appetites and then they invaded the rooms of their 
 unfortunate friend and routed him from his bed. 
 The conduct of Mr. Mayo under these circumstances
 
 68 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 was characteristic, and would have left to an 
 observer a most hazy conception of his moral views. 
 He listened in his night dress grinningly as the tale 
 was told him, and, though above all need of the 
 papers himself, being a natural mathematician, he 
 was hilarious at its conclusion. He dressed hurriedly 
 and talked jubilantly. He produced paper, arranged 
 a couch near the lamp, seized upon the copied 
 problems, and, with a pupil on either side of him, 
 began his explanations. One by one, the problems 
 and equations were gone over until each of the 
 visitors had each problem fairly solved on paper and 
 had obtained at least a glimmering of the meaning 
 of his own figures and algebraic characters. By no 
 means perfect were these solutions, for perfect 
 papers from either Sargent or Lathrop would have 
 excited prompt suspicion. Slight errors were pur- 
 posely introduced, but a certain decent average was 
 maintained. "We've got to make 'em about 80 per 
 cent," said the astute Mayo. "That'll pass you, 
 but won't look queer." 
 
 The darkness was turning to gray dawn when the 
 work was done, and all three sought a little sleep 
 before the coming day of trial. At ten o'clock 
 Sargent and Lathrop were, together with a room full 
 of other victims of the inquisition, working with 
 apparent diligence upon the problems of which they 
 already had such guilty knowledge. They made 
 many computations and consumed much paper, but 
 not a page of it ever reached the professor's hand. 
 What did reach him were the papers prepared in the 
 room of Mayo, and when they were handed in and
 
 SURVEYING THE CAT HOLE. 69 
 
 all those examined separated to await the announce- 
 ment of their fate upon the morrow, each of the two 
 burglars wished Mayo had allowed them a somewhat 
 higher percentage. "We're pretty low, but I don't 
 believe Old Syllabus would have smelled anything 
 at 85," said Lathrop. 
 
 About the bulletin boards next day were gathered 
 anxious groups scanning closely the lists of the 
 fortunate passed ones. In it appeared, "in shining 
 letters," as one declared, the names of Sargent and 
 Lathrop. And the chief conspirator rubbed his 
 hands together and chanted gleefully: "We's ober 
 de ribber, yah, yah, yah!" 
 
 "Yes," assented Sargent, "we's ober de ribber, 
 but, somehow, I feel like a sneak thief ! ' ' 
 
 And he did. Lathrop said nothing. He looked 
 grave, suddenly, and, without doubt, felt some 
 qualms of conscience. Mathematics was a hard won 
 victor) r , as both youngsters upon reflection decided. 
 It was some years before Sargent's cheek ceased to 
 burn whenever he thought of "Old Syllabus" and 
 his desk, of the open window and the stealing away 
 from it at night of two young desperadoes, one 
 of whom had his own form and features, but with 
 whom he could hardly identify himself, so unlike 
 him, he hoped, was the whole adventure. 
 
 After all came good, as good often comes out of 
 bad, for, in silent strength of feeling, Sargent 
 resolved finally, that whatever he gained during the 
 rest of his life, should be his by right, acquired in 
 the face of day, and that to lose were better than to 
 gain otherwise.
 
 70 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN. 
 
 Her hair is red as flame may be ; 
 A glowing crown it seems to me ; 
 
 Warm, like her heart O, heart of might! 
 
 Her skin, like royal ermine, white 
 Ermine goes with the crown, you see ; 
 Her hair is red ! 
 
 The Queen's heart is a bubbling sea, 
 From scarlet geysers flowing free 
 
 Such blood is when the hair's so bright 
 No lifeless, halting ruler she, 
 Tempestuous in each decree. 
 
 Yet oft repentant, loving quite. 
 Who would not bend a rugged knee 
 
 To rule so lofty yet so light? 
 Her hair is red ! 
 
 The Red Rondeau. 
 
 A junior in college bears in some respects a strik- 
 ing resemblance to the Vice-President of the United 
 States. He has had, necessarily, something of a 
 career in his field; he has reached a point where 
 there is great dignity possibly awaiting him, for he 
 is likely to be a senior, but he is not prominent in 
 the active life of the present. His warfare and 
 trials as a sophomore over, he is no longer of the 
 turbulent element in the college, and there remains 
 for him only completion of the year of study before
 
 A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN. 71 
 
 he is one of the stateliest of all human beings, a 
 senior. So it comes that the junior, being thus 
 without great aims and duties outside his class work, 
 becomes aware of the fact that there are in the world 
 creatures fairer than men, and joys aside from those 
 strictly related to the collegiate course. It is aston- 
 ishing how swiftly his eyes are opened in this direc- 
 tion. Hardly has he become assured of his safe 
 passage over the dangerous shoals in his examina- 
 tion before he begins to note the neat foot and 
 expressive eye of the other sex and has opinions of 
 profundity thereon. This fact in natural history has 
 been noted and admitted in all colleges, without 
 exception. It is not often, though, that juniors fall 
 so suddenly into a new condition as did Sargent. 
 
 There had been many things to attend to after the 
 examinations, and especially did those with athletic 
 affairs on their minds have their hands full. There 
 were many meetings having regard to the work of 
 the coming year. Sargent bolted from one place to 
 another like a politician at a convention. He was 
 trotting, almost running heedlessly, but with the 
 momentum of a man weighing well up toward one 
 hundred and seventy-five pounds, and he was 
 trotting like a fool, for his head was down, and he 
 had to turn a corner. He swerved and turned about 
 the almost right-angle of the pathway, and then 
 there was an impact, and something slight gave way 
 before him and went groundward. There came to 
 his nostrils a faint perfume and to his brain came 
 suddenly a little sense. In turning the corner of the 
 building he had run down a young woman and had
 
 72 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 done the running down most thoroughly. He 
 swerved, caught himself against the side of the 
 building, and looked upon the ruin he had wrought. 
 Something slight and fair was upon the grass, and 
 something slight and fair recovered itself with 
 wondrous ease and stood before him. The some- 
 thing was a young lady, who, with extraordinary 
 calmness, under the circumstances, and with a 
 woman's instinct, was arranging her tumbled hair. 
 Her hat lay on the ground beside her. Now, that 
 hair was of a rare tint like the red, unburnished 
 copper, and, as the girl twisted its heavy waving 
 masses into a great rope and coiled and fastened it 
 at the back of her well-shaped head, she looked at 
 Sargent calmly and without a word. 
 
 Sargent stepped forward and picked up the 
 marvelous straw hat, while he recited an abject 
 apology, and stood waiting until the hair-dressing 
 was at such a stage as to admit the putting on of 
 the crown, and then he handed the delicate mass of 
 straw, lace and ribbon to the girl of the glorious 
 hair, but he had recovered himself now, the young 
 brute, and he couldn't help saying, as he glanced at 
 her shining tresses 
 
 "It's too bad to cover your hair, even with such a 
 hat." 
 
 Sargent had spoken the crystal clear truth as the 
 thought entered his brain just as a ghost of a smile 
 appeared on the lips of the red-haired girl, but the 
 brim of the straw hat was now poised over a face 
 flushed with rose color, and, without a smile, the girl 
 said, as she turned to go in the opposite direction
 
 A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN. 73 
 
 from Sargent's way, "It's not your fault, I know 
 all this but your comment is like your racing 
 gait." 
 
 "I was awkward. You must pardon me!" 
 pleaded Sargent, but the red-gold head, after a 
 slight bow to him, was held up very high, and the 
 fair face was turned away as the girl walked from 
 him. 
 
 The young man stood looking after her in a dazed 
 way, quite out of keeping with his usual manner in 
 an emergency, quite out of keeping, even, with 
 his usual manner toward ladies, for he was 
 not a person easily abashed, and had grown up 
 among clever sisters. Now he stood looking at the 
 disappearing girl with the air of one who has seen a 
 vision. For that matter, he had really seen one, and 
 one which it was a privilege to look upon. Fairer 
 vision seldom comes to mortals than that which was 
 just disappearing round the corner of a building. 
 Only when the last skirt-flutter was lost to sight did 
 the young man recover himself, and his face again 
 assume an expression of more or less intelligence. 
 Then he started impulsively to follow the girl, 
 but checked himself at once. "I'll find her, 
 though, somehow. I'll find her!" he said to him- 
 self. 
 
 It was noted that evening by his room-mate that 
 Sargent appeared absent-minded and speculative. 
 Comment to such effect elicited but a good-natured 
 growl, but the fact of absent-mindedness was indis- 
 putable. Sargent was thinking, and thinking hard, 
 and his thoughts were all toward the solution of a
 
 74 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 problem of finding a fair "X." The equation was 
 rather a difficult one. He formed it in his mind: 
 
 X = Identity of one fair unknown. 
 
 Y = One angelic creature with the reddest hair and 
 whitest skin in the world. 
 
 XY = One guest among five thousand visitors at 
 Commencement exercises = Something to be 
 found among that five thousand. 
 
 Then X-|-Y = Result of efforts of self and friends, par- 
 ticularly self. 
 
 More definite understanding of certain features of 
 the second half of the equation were, he decided, to 
 be arranged for the first thing in the morning, and 
 work on the equation which had suddenly become a 
 thing so near the heart of Sargent began very early 
 indeed. 
 
 The first thing to do was to interest Lathrop, and 
 interest him deeply, and Sargent introduced the 
 subject at breakfast in what he considered an 
 extremely far-off and crafty way. 
 
 "I ran into a woman yesterday.' 
 
 "Yes, young or old?" This in an uninterested 
 way from Lathrop, who, as he ate, was reading the 
 morning paper's account of Commencement affairs. 
 
 "Young; and I bowled her over, and I've got to 
 find her and square myself. I was coming around 
 a corner of the middle building, and on a run, like 
 a fool. I might have known I'd lift somebody. I 
 did, and it was a young lady! I've been feeling 
 small over it, ever since." 
 
 "Description?" 
 
 "About eighteen, I should think, slender; eyes
 
 A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN. 75 
 
 I don't know what color just eyes that saw you, a 
 skin like what comes when you squeeze milk-weed, 
 and hair, a cross between copper and the heart of a 
 coal fire. Furthermore, she's proud and 'hotty' 
 was stately when I tried to apologize. But I've got 
 to find her." 
 
 The interest at once exhibited by the gracious 
 young man, Lathrop, was, to say the least, sus- 
 picious. He was ardent in a moment, but he had 
 remarks to make. 
 
 "We'll find her! Oh! we'll find her! but, I say it 
 in all kindness, what did you eat yesterday, or have 
 you risen silently and sneaked away from me to 
 some hostelry as the dawn broke gradually? Of 
 course their isn't any hostel near here, and you 
 don't drink, but I had to round out the sentence. I 
 had reason, too! Something has got you. I think 
 it's the hair. 
 
 "Let me tangle a hand in your hair, Jeanette, 
 And you won't get away, you'll be mine, you bet!" 
 
 hummed the young brute. "Your hand shall, alle- 
 gorically, be there, my boy! Give us further 
 details. ' ' 
 
 Now, under ordinary circumstances, such an out- 
 break on the part of one Lathrop would have been 
 followed by an immediate and violent personal 
 assault, but, to the astonishment of the chaffer, no 
 such issue came. On the contrary, Sargent, assum- 
 ing a casual air, only said conciliatingly : 
 
 "Well, how are we to do it?" 
 
 Lathrop stood astonished, for he had braced him-
 
 7 6 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 self against an attack, and such extraordinary 
 demeanor on the part of his stalwart room-mate was 
 too much for him. It seemed unfair. He had been 
 imposed upon by an unaggressive appeal to his 
 finer feelings. But he rose, or, in his own estima- 
 tion, fell to the occasion. He became, on the 
 instant, a young college Moses leading a friend out 
 of the wilderness, a Galahad with but vague ideas in 
 mind, a Damon ready to prance about in the 
 interest of a Pythias. 
 
 "Sargent," he said, "she's as good as found! 
 Behold in me the old man with the witch-hazel rod 
 having a forked end ! Great am I, begobs ! I find 
 not only hidden water, but hidden fire ! Hoopla ! ' ' 
 and the young man executed an ungainly dance. 
 
 It was chaffing, but, nevertheless, Sargent felt 
 relieved. He was in earnest ; he knew his friend to 
 be so, as to finding the girl, at least, and here was aid. 
 
 They talked together long and earnestly as to the 
 best method of discovering a nameless but recogniz- 
 able young woman in a visiting force of five thou- 
 sand or more people, and, after all, the result of their 
 discussion was practical, Lathrop affording most of 
 the brains in the debate, because his point of view 
 was necessarily most objective and unobscured. 
 "She wouldn't have come to the University," he 
 declared, "unless she were going to attend the 
 Commencement exercises. She'll be in sight some- 
 where among five or six thousand people. That 
 means only opera glasses and work, thanks to the 
 infatuated perfection of your description. Oh! 
 we'll get 'er!"
 
 A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN. 77 
 
 The day of the Commencement exercises came and 
 the great hall of the University was packed by the 
 glittering assemblage such an occasion demands. 
 There were the faculty and the graduating class in 
 all dignity on the wide platform, there was a blaze 
 of color and flutter of fans throughout the audi- 
 torium, where fair women were as numerous as 
 men, and there, situated at a vantage point for 
 viewing the audience, were two newly-fledged 
 juniors, each holding an opera glass, and each devot- 
 ing himself as strictly to studying the scene through 
 his glasses as though he were a field officer in 
 battle. 
 
 Very elaborate had been the preparations for 
 this "needle hunting," as Lathrop called it, refer- 
 ring to that housewifely implement lost in the hay- 
 mow, and in these preparations Lathrop had shone 
 resplendent. He had secured two diagrams of the 
 hall, and each diagram he had marked off into care- 
 fully numbered squares. This enabled a division of 
 labor between the two young men, and, at the same 
 time, made practicable an absolutely thorough 
 search. Sargent was delighted with the idea, 
 though, when his buoyant friend declared that he 
 ought to have a "share in the girl, ' ' if they found her, 
 his face assumed a grave expression. This was no 
 subject to jest upon. Then, too, the whole search 
 might be fruitless. The fair unknown might not 
 be in the great assemblage. But the chances were 
 against that, and Sargent was hopeful. 
 
 So the young men began their study of the audi- 
 ence, Lathrop sitting just behind Sargent, and
 
 78 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 neither paying the slightest attention to the exer- 
 cises. Square by square, each carefully made his 
 search, and half an hour passed. Upon the plat- 
 form some man of dignity was making an address 
 and the only sound heard save that of the sonorous 
 utterance was the whir of a thousand fans. All at 
 once, this pleasant blending of sounds was broken 
 by a suppressed gasp of agony followed by an 
 excitedly resonant whisper which was so loud that 
 it was on the margin of common speech : 
 
 "There's your bonfire!" 
 
 The gasp of pain came from Sargent, who had 
 been hit in the back with awful force. The roaring 
 whisper came from Lathrop, whose eyes were ablaze 
 with triumph. There was a ripple of laughter all 
 about, the speaker paused for a moment in his 
 address and then all went on again. The episode 
 had been looked upon only as some foolish student's 
 freak in disturbance of a fellow. A moment later 
 Lathrop leaned forward and whispered again, but 
 this time, though excitedly, in a lower voice, 
 "There she blows, my hearty! There's your con- 
 flagration; square eighty-three!" 
 
 Sargent controlled himself for a moment or two, 
 then, as all attention returned to the stage, slowly 
 raised his glass and brought it to bear on the spot 
 designated. Yes! It was ture! There was the 
 vision again! 
 
 He could study her calmly now, and his case got 
 worse. She might not be what appealed to others, 
 but there was the face for him! It was in new 
 environment now and seemed fairer than ever above
 
 A JUNIOR AND A YOUNG WOMAN. 79 
 
 the white garb and thrown out in relief by its red 
 crowning against a background of other faces. He 
 was becoming more or less daft when aroused to 
 practical life by the restlessness of his companion, 
 who claspedliis arm tightly and whispered in his ear: 
 
 "We've got the whole thing! I know her!" 
 
 Sargent became excited and alive: "Know her? 
 Who is she?" 
 
 "Well, I don't really know her, but I know who 
 she is. She's Milton's cousin. I saw the old lady 
 who is with her when with Milton yesterday and 
 was introduced. I forget the name. But he spoke 
 of his cousin who was here and hoped I'd meet her. 
 She's Miss Barbara something, and from northern 
 Michigan. Her father is a retired judge or some- 
 thing. We'll lay for 'em when the show's over, and 
 have Milton introduce us. Oh! my boy, I'm worth 
 my weight in gold!" 
 
 The exercises seemed longer to Sargent than to 
 the blithesome Lathrop, but they came to an end at 
 last, and the two crowded their way swiftly to the 
 main exit. There came down the main stairway a 
 young man accompanying an old lady and a young 
 one, the young one having red hair. Lathrop 
 crowded forward effusively ; he grasped Milton by the 
 hand. He was most respectful to the old lady and 
 most obsequious when presented to the young one, 
 Miss Barbara Sloan. Then came in Sargent. It 
 was all formal until his eyes met those of the girl. 
 He was rather awkward than otherwise, and she, 
 dignified as she was, blushed a little. She recog- 
 nized him. 
 
 6
 
 8o THE MAKING OF A MAN. 
 
 As for Lathrop, he stood by grinning patronizingly. 
 Billy Barnes came along, and Lathrop strolled away 
 with him, and Sargent knew well enough what the 
 two were talking and laughing about, as he saw the 
 little diagram of the hall in Lathrop's hand, with 
 Barnes considering it. But he held his peace. He 
 was content with the outcome of the day.
 
 A NORTHWARD DRIFT. 81 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A NORTHWARD DRIFT. 
 
 If there be a feature of a landscape different from 
 any other feature of any other landscape in the 
 world, it is the pine stump fence region of the 
 Saginaw Valley, of eastern Michigan. It is a 
 strong thing all alone in the world. The pine 
 stump, dragged from the earth by a derrick, oxen, 
 men, and the effect of much loud language, lies 
 upon the sward looking like a great fanged and 
 tentacled thing uplifted edgewise, six feet high and 
 as many across. It will last. It will lie there 
 uninfluenced when the heat of summer works and 
 cracks all other wood exposed, when the soaking 
 rains of autumn bring their slow disintegration, 
 when the fierce cold of winter makes the ice bulge 
 and crack in all interstices anywhere, when spring 
 brings alternate frost and sunshine ; it will lie there 
 unchanged while the hair turns gray about the 
 temples of the men who pulled it from the earth. 
 So, in the Saginaw Valley they make fences of the 
 pine tree stumps, piling them along in a bristling 
 row about a field, a fence to last and defy. 
 
 The men who owned farms when the pine tree 
 stumps were to be had could if they were wise 
 enough in time have avoided the brush fence, the 
 rail fence and even, for a period, the hedge of the
 
 82 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 future. But those who availed themselves of the 
 pine tree stump, the everlasting devil-fish on edge, 
 were among the few and the wiser ones of the 
 pioneers. So it is that, as you go on the railroad 
 beside what they call the "Thumb" in Michigan 
 that is where there is something like the thumb of a 
 mitten outstanding northward into Lake Huron and 
 protecting Saginaw Bay you see these strange 
 fences about the fields which lie close beside the 
 road. 
 
 Nowhere else in all the world will you see such 
 fences at least at their best. Your grandchildren 
 will not see them, for even the pine roots will rot in 
 time, and then will come whatever may be the fence 
 of the future. But, so long as they exist, the stub- 
 born things bristling about the fields, they will be 
 banners of a race, a standard set up to tell how 
 certain Anglo-Saxons conquered certain soil. About 
 them in spring grow liverwort and pink and white 
 areas of anemones. And there are mandrakes, too, 
 growing along the sides of these dragon-like fences. 
 You can see them near Port Huron to-day, and 
 near Seymour; they linger, hoary and strong, like 
 Methuselah. 
 
 To the village on the shores of the great Lake, 
 the village surrounded by farms fenced with pine 
 stumps, came Sargent on his vacation. It was not, 
 to the uninitiated, a glorious region. There to the 
 east, to be sure, was the vast blue lake, and the air 
 was purified by its drift over water, or scented in its 
 drift from the west over the wood, by the pines still 
 living, because, when Attila the lumberman
 
 A NORTHWARD DRIFT. 83 
 
 passed, they were too slender for sawing into 
 boards. It was a land of vigor, but there was 
 bareness, and the dead pine here and there was a 
 skeleton, as the dead pine ever must be. But dead 
 trees respond heartily to the tap of the red-headed 
 woodpecker, the soil had produced its clover, the 
 bobolinks were everywhere, the bluebirds had nest- 
 ing places in holes of the pine stump fences, and 
 the song sparrow was all about. The sun fell hotly 
 on the sandy reaches of the roadways, and there 
 was too much glare, but the air one breathed was 
 like champagne in its effect, and the new growth of 
 things was making greenness where the lumbermen 
 had been. 
 
 To Sargent the place was home, and what we 
 have been born to is a standard all our lives. To 
 the forest-born the forest is perfection ; to the child 
 of the desert, no doubt a stretch of yellow, 
 unrelieved to the horizon, is the perfect landscape. 
 
 He had seen more, this young collegian, he of the 
 blundering work and triumphant athletics, of the 
 red-haired girl, and the result was that she more 
 and more fascinated him. He had been earnest and 
 adroit, had been most deferential to the aunt, had 
 been much about the two during the brief day or so 
 of Commencement exercises, and had been invited, 
 if it should chance that he visited the Northern 
 Peninsula, to become a guest at the Sloan house- 
 hold. He had learned much about that household. 
 
 He was with his sisters now, and there were good 
 times in town and country, and a proud father and 
 mother made much of him, but he was mooning
 
 84 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 over the girl with the red hair. He thought foolish 
 thoughts. There were old pine tree trunks along 
 the roadside where he drove. There were worms in 
 the shallow depths of the decaying tall white trunks, 
 and how to find these worms the red-headed wood- 
 peckers well knew. They knew how to get at the 
 heart of things. He'd ride along, this Sargent, 
 sitting dreaming in a buck-board, and see the red- 
 headed woodpeckers get what they wanted through 
 the decaying shell. "I'm a worm," he said to him- 
 self, "and she's the red-headed woodpecker. 
 They're not slender enough, though. The worm 
 must turn!" he would sometimes say, half aloud 
 ' ' I must get after the red-head ! ' ' 
 
 He had learned that Barbara Sloan was the sole 
 child of Lysander Sloan, who had been an associate 
 justice of the Supreme Court of the state ; who had not, 
 like others of his party, been re-elected when his 
 term expired, and who, in half disgust, had invested 
 the small money in his possession in a woodland 
 area of northern Michigan, had built a house and 
 improved its surroundings, and was trying to live 
 on something very nearly resembling nothing, 
 aside from what the cleared area of his tract pro- 
 duced. In time, the tract, as a whole, would be 
 valuable. Meanwhile the small cleared space with 
 intelligently directed work upon its acres did not 
 yield much save food. There was no surplus of 
 ready money. The daughter had graduated at a 
 famous Eastern school, then had come to the place 
 in the woods and had been brave with her some- 
 what broken father. Once in a while, as finances
 
 A NORTHWARD DRIFT. 85 
 
 allowed, she emerged into the world again. So 
 Sargent had met her. He had talked with her 
 often before he left the University, when the stu- 
 dents and guests streamed away upon trains at 
 almost the same time. 
 
 It is hard to describe a red-haired girl, even in a 
 story, and, for that matter, hard to describe the 
 moods and blood and force and thought and love 
 of a junior in an American university. But the 
 junior, if he be one of the leading men, is ordinarily 
 a fine fellow, and the red-haired girl, with cultivated 
 mind added to her temperament, is surely a telling 
 and piquantly dangerous addition to some equations 
 in this world of ours. 
 
 Sargent went to parties with his sisters, talked of 
 grave affairs with his father and hung about his 
 mother. He did some shooting and fishing, and 
 was foolish with a small sailboat at times when a 
 storm was coming on, but that, though dallying, he 
 was going to spend a week or two in northern 
 Michigan before he returned to the University was 
 as sure as that the sun would shine again. He 
 knew that. He had talked with Barbara Sloan 
 about her home, about the log house with a wing at 
 the end of the sloping cleared space. He wondered 
 just how the hollyhocks, of which she had once 
 casually spoken, grew along the rough fence's side. 
 He had imaginings about the pinks, and wagered 
 with himself as to whether or not they were north- 
 east or southwest of the east window of the front 
 room of the house? Above all, he wondered what 
 she would say when, some day, he came up the
 
 86 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 pathway from the gate? Something kept pulling 
 and pulling. He hadn't much money, but, one day, 
 he said he was going north for most of what 
 remained of the vacation, and he had a little talk 
 with his father, to whom he explained nothing, but 
 who was a real man, and who had faith in his blood; 
 and then there was a railroad trip across land 
 where apple trees grew and where barns were 
 painted, and then across barrens, and then where 
 sugar maples grew close enough and small enough 
 for thickets, with brooks springing in their midst, 
 seeking Lake Huron or Lake Michigan, as the 
 mood of the brook might be, and then a ride in a 
 steamboat across the Straits and a buck-board ride, 
 a ride of many miles, ending in a drive beside a 
 creek where the scrub oaks were small and the 
 birches were prominent, and then a climbing 
 entrance to a clearing where there was a log house 
 worth seeing, though unpretentious, because all 
 about it were the signs of soul and of culture within 
 the rude wooden walls. The boy's heart you 
 must remember that he wa x s not, at this time, much 
 more than a boy, for what is one at twenty? beat 
 very fast. Here was Her Castle! He had come and 
 didn't know what to say or do now that he was here! 
 He had come because he couldn't help himself. 
 
 Sargent had hired the buck-board man at the 
 little village of Conway, the County Seat, close by 
 the railroad, and ten or eleven miles from the Sloan 
 residence. He had reached Conway by a foot trip, 
 with many directions. There was but one horse to 
 the buck-board, but he clambered easily along up-
 
 A NORTHWARD DRIFT. 87 
 
 hill, for the wild country road was good. The 
 driver had learned his fare's name very adroit are 
 these drivers and had learned in an undetermined 
 way, that he, the fare, must be respected, else there 
 might happen something unpleasant. The driver 
 had found out much on the way, and guessed more, 
 though there had been little talk. He, though, 
 poor hanger-on of a country tavern stable that he 
 was, in comparison with Sargent, was as a banker to 
 a beggar when they reached the gateway to the 
 paradise in the stiff region of the northern peninsula 
 of Michigan. The man with the buck-board was 
 told to wait. Sargent was what athletic experts 
 call "a good man," but his knees had a funny feel- 
 ing about them as he went up the sanded path 
 between the grasses from the road toward the door- 
 way of the house. The hollyhocks did him a little 
 good, and so, in even a greater degree, did a bed of 
 pansies. Their faces smiled encouragement at him. 
 He was half-way to the door when a huge collie 
 bolted out from somewhere, and leaped forward 
 fiercely until within a yard of him. Then the collie 
 stopped. It's queer how we've bred up so close to 
 ourselves some breeds of dogs. The collie knows a 
 gentleman. 
 
 There is an expression in our tongue comparing 
 strong attraction to being "drawn by a single hair." 
 Sargent had traveled miles, drawn, not by a 
 single strand but by a wealth of red hair. Imagine 
 his condition. He stalked up the pathway and 
 rapped on the door, because there was no bell. And 
 the red-haired girl appeared.
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 AN OASIS IN THE FOREST. 
 
 Clever young women are more self-possessed than 
 young men. And this particular young woman was 
 no exception to the rule. There was a little start as 
 her gaze met that of Sargent, then swift recovery, a 
 smile, and extended hand. 
 
 "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Sargent. What 
 good fortune to your friends has brought you so far 
 into the wilderness?" 
 
 The young man, by far the more disturbed of the 
 two, had by this time somewhat regained control of 
 himself. As he looked at the creature before him, 
 there came an almost overmastering desire to blurt 
 out the whole truth, to tell what had brought him 
 there, but common sense prevailed. 
 
 He had a somewhat reasonable explanation at 
 hand. Twenty miles farther on, where the great 
 copper mines were, he had a college friend who had 
 often invited him to make a summer visit. This 
 visit was the ostensible object of his journey, and 
 he told Barbara of where he was going, and said 
 that he was perhaps too venturesome in turning 
 aside to visit her. But he wanted to see her. 
 
 The girl was perfectly at ease. "But you cannot 
 possibly reach Minkville to-day," she said, "at least 
 until very late. Send away your man with the 
 buck-board and do us a kindness. A visitor is too
 
 AN OASIS IN THE FOREST. 89 
 
 valuable a prize here to be allowed an easy escape. 
 You must meet my father and the people about 
 here, and the fishing is better here, too, than it is 
 near Minkville. We can send you on at any time." 
 
 Sargent's face must have shown his delight. He 
 accepted without excuse, went down the path to the 
 buck-board man and settled with that person 
 promptly. His heart beat fast. Here he was, a 
 guest in the house of the Red and White goddess ! 
 It had paid to venture! 
 
 There was due attention paid the guest, and when 
 Sargent met the father of his divinity, he found 
 him generously hospitable and commonplace as to 
 reception, and dignified and cultivated as to appear- 
 ance and conversation. He was exceptionally fond 
 of young people. In his leisurely talk the scholarly 
 old judge was delightful. To him the visit of a 
 young man fresh from college was a rare pleasure, 
 and he showed it. 
 
 It would have been a study had there been some 
 knowing one to see all that followed when the old 
 man and the young one met, and, later, talked 
 together ; the one more absorbed in his theories than 
 in his red-haired daughter, though almost living in 
 her, and the other, young, vigorous and hopeful, 
 absorbed in the girl entirely, and anxious to make 
 a great friend of her father. That he did with no 
 great difficulty. 
 
 An exceedingly learned and clever man was Judge 
 Sloan, and his family had grown up in comfort with 
 him until he had reached the bench of the Circuit 
 Court. Then, later, and deservedly, because of his
 
 90 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 marked fitness for the place he occupied, because of 
 the direct justice and soundness of his opinions, he 
 was nominated to the Supreme bench of the state. 
 It was almost understood that he would, in time, if 
 elected, be the head of that highest tribunal of the 
 commonwealth. He made in the political race a 
 great showing while all other members of his party 
 who were candidates were defeated by a strong- 
 majority. He was almost elected, despite the 
 change in the attitude of the more or less weak- 
 minded and fluctuating force, which makes first one 
 party win and then the other. He had a few thou- 
 sand dollars in money and he knew northern 
 Michigan. His wife had died after but a few years 
 of happy life with him. He had in the world but 
 his daughter to live for. He bought the land in the 
 forest in the North and made the buildings and 
 brought the girl there, and adopted a new mode of 
 life, depending more and more upon the society of 
 books as the world of cultivated men and women 
 slipped away from him. He had felt his daughter's 
 absence while she was away at school, keenly, and 
 since her return had been exceptionally happy in a 
 new way, in her companionship. All this Sargent 
 saw and felt and heard as the days of his brief visit 
 slipped away. 
 
 A tall, rather masculine looking woman, of 
 unmistakable Norse ancestry, was the mainstay of 
 the kitchen, in this house of logs. She was a strong 
 character, and interesting to Sargent by reason of 
 the native simplicity, tinged with sadness, of her 
 talk and ways. She was the widow of a Norwegian
 
 AN OASIS IN THE FOREST. 91 
 
 farmer, who had been one of the early settlers in the 
 wilderness, and her son Michael, a queer combina- 
 tion of wildness, mischief and music, was her 
 assistant, and the general factotum of the household. 
 The two made a study of themselves, and an inter- 
 esting addition to what commanded attention in and 
 about the household of the Sloans. 
 
 Upon the garden, and the garden means the 
 enclosed space all around the house in northern 
 Michigan, Sargent gazed with interest in the early 
 morning, after his first night's rest, beholding in 
 the little area reclaimed from the Michigan forest 
 the intimate surroundings of the every-day life of 
 Barbara. It reminded him of what he had seen in 
 another dooryard in another place and with other 
 surroundings fifteen or twenty years before, in the 
 home of his infancy and early childhood. Again he 
 saw the golden coreopsis and the phlox and the 
 "bouncing betties," each in their places, from close 
 beside the house where the clay had been banked up 
 for winter, and beside the pathway, the coreopsis 
 leaning flauntingly toward the late September sun 
 and saying, "We'll die together gently, and the 
 frosts will find us gone." And the asters and 
 dahlias said, "The golden coreopsis knows things. " 
 Anyway, that is what Sargent's sisters had once 
 declared these flowers said. 
 
 Flower gardens show ancestry. You can tell the 
 Puritan from the Pagan. We, that is, we who 
 know, can tell from the flower garden what kind of 
 people are living in a house we may be passing. 
 This flower garden in northern Michigan, where the
 
 92 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 arbutus has most scent in spring, and where the 
 hoarfrost is deepest and whitest in autumn, where 
 the beechnuts are big and the walnuts are small, 
 this was a place with a southern slope and loamy 
 soil, and a woman the conditions for a garden; a 
 garden which, beside the other flowers named, had 
 hollyhocks and old-fashioned pinks, the pinks you 
 smell and remember, and peonies and phlox, and 
 lady-slippers and all the rest. They were in the 
 southern slope from the house to the gate, and, 
 somehow, it seemed as if each flower had at last 
 been admitted to its heritage and was content and 
 glad, and had only now to pay its debt to the other 
 things, and be as glorious as it could. The flowers 
 which Barbara tended, the flowers upon which 
 Barbara looked, certainly responded to her with love 
 and reverence. She, the red-haired, was as glowing 
 with color as they. She was close to nature, which 
 is respondent. This may have been only lover's 
 nonsense, but how the flowers grew and blossomed ! 
 From the gate extended a sanded path to the 
 house, a path with a succession of planks laid 
 along its middle in a line, oaken things two inches 
 thick. The sand was clean, of course, because 
 things could not grow in its non-nourishment; but 
 on either side was the broad grass area relieved by 
 the cultivated, flower-bearing, brilliant patches, 
 which made the place so beautiful. The old- 
 fashioned grass pinks, now out of blossom, had their 
 beds, which lay blue-green in their places. The 
 fence on either side of the gate was loved and 
 leaned to by the rows of hollyhocks, and still farther
 
 AN OASIS IN THE FOREST. 93 
 
 away the sunflowers swung to greet the sun. And 
 there were more flowers here in their season, 
 larkspur, and sweet-williams, and sweet-briar ; there 
 was bergamot, which was fine to crush between 
 your fingers, and johnny-jump-ups, most hardy of 
 the violets and grandmother to the pansies, and 
 marigolds, most luxurious and symmetrical. There 
 were caraway patches over by the fence, here and 
 there. Outside grew sumach and elderberry 
 bushes, cousins of the house-bred things inside. 
 About the log house, climbing up its sides, was the 
 Michigan rose, one of the sweetest roses in all the 
 world. 
 
 There was the back-yard, too, and what a back- 
 yard it was ! There was a buckwheat field, a little 
 one, but wonderful when in bloom, for there must 
 be buckwheat cakes in fall and winter; still, the 
 buckwheat field was only a sort of aside thing. 
 Here in the clearing, which reached up to the edge 
 of the wood, were raised the vegetables and light 
 fruit which furnished food for the family. Currant 
 bushes, and the wild raspberry transplanted from 
 the clearing rioted here. Great potatoes grew in 
 the sandy soil of the field, which, drained and well- 
 hoed, hung downward from the woodland toward 
 the creek. There were lighter patches, too, where 
 melons grew to only moderate size but which 
 attained the flavor of their zone. Flavor goes with 
 zone, increasing in richness toward the poles. As 
 for the other things, well, the judge knew what 
 good things were. He knew that young beets, just 
 little things an inch or so long, made the best
 
 94 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 "greens" in the world; he knew asparagus, one of 
 nature's greatest gifts to man; he knew the summer 
 squash, which fascinates with its prodigal great 
 blossoms and scalloped fruit, and the Hubbard 
 squash, the northern sweet potato; he knew 
 parsnips and carrots, and all things in their degree, 
 and all of them were coaxed and tended in the 
 yellow-gray kitchen garden stretching northward 
 from the house till the background, with its green 
 lines, was lost in the black gown of the woodland. 
 There was a blackened stump here and there, which 
 had not burned well, and, at greater distances, a 
 stub or two, standing higher. 
 
 Of cabbages, the judge made almost a specialty. 
 He marshaled them in long lines, like ranks of 
 hard-headed soldiers, but it is hardly worth while 
 to speak of cabbages in telling of this garden. The 
 judge knew his vegetables. The little field was 
 excellent to see. The judge had ideas of an orchard, 
 and there were trees, some of them quite well 
 grown, some puny as yet, which sprung up all over 
 the sweep of land, and dotted it with green touches. 
 In these were nests of birds that sang. They 
 made an orchestra each bright morning or bright 
 evening in the combined though unblending 
 volume when was trilled and flourished out the 
 story of how near God is to earth. It was an 
 inspiring little piece of ground to look upon, this 
 field, for a man with eyes and brain, but, above all, 
 to one with perception of what on earth is related to 
 heart and soul.
 
 SWEET CROSS PURPOSES. 95 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SWEET CROSS PURPOSES. 
 
 The facility with which Sargent adapted himself 
 to the home life of the household was astonishing. 
 The judge fancied him greatly, and their talks 
 together were most edifying. Even the rather 
 somber Tilda and the silent Michael appeared 
 friendly to him, and, as for Barbara, she offered a 
 somewhat queenly comradeship. The two were 
 much together, most of the time along the creek 
 or in the forest, for Sargent's instinct led him 
 thither as a buck seeks his haunt, and Barbara was 
 herself a lover of all nature. There was no love- 
 making, but there was an undercurrent of something 
 which made ever a hunger in the man and in the 
 woman, an alertness against any exhibition of senti- 
 mentality. He was but a great man-boy, and 
 undeniably in love with this slender, red-haired 
 maiden, who puzzled him so much. She was not in 
 love with him, in the way a woman should love a 
 man, if she loved him at all. Thus, with the rela- 
 tions as they were, she had all the vantage. 
 
 They went out together, these two, the graceful, 
 thoughtful, youthful lady, and the bungling animal 
 we call a very young man of education. They 
 walked often down the path to the southward where 
 the creek quarreled with the stones, knowing some- 
 how that it would get free of them presently, and 
 
 7
 
 96 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 lose its own entity in blending with the great lake, 
 but would have no more stones to hurt, just as, 
 some say, a soul goes out to mingle with and be lost 
 in the Great Unknown. 
 
 But Barbara, being a woman, and furthermore 
 being a woman with red hair, was, in a manner, 
 what we call "interested." The hours the two 
 passed together were enticing to her. The man 
 showed the woman a host of things she had never 
 known about the wood life. He would explain to her 
 the story told by the spoor of all the creek's small 
 creatures. He would show her where the raccoon, 
 the tracks of which looked like those made by the 
 feet of a little baby, had feasted with his mate on the 
 fresh pink clams, and would tell of the happy family 
 living far aloft in the hollowed heart of the big dead 
 tree. He would make interesting to her the stories 
 of the mink and the muskrat and the otter, and even 
 of the tiny, undeveloped creatures crawling about 
 and making criss-cross lines on the creek's sandy bed. 
 And ever, throughout what he said, ran a strain of 
 half-way love-making, venturesome but fearful, and 
 sometimes reproachful, because of her irresponsive- 
 ness. 
 
 The man had a fancy for rising early and rejoicing 
 in the inhalation of the champagne morning air, 
 and, sometimes, he prevailed upon her to go out 
 with him on these ante-breakfast excursions. He 
 was boastful one morning. 
 
 "There are a hundred rhapsodies over sunset to 
 one over sunrise," said he, "and the reason is 
 obvious ; the laziness of mankind. ' '
 
 SWEET CROSS PURPOSES. 97 
 
 The girl laughed. "Possibly that is true. This 
 morning at least is delicious. Are the colors of 
 sunrise more delicate and tender than those of 
 sunset? It seems to me that at sunrise only pink 
 and rose prevail that the more gorgeous colors are 
 always subdued by grays. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, that is because you have seen only half a 
 dozen sunrises in your life, and the memory of them 
 becomes clouded by your 'grays.' The sun rises 
 in a riot of fiery splendor, I tell you, I who have 
 watched it a thousand mornings. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, sage, live forever!" mockingly. 
 
 He paid no attention to her gibe. "Yes," he 
 mused, "I have seen many a fair sunrise, but never 
 any to equal this. You see there's a great deal in 
 environment. Alone, one cannot get the whole of 
 anything, even of a sunrise, and there is always " 
 
 He stopped clumsily, realizing that he was ever 
 wandering toward the danger line, for the face of 
 the young woman had taken on its anti-sentimental 
 expression. 
 
 "Oh, don't talk about that," said she. "Tell me 
 about the time when you were in camp in mid- 
 winter, and of the pine woods, when the snow was 
 four feet deep, and all that." 
 
 "It was very cold," he began, "but I have had, 
 since then, a greater experience in coldness. ' ' 
 
 " 'The owl for all his feathers was a-cold,' " she 
 recited, in a shivery voice. "But go on and tell 
 me about that pine-woods experience. What did 
 you eat and what did you do?" 
 
 And so Sargent was compelled to tell the story of
 
 98 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 a winter experience to which he had made some 
 chance allusion. What man ever reached his goal 
 in talking when opposed by feminine evasion? Yet 
 ever he returned to the tentative love assault, 
 advancing cautiously, only to 'find the bridge raised 
 and the portcullis down. There were, however, fair 
 parleyings from the battlements, that and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Sometimes the woman would be the seeker, for 
 she was very curious about the man. "Tell me 
 about yourself, ' ' she said one day. ' ' I know almost 
 nothing of you yet. What are you in your domain? 
 Are you going to be a brigand, or study for the 
 ministry? Have you sisters, and what are they 
 like? And have you a favorite among them? And 
 what is she like?" 
 
 "I would like to be a brigand," was his reply, "but 
 circumstances beyond me prevent, and so I am only 
 going to be a civil engineer, with the accent on the 
 'civil,' if you please, Miss Sloan. I couldn't go into 
 the ministry, even if I wished, because, if I did, I 
 should want to be a missionary, for the sake of the 
 varied experiences and adventures, and there are 
 tenets connected with the present missionary 
 system to which I could not possibly subscribe." 
 
 "That's strange," she commented. "Will you give 
 me an illustration?" 
 
 "There are a number of things with which I cannot 
 agree," he said, "but I am inclined to the belief 
 that the chief fault of the missionaries relates to 
 angels. They do not teach the right sort of angels. 
 Now, I take it, an angel is about the most
 
 SWEET CROSS PURPOSES. 99 
 
 picturesque thing in Christian tradition. I know 
 that, when I was a boy, I didn't care to go and live 
 with the saints, but the angels caught me. So, too, 
 they would catch black or yellow people, if their 
 angels were of the right sort if they were not 
 white but who wants to go to be a saved saint to 
 be bossed over by angels of another color? Preach 
 black angels or yellow angels and you'll make con- 
 verts from Zanzibar to Pekin. But my ideas would, 
 I fear, be considered revolutionary, if not 
 unorthodox ! ' ' 
 
 "What a theologian is being wasted!" said she. 
 "But what about your sisters?" 
 
 "Oh, well, I have three, and I am fond of them. 
 If there is one of whom I am more fond than of the 
 others, I think it's Bessie. She's little and has 
 brown hair, and is in love with her brother. I wish 
 other people would follow her example, ' ' he added 
 reflectively. 
 
 "Go on," she said, imperatively. "Tell me more 
 about her. What do you do together?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing in particular, we're just birds of a 
 feather. We take delight in caring for each other, 
 and in being impractical and having fancies. We 
 live in Vagueland, Bessie and I. Don't you know 
 Vagueland?" 
 
 Barbara replied that as to Vagueland her geo- 
 graphical knowledge was incomplete. 
 
 "Well, to tell the truth, I don't know just where it 
 is myself, but it lies somewhere between Kalamazoo 
 and Dreamville. Bessie and I never have any 
 trouble in finding it."
 
 too THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 "What do you two do when you are in Vague- 
 land?" 
 
 "Well, our adventures are partly military and 
 partly matrimonial. Bessie usually marries a prince 
 of excellent moral character, and I lead a successful 
 army, or accomplish great engineering feats, and 
 the girl I want is always good to me. I wish this 
 were Vagueland!" 
 
 Here again was occasion for diverting the con- 
 versation, but Barbara was insatiate. "Were you 
 ever in love?" she demanded. 
 
 "Do you mean up to date, or just in the past?" 
 
 "Oh, just in the past," she said, impatiently. 
 "Don't be foolish. Were you ever in love before 
 you went to college?" 
 
 ' ' Desperately. ' ' 
 
 "Were you rejected?" 
 
 "W e 11 not exactly. In fact, my sweetheart 
 was very good to me. She made much of me until 
 the day she was married to another fellow." 
 
 "Then she must have been a hard-hearted 
 woman," and the girl's eyes flashed ajittle as she 
 said it. 
 
 "It would almost seem so from the bare relation 
 of the facts, yet the plea that I was only twelve 
 while she was twenty-nine at the time of our affair, 
 seemed to be accepted as a degree of palliation by 
 our mutual friends. She belonged to what might be 
 called the horse-hair sofa epoch, and she was a good 
 girl, with her hair in a net. She has four children 
 now, and they are fine. ' ' 
 
 "You are but trifling," declared the indignant
 
 SWEET CROSS PURPOSES. 101 
 
 Barbara. "Have you been engaged in no love 
 affair of comparatively modern date?" 
 
 "I don't think there has been anything fully 
 deserving the title," he said, musingly. "There 
 is a friend of my sisters who is, in many respects, 
 the most beautiful creature upon whom human eyes 
 have ever rested; everybody raves over her, and 
 my sisters, except Bessie, think I should devote 
 myself to her. She'd make what we call a 'model 
 wife. ' ' ' 
 
 "Why don't you make love to her?" 
 
 "Because I couldn't do anything with her if I 
 tried. She lacks the understanding, emotion. I 
 don't suppose Cicero could have convinced a fish or 
 a canary bird. Who can play without a musical 
 instrument a piano, fiddle, or harp?" he added, 
 laughing. "There isn't a hypnotist in the world 
 who could affect a dressed dummy in a shop 
 window. I know I'm mixing my similes, but I 
 can't help it. She has a class in the Sunday-school, 
 an excellent education, a well-to-do father, a sort of 
 dimpled dignity of face, big blue eyes and wavy 
 flaxen hair. I think it's the hair that disagrees with 
 me most. Do you know I think there is a great 
 deal of character in hair?" And he gazed earnestly 
 upon her crown. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't look at me that way," she 
 said. 
 
 "You do! Well, the expression you see upon my 
 face just now is intended to represent undisguised 
 admiration. ' ' 
 
 She said that it looked like illness, but that she
 
 102 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 would take him at his word. Appearances were 
 deceiving. 
 
 Once or twice Barbara was nearly lured into 
 earnestness by the ever-seeking Sargent. One day 
 he led her into what was almost a debate regarding 
 the relative love-perceptiveness and faithfulness of 
 men and women, he became almost eloquent in his 
 declaration that men were truer and tenderer ; and 
 he felt what he said, for his sensibilities had been 
 disturbed. He told of how a man beatifies the 
 individual goddess, of the purity and lastingness of 
 it; how men have led their squadrons, written 
 books, controlled the councils of nations, or triumphed 
 in mere money-making for it, and how the ideal and 
 idolized "She" may be pretty and good and thought- 
 ful, but be hard and calculating and not appreciative 
 at all, not half understanding the devotion that is 
 given her. Though some great women, like men, 
 do understand, he argued. "And the worst of it 
 is," he declared, "that the greater the man and the 
 more forceful, the greater is his loving and his 
 possible suffering. Ever and ever the giant among 
 men comes back to the feminine soul, the maybe 
 helpful mate, upon whom he rests and who gives 
 him life and strength. It is for her he accomplishes, 
 because she is a part of his life. It is good for him. 
 Where did they find Alfred before his greatest 
 battle with the Danes? He was in his tent, set far 
 apart, and the woman he loved was washing his long 
 hair. They had to call him away wet-headed from 
 her lap. Who says he did not think the better and 
 fight the better for it! Do men so inspirit women?"
 
 SWEET CROSS PURPOSES. 103 
 
 Barbara was indignant. "Of course they do 
 when they are the right men, ' ' she added pointedly. 
 
 And Sargent's heart fell, but he continued, in 
 boyish emotion. "It is the man who guards and 
 fights, and the woman who forgets. There was no 
 grass on the tomb of Pericles when Aspasia had 
 another lover. The Angle hunted the she-wolf 
 down for a cloak for the girl to wear. She fled with 
 the Briton foeman. They were your ancestors and 
 mine, and the women have been doing the same 
 thing ever since the lighter ones. ' ' 
 
 And so the days passed. When Sargent felt that 
 he could stay no longer, he went away, making, 
 before his return home, a short visit to his con- 
 venient friend of the copper region. The young 
 fellow left the girl of his heart with unspoken, 
 forcibly suppressed feelings. He was not a whit 
 downcast, though, so strong was his youthful hope 
 and faith. "She must love me in time," he said 
 to himself. "It is true I don't deserve it, but just 
 because I love her so, she must love me!" 
 
 And nothing could shake this belief.
 
 104 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 
 
 Not remarkable for its vigor was the first month's 
 work of Sargent at the University in the junior 
 year. Ever between him and the pages before him 
 came visions of a fair face and of woodland 
 stretches, but Time, the balm-bearer, is as kind to 
 the young as to the old. And enforced work is a 
 great sedative. With ends to attain, the youth 
 became once more engrossed in the labor of learn- 
 ing, and could reason more objectively. Besides, 
 there came occasional letters from Northern 
 Michigan, piquant, interesting, not altogether 
 satisfying, but still forming a link between two 
 people. 
 
 Sargent's own letters in reply were, like his con- 
 duct on his visit, somewhat uncraftily concealed 
 attempts at love-making, held within reasonable 
 limits by prudential considerations. 
 
 And, as time passed, the young man began to feel 
 that courage which follows success in effort; he 
 became a student who was a credit to the Uni- 
 versity. Even the hobgoblin of mathematics he no 
 longer feared, and he felt that he was becoming an 
 engineer, an engineer who would know his business, 
 a man who could wrestle with natural obstacles and 
 
 \ 
 
 overcome them scientifically, a maker of paths. 
 Side by side with him struggled the buoyant Lath-
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 105 
 
 rop, and when the academic year had neared its 
 close, each was prepared to face examination with a 
 confidence which was justified. There was no 
 marauding expedition this time. One had been 
 enough to last each for a lifetime. 
 
 Ten days before the end of the term, there came 
 to Sargent a letter. He had been dreaming of 
 another trip to Northern Michigan, and his pulse 
 had beaten faster as he thought of it. He felt 
 himself more virile now, more qualified for the 
 breaking of a butterfly, one who might perhaps 
 command that which he wanted, but the letter 
 arbitrarily changed his plans, and there was no 
 recourse. 
 
 Sargent was summoned to spend his vacation in 
 the great city of the West, there, in the office of the 
 engineering department of a railroad, to acquire an 
 outline knowledge of the duties which would be his 
 upon his graduation; there was no alternative in 
 the matter, he must perform this work while the 
 influence behind him and supporting him existed, 
 or sacrifice, perhaps, his prospect of entering active 
 life with an advantage. To have refused would 
 have been the sheerest folly, even considering the 
 ultimate attainment of what he most desired. He 
 wrote a regretful letter to Barbara, bewailing the 
 fact that he could not visit the north that summer, 
 and received one too placid in return, though its 
 very placidity may have done him good, in that it 
 somewhat piqued him. He plunged feverishly into 
 his work amid his new surroundings, and the vaca- 
 tion seemed but a few days to him. The practical
 
 106 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 experience in work was of great value to him; it 
 showed him wherein was his strength and where 
 were his weaknesses, and enabled him to concentrate 
 his efforts in the senior year upon the attainments 
 most required. He graduated with honor, and with 
 half a thousand friends; then came again an 
 imperative call to Chicago and the beginning of his 
 career. He chafed and fretted somewhat, and his 
 imagination treated him unfairly. The northern 
 letters, which still came regularly, partook, it is 
 true, a little of the coldness of the winds chilled in 
 their sweep over Lake Superior, but his heart was 
 warm and his hands were outstretched. The face 
 in the woods had become wonderfully idealized and 
 the red hair had become an aureole. The long days 
 of fall and early winter passed, and with the first of 
 January came a six weeks' vacation from drudgery, 
 and he fled toward the Saginaw Valley as fast as 
 steam could carry him. There were joyous and riot- 
 ous times at home, where, as the pride of his sisters, 
 much ado was made over him, and where he liked it 
 all, though he was restless. At the end of two 
 weeks he announced his intention of visiting the 
 Northern Peninsula, and a train which forced its 
 way through snow-drifts carried him toward the 
 Straits. He crossed upon the ice and found him- 
 self somewhat perplexed in the little town, where 
 old eastern fur-traders had laid the foundations of 
 vast fortunes, and where yet the Indian and the 
 half-breed were part of the population, where 
 strange legends of lake and forest were yet of firm 
 belief, where, upon the mainland, the wood-roads
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 107 
 
 were buried deeply, and where dog-sleds or snow- 
 shoes were a necessity for him who would go afield. 
 Miles to the north lay the place he sought, lost for 
 the winter. 
 
 He talked with the old trappers, who were drink- 
 ing strong waters and telling hunting stories in the 
 shanty-like boarding houses, hibernating until 
 spring should come. He told them where he 
 wanted to go and they advised him not to undertake 
 the trip unless it were a matter of life and death ; 
 they told him that he would inevitably be lost if he 
 made the attempt, that the forest roadways and 
 rough trails were invisible and could not be followed 
 by one unfamiliar with the region. He could not 
 induce one of them to act as guide, for they, one 
 and all, said that the snow was not yet packed hard 
 enough for travel, that if he went into the woods 
 alone he would not come out again alive, and that 
 if he persisted, they would find his body somewhere 
 in the wilderness the coming May. He but laughed 
 in their faces, and went to a store where equipments 
 for the lumbermen were sold. He was warmly clad, 
 but he bought a heavy woolen suit, which he put on 
 over the one he already wore; he bought a com- 
 pass and a surveyor's map of the region he was 
 about to enter, a strong knife, a revolver and some 
 cartridges, and a heavy blanket. He bought a 
 knapsack, which he filled with provisions for four 
 or five days. He had been upon snow-shoes before, 
 and he purchased a pair of these. Then, with his 
 blanket in a roll above the knapsack at his back, 
 amid the pitying and contemptuous remarks of the
 
 io8 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 trappers, who called him a fool, he plunged into the 
 wilderness, going as blithely as if to the wedding 
 which he hoped might come. 
 
 It was a cold, gray morning when Sargent entered 
 the wood, following the roadway which was clearly 
 enough defined for miles. The snow, as the trappers 
 had said, was soft and feathery, and, despite his 
 snow-shoes, he sank too deeply for comfort as he 
 strode along. It was wearisome work, but he was 
 strong, and as he walked he hummed to himself a 
 more or less foolish song he had often heard, the 
 burden of which was to the effect that "Love will 
 find out the way," over all obstacles whatever. 
 The turns of the roadway were such that all sight 
 of the clearings was soon lost, and he was striding 
 along where there was half darkness because of the 
 dense overhanging of the forest growth on either 
 side. An occasional opening or marshy lowland 
 afforded greater light and cheerfulness, but the 
 march was somber as a whole. By noon, he was 
 ten miles from human life; at three o'clock in the 
 afternoon he had traveled five miles farther 
 and was very hungry, and beginning to be tired. 
 He brushed the deep snow from a log by the 
 pathway, sat down upon it, and ate heartily; he 
 resumed his tiring walk somewhat refreshed, and 
 again humming cheerily as he walked, the refrain 
 exploiting Love's ability as a pathfinder. The 
 roadway now led downward into a hemlock swamp 
 extending for miles ahead ; a swamp lying so low 
 that he could look over the tops of the trees before 
 and beneath him a great dismal sea, which
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 109 
 
 seemed more black than green. It was easy going 
 down-hill, and he was soon where there was almost 
 darkness, though it was only four o'clock in the 
 afternoon. The trail was dim now, and all caution 
 was required to keep it. He was miles in the 
 swamp when there was presented to him a puzzle. 
 He emerged into a little open space where the light 
 was better and looked across it to see where the 
 roadway resumed its course. He saw four snow- 
 filled spaces, once wood roads, no doubt, almost 
 alike in appearance and diverging like the spokes of 
 a wheel. 
 
 Not all the mathematical knowledge acquired in 
 the University, not all the engineering ability 
 attained, not the assistance of the compass, could 
 give a man one tota of knowledge as to which of the 
 four paths to take. Three of them were roadways 
 made in summer by the bark-gatherers, and must 
 end somewhere in the swamp. Sargent knew the 
 general direction he should take, but the entrances 
 were so close together that the compass could not 
 aid him ; the right path might be the one that started 
 seemingly in the wrong direction, for the regular 
 trail had many turns. He could but venture. 
 Even love could not certainly find a way. He chose 
 the route which seemed to trend most nearly in the 
 right direction, and entered it hopefully. He was 
 soon in the half darkness again, which was now 
 being intensified by the waning of the light of day. 
 He was tired, too, for the snow-shoes were 
 unaccustomed things and were bearing heavily upon 
 his great toes. Snow-shoe wearers know where
 
 no THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 the strain comes, until one gets accustomed to the 
 lift 
 
 The pathway was relatively easy to follow, and 
 Sargent struggled forward, hoping to emerge from 
 the swamp upon the higher land before night should 
 set in completely, but there were many windings, 
 and, after an hour or two of fatiguing work, he felt 
 that he was still far from the uplands. The gloom 
 intensified, and he could follow the roadway with 
 difficulty. It was just as night fairly settled down 
 upon the forest that he stumbled forward into a 
 small clearing, with felled trees lying upon all 
 sides, and great stacks of hemlock bark piled here 
 and there. He crossed the little opening and 
 found no exit into the forest beyond ; it was the end 
 of the roadway. He had walked miles out of his 
 course, only to find himself in an abandoned camp- 
 ing place of the bark-gatherers ! 
 
 It was not a pleasant situation, and Sargent 
 realized it; here he was, alone, in mid-winter, 
 practically lost in a forest of Northern Michigan; he 
 was miles from any human habitation or any 
 human aid. For a moment he was somewhat dazed, 
 but it was not in him to make much of a situation of 
 the sort. He pulled a broad strip of the hemlock 
 bark from one of the heaps, laid it on the snow, 
 crowning a hemlock log, and sat down upon it to 
 think a little and pull himself together. That was 
 not a difficult task ; he had spent midwinter nights 
 in the woods before, and after a few minutes of 
 rest he aroused himself and began the work before 
 him.
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." in 
 
 Two great logs lay side by side, four or five feet 
 apart. Using a piece of the stiff rectangular bark as 
 a shovel, he cleared away the snow between them, 
 for a distance of ten or twelve feet. One end of the 
 bottom of the excavation he covered with bark from 
 the heaps for two-thirds of its length, leaving an 
 open space of some three feet. Here he made 
 another little flooring of bark, and upon this pro- 
 ceeded to build a fire. There were bark and dry 
 limbs in abundance, and to build a fire was no feat 
 at all ; a merry blaze was soon leaping upward into 
 the night, and enough dead wood was piled at hand 
 for the fire's replenishment as need might come. 
 Across the logs over the floored space more bark 
 was laid, until it was fairly roofed, and more bark 
 still was piled leaning against the end farthest from 
 the fire. Here was now a little cabin, dry, open at 
 one end, and with a blazing fire in front. Next, 
 with the heavy knife he carried, Sargent cut a great 
 armful of small hemlock branches, and with them 
 made a soft and fragrant bed upon the hut's even 
 floor. He was delighted with and interested in his 
 work. All perplexity had gone. 
 
 Seated in the door of his cabin the man ate 
 heartily, smoked his briar-wood pipe, and from 
 placidity grew buoyant of mood again. He even 
 sang his foolish song aloud, and, unaffected by 
 "Love's" failure of the late afternoon, announced 
 buoyantly to the forest that Love would find a 
 way. Toward night it had become warmer and a 
 soft snow was falling. At last a drowsiness came 
 upon the singer; he heaped more wood upon the
 
 112 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 fire, wrapped his blanket about him, and lay back 
 among the soft hemlock boughs, with his feet toward 
 the warming flames. 
 
 He slept dreamlessly for an hour or two, then 
 awoke with a start, aroused by some sound from the 
 forest. The fire had waned, but the blaze still 
 uplifting made queer dancing shadows among the 
 hemlocks, as if the black wood spirits were holding 
 a carnival about him. He could hear the patter of 
 soft feet, as the great white rabbits frolicked about 
 among the bark heaps. Then from the wood came 
 a sudden hoarse-prolonged shriek, so strident and 
 threatening that Sargent started to a sitting 
 posture, but settled back upon his couch again, for 
 he recognized the sound. He had a neighbor in 
 the great snowy owl of the north, that terror of all 
 small four-footed things. Then something waver- 
 ingly big and white swept silently and swiftly by, 
 there was a struggle in the snow, the agonized 
 squeaking of a hare, and silence again. The great 
 owl had found its prey. A little later, from a 
 distance, came the long moaning howl of a wolf, 
 but that mattered little to Sargent, for the big gray 
 wolf of the Peninsula has long since learned to fear 
 man above all living things, while fire is to him a 
 terror. There came the snort of a startled deer, but 
 Sargent was becoming oblivious to what was about 
 him. His eyes were heavy and he slept again. 
 
 There came dreams, wonderful dreams, there were 
 a thousand fair happenings, and the red-crowned 
 girl flitted through a world strange and beautiful 
 with him. He reveled in a land of summer;
 
 'LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 113 
 
 % 
 
 flowers blossomed about him, and birds were filling 
 the air with their untaught music. 
 
 It was all queer, but everything seems natural in 
 a dream. He wanted to find Barbara, and it seemed 
 to him that Barbara was anxious to be with him, 
 but there were difficulties in the way. There were 
 high walls and there was something about a sheriff 
 and a bear. He couldn't understand very much 
 about the sheriff and the bear and didn't care much 
 about them, but the high walls were real and there 
 was nothing to clamber up by, and so he couldn't get 
 to Barbara, who was somewhere on the other side. 
 Then suddenly he was happily surprised to hear 
 her call to him that she was coming over herself, 
 and that he needn't bother about the climbing. 
 She came over at once in the form of a beautiful 
 brown quail, but instead of alighting beside him she 
 sailed down in the sunlight across a meadow, then 
 settled beside two maple trees where the clover was 
 thick and heavy. It seemed all right that Barbara 
 should come in such form, but it seemed a little 
 unfair that he should have to walk so far to get to 
 her and he said to himself, quite naturally: "The 
 girl hasn't learned how to fly well yet." Then he 
 stalked across the meadow to where he had seen 
 her alight beyond the maple trees, just where the 
 ground dipped up into a little hill, and began parting 
 carefully the tops of the red blossoms that he might 
 find her. It was quite a search, but he succeeded at 
 last and found her crouching cozily in the midst of 
 all the bloom and fragrance. He asked her why she 
 had flown so far. She said she didn't know, that
 
 114 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 the air had carried her, and that she couldn't help 
 floating down upon it. She had dropped into the 
 clover as soon as she could. He said that was all 
 right, and then they walked away together, for 
 somehow Barbara seemed a young woman again, 
 and there was nothing out of the way about the 
 transformation. He began to tell her of the hawks 
 that were once accustomed to alight upon certain 
 dead limbs of the two maple trees, for it seemed to 
 him, now, that this was one of the meadows of his 
 childhood. Then both of them became so interested 
 in the singing of the birds about them that they 
 forgot the subject of their conversation, and could 
 talk only of the singing. Sargent awoke. 
 
 Morning had come. The man lay quiet in his 
 blanket, and as he began to realize where he was, 
 he thought he must yet be half asleep and dream- 
 ing, for the song of birds was still ringing in his 
 ears. They were calling to each other all around, 
 and there was music everywhere. He could hear 
 distinctly among them all what seemed the notes of 
 the phoebe-bird, the bird of the summer, which 
 builds its nest in the bridges over creeks, or in 
 pleasant places about the barns and meadow sides. 
 Through the open doorway came to the man's eyes 
 the flash of a million crystals, as the bright sun 
 smote the frosted hemlocks ; it was all wonderful, and 
 Sargent leaped to his feet to look upon the morning 
 scenes. 
 
 It was all real enough, the sun was shining 
 brightly, and the birds were singing, but it was not 
 the phoebe-bird which had so puzzled Sargent; it
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 115 
 
 was the wood pee-wee of the far North, the note of 
 which is so similar to that of the phoebe; and it 
 was accompanied by a host of its northern friends. 
 This was their summer time and they were in a 
 joyous mood. The crisp air and the glorious scene 
 were enough to inspirit any man with health and 
 courage in him. Sargent laughed aloud. He ate 
 heartily and then sat down to ponder. 
 
 Should he retrace his steps and seek another trail 
 in the swamp at the point where the ways had 
 diverged? He would not waste the time. Could 
 not he, a born woodsman, find a way of his own? 
 What to him were trails? He took out his 
 surveyor's map of the region and studied it care- 
 fully. With his compass he laid a course for where 
 lay the Sloan homestead and coming happiness; 
 then he girded himself and strode into the forest 
 depths full of strength and hope. Within an hour 
 he had emerged from the swamp and was among the 
 birch and oak and maple, holding his course 
 steadfastly, and his progress was fairly satisfactory, 
 though the snow was softer still because of the 
 slight fall the night before, and the walking required 
 much strength of leg and depth of lung. 
 
 In his present mood, Sargent could rejoice in all 
 he saw, and he saw much. Not a journal in all the 
 country gave more news that morning than did the 
 sheet of fresh new-fallen snow. The squirrels had 
 left bulletins everywhere upon the snow-clad tree 
 trunks, and upon the ground were page after page 
 of added information. In some bank a crumbling 
 breakage in the snow showed where the ruffed
 
 Ii6 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. . 
 
 grouse had buried itself for protection against the 
 cold, and beneath the birches the brown fleckings 
 gave proof that the same bird had taken its bud- 
 breakfast in the tree-tops. There were the tracks of 
 the fox, but, somehow, he had missed the grouse in 
 its bedroom. Along beside the logs, the queer 
 twin pads of the weasel or the mink showed what 
 hunting had been done, and beside the creeks, 
 where the air-holes in the ice were, the otter had 
 left his mark. Here and there seemingly a great 
 dog had passed in the night, but this was the trail 
 of the old gray wolf ; and here and there were the 
 bunched hoof marks of the running deer. Snow 
 buntings had scattered seeds from the reed clumps, 
 and wood mice, their light bodies barely sinking in 
 the snow, had made lace work all about. It was a 
 great morning for a tramp, even though one were 
 alone with no companionship save that of the wild 
 creatures. 
 
 Noon came, and with it hunger, which was 
 appeased again .from the knapsack. Valleys were 
 descended, and hills climbed, and dense woods and 
 thickets threaded, with slight turning aside, for 
 the course must be held firmly, or there might 
 come disaster. At last, at four o'clock in the after- 
 noon, a hill was climbed, a slope partly descended, 
 the wood came to an end, and there, fair and white 
 before him, Sargent saw lying the Sloan farm. 
 From the house the smoke curled high and white, and 
 there came to the mind of the grateful and happy 
 youth a thought of the pillar of cloud by day which 
 led the Children from the Wilderness into Canaan.
 
 "LOVE WILL FIND OUT THE WAY." 117 
 
 He walked on again, until he reached the clear- 
 ing's edge, then climbed the fence and sat there 
 resting. There was his heart's desire, but a sudden 
 timidity came upon him; he overcame it at last, 
 though, plunged through the snow across the fields 
 and creek, and up the slope and the well- 
 remembered pathway, and knocked upon the door. 
 It was opened by a fair girl, who started as she 
 saw him. She looked upon him silently, and the 
 blood rushed to her face, until the tint of her cheeks 
 was deeper than that of the Michigan roses she had 
 tended in midsummer. She opened her lips, but, 
 for a moment, did not speak.
 
 n8 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "THE WOOIN' O'T." 
 
 For a moment or two the girl stood silent, still. 
 Then the blood in her fair cheeks sank back to its 
 sources, and she was, in a degree, herself again : 
 
 "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Sargent!" 
 
 The fear had gone from him, and he had become 
 a man again as his eyes fed upon her. A little 
 more grave of face, a little more stately of bearing, 
 a little more beautiful in all ways was the woman 
 before him, and he wanted her more and more. 
 His eyes told his story demandingly, and she 
 understood it What civilized woman ever lived, 
 even the dullest scrub-woman of the floors of a 
 public building, who could not understand such 
 language from the eyes of a man? 
 
 She, the woodland girl, knew well what the man 
 had done. None better than she knew the life- 
 risking danger of the solitary trip in mid-winter 
 across the unpeopled waste between the settled 
 region and the Straits. He, this magnificent animal 
 before her, had ploughed his way through deep 
 snows, had slept in the forest when a sudden 
 blizzard might have cost his life, had taken all 
 chances just to look again upon her, to be with her! 
 She understood it very well. She understood it so 
 well that, saying all graceful things after she had
 
 "THE WOOIN 1 O'T." 119 
 
 recovered herself, and bringing him in to her father 
 beside the great open fireplace, she fled to her own 
 room, threw herself down upon the bed there, and 
 pressed her face hard upon the pillow, and 
 wondered what she should do? She could not tell. 
 But what a great, resolute, daring boy-man it was ! 
 What a struggle was before her! She knew that 
 the youth who had come across all those buried 
 miles had not come for nothing. Considering the 
 case of this young woman objectively, it is but fair 
 to extend to her a degree of sympathy. Her 
 problem was certainly a serious one. 
 
 What were the thoughts of Barbara? Who shall 
 analyze and make plain in fair print the mind and 
 emotions of a young woman dealing with the love 
 problem? Save in exceptional cases, before the age 
 of twenty-five, the woman is far in advance of the 
 man in keen perceptiveness, and understanding of 
 the relations between them. Yet the man, more 
 bungling, has a certain advantage in that he knows 
 just what he wants, while the girl does not. The 
 girl has dreams, the man has purposes. Her 
 reasoning is all of the abstract, his of the concrete. 
 He is in love with a particular woman, and is 
 resolved to have her and no other woman. She has 
 a sort of vague ideal, she is in love with love, so to 
 speak, and not so much with the one particular 
 biped. He is certain and she is uncertain. The 
 more definite goal in love comes to her later. Her 
 course is most doubtful. The old Biblical gentleman 
 who described as one of the things which could not 
 be foretold, "the way of a man with a maid," one
 
 120 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 would think might have improved upon it. Why 
 didn't he say "The way of a maid with a man"? 
 
 Thoroughly delighted was Judge Sloan over the 
 unexpected advent of the young man whom he had 
 learned to regard so highly. He asked no questions 
 about the perilous trip, for his thoughts now ran in 
 somewhat narrow channels, and it did not occur to 
 him that there was anything extraordinary about 
 this sudden appearance of a visitor from the outer 
 world. He settled back in his easy chair and lit his 
 pipe and began talking with the young fellow who 
 could understand him so well. Sargent was at 
 home in a moment. 
 
 Michael, who was lounging by the fire, fingering 
 the strings of his fiddle, thrumming out half- 
 smothered music like that of a guitar, cast a swift, 
 piercing sidelong look at Sargent, his small black 
 eyes betraying a world of meaning in the fleeting 
 glance. As the talk began and went on briskly 
 between Judge Sloan and Sargent, the lad played 
 softly yet briskly and with unerring snap and 
 emphasis still with his fingers alone on the strings, 
 the bow lying idle on the floor by his side an ancient 
 Norwegian wedding march. The blood mounted to 
 Sargent's cheek as he heard the smothered laugh of 
 the strings; he looked sternly at Michael, but the 
 dwarfish youth seemed totally unconscious of all 
 around him, except perhaps of the hound which lay 
 at his feet, for he caressed its head with his 
 moccasined foot occasionally. 
 
 The bustling Tilda came in now, and began 
 preparations for a mighty refection for the traveler;
 
 "THE WOOIN 1 O'T." 121 
 
 and she roused Michael from his dream of laziness 
 and sent him flying to the spring for water, and to 
 the great pile of wood for fuel, and to the cellar 
 for vegetables, and to the loft for frozen spareribs 
 and dried venison, and so kept the Troll, as Sargent 
 inwardly called him, chasing about and leaving 
 doors open, and being called back to shut them, 
 until, in self-protection, the lad fled away to the 
 barn, where he had a warm nest in the hay, in which 
 he spent a good share of his time, remote from the 
 sharp commands of his mother, and from all other 
 calls of duty. 
 
 And now began a series of bewildering days for 
 Sargent. There was a trial of skill at love's fencing 
 between the two young people from the first. The 
 one purpose of Sargent's life was to declare his love 
 to the girl who, from the time when he first saw her, 
 had held his heart as in a clasp which could never 
 be loosened. The one purpose of Barbara seemed 
 to be to keep back from the lover's lips the story 
 he was struggling to tell. 
 
 As for Barbara, she felt the currents of her being 
 setting toward the young adventurer of the snow- 
 shoes, and she made a brave struggle not to let the 
 current get too strong. Barbara Sloan was a girl of 
 great purpose and ambition, loving and unselfish, 
 and she had not planned, as yet, to fall in love at all. 
 In her dreams, she had thought of a lover, of course, 
 and although such dreams were unacknowledged, 
 the real trouble was that Sargent did not look like 
 the somewhat stiff and august creature of the 
 young girl's fancies. And then, Barbara, when she
 
 122 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 had returned to stay with her father, after her latest 
 absence from her home, where she had lived 
 among men and women of more than ordinary 
 ideas and ideals, had found her father much broken 
 in spirit and strength, and, saddest discovery of all, 
 she was forced at last to see that his mind had 
 lost, in some degree, its practical tone, and his will 
 its strength of direction, so that he was floating 
 passively, and somewhat aimlessly, along on the 
 stream of life. Barbara passionately denied this 
 discovery, even after it had become a conviction, 
 insisting to herself that it could not be true, but 
 unconsciously she was already shaping her whole 
 existence in such a manner as to hide the lapse from 
 active, virile life which had come upon her father. 
 
 The girl's anxiety and apprehension extended to 
 financial matters. She saw complications in the 
 near future brought about by certain ventures of 
 Judge Sloan's in buying timber and mining lands. 
 She clung ever more and more fondly to the gentle, 
 learned, kindly old scholar as she saw his fortunes 
 failing, and recognized the unfitness of his nature 
 and training for the rough struggle for wealth which 
 consumes the energies of strong men without due 
 reward, and in which men of gentle blood, high 
 ideals and scholarly attainments almost invariably 
 fail. 
 
 And so, in the girl's ardent soul, had been formed 
 a scheme of life for and with her father. The 
 dream of a lover did not disturb this plan at all, but 
 the real lover did; the real lover, so young, so 
 new to the world and all experience, fresh from
 
 "THE WOOIN' O'T." 123 
 
 college and all the jejune life of college, so master- 
 ful, too, and sure of himself, and even of her! 
 
 And so the lover and the lass wavered along, one 
 advancing with a heart on fire, the other retreating, 
 but looking back. It was like a Spanish dance, 
 thought old Tilda, as she looked on silently, taking 
 note without appearing to do so, and soundly boxing 
 Michael's ears whenever he became too much 
 interested in the young folk. 
 
 One morning the two went out for a walk over 
 the hard crust of the frozen snow. It makes ideal 
 walking, the snowcrust; only, as Barbara said, "You 
 want to run all the time. ' ' 
 
 They ran a race along a chain of play mountains 
 formed by drifts over the three-cornered fences. It 
 was a mile to the pine woods, in whose shadow the 
 snow lay perfectly level, and they ran across the 
 hard surface, with just a little dust of new-fallen 
 snow upon it, with such ease that it seemed like 
 flying. Barbara was a fleet runner, but of course she 
 was no match for Sargent, and, as he heard her 
 skirts rustling along behind him, and the "pat-pat" 
 of her little feet, he turned suddenly and caught 
 her hand. 
 
 "Oh, let's not race, " he said, running along by her 
 side, "let's run together." 
 
 And so they ran, hand in hand, until just as they 
 were leaving the mimic mountain chain Sargent 
 broke through the snow crust and, with a flounder 
 or two, sank waist deep. 
 
 Barbara saved herself by darting with lightning 
 quickness from Sargent's side, and then she stood
 
 124 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 afar off. and laughed at him. When she saw him 
 emerging from the drift covered with snow, she 
 started running again, and reached the woods before 
 him. Then they had a game of hide and seek, 
 dodging about among the trees, until at last Sargent 
 caught the laughing girl again by the hand well 
 gloved, you may be sure, and not in kid either and 
 they walked among the sighing lanes of green trees 
 with the frozen waters of Honey Creek for a path- 
 way. 
 
 "You make me follow you, Pied Piperess that you 
 are," said Sargent, "and now that I have caught 
 you I am going to quarrel with you." 
 
 "Oh, is that what you came up from below for, in 
 the depth of winter? Why, we could quarrel very 
 well in writing." 
 
 ' ' But that is one of the things I want to find fault 
 with you about. Your letters are unsatisfactory, 
 not like yourself. ' ' 
 
 "You are talking in a double-edged style, trying 
 to cut and salve the wound with one sweep, Mr. 
 Sargent. Pray, to what do you object in my 
 epistolary style?" 
 
 "It is lifeless and cold," began the poor fool of a 
 boy, but she interrupted him 
 
 "It is cold up here, you can see and feel for your- 
 self and then I don't see why you complain you 
 are unjust. Didn't I thank you with enough 
 warmth for the books you sent me Christmas?" 
 
 "Why talk of trifles?" this indignantly. "Well, 
 no, I don't care, your letter was cold, perfunctory, 
 ending with that simpering 'Again thanking you, '
 
 "THE WOOIN' O'T." 125 
 
 and so on Why will people write that? They never 
 say it; fancy a man or woman saying 'Again thank- 
 ing you' ; the straight-out ending of a child's letter 
 is better, 'As I can think of nothing more to say, I 
 will close. ' ' ' 
 
 "Aren't you making a lot of fuss over a little 
 thing?" asked Miss Barbara Sloan, tying the blue 
 ribbons of her fur hood anew under her chin with a 
 certain far-away dignity in the simple action. 
 
 "Of course I am and I didn't mean that at all I 
 mean the tone of your letters. It is frosty, and 
 gives me a heart shiver every time I hear from you. 
 And I wait for your letters so!" 
 
 "Too bad," said Barbara, gravely. "It would be 
 better not to write at all. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, no, don't say that and don't look so, so 
 school-teacherish ! ' ' 
 
 The girl immediately assumed the look and air of 
 a child of nine years old how she did it, who can 
 tell? but her eyes looked out childishly, she swung 
 one well booted foot back and forth, as she stood 
 before Sargent, and with her hands crossed before 
 her, sung in a sweet childish voice : 
 
 'How I love my teacher, 
 
 How I love my ma, 
 
 How I love my preacher, 
 
 How I love my pa!" 
 
 And then, why then, Sargent came nearer kissing 
 Miss Barbara Sloan than he had ever before. She 
 had a narrow escape that time, but by great self- 
 possession she did escape.
 
 xa6 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 "Come now," said Barbara, as they turned and 
 walked sedately homeward, along the creek, "let's 
 turn over a new leaf and talk sense." 
 
 "Then you begin," said Sargent. "You have 
 taken my senses from me, but while you're starting 
 the ball rolling, I will be turning over the leaf and 
 collecting myself together. ' ' 
 
 "Tell me your plans, " began Barbara, "and don't 
 bring me into them, either," she warned, for she 
 saw a dangerous flash in his eyes. 
 
 And then Sargent told about his hopes and 
 schemes, how he was to finish his preparations in 
 Chicago for his work in helping to lay out the route 
 for a great railway across the continent, from the 
 Missouri to the Pacific, and how, before the snow 
 should come again, he expected to be in the heart of 
 the Arizona desert or in the Mexican district at his 
 work. 
 
 Barbara entered into the new world thus brought 
 before her with great interest, and, with exquisite 
 tact, she drew out the young engineer's story of his 
 profession until they reached home, where the 
 Judge was eagerly awaiting them, book in hand, and 
 finger between the leaves, to show Sargent some- 
 thing he had found, in which the two men had a 
 common interest. 
 
 And Barbara, in the silence and trim order of her 
 own little room, as she looked out vaguely at the 
 white world, through her small-paned window, said 
 to herself softly: "I must take care! Icouldlovz 
 him!" 
 
 Very strong in the make-up of Sargent was the
 
 "THE WOOIN' OT." 127 
 
 instinct that the physical Nature we know could 
 speak to what we call Human Nature. Happy those 
 who have this thought and instinct, for they are 
 right! Though the wild things may not always 
 speak in their behalf with promptness for an 
 emergency, they will speak at last, to all save the 
 dull-minded. 
 
 So Sargent, hoping, grasping, took Barbara out 
 with him again along the creek, the waters of which 
 ran, swift and black, beneath the pure ice, cleaned 
 here and there by the broom of the winds. 
 
 The creeks which run north and south from the 
 divide in northern Michigan, are often spring-fed 
 for miles from their beginning. And so the ice 
 above the water is relatively thin in places, espe- 
 cially where the streams linger and spread into ponds, 
 deep and broad, and here the ice is almost absolutely 
 clear. It was out upon one of those ponds, close to 
 its steep side, where the scrub oaks overhung, that 
 Sargent took Barbara one day. He had with him 
 two huge horse blankets, and an axe, and broom. 
 He swept away the feathery snow which lay upon 
 the ice and exposed an area which looked almost 
 black by contrast. With the axe he cut a hole 
 through the ice perhaps a foot across, and cleared 
 away all chippings, so that the hole opened into the 
 water fair and clean. Then he spread one of the 
 blankets upon the cleared surface, close up to the 
 edge of the hole, and made Barbara kneel with him, 
 looking down through into the waters. Over both of 
 them he threw the other blanket, so that they were 
 protected from the cold and wind, in a sort of little
 
 iz8 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 tent. It was very good to be thus close to Barbara 
 in that little tent. 
 
 At first, there seemed to be what was almost 
 darkness in the tent, but, as they looked downward 
 into the water, there came to the woman a revela- 
 tion. There was light below, and there was sud- 
 denly revealed to her, what she had never 
 imagined even, the real life of the water-world, the 
 under-world. There she could see plainly all that 
 was going on among the people of the depths. She 
 could see the pebbly bottom, with the funny criss- 
 cross streaks made by the little creatures of the sand 
 and slime. She saw huge pickerel drift lazily across, 
 each barely steadying himself by slow fin-strokes, 
 or the black bass passing, all alert. What, beyond 
 all, most attracted her, though, were the shifting 
 groups of speckled trout, brilliantly marked, and 
 graceful of outline, and intent on seeking something, 
 none knew what. There were other things, a score 
 of other things, to interest her, but the shining, 
 glittering trout attracted her above all else. Sud- 
 denly there was a scurrying together, a moment of 
 wavering, and then a group darted away, far from 
 her field of vision. Immediately across that same 
 field of vision swept something dark and graceful 
 and dreadful. It was an otter pursuing the trout. So 
 swift and fierce was its lightning dash that it 
 seemed almost flattened out in its pursuit, and, 
 following closely, came another shadow, almost the 
 same, as graceful and as swift; it was the otter's 
 mate. 
 
 There were other things, a host of them, to
 
 "THE WOOIN' O'T." 129 
 
 interest, but this fierce chase of the graceful otter 
 after the trout seemed most to attract the astonished 
 Barbara. Then Sargent told her of the qualities of 
 this most gifted and graceful of all the water 
 creatures, of their made slides, where they played 
 together as children do on the hill slopes in winter, 
 of their lovingness toward each other, and of the 
 caressings of male and mate when they lounged 
 together in summer upon some rock rising just 
 above the water. And he tried to tell her how, 
 even among the wild things, with greater intelli- 
 gence came the greater affection. Of how love in 
 reality rules all life, and of a verity, "makes the 
 world go round;" but Barbara appeared to com- 
 prehend and give heed to only the natural history 
 features of what he said. His talk about love in the 
 depths of the waters and of the forest she called 
 fantastic, and steered the talk into channels much 
 more commonplace. 
 
 It seemed to Sargent as if all nature were mating 
 easily, that everywhere the right female came to the 
 right male upon call. Only Barbara would not 
 come to him.
 
 130 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 
 
 "We are going to be very gay," announced 
 Barbara, jauntily, as she poured the breakfast coffee 
 one cold, glittering morning. "I have accepted an 
 invitation on behalf of father and me and our 
 distinguished guest from 'below.' " 
 
 ' ' I shall be glad to go anywhere with Judge Sloan 
 and his daughter," said Sargent, "but it's uncanny 
 somehow this constant reference to the depths 
 from which I come. ' ' 
 
 "Up here, Mr. Sargent," Judge Sloan interposed, 
 with the entirely unnecessary information, "Up 
 here, every stranger is enevitably located as from 
 'below' meaning south from upper Michigan. " 
 
 "Nothing could come from above," said Barbara, 
 "nothing save the north wind, for there is only 
 Lake Superior." 
 
 "As you very justly remark," the Judge spoke 
 with his usual slow dignity, using one of the forms 
 of words which had become habitual to him and 
 somehow they were interjected into ordinary con- 
 versation with ludicrous effect "it is embarrassing 
 to be continually spoken of as from 'below,' but I 
 assure you no offense is intended." 
 
 "Or taken," heartily assented Sargent, "but about 
 that gayety, Miss Sloan? The idea of going any-
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 131 
 
 where with the thermometer from ten to twenty-five 
 below zero appeals to me with force. Will you tell 
 me what is in store for us?" 
 
 "We are going to an entertainment in the 
 Fletcher District," answered Barbara. "This even- 
 ing at early candle light, the Fletcher mansion, the 
 first house built in all this region, will be opened to 
 entertain the neighborhood. All the beauty and 
 chivalry of the surrounding country will be there, 
 to say nothing of such strangers as are visiting us. 
 And," continued she, "we will take Michael and 
 his 'wee wicked fiddle' along with us so that we may 
 have a dance, if the Court please," turning prettily 
 to her father and making a comic gesture of 
 homage, and laughing as the two men at table 
 smiled, for she had the august Judge completely 
 under domination. 
 
 "I fear the evening will be somewhat tedious," 
 said Judge Sloan, glancing longingly toward his 
 chair by the fireplace, and his book and pipe on the 
 table near it. 
 
 "But, father," Barbara expostulated, "Mr. Sar- 
 gent has never been at the Fletchers', nor seen any- 
 thing so perfectly typical of our Northern Michigan 
 life, as is their home. I think it is but due to him 
 as a guest that we should give him opportunity to 
 see, not only the Fletchers and their house, but our 
 social surroundings just as they are. Mr. Sargent 
 has not stirred from our place, except for walks in 
 the woods, since the day of his arrival. ' ' 
 
 "Your observations are quite justified, my dear," 
 the Judge confessed. "We must take Mr. Sargent
 
 132 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 to Fletcher's; the visit will certainly interest and 
 amuse him for a time at least "and the good man 
 sighed the sigh of the patient parent of a grown-up 
 daughter. 
 
 And so it came that the sound of sleigh bells 
 called the little group of well-wrapped people to 
 their door that frosty evening, just as the red glow 
 was fading in the west. Michael held the reins of 
 the restless horses, and Michael's fiddle was under 
 his seat in the sleigh. Fur-booted and fur- wrapped, 
 veiled and hooded, Barbara sprang into the sleigh 
 like a wood sprite weighed down only by her weight 
 of garb. And Sargent sat down beside her. Judge 
 Sloan, a mere bundle of comfortable clothing, 
 under his daughter's watchful care, occupied the 
 seat in front beside Michael. Heavy buffalo robes 
 were tucked about the party, and the horses gave 
 the bells a shake. 
 
 "They feel good, them horses," said Tilda, as she 
 stood in the door holding a lighted lantern of tin 
 with holes bored in it, to show the light through, the 
 pattern being wrought to imitate the befeathered 
 head of an Indian chief. The road was tolerably 
 well broken for the sleigh, and it seemed but a 
 short ride over the eight miles which intervened 
 between "Honey Creek, " Judge Sloan's place, and 
 the old house of the Fletchers. 
 
 The moon "shone fair on field and fell, "as the 
 sleigh dashed up in front of the great log Fletcher 
 house. Beside the road, beyond the house, 
 extended a long, low, open shed, already fairly 
 occupied by teams which had brought guests in
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 133 
 
 sleighs, "jumpers" and bobsleds. Attached to one 
 of the bobsleds was a yoke of oxen, and from the 
 shed came the sound of much snorting and stamp- 
 ing of feet, varied by an occasional bellow. The 
 bells had announced the arrival of the new party, the 
 door of the house opened, a flood of light streamed 
 out, they were welcomed hospitably and hurried 
 inside upon a scene which was certainly inspiriting. 
 
 It was a fine old log house, that of the Fletchers, 
 the main part of it long built, but built exceeding 
 well. It had been, originally, but a rectangle, its 
 side facing the road, with a big doorway in the 
 middle, and a big window on either side. There 
 had been partitions then, the large room with a 
 fireplace at one end, and two bedrooms and a 
 kitchen at the other. As time passed and children 
 and prosperity came to the pioneer couple, an 
 addition had been made to the house in the form of 
 a wing set against its rear. In this wing were all 
 the bedrooms and the big kitchen. The house in 
 its new form was a "T," but this did not show from 
 the road. The partitions in the original house had 
 been removed, and it was now one great room with 
 the enormous fireplace at one end, and was the 
 general sitting-room and living-room of the big 
 family. 
 
 The fireplace was just as it had been twenty years 
 before. In front of it the wide brick hearth 
 extended far out into the room, and from one side 
 of the huge chimney still swung the iron crane from 
 which, before the wing and stove stage, had hung 
 the kettles in which hulled corn, and frumenty, and
 
 134 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 samp had been cooked, and all the stewing and 
 boiling of the old days had been done, to gain a 
 flavor not excelled by any product of the stove in 
 the new kitchen. Upon the hearth before the fire 
 and in the tin oven which formerly stood there, had 
 been cooked such "johnny-cake" and bread as the 
 older men said they could get nowhere nowadays. 
 From the crane had once hung the griddle, where 
 big buckwheat cakes were baked, and on the hearth 
 above the raked-out red coals had once stood the 
 three-legged revolving gridiron on which venison 
 steaks were broiled. To the left of the fireplace the 
 old-fashioned dye-tub, with its indigo dye and its 
 soaking yarns, still occupied a place, making an 
 excellent seat for any of the younger members of 
 the family, and on the right stood the pile of fire- 
 wood, such as had been brought in nightly for 
 nearly a quarter of a century. 
 
 There is art in piling up the firewood brought in at 
 night. The great backlog, of hickory or hard 
 maple, must be lugged in first, for it is first to be 
 utilized in the morning. It must be laid three or 
 four feet from the wall, and the space between it 
 and the wall filled with the split ash and beech and 
 smaller logs used for constant replenishing of the 
 fire. When this space is filled about even with the 
 top of the backlog, the forelog, smaller but also of 
 hardwood, must be brought and laid well in front of 
 the backlog. Above this and heaped high up 
 against the wall the remainder of the fuel necessary 
 may be laid without any order. All this is because 
 of the fire building of the morning, when he whose
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 135 
 
 duty it is to get up and build the fire with the 
 thermometer away below zero, half dresses 
 hurriedly, rushes to the fireplace where nothing is 
 visible but white ashes, pulls out the heavy andirons, 
 seizes the great iron shovel standing ever at hand, 
 scrapes the ashes away from the back of the fire- 
 place and exposes a great mass of huge living coals, 
 the backlog of the day before. He pulls them to 
 the front, clears out the hollow at the back, heaves 
 into the place so made the backlog brought in the 
 night before, covers it with ashes, shoves the 
 andirons up against it, one on either side, heaps the 
 blazing coals between them, throws on a bit or two 
 of light wood, lays the forelog in front squarely 
 across the andirons, and then, between it and the 
 chimney back, above the already blazing fire below, 
 lays more or less criss-cross, so that air and flame 
 may circulate, the sticks which make the ordinary 
 fuel. There is a roaring, warming, comforting fire 
 in no time. 
 
 Six or eight inches from the floor, in the jamb at 
 the right of the fireplace, there was a space which 
 shone whitely of deep abrasion and indentation; 
 this was where a generation had kicked its frozen 
 cowhide boots on in the morning. In the heavy 
 oaken floor, a little at one side, was a smooth dark 
 hollow, charred in at one time ; this was where a 
 "smudge," made in a tin pan to drive away mos- 
 quitoes, had, some summer night, burned too 
 fiercely and fired the floor beneath. 
 
 Above the fireplace was a mantel shelf, black with 
 smoke and age, and upon it were various articles in
 
 136 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 common use. At the other side of the room was 
 another shelf, well elevated. Upon its middle 
 stood a high clock with an imitation mahogany 
 frame, the lower part of the door ornamented with a 
 painted flower-pot holding a tremendous bouquet of 
 red roses and other flowers. On one side of the 
 clock stood a big green camphor bottle, and on the 
 other a bottle of "cholagogue, " a sovereign remedy 
 for fever and ague, as malaria was still designated, 
 danger from which yet lurked in the swamps, in 
 the spring and fall. Further along, on each side 
 were coal-oil lamps, though formerly candles, made 
 by dipping, had occupied their places. To-night 
 there were blazing lamps on each of the two 
 shelves, and on brackets set in the wall. At each 
 end of the clock-shelf stood a vase with more flowers 
 upon it. Never, even in summer, were real flowers 
 placed in such vases. They were purely orna- 
 mental ; and not to be desecrated by use. Upon the 
 walls were pictures, two colored prints, one of 
 Henry Clay, the other of Frelinghuysen, and there 
 was another, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," 
 and one of an old English landscape. The overflow 
 to northern Michigan had been mostly from New 
 England and New York. There were chairs and 
 rocking chairs ranged about the sides of the room, 
 and in one place stood an old cherry "bureau," in 
 the top drawer of which was kept the smaller finery 
 of the girls, in the second that of the men and boys, 
 while the one beneath was locked and belonged to 
 "Mother," as one of the children told Barbara 
 during the evening, telling her also that in it was a
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 137 
 
 little baby's cap which had grown yellow, and that 
 there were some old dresses and ribbons, and 
 pressed flowers and a red-stone breastpin, and a 
 little book, and that "Ma" cried some times when she 
 went there. 
 
 The beams of the low ceiling of the room came 
 down almost to the heads of the tall young lumber- 
 men and farmers and wood-cutters, who, dressed in 
 their best and awkward in consequence, were pay- 
 ing their court with bashful zeal to the beauty and 
 grace of Fletcher's District. 
 
 When Judge Sloan's party entered there had been 
 a moment of confusion, but the measured chant 
 that could be heard outside very soon began again. 
 A young man and woman stood at one end of the 
 room with their hands clasped higher than their 
 heads, and under the angle formed by their arms, 
 the merry-faced girls and strong-featured, laughing 
 men marched one by one, singing to an air 
 certainly older than the settlement of America : 
 
 "The needle's eye, 
 It doth supply 
 
 The thread that runs so true. 
 There's many a lass 
 That I've let pass, 
 But now I have caught you!" 
 
 The song and march went on monotonously over 
 and over for a few minutes, and then there was a 
 great shout of laughter, a little pause, and the song 
 began again, with a new girl blushingly holding up 
 the hands of the young gallant who had chosen her. 
 In her turn she must now choose a partner and a
 
 138 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 kiss was always exchanged between the two the 
 signal for the shouting and the laughing. 
 
 Sargent glanced at Barbara as she stood by the 
 fire demurely looking on. 
 
 "Let us join the players," he said. "Had I known 
 about 'The Needle's Eye' I should have begged 
 that we might start for this place before dinner." 
 
 But it would have been easier for the camel to 
 get through the eye of the needle, or for the rich 
 man to obtain the Kingdom of Heaven, than for 
 Sargent to secure what he craved from this 
 particular needle's eye. Barbara promptly intro- 
 duced him to a blooming maiden with saucy black 
 eyes, and sent the couple helplessly on their way 
 around the room. Joining her father, who was duly 
 installed in the place of honor on a pine settle by 
 the side of the pioneer and host, Barbara watched 
 the play with a delighted sympathy which had in it 
 no shadow of condescension or mock modesty, and 
 yet she seemed to Sargent to be far away from the 
 joyous laughing circle in which he found himself. 
 He gave himself up to the moment, however, and 
 soon became the center of the riot and fun of the 
 merry-makers. It could not well be otherwise, he 
 entered with such zest into the spirit of the 
 occasion, and as he towered even above most of 
 the stalwart woodsmen, his magnetic personality and 
 his striking, laughing face won all at once. They 
 liked him, and he felt it and was very glad of it. 
 If he could not have Barbara, he could, at least, be 
 a thorough boy for an hour or so. Besides, the 
 black-eyed girl was certainly very pretty.
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 139 
 
 Soon the song was changed, and the company 
 took hold of hands and began circling around a 
 pink cheeked and pink gowned girl standing alone 
 in the center of the space made by the singing 
 players. It was a long time before the play ended. 
 
 "So the farmer sows his seed 
 And scatters far what he may need, 
 Stamps his foot and waves his hand 
 And turns around and views the land!" 
 
 So sang the chorus of careless young voices, the 
 lines which have later wandered even into the 
 kindergartens, suiting the action to the words, the 
 great feet of the men, shod in cow-skin, coming 
 down on the bare floor with a loud bang, and the 
 more lightly clad feet of the girls making a patter- 
 ing noise by their side. Round and round they 
 whirled, the bright faces flushed in the lamp light, 
 and "clap! clap!" went big brown hands and smaller 
 ones as the game unwound itself, always coming to 
 a climax of kissing and then beginning all over again. 
 
 Barbara went with the young women of the 
 Fletcher family into the new kitchen, and helped 
 them set out the supper on long tables made of 
 boards set across wooden "saw-horses" and covered 
 by coarse, well-bleached linen. Here, from time to 
 time, came trooping admiring elderly women, doing 
 homage to the wonders of the Fletcher cuisine. 
 
 There were two immense game pies, cold, as was 
 everything on the table excepting the boiling coffee, 
 a boiled and roasted ham, with cloves stuck all 
 over it, and roasted chickens and turkeys, great
 
 140 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 platters of bread and butter and pans of doughnuts, 
 plates of pickles and glasses of jelly and jam, and 
 on every other space a pie of mince or apple, or a 
 cake of famous construction. Pitchers of coffee 
 stood along the middle, each with a smaller jug of 
 rich cream beside it, and the table was, when the 
 girls had finished setting it, a cheering sight. 
 
 At eleven o'clock the whole merry group came 
 pouring in, and the supper was no play. When the 
 company returned to the big room there sat 
 Michael, dreaming away over his violin, playing 
 snatches of strange old minor tunes, mingled with 
 "Sir Roger de Coverley," and other dancing airs. 
 Then, with a flourish of his bow, he was off with the 
 enlivening strains of ' ' Money Musk. ' ' 
 
 And now Sargent caught the hand of Barbara for 
 just a moment in his own, and begged her to dance 
 with him. And she consented and they stood up 
 opposite each other and went down the middle 
 together and outside alone and wound their way 
 from one end to the other in breathless and joyous 
 abandon, and, although there was no kiss to this 
 play, it was nevertheless the most enjoyed of all that 
 evening, by these two young people, at least. 
 
 There was much bustle and merriment when the 
 time came for departure. Team after team was 
 driven up before the door, and load after load of 
 merrymakers hid themselves between the robes. 
 The horses came from the shed, frost-fringed and 
 prancing, and dashed away impatiently for their 
 distant stables. Even the solitary ox-team, draw- 
 ing a jumper, was full of fire and the oxen clashed
 
 A WINTER FESTIVAL. 141 
 
 their white horns together impatiently and started 
 off in a cumbrous trot; while the log-chain jangled 
 and banged from the yoke to the iron pin at the 
 other end of the sleigh-tongue, and the bright night 
 was full of clamor in all directions. The Sloan 
 party left with the others, though more quietly. 
 From a sleigh behind them came a chorus of 
 voices joining in the singing: 
 
 "Buffalo gals, ain't ye comin' out to-night? 
 Comin' out to-night ! comin' out to-night ! 
 Buffalo gals, ain't ye comin' out to-night, 
 To dance by the light of the moon?" 
 
 By contrast, as they passed a cross road, there 
 came floating to them across the field from another 
 sleigh, the words of Toplady's wonderful old hymn: 
 
 ' ' Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in thee." 
 
 Close together beneath the warm robes Sargent 
 and Barbara sat silently. His arm stole about her, 
 but its pressure was a farce. He almost dared, but 
 dared not. Her head was close to his, though, and 
 her warm breath was upon his face. It was an hour 
 of bliss. All the way back that night, the bells 
 sang a sweet song to Sargent, and who can tell 
 what they said to Barbara?
 
 142 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 
 
 And the days passed. Happily unhappy or 
 unhappily happy, was the deep chested and 
 splendid youth who went perplexed about to woo 
 the young woman of the woods. It was curious, but 
 by no means new. It is only what happens to 
 young men of good brains and good blood that 
 which came to Sargent throughout this period of 
 watching and waiting and hoping and dreaming 
 and planning and much fooling and much brave 
 silliness. 
 
 Take a young Anglo-Saxon male of decent herit- 
 age and qualities, and then send him through a 
 university, and, queerly enough, he ordinarily can- 
 not at first reason with that degree of practicality 
 which adapts most easily the means to the ends 
 desired. It does not matter much whether the end 
 to be attained be the hand of a young woman, with 
 her feet and her head and the rest of her likewise, 
 or control of the stock of some railroad which 
 might be made dividend-paying in time. The 
 young graduate has yet to learn that learning is 
 but the hammer with which rocks may be split. 
 But the rocks can be split only when the blow is 
 delivered with a certain impact and at a certain
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 143 
 
 angle. The impact and angle can be learned only 
 by attrition with other human beings in the world 
 of men and women. 
 
 So Sargent reasoned bunglingly. He said to him- 
 self this was in a fretful mood, and his fretful 
 train of reasoning had become almost constant 
 "What is the reason that I cannot get what I want? 
 Here I am, I who have worked hard and have 
 become a good engineer, and who am in love with a 
 woman, and who feel within myself the ability to 
 care for her as a woman should be cared for and to 
 protect not only her but her kith and kin. She 
 doesn't care for anybody else, that I know. She 
 cares for me, that I know too, but there is something 
 queer about her caring. She ought to know. She 
 does know. What's the matter with the red-haired 
 reed of a thing? What's the matter? What am I 
 to do?" And he would take a gun and plunge off 
 into the woods and make a circuit of fifteen miles or 
 so, and come back with a couple of ruffed grouse 
 and a rabbit or two, and say he had been having a 
 fine time. He was a liar, and yet the good-blooded 
 youth would not have stood and told a lie know- 
 ingly, even to gain for himself the girl he wanted. 
 It was but the old story of a woman of younger 
 years being older than the man. Doubtless when 
 Clive and Hastings were seizing India there went 
 often into the Eastern world other young men of 
 similar blood and quality, who said good-bye, 
 among their other good-byes, to girls who did not 
 grasp the situation with all its relations as pertaining 
 
 to the young male animal. The fellows who went 
 10
 
 144 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 out with Clive and Hastings probably came back 
 with more or less of wealth and honor and a 
 thousand tugging fancies in their young hearts when 
 they sought the girls again. As far as the record 
 goes they found most of their old sweethearts 
 married, and all of them full faced and thick- 
 waisted, having married young, and being more 
 or less happy or unhappy until they died, while 
 the young adventurers found for themselves 
 new sweethearts, without trouble now, and 
 thought no more of the old ones. They had 
 become men. 
 
 All sympathy, however, "is not to be bestowed 
 upon Sargent alone. Barbara had her troubles, no 
 less serious. She could not but understand how 
 this young giant loved her, and there is no better 
 saying among all the proverbs than that "love 
 begets love. ' ' There was a wealth of clean loving 
 and strong affection in the creature, and here was a 
 good object for its expenditure right at hand. What 
 should she do? There were nights when the young 
 woman did not sleep well. There was night after 
 night when, like those of the man, her own fancies 
 ran away with her, and she dreamed of how the 
 struggle might be made with him to be begun then 
 and there and carried forward, on her part at least, 
 as it should be done by a good wife. But there was 
 logic in her and much filial quality, and after all, 
 though not as years go, she was older than he, so 
 maybe it was the best for her, but her course is 
 not to be recommended to all the world. She 
 resolved not to be "carried off her feet" by Sargent.
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 145 
 
 He must wait, she said to herself. If he loved her 
 in reality he would come back, and while he was 
 away she could make up her mind whether she 
 loved him well enough to be his wife. He must 
 wait. That the girl decided and she vowed to her- 
 self to stand by the decision. 
 
 There came a moment when Sargent could no 
 longer keep his tongue from speaking out of the 
 fullness of his heart. It was just before his going 
 away. The two young people were seated by the 
 western window of the cosy sitting-room, watching 
 the reddening of the snow on the pines and on the 
 hills as the sun set in a cold, clear sky. 
 
 Barbara was talking earnestly. With an effort, 
 Sargent made himself take notice that she was 
 commenting on Thackeray and his creations. ' ' His 
 men are all right, but how I hate his women!" 
 declared the fair critic, and, right then and exactly 
 there, literary subjects were dropped from the con- 
 versations of those two people for some time to 
 come. 
 
 There was nothing else in Sargent's world; he 
 had no thought or care for anything but for the girl 
 who sat facing him, her hair shining in the fading 
 light. And this the young man told her, with such 
 earnestness and power that Barbara paled as she 
 heard his words. She became serious instantly, and 
 listened to him quietly until his eloquence had 
 spent itself, and then he stopped suddenly, 
 frightened by her silence and seriousness. Could 
 it be that she for whom he was as molten lava, was 
 but unyielding ice? His glowing heart turned
 
 146 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 cold. A moment ago he had begged her to speak. 
 Now he was afraid to hear her, and he began again 
 to urge his love and plead for himself. At last he 
 stopped in his wild torrent of talk, and then, 
 answering him in a gentle voice, with a manner 
 new and strange for the imperious Barbara, she 
 said that she could not give the lover cause to 
 hope that she might love him enough to be his 
 wife. 
 
 "Why? why?" urged the stricken man. 
 
 She told him he was young, with all the world 
 before him, even as she was, and that it was too 
 soon for either of them to talk of marriage. 
 
 "My life seems pretty well laid out for me here," 
 she said with a little note of sadness in her voice, 
 "but yours is all before you. It is better for you to 
 go out into it free; you have to win your spurs. 
 You do not know what trials may be ahead of you, 
 or what triumphs, or, perhaps, defeats. ' ' 
 
 "In short," interrupted Sargent, smarting under 
 the pain of it all, "you refuse me because I am 
 young and inexperienced, poor, and so, uncertain as 
 to the future. You do not love me nor even care 
 deeply for me, and you wish me a very good ten or 
 twenty years in which to win my spurs ! I tell you, 
 Barbara Sloan, you are my spur, you shall drive 
 me on to fortune, and so that much of you I have 
 won! No more, I know, but without your love I 
 care for nothing ! ' ' 
 
 And the poor fellow dashed out of the room and 
 plunged out of the house into the drifts, for a walk 
 in the snow and the almost arctic cold.
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 14? 
 
 It was a cruel blow; its effects grew worse and 
 worse the more he thought of it. But, at last, 
 Sargent remembered that he was a man, and so 
 must be reasonable and strong, and tender toward 
 the woman who had inflicted the wound he was 
 suffering from, and he floundered back to the 
 house. 
 
 At the early lamp-lighted dinner, Barbara was a 
 shade more sedate than usual. That was the only 
 change in her from her usual buoyant mood. She 
 proposed, after dinner, as it was the last night of 
 Sargent's visit, that the evening be spent in the 
 "old house," as the kitchen wing was called, with 
 stories and songs for entertainment and with cider, 
 nuts and cakes for refreshments. 
 
 "The house should be more pleasant 
 And the guest be more contented." 
 
 This last Barbara gave with the sing-song of 
 Hiawatha. 
 
 Two hours later, when the bustle of Tilda's 
 "clearing up" was over, all of those who dwelt 
 under Judge Sloan's roof were gathered around the 
 great hearthstone Tilda, and Michael, too, with his 
 fiddle, by Barbara's special invitation, for she meant 
 to have some Norwegian music to lead up to the 
 story-telling and talk which was sure to last until 
 midnight, long after the hard-working Norse people 
 were in their beds. 
 
 To begin with, the Judge, who was an enthusiastic 
 and accomplished student of Norse lore and
 
 148 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 literature, told a blood-curdling werewolf story, 
 and, when it was done, Michael took up his violin 
 unasked and began to play. His music was made 
 of that of the folk songs of Norway, with his own 
 strange fancies woven in between. There were 
 slow minor love songs, and odd, crashing, short- 
 breathed dances, and funeral dirges, and frolicsome 
 wedding lays, all coming from the little red fiddle 
 with Michael's black eyes shining over it. At the 
 waving of his wand of a fiddlestick, the minds of 
 the little audience were full of the images set 
 before them by the fantastic young-old wizard. By 
 and by, as he played a slow, melancholy strain, his 
 mother, Tilda, began to sing. Michael at once 
 dropped into an accompaniment, and the two 
 finished the song. They were urged to continue, 
 and then their old Norwegian songs, grave and gay, 
 followed in quick succession. 
 
 Barbara asked for a song in English. "Father 
 has translated two or three of Tilda's songs, 
 and she has learned the English words," she 
 explained to Sargent, who had often before 
 been a charmed listener to Michael's music, and 
 who well knew Tilda's Norwegian songs, from 
 hearing her as she sang at her work about the 
 house. 
 
 "Please sing 'The Cave of Silver,' Tilda, and in 
 English," she asked the old woman, who was 
 pleased and flushed with the joy of singing her 
 national songs to three admiring hearers. 
 
 Michael at once began playing a strong, low-toned, 
 monotonous strain. He drew his bow with vibrat-
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 149 
 
 ing force across the strings, and swung his ungainly 
 body from side to side. 
 
 Tilda swung in her high-backed rocking-chair. 
 She closed her eyes, listening to the long wail of the 
 violin, and, when she opened them, she seemed to 
 look out beyond the walls of the house to the 
 distant snow-covered hills. Her eyes had in them 
 bright lights, but they seemed not to see anything 
 but the pictures drawn in imagination by the words 
 she sang. 
 
 The air of the song was one of those unchanging, 
 long-drawn tunes of the people, dwelling on one 
 note throughout a line almost, to fall in a minor 
 interval at the last word, a sort of music which 
 grows as naturally among primitive peoples as does 
 the moss upon the beech tree. 
 
 There was a wild yet melancholy power in the 
 strange contralto voice which poured forth the old 
 Saga without a tremor of age or weakness. The 
 sturdy form of the singer rocked slightly backward 
 and forward, as her chair rocked. Her hands were 
 once or twice raised a little with the impulse of her 
 song, and then dropped carelessly in her lap. In 
 the pauses between verses, the violin took up and 
 continued the unvarying strain with piercing itera- 
 tion and strenuous power, and then, as the singer 
 resumed, dropped into a simple, harmonious 
 accompaniment. 
 
 This was the song they sang, old Tilda and the 
 violin :
 
 15 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 "Go, seek me the Cave of Silver! 
 Go, find me the Cave of Silver ! 
 Go, seek me the Cave of Silver!" 
 
 Said Hilda to Brock the Bold. 
 "And then you may kiss me often, 
 And then you may ring my finger, 
 And then you may bind our true love 
 
 With a round hoop of gold. 
 
 "For Hilma, the witch, has told me 
 That up in the wild Lapp mountains 
 There lieth the Cave of Silver, 
 
 More precious than caves of gold ; 
 Beyond the purple pastures, 
 Beyond the shining meadows, 
 High up in the wild Lapp mountains 
 
 Seek ye, oh, Brock the Bold ! 
 
 "Bring me no skins of foxes, 
 Bring me no fur of otter, 
 Boast not your fighting vessels ; 
 
 Hear me, oh, Brock the Bold ! 
 For I would lie upon velvet, 
 And sail in a golden galley, 
 And naught but the Cave of Silver 
 
 Will win me, Brock the Bold!" 
 
 "I go," said Brock, right proudly, 
 "I go to the far-off mountains, 
 To seek the Cave of Silver, 
 
 More precious than caves of gold !
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 151 
 
 But when the wild Lapp arrows 
 Have pierced the heart that loved you, 
 I leave my curse on the woman 
 
 Who slaughtered Brock the Bold!" 
 
 And Summer passed, and Winter 
 Came down from the far-off mountains, 
 But back from the Cave of Silver 
 
 Came never Brock the Bold. 
 And the maiden Hilda waited, 
 And sat at her door at evening, 
 And watched the gleaming lances 
 
 Of the North so bright and cold. 
 
 "Oh, wild Norwegian gallants, 
 Go, seek for my lonely lover, 
 Go, seek for the Cave of Silver, 
 
 Where tarries Brock the Bold!" 
 But the wild Norwegian gallants 
 They laughed at the cruel maiden 
 Who away to the wild Lapp arrows 
 
 Had driven Brock the Bold ! 
 
 And she mourned for the Cave of Silver, 
 And she mourned for the purple pastures, 
 And she mourned for her lonely lover, 
 
 Till her heart and her face grew cold ! 
 But back from the shining meadows, 
 Or back from the wild Lapp mountains, 
 Or back from the Cave of Silver, 
 
 Came never Brock the Bold !
 
 152 
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Long afterwards Sargent, humming the ancient 
 air to a sympathetic musician, contrived to get it in 
 written form as it appears here, a wild spirit impris- 
 oned behind conventional bars at last: 
 
 JLl, f j 1 K fc 1 h 1 : : 1 1 N h 
 
 NH i : r- 
 
 ir c j 
 
 "Go 
 
 seek me the cave of sil-ver, Go find me the cave of ill-ver, Go 
 
 
 J f 
 
 ' 
 
 i=f i= 
 
 J j j 
 
 r r 
 
 
 4=4=^ 
 
 
 
 a J i 
 
 -a 
 
 1 Ls j p_i 
 
 
 
 
 seek me the cave of il . ver,"8aid Hil-da to Brock the Bold; "And 
 
 & 1 J' J M-| J ' 
 *>L J J~T" 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 = * 
 
 F^F 
 ^N= 
 
 trf 
 
 sg a i j -j 
 
 r r J 3 g; 
 
 ^ p cr **c 
 
 ]- -J--^ * " ' ' 
 
 g>' j j j j. J r j j j i 
 
 then you may kiss me of * ten. And 
 
 * ^' ^^- ^'j j j=i 
 
 then you may bind my fin - ger, And 
 
 "' pf f 
 
 >JL I 4 J=^= 
 
 
 
 
 pf 
 
 1 , J 
 
 b J - 1 J 3 '3 ^ 3'j 
 
 +- 
 
 ^ 'M - 
 
 
 
 
 then yon may bind our 
 
 true love, With the round hoop of 
 
 joidT 
 
 _ ^ === ^^^; 
 
 z r 
 
 J J 
 
 - 
 
 3 i i 
 
 i F 
 
 1 F 
 
 I"
 
 "THE CAVE OF SILVER." 153 
 
 There was a long silence after the song was 
 finished, and the wind blustered about the chimney 
 and sung its own wild song. And then Judge Sloan 
 courteously thanked old Tilda and her son and 
 during the conversation which followed they dis- 
 appeared from the room. After a time the Judge 
 went to his book-room to get a volume or two of the 
 old Norse literature he loved, to show to Sargent, 
 and the two young people were left alone. Sargent 
 sat looking into the fire, and, at some slight move- 
 ment or remark from Barbara, he looked up at her, 
 for she stood by the table, the lamp shining on her 
 face. Sargent, too, arose and came close to 
 Barbara. There was in his eyes a bright, steady 
 look, and his face had in it a new firmness and 
 resolve. 
 
 "The maiden Hilda was not the last woman to 
 send a poor fellow out into the world," he said. 
 Then his face changed. "I am going to-morrow, 
 but I am afraid there will be no mourning or watch- 
 ing for me" and his voice broke, for, as has been 
 said before, he was but a boy, after all. 
 
 Barbara grew rosy and then pale. She remained 
 silent, except for an inarticulate murmur of sorrow 
 or regret who can tell? and Judge Sloan re- 
 entered the room, his arm piled high with precious 
 books. There was a long evening together, of 
 legend, story and song, and then they all said 
 good-night. 
 
 In the morning, after the three had breakfasted 
 cheerily together, Sargent took up his homeward 
 journey, this time with a party of woodsmen, with
 
 154 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 dogs and sledges, and the journey was quickly made. 
 The youngster's heart was heavy, but he was 
 buoyed up by hope. Somehow, it would not fade 
 out of him. And he hummed the old song of the 
 Northland, and thought how he would force a 
 different ending to the tale of the " Cave of Silver."
 
 IN A NEW WORLD. 155 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IN A NEW WORLD. 
 
 In all the world there is nothing so unconsciously 
 helpless as a young man, without means or friends, 
 in a great city. Especially is this true where the 
 young fellow is smarting under the first real trouble 
 of his life. In seeking shelter and food, he of 
 necessity must make acquaintances, and being 
 youthful and hungry for society knows no better 
 than to accept such companionship as comes with 
 the routine and machinery of daily living. 
 
 Sargent, on the lookout for a room, called one 
 morning at a tall house of stone and brick on 
 Wabash Avenue. He had found the house in which 
 he had formerly lodged when in Chicago calmly 
 moving down the street in a manner as dignified as 
 could be expected from a large frame building at 
 the end of a rope wound around a windlass. 
 Sargent was impressed but disappointed. He 
 must begin anew his search for a home. The 
 wide avenue looked like a village street, with its 
 houses set back from the wooden pavements, with 
 green plats of grass surrounded by painted iron or 
 wood picket fences, beside wide sidewalks, with 
 grass plats between them and the roadway, and 
 spreading trees on either side. Mrs. Graves' house 
 \vas an exception to the general rule on Wabash
 
 156 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Avenue. It had no green grass plat its basement 
 rose from unsodded ground, carefully graveled, it 
 is true. There was an iron fence and gate, and iron- 
 grated windows all around the basement story. 
 Two clanging doorbells alarmed the house when- 
 ever any one sought entrance at the basement, or 
 stood on the landing at the top of the steps leading 
 up to the double front doors of black walnut. A 
 scared-looking, shabby young girl always opened 
 these doors. She admitted Sargent, on the day of 
 his first call, and, after closing the door, amused the 
 caller by standing with wide admiring eyes looking 
 at him very approvingly before she disappeared, 
 leaving the visitor standing upon the polished floor 
 of black and white marble looking helplessly at the 
 high narrow walls and stairway, and the massive 
 ugly hall chair and hat-rack of black walnut, the 
 sole furniture in sight. No one ever sat down on 
 the chair, or hung his hat upon the arms of that 
 truculent-looking rack. One's instinct was to keep 
 hat in hand and person in readiness, as with one 
 foot uplifted, for instant flight. 
 
 Yet Sargent did not run when he had been 
 admitted to this hall of silence and decorous gloom. 
 He stood there waiting for the proprietress, having 
 told the "slavey" who opened the door that he 
 desired to look at a room for himself. As he waited, 
 he felt a presence, and, looking up, saw a beautiful 
 child, or rather a young girl, coming down the stairs. 
 She glanced shyly at Sargent as she turned the 
 corner and ran down the basement stairs which were 
 directly under the main stairway. Sargent had a
 
 IN A NEW WORLD. 157 
 
 sheepish feeling that the pallid serving maid had 
 sent this lovely child in to take a look at him. If 
 he had before any inclination to run, the sight of 
 that sweet, childish face framed in wreaths of dark 
 hair, and that graceful, slender figure, would have 
 checked him. He decided, at once, to be suited 
 with the lodgings provided by Mrs. Graves, whose 
 house had been recommended to him by a young 
 man at the office. Of course Sargent had no serious 
 intentions, nor any even tinged with gallantry, 
 toward the beautiful stranger he was only attracted 
 by that irresistible loadstone to a young man's fancy, 
 a fair face. 
 
 Mrs. Graves, noiseless of step, downcast of eyes, 
 quiet and black-clad, with a widow's bonnet and 
 a veil casting additional gloom over the place, 
 appeared, and with her Sargent arranged to have a 
 large square sleeping room on the third floor, pay- 
 ing a not unreasonable sum for it. His meals he 
 had chosen to eat at restaurants. In Mrs. Graves' 
 house no table was se*t for boarders. She rented 
 her rooms, most of them by the year, to men of a 
 sort of regular irregularity, so far as hours were 
 concerned, but certainty as to pay, and knew and 
 cared no more about them. Her name, Mrs. Graves, 
 probably caused the uncanny suggestion, but her 
 face reminded Sargent of one of the long, narrow, 
 white marble headstones which mark so many 
 graves in the cemeteries of the West. Her coun- 
 tenance was long and narrow, with a square fore- 
 head and chin, and she was always pale. Her 
 features were regular. Her hair was dark, and
 
 158 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 rich in color and profusion, but her eyes and lips 
 were colorless and her look was still and expression- 
 less. She was always dressed in black, her gowns 
 fitting exquisitely her graceful figure, but only once 
 or twice did Sargent ever see her without her 
 widow's bonnet with its long crepe veil streaming 
 down her back. She was often pulling on or off 
 black kid gloves, out of which her white hands came 
 with startling effect. 
 
 All work in that house, from answering the 
 doorbell to carrying up and down stairs and putting 
 in place heavy furniture and trunks, seemed to be 
 done in solitary struggles, with which no one inter- 
 fered, by the slender, shabby girl, whose abbreviated 
 name, "Em," was called out all day from various 
 parts of the house by whoever had a task for her. 
 On the day after Sargent took possession of his 
 room, when he was coming downstairs in the morn- 
 ing, he met the undersized, thin-armed Em bringing 
 his trunk upstairs. The young" man from the 
 country was surprised at seeing a girl laboring in 
 this manner. He seized the trunk, as the panting 
 woman creature stopped for breath on the step 
 where she was laboring, and, unheeding her pro- 
 test, shouldered it and ran up to his room, setting 
 down the heavy thing with a bang which shook the 
 house. 
 
 "Em!" called the voice of Mrs. Graves from the 
 basement, "Em! what are you doing?" 
 
 "Nothing, 'm, " the tearful voice of Em replied 
 over the banisters. "It's the new lodger, a-openin' 
 his trunk."
 
 IN A NEW WORLD. 159 
 
 The pitiful figure now came to Sargent's door, and 
 stood with a hand upon each post. She was a 
 young creature, stunted in growth, broad-shouldered, 
 with skinny arms, and she was bent and thin. Her 
 face had the pallor of a prison, almost, but her eyes 
 were bright, with an expression of mingled audacity 
 and fear, which was the surprising feature of her 
 otherwise commonplace face. 
 
 "Oh! Mister, won't I get it!" she exclaimed. 
 
 "Why? Is that what I get for helping you?" said 
 Sargent, laughing. 
 
 "Oh, but you might a' jarred the plaster off the 
 second front's ceiling, and then what would happen 
 to me? I'll never dare tell Mrs. Graves what you 
 did! Why, that's nothing for me. I tug and I lug 
 and I fetch and I carry all day, and purty nigh all 
 night sometimes and nobody ever cares or thinks 
 anything about it. Say, Mister, what's yer name?" 
 
 "Sargent," was the reply, and evidently not at all 
 to the satisfaction of the energetic Em, for she 
 expostulated : 
 
 "Why, that's a common name excuse me, I 
 don't mean any harm, but, somehow, I thought you 
 might be a Montmorenci or Llewellyn, or some one 
 of a more romanticer name than Sargent, but of 
 course a Montmorenci would never a' carried his 
 trunk upstairs, I might a' known." 
 
 Sargent laughed again. "I imagine you have a 
 taste for novels," he said good-naturedly, drawing 
 out the eager mind which seemed caged in the frail 
 body leaning against his door-posts. "What is your 
 
 name? I hear you called 'Em.' " 
 11
 
 160 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 "I am called Em," said the girl, earnestly, "by 
 those that know no better, but my name is 'Grace 
 Emily. ' Any one that is really my friend calls me 
 'Grace Emily.' That's what Elsie calls me, but she 
 is the only one." 
 
 " 'Grace Emily' ; why, I'll call you that, from this 
 time on, and then you'll forgive me for making all 
 that noise, won't you?" 
 
 "I had already forgiven you," said Em, with a 
 stately emphasis not before employed by her, and 
 infinitely laughter provoking it was, "but now, 
 since you name me aright, you are thrice forgiven." 
 
 "Em!" shrieked a loud, musical voice from the 
 attic, and, without further parley the magnanimous 
 heroine disappeared to the upper regions.
 
 THE PITY OF IT. 161 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE PITY OF IT. 
 
 Sargent was immersed by day in his round of 
 duties and studies at his office, but in the gloomy 
 house on Wabash Avenue he began to feel an 
 intense interest. The people in it attracted him 
 from the first, and soon his keen, alert sympathies 
 became aroused and then thoroughly enlisted upon 
 the side of the weakest combatant in a struggle 
 which, at last, became the supreme subject of his 
 thoughts. 
 
 He soon learned that Mrs. Graves had but 
 recently returned from a visit to England, where 
 she had been to settle the affairs of her dead sister, 
 a burlesque singer, Kitty Romaine, the mother of 
 Elsie. Later on he was to know that at the time of 
 this visit the yachting nobleman who was Elsie's 
 father, though unacknowledged, had settled upon 
 the girl, under the control and management of Mrs. 
 Graves, a sum of money sufficient for the education 
 and ample support of his unfortunate child, and he 
 was to learn in time, too, that Mrs. Graves had her 
 own ideas as to how this money should be expended, 
 and for whose benefit. 
 
 That Elsie was destined for the stage, Sargent 
 knew from the first. He noted with curious and 
 delighted interst all the new life around him, and
 
 162 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 in a few weeks had become entangled in its meshes, 
 but in his own honest and fearless and clean -going 
 fashion. 
 
 The only woman lodger in the house was Rosie 
 Clyde, a passe* beauty, who had won money and 
 praise during the brief summer of her reign on the 
 burlesque and variety stage, and who seemed to 
 have some sort of a claim on Mrs. Graves. She had 
 been a white terror in her day, but was now harm- 
 less enough. Sargent looked with the astonishment 
 of youth upon her, for she was the first member of 
 the theatrical world that he had ever seen at close 
 range. A woman with fewer claims to beauty or 
 style he had never seen, and yet half a dozen years 
 before she had turned the heads of the gilded 
 youth of New York and of London. There was, 
 though, a good-natured, happy-go-lucky way about 
 the overblown stage rose which was mildly captivat- 
 ing to the lonely youngster in a strange city, and 
 many a long talk he had with her in Mrs. Graves' 
 economically lighted, stuffy little parlor, with Elsie 
 sitting listlessly by, content but entirely without 
 interest in the lively tales of accident by flood and 
 field, and adventures rare and bizarre with which 
 Miss Clyde regaled her auditors. The actress 
 seemed to have a sort of careless regard for Elsie, 
 and for this the poor girl was so grateful that she 
 rewarded her with a kind of adoration. 
 
 In pursuance of the settled plan of Mrs. Graves, 
 that Elsie should go upon the burlesque stage, the 
 girl was taken regularly to her dancing master, and 
 she spent hours daily practicing her voice before
 
 THE PITY OP IT. 163 
 
 piano and mirror, for it was essential that she should 
 look pretty and sing in time with her accompaniment, 
 whether she had any real singing voice of 
 attracting quality or not. 
 
 The girl's figure was the embodiment of grace, 
 and her face was "alone her fortune," as Miss Clyde 
 enthusiastically told her again and again. Dressed 
 in shabby black, without any aid from the filigree 
 of toilet, she, in truth, could not appear anywhere 
 without giving delight to all who saw her. It was 
 like the carrying along the street of some flower to 
 see her go and faces lighted as she walked. But 
 there was so much unconscious goodness and gentle- 
 ness in her that no one ever spoke to her or even 
 looked upon her too boldly in the strident Western 
 city, even when she was in company with Rosie 
 Clyde, brave in cast-off stage finery skillfully made 
 over, with bleached hair and a complexion not her 
 own. Elsie was often chaperoned by the burlesque 
 fairy, and, as a matter of fact, she was a veritable 
 dragon. Both she and Mrs. Graves well knew the 
 pecuniary value of modesty and virtue in a young 
 candidate for theatrical honors. Once on the stage 
 it would be different, but now the slave girl was 
 being prepared for the auction block, or for more 
 such sales than one. 
 
 As the weeks passed, Sargent found from his talks 
 with Elsie, when the older women were not by her 
 side, that Elsie herself had no relish for the pro- 
 gramme laid out for her. This surprised the young 
 man, for, to him, knowing as he was in many ways, 
 there was a certain fascination about everything con-
 
 164 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 nected with the theater. In those days he spent 
 every evening when he was not at work, at some one 
 of the play houses, but always before the curtain. 
 He had sense enough to cherish his illusions. He 
 never dared let himself go to the stage door. He 
 dreaded to see Pauline turn into a commonplace, 
 well-dressed lady getting into a hack, or little Eva 
 eating pink and white candy, or Ruy Bias in a silk 
 hat and trousers. But to his mind there was, after 
 all, a glow around the names of theatrical folk and 
 he could not see how a girl of such striking beauty 
 as that of Elsie could, though he had clean doubts, 
 wish for any career except that which would give to 
 the whole world what it worships, in its most 
 dazzling form, but as he came to know Elsie he 
 found that in nature she was timid and shrinking to 
 such a degree that the rude regard of strangers was 
 a positive agony and that the thought of stage life 
 was- abhorrent to her. When realization of this con- 
 dition had found a firm seat in his mind he could not 
 keep from speaking of it to Rosie Clyde. One night 
 in June, while they were sitting on the piazza., Elsie 
 being away with her aunt for the evening, Sargent 
 opened the subject. 
 
 "She isn't fitted for the life of the stage world, 
 and I don't believe any one can make a successful 
 actress out of her," he said. 
 
 "Oh, yes, we can," said Rosie Clyde, easily, while 
 she ate cherries and snapped the stones at Sargent. 
 "She's so pretty she'll go, anyway, no matter what 
 she does. ' ' 
 
 "But she doesn't like it," urged Sargent, "she's
 
 THE PITY OF IT. 165 
 
 too retiring and not fond of that sort of thing, 
 you know. It's all right, of course, for those 
 who are fitted for it, but Elsie isn't, and never can 
 be." 
 
 "Oh, stuff and nonsense, Mr. Sargent! What is 
 your first name, anyway?" and without waiting for 
 his slow-coming reply, Rosie Clyde went on: 
 "Why, she'll be all right as soon as she gets going. 
 One or two champagne suppers and she'll be as gay 
 as the gayest. A little Dutch courage, and she'll 
 be as jolly and successful as her mother was! Why! 
 Are you going?" 
 
 "Good night," said Sargent from the gate, and 
 its latch clicked behind him. He fairly swayed as 
 he walked rapidly along the broad sidewalk, and 
 turned down a street leading to the lake shore, and, 
 under his breath, he was cursing with such fierce 
 vigor as he had never exerted before. It was some 
 time before he could bring himself to talk with Miss 
 Clyde again, but that easy-going person soon won 
 him over to being civil to her, by her perfect 
 ignorance of his antipathy and by a thousand little 
 sallies of good-natured talk to him and any one else 
 who happened to be in the same house with her. 
 Most of all, he was reconciled to this feminine 
 monster of morals by the evident love with which 
 she was regarded by poor friendless Elsie, for from 
 her aunt the child knew nothing but cold, hard dis- 
 pleasure and task-setting, and so to her even Elsie's 
 gentle nature could not cling. In the kindly- 
 mannered Rosie Clyde the girl found something to 
 care for, and upon her, who was inwardly as cold
 
 1 66 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 and unfeeling as Mrs. Graves herself, the neglected 
 creature lavished her affections. 
 
 So, as the summer passed, his surroundings took 
 hold of Sargent. Interested and drawn out of him- 
 self by Elsie and her future, he studied Mrs. 
 Graves with profound attention and found her a 
 creature new, strange, and, finally, awful to him. 
 Her voice was an astonishingly deep contralto, low 
 and well controlled, except when she was very 
 angry, when it was harsh and threatening enough 
 to frighten any one. In excitement Mrs. Graves 
 was a marble-white, black draped, raucous voiced 
 feminine demon, whose whip of scorpions was her 
 tongue. The awful eloquence of the ancient bards 
 and orators of the Irish was hers; she excelled in 
 vituperation and in denunciation of such bitterness 
 as seemed to blast the understanding while one 
 listened to it. Blighting curses flew from her lips 
 like those envenomed arrows of the Indians of the 
 tropics, which leave festerings in the flesh of their 
 victims, and so cannot be robbed of their prey even 
 when withdrawn from their bodies. Poor little 
 Elsie trembled and shrank under the affliction of her 
 aunt's displeasure, and it was small wonder. There 
 was no man nor woman who was content to hear 
 Mrs. Graves' recital of her unveiled thoughts, 
 opinions and desires. These paroxysms of passion 
 were not common with Mrs. Graves, and even with 
 all their terrors, the mood which followed them, 
 lasting for weeks, was more unbearable to those 
 whose misfortune it was to live under her dominion. 
 These unhappy mortals she treated with a cold,
 
 THE PITY OF IT. 167 
 
 unbending displeasure, with sharp censoriousness 
 thrown in for seasoning, no matter how obsequiously 
 and carefully the poor subjects of her wrath strove 
 to appease her. 
 
 Sargent studied and looked upon the gradual 
 unfolding of this malevolent character with unmixed 
 astonishment. At first he could not credit his own 
 senses nor conclusions, but, finally, he became con- 
 vinced of the reality of the vicious nature with which 
 he had come in contact, and from it his soul recoiled 
 in horror. To him the ideal cf womanhood had 
 been formed in an ideal home and society, from the 
 high standards which are constantly held up before 
 young Americans, and he had been used to attribut- 
 ing everything that was good and beautiful to 
 women and expecting nothing but high aspiration 
 and counsel, or harmless merriment and spirited 
 conversation from them. 
 
 Mrs. Graves was a revelation in human wicked- 
 ness made additionally astonishing by the fact that 
 she was a woman. At first he had not been able to 
 believe the evidence of his own senses. He thought 
 there must be some extenuation, some unknown 
 softener of what seemed so hard and cruel. He 
 came finally to see that the human heart can be as 
 relentless as the unbending laws of nature herself, 
 that there are human beings with whom one can 
 come in contact with as much safety as one can put 
 a hand in the fire.
 
 1 68 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE ROOM OF DEAD VANITIES. 
 
 One evening at the end of summer, on his return 
 from his office, Rosie Clyde met Sargent at the street 
 door. ' ' I was lying in wait for you, ' ' she said. ' ' I 
 have something to show you. Prepare to be 
 dazzled." 
 
 By Miss Clyde's freedom of speech and movement, 
 Sargent divined that Mrs. Graves was out of the 
 house, as, when she was there, no one spoke 
 naturally; and he was right in his conclusions. 
 Mrs. Graves had gone to consult her attorney, 
 leaving Miss Clyde to a task which pleased her very 
 soul. This was to make a list of the contents of 
 seven huge boxes from London, containing the 
 wardrobe and belongings of poor Kitty Romaine. 
 
 Mrs. Graves had packed the boxes before she left 
 England, after her sister's death; following her, 
 they had been shipped to her by a sailing vessel, so 
 that they had arrived long after her. They had, 
 after some delay, been unpacked, and now all the 
 finery, the jewelry, and dainty belongings of the 
 belle of the footlights were to be sold for the utmost 
 penny that they would bring. Miss Clyde had 
 herself unpacked the boxes in a large room just 
 then unoccupied by a lodger, and so available for 
 the purpose; the variety singers' butterfly posses-
 
 THE ROOM OF DEAD VANITIES. 169 
 
 sions were arranged to the very best advantage, 
 for the benefit of those who should come to buy. 
 
 Sargent looked around him with a feeling of 
 mingled dismay and admiring curiosity. He was 
 reassured by the sight of Elsie sitting in one of the 
 windows, looking delightedly at the gorgeous array 
 of velvet, satin and brocade robes spread out on 
 tables and chairs. A pang shot through his heart 
 as he noted the brightness of the girl's eyes, and the 
 flush on her face as she cast fairly adoring glances 
 at the finery around her. He noted the longing 
 eyes, with their slumbering covetousness awaken- 
 ing, yet could not understand their language. To 
 him they were perfect in beauty, those gray Irish 
 eyes, shadowed by black brows, and made bewitch- 
 ing by long dark lashes, but something in their 
 expression now frightened him, without his knowing 
 why. 
 
 "Just see there," Miss Clyde exclaimed, going up 
 to the mantel shelf upon which, from end to end, 
 stretched a line of the most dainty and fanciful 
 shoes, slippers and sandals in the world. Spangled 
 and overlaid with gold and gems, of every extrava- 
 gant shape, color and material, the fairy footwear 
 was set out ready for inspection. 
 
 "And look," said Elsie, designating by a glance a 
 table upon which were heaped fans of every size, 
 rainbows starred by jewels, Sargent thought, as 
 Elsie took them up, one or two at a time, and waved 
 them around her, and over her head, as she danced 
 slowly and rhythmically around the table. 
 
 Over one sofa lay a cloak fit for royalty, splendid
 
 170 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 in crimson and ermine, and over another trailed a 
 long court train of cloth of gold. There were filmy 
 gauze skirts in bright colored heaps upon the floor 
 flame-colored and blue and green, yellow, black 
 and snow-white, and upon the dressing table blazed 
 jewels, the real indistinguishable from the false 
 gems, but making a show that rivaled any jeweler's 
 showcase that Sargent had ever seen. 
 
 There were endless fripperies of linen, gauze and 
 lace, and ribbons, for which Sargent knew no name. 
 He sat down, pleasantly entertained, while the 
 faded burlesque beauty and the fresh, budding 
 maiden displayed the gewgaws and draperies of the 
 dead singer. 
 
 "Sophia La Belle is coming to dinner to-night, 
 with her manager, Simon Strauss, and you may be 
 sure Sophie will never leave without some of these 
 things," said Miss Clyde, at last, when Sargent 
 began to tire of the show. 
 
 Elsie came and sat down on a chair near Sargent, 
 unmindful of the rose-colored silken gown hanging 
 over it. 
 
 "I'm to be all dressed up to show off, too," she 
 said, with a half smile, and a tremor in her voice. 
 
 "To the manager?" asked Sargent. 
 
 "Yes, and if they like me they may take me with 
 them in their company," said Elsie. 
 
 The town billboards and fences were all plastered 
 over with glaring advertisements of "Sophia La 
 Belle's Paralyzing Blondes," and as Sargent heard 
 this announcement he felt sick at heart, and 
 desperate.
 
 THE ROOM OF DEAD VANITIES. 171 
 
 He left the room of cast-off splendors without 
 more than a word or two, and sat in his room brood- 
 ing, silent and savage, until dark. When the street 
 lamps were lighted he went out on the steps, brush- 
 ing against an oily-haired, obese, be-ringed and 
 highly perfumed personage, with small ferret-like 
 eyes, clean shaven face, and a large hooked nose. 
 He recognized the theatrical manager without 
 trouble. He was nauseating, but Sargent was glad 
 he had escaped the "Star" of The Blondes; she had 
 evidently preceded Simon Strauss, as there had 
 lingered a strong smell of patchouly all the length 
 of the hallway, and a high voice could be heard in 
 Mrs. Graves' parlor. 
 
 Who can tell the disgust with which Sargent 
 thought of the company surrounding the beautiful 
 girl who was beginning to fill all his thoughts, that 
 evening? He walked through the streets until long 
 after midnight, for he knew the house would not be 
 rid of its visitors until after the return of the whole 
 party from the theater and supper. When he 
 ventured to go there toward morning, there was 
 nothing to remind him of them but the smell of sour 
 beer about the house. 
 
 He slept uneasily. There came before his eyes, 
 in his dreaming, a red-crowned head and scenes 
 of a cleaner life, as they came to him hourly 
 throughout the day; but here was another life of the 
 present, and his sympathies and emotions were all 
 roused. 
 
 That one who had been so earnestly and clearly in 
 love should so soon love elsewhere and anew seems
 
 172 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 strange, but human nature is human nature, and 
 this was, in fact, not the love with deepest roots. 
 There is no suffering so acute as that of the young, 
 because they do not know that there is "balm in 
 Gilead." To them darkness shuts down on the 
 world as if never to lift. They cannot hope ; their 
 faith is too gossamer-like a thing to stand the 
 storm. It is only when one has reached middle 
 life that faith and hope have grown robust enough 
 to endure the world's convulsions. 
 
 The cruel early blow to Sargent's dearest hopes 
 had found a helpless and bewildered victim. He 
 suffered silently and deeply. Work and new environ- 
 ment brought a sort of benumbed relief, and slowly 
 the outer world pressed in upon the morbid con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 It was certain to befall a youngster in Sargent's 
 case that the pulse of life should seek to some way 
 sustain itself by creating new interests, and that 
 from those who lived near him some should be 
 attracted to him. 
 
 The bruised and sore spirit inevitably seeks to 
 adjust itself to its fate as surely as does the broken 
 and anguished body. It is human to crave and gain 
 relief. He who laughs at the renewing of interest 
 in life in one whose affections have suffered, may as 
 well laugh at the efforts of the sufferer from bodily 
 wounds to obtain comfort. The disconsolate young 
 soul looks and leans toward happiness as the 
 parched plant yearns for rain. Unconscious both 
 sufferers may be, but they surely seek relief, and 
 God has so made the world that to most of his
 
 THE ROOM OF DEAD VANITIES. 173 
 
 creatures relief comes, when their extremity is 
 reached. 
 
 To be able to take an interest in another human 
 being than himself, to think perhaps he could be of 
 use and help somewhere in the world, was to bring 
 a thrill of renewed life to Robert Sargent, and 
 inevitably these experiences and thoughts came to 
 him, after months of brooding over the torn fancies 
 and ideals of his life. Feeling had not died within 
 him he was alive and the great world was whirling 
 around him. Gradually it came about that he 
 thought less bitterly of Barbara Sloan and his 
 wasted love ; by degrees he began to live again.
 
 174 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SHOWN THE DOOR. 
 
 As Sargent turned to go up the second flight of 
 stairs the door of the Room of Dead Vanities was 
 softly opened, and he heard within Em's hushing 
 "Sh!" He quietly walked over to the half-open 
 portal. Em's hand swiftly drew him into the room, 
 and as soon as the door was closed a blaze of light 
 flooded the room. On a table, her hand at the 
 chandelier, stood a radiant creature; she was not 
 recognizable at first as Elsie, but it was she. 
 
 Now with her finger on her lip she stood like a 
 statue, wide-eyed and half smiling at Sargent's 
 amazed looks. She was dressed in a cloud of filmy, 
 lace-like black, her bare neck, shoulders and arms 
 rising out of the silky, shining jet-colored gown like 
 snow. Jewels blazed in her ears and around her 
 throat and upon her arms, a golden girdle encircled 
 her waist, and upon her feet were golden sandals 
 glittering like gems. 
 
 Suddenly, before Sargent could speak, the 
 bewildering vision moved. Elsie sprang lightly to 
 the floor and ran up to him as he stood by the door 
 with Em, too surprised to speak. 
 
 "I sat up to show myself to you in my finery," 
 said Elsie, softly. "I wouldn't take off so much as a 
 bracelet until you had seen me! And am I not 
 gay?'
 
 SHOWN THE DOOR. 175 
 
 The girl drifted like a leaf before a breeze over in 
 front of a tall mirror, and began to dance before it 
 noiselessly and with a light grace which made her 
 look more than ever like some creature from the 
 land of sprites. 
 
 Poor Sargent! It was all over with him now. 
 From indignant pity to infatuation is a short step, 
 and he had taken it before the dancer had looked 
 around at him from her posing before the mirror. 
 It was not long; all in a moment she turned from 
 her own bright reflection and ran, this time straight 
 into Sargent's open arms. He touched her 
 reverently and gently, taking both of her hands in 
 his, and leading her to a seat. There was the 
 innocent coquetry of a child of three years in the 
 girl, and that was all. She looked at him with the 
 pride of a baby who wears its first red shoes. 
 
 "Elsie," said Sargent, his voice trembling, 
 "don't go with the theater people! I love you. Let 
 me take care of you. Let me make you my wife and 
 then you can go away from here with me and live 
 with me always." 
 
 "Hush!" said Elsie. "Em hears you Grace 
 Emily, I mean." 
 
 "Never mind Grace Emily, Elsie, I want to say I 
 love you before the whole world. Will you marry 
 me?" 
 
 The girl held her face in her hands for a few 
 moments, then she looked bravely up. 
 
 "I have never hoped that you would love me, or 
 imagined it," she said, "but I have wished it from 
 
 the moment I saw you, and I have prayed that you 
 12
 
 1 76 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 would, and now I am happy!" Then she began to 
 sob, but checked herself immediately. 
 
 "Takeoff those jewels, and that dancing- dress, " 
 said Sargent, "and remember, dear, forever. I am 
 a poor boy, and you will be the wife of a man who 
 is struggling for himself and you in the world. You 
 shall have all that my love and work can give you, 
 no more you understand?" 
 
 "I understand," said Elsie, "and I will love you 
 and obey you always. I don't want anything but you ! ' ' 
 
 Sargent took up the girl's little white hand and 
 kissed it. She trembled and held up her lips to 
 his, and he kissed them ; and then they said good 
 night. The girls softly stole away, and, after 
 standing a minute in the dark room, Sargent went 
 upstairs. 
 
 Mrs. Graves was never visible before noon, and it 
 was the evening of the next day before Sargent 
 could see her. Then, as she sat in state at her 
 table, entered to her Sargent with Elsie by his side. 
 
 The young man began at once the business of the 
 moment, and asked in the most matter of fact 
 manner for the hand of Elsie. Then, after a 
 moment of frozen surprise, Mrs. Graves gave the 
 intrepid man a very bad quarter of an hour. She 
 told him anew her plans for Elsie and declared her 
 unalterable purpose of carrying them out. 
 
 To Sargent's attempted expostulations she made 
 the unanswerable rejoinder of curtly ordering him 
 out of the house. 
 
 "Go at once," she said. "I give you half an hour 
 to pack your trunks and get out."
 
 SHOWN THE DOOR. 177 
 
 Then Sargent turned upon her. He poured out 
 in an irresistible volley all the anger and disgust 
 which tormented his soul. He advanced as she 
 shrunk from him until he stood over her as she 
 cowered against the wall, and he rained down 
 bitterest denunciation upon her until Elsie crept to 
 him and plucked his sleeve and begged him to desist. 
 
 "Come with me, Elsie," he cried, trying to take 
 her hand. "Come now;" but Elsie, looking at him 
 helplessly, was bodily taken in hand, and half -pulled 
 and half-carried away by her aunt, who had rallied 
 as soon as Sargent turned his attention to Elsie, and 
 now she withdrew with the young girl to her private 
 room. 
 
 Sargent was stunned. He looked at the closed 
 door of Mrs. Graves' sitting-room and rushed to 
 open it, but found it locked. He shook it, and 
 finally hurled himself against it with all his force, 
 but the barrier was unyielding. Suddenly his reason 
 asserted itself and he stood still. He was acting like 
 one demented, and, as he realized it, he slowly 
 turned to go. 
 
 "Hist," came a sharp sibilant sound as he walked 
 along the second floor landing on his way to his 
 room to pack up his belongings ready for instant 
 removal. He looked all about him, and, as he 
 mounted the next flight of stairs, he saw leaning 
 over the banisters in the half light of the hall, the 
 figure of Em. She grasped Sargent by the coat 
 sleeve as he came within her reach and hurried him 
 into his room, shutting the door softly behind her. 
 Then, in a loud whisper, she said, "Trust her not!"
 
 178 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 "Who?" said Sargent, surprised out of himself. 
 "Not Elsie?" "No! No!" emphatically whispered 
 the tragic Em; "Miss Clyde! Trust her not, she is 
 an enemy and will basely deceive you!" Here 
 in somewhat stilted phrase was confirmation of 
 Sargent's own premonition, and therefore it was 
 strong. 
 
 "But who am I to trust?" he muttered, half to 
 himself 
 
 "Trust me!" said the small slavey, laying her 
 thin, bony hand on her hollow chest, ' ' I love Elsie, 
 and I am determined that you shall rescue her from 
 this palace of hate!" 
 
 Sargent lost all thought of amusement over the 
 girl's grandiloquence, in his intense anxiety, and his 
 hopeless hope for help from some source. He 
 looked at the pitiful little work-worn figure, with its 
 earnest, beseeching face, and it came upon him with 
 a feeling of self-pity that here indeed was the only 
 being in the world to be depended upon to keep 
 him in communication with Elsie. 
 
 "Trust me," repeated little Em, and Sargent did 
 trust her. Hastily writing a letter of promise and 
 comfort to Elsie, he gave it to his new-found friend 
 and ally, with strict commands as to its secret 
 delivery. The girl looked ecstatically at the billet. 
 It was the first bona-fide love letter her eyes had 
 ever beheld, even on the outside, although in the 
 pages of story books, complete letter writers and 
 "Dream-Books," they were her favorite study. 
 "Remember I trust you, Grace Emily," said 
 Sargent. She did not reply, but stooped down, hid
 
 SHOWN THE DOOR. 179 
 
 the letter in one of her shabby shoes, and with a 
 look of farewell, and the words, "Be of good 
 cheer!" she left the room. 
 
 Within ten minutes Sargent's trunk, locked and 
 strapped, ready for transfer, stood in the middle of 
 the apartment which he had already left forever. 
 He saw no sign of life on the stairs, or anywhere, 
 as he went. He left the money for his week's 
 lodging on the hat-rack table in the dismal front 
 hall, and went out into the street. There was no 
 face at any window or door no signal nor mark of 
 interest from the house which held so much that 
 was dear to him that it seemed to hold all his 
 world. 
 
 Elsie's imploring, loving face haunted him. He 
 did not blame her for not coming at once to him. 
 He knew well the shrinking, dependent nature 
 which could not avoid yielding passively to the 
 strong hand which had drawn her away from him 
 just at the moment of decision, before the real 
 situation had become clear to her, but he could not 
 keep from raging at the thought of the deserted girl, 
 left without help or love. But even momentary 
 quickness and strength of will on her part might 
 have given her to him and made an end at one 
 stroke of all her troubles. 
 
 Now he had but one object in life, to get Elsie 
 out of her prison and marry her forthwith, and then 
 what? Visions of his mother's home and of the sure 
 refuge his young wife would find there while he 
 was seeking his fortune in the West, filled his mind 
 satisfactorily as regarded the future. All he had to
 
 i8o THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 do was to get possession of Elsie and marry her. 
 The present held the main problem, he thought. 
 The future, of course, was bright, and held no 
 uncertainty.
 
 THE RELEASE OF ELSIE. 181 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE RELEASE OF ELSIE. 
 
 Sargent spent the night at a hotel, that comfort- 
 able refuge of the homeless, and, after getting him- 
 self settled in a new boarding house the next day 
 this he knew must be a temporary home, for the 
 surveying outfit he was engaged for was to go 
 West soon he went out at evening to look for Billy 
 Barnes. He needed a strong friend and helper, 
 and Barnes, who was in a lawyer's office in the 
 city, was just the man his heart craved. 
 
 During the past few weeks Sargent's daily life 
 had been one of severe work, often extending late 
 into the night, in preparation for his start West on 
 the railway survey in October. And in addition to 
 what was demanded by his work his attention had 
 been gradually concentrating upon Elsie and her 
 surroundings in the forbidding house on Wabash 
 Avenue, so that, without knowing it, the youngster 
 had neglected and temporarily forgotten the few 
 friends he had in the town. Barnes greeted him 
 with unshaken cordiality, however, and soon the 
 classmates were walking at a great pace through the 
 lighted streets. 
 
 Barnes laughed before Sargent had fairly made a 
 beginning to his story. 
 
 "Another girl!" he exclaimed. "Has she red hair 
 this time?"
 
 i82 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Sargent stopped short on the sidewalk, and by the 
 flaring gaslight his face had for a moment an angry 
 look. Then he walked on in moody silence. He 
 did not hear what Barnes was saying. Before his 
 fancy, stronger than reality, rose a vivid, riant face 
 crowned by glowing hair. A scent as of pine trees 
 was in the air, and all around him the fields of grain 
 and clover seemed to spread. That was reality, he 
 thought, as he strove to regain hold of himself, and 
 this, the city and all the people in it, but a morbid 
 dream. 
 
 Barnes took hold of his arm and shook it. 
 "You're not offended, old man?" 
 
 "No, of course not, Billy! I may as well tell you, 
 though, that the red-haired girl refused me. Let 
 that end it. Now, as I was telling you " 
 
 And he went on with his story. Barnes was soon 
 thoroughly aroused, and he entered with all his 
 heart into his friend's plans. It was indeed more 
 than could be expected, and as he said, "too good to 
 be true, ' ' that he should be concerned in an elope- 
 ment, for this and nothing less was what Sargent 
 had determined upon. It was the only thing to do, 
 speaking in all seriousness, he explained, and then 
 he set forth his plans in detail. 
 
 Elsie went twice a week to an afternoon dancing 
 class, in one of the theater buildings down town. 
 Sometimes she was accompanied by Rosie Clyde, 
 sometimes by Em. Sargent's scheme was, with the 
 assistance of Em, with whom it was easy for him to 
 communicate, to have Elsie slip out of the dancing 
 room some day and meet him in the hallway, and
 
 THE RELEASE OF ELSIE. 183 
 
 then, the rest was easy. To Barnes, Sargent 
 confided all the arrangements necessary for the per- 
 formance of a strictly legal marriage ceremony 
 within a few minutes of the time when Elsie should 
 be safe in Sargent's care, at the doors of the dancing 
 master's rooms. 
 
 The two friends discussed every detail of their 
 enterprise. Sargent and Elsie, immediately after 
 the marriage ceremony, were to be hurried into a 
 carriage, Barnes being the driver, to Barnes' office, 
 where they were to await the time of departure of 
 the train which should carry the young pair to 
 Sargent's Michigan home. All that remained to be 
 done now was to get word to Elsie, so that on the 
 following Thursday, at the time of her next dancing 
 class, she should be ready for her wedding and 
 flight. Sargent and Barnes parted late that night, 
 having arranged it so that each could find the other 
 easily or communicate with him at any time, day or 
 night. 
 
 When Sargent met Em, the third conspirator, the 
 next evening, that romantic damsel's spirit was 
 swollen with such pride as no one could well depict. 
 Here was she, the despised and persecuted Em, 
 walking along the avenue upon the arm of a tall, 
 handsome young gentleman who bent over her 
 solicitously and talked in lowest tones. She 
 fervently wished that some acquaintance might pass 
 by, only to see it, even in the uncertain light of the 
 September evening, with only a street lamp now 
 and then to make the darkness visible. It was true 
 that the low-toned voice discoursing on themes of
 
 1 84 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 love and adventure was vibrating with emotions 
 inspired by another than herself, but Em did not 
 mind that. The situation was full of romance, and 
 was intoxicating. She was, inwardly, a little dis- 
 appointed at the prosaic meeting planned by 
 Sargent; it all seemed a little tame, to her fancy 
 the dingy place down town, the office of the Justice 
 of the Peace and the railway station, and all in broad 
 daylight, too. Em had formed visions of a midnight 
 escape, with a rope ladder, fashioned, who knows? 
 but by her own hands, and Sargent's practical 
 arrangements were so different from her dreams! 
 She said nothing, though, but concentrated her 
 attention, very faithfully, upon remembering exactly 
 every direction, and every message she was to 
 deliver from Sargent to Elsie. 
 
 Just at parting, near the house, Em said, and 
 somehow it sent a stab to Sargent's fast beating 
 heart : 
 
 "Don't be too disappointed, Mr. Sargent, if we 
 aren't there, Thursday. Elsie has not been out of 
 her room or able to sit up since yesterday; she can't 
 eat or sleep, she says, but Mrs. Graves says she is 
 only 'playing sick,' and she won't believe there is 
 really anything wrong with Elsie's health. I think 
 myself she'll be all right when she has heard from 
 you." 
 
 "But, Em," said Sargent, "you must tell me to- 
 morrow night how Elsie is or be sure to be up at 
 five o'clock to-morrow morning, and meet me at the 
 door. I'll be there; I can't ring the bell, you know, 
 but you come to the door at five, Em ! Do. ' '
 
 THE RELEASE OF ELSIE. 185 
 
 "Of course I will," promised Em, and then she 
 ran down to the basement entrance and disappeared. 
 
 So little Elsie was sick. It pressed upon him like 
 a smothering nightmare. He feared, he knew not 
 what. Certainly it was unreasonable, "as all fear 
 is, ' ' thought the young man, but he could not shake 
 off the foreboding which oppressed him. 
 
 Before sunrise in the morning Sargent was at Mrs. 
 Graves' door, and promptly at five o'clock came Em 
 with brush and hot water, ready for her morning 
 task of scrubbing the high white stone doorsteps. 
 She set down the heavy pail she carried, and stood, 
 pale and red-eyed in the morning light, looking at 
 Sargent. 
 
 "Been up all night with Elsie. She's very sick. 
 I'm scared about her," she said simply, with an 
 appealing look, and pitying too, at the great fellow 
 standing there helpless. 
 
 "Em!" he said, "call Mrs. Graves, and tell her she 
 must have a doctor for Elsie. Tell her I shall come 
 at noon, and if she has not called a doctor before 
 then, I shall bring one, and he shall see Elsie, too ! 
 Run, Em, run!" 
 
 At noon Sargent rang the door bell he had an 
 hour from his office at noon and Rosie Clyde 
 opened the door. She would not admit Sargent, 
 but she spoke kindly to him, telling him that Elsie 
 was ill, but not seriously, and that a physician had 
 been sent for, and would soon be there. To 
 Sargent's imploring look she only said, "Impos- 
 sible. You can't see her!" Hearing footsteps on 
 the stairs she abruptly closed the door, leaving
 
 1 86 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Sargent standing there staring at the heavily carved 
 black walnut barrier which had just shut him out. 
 
 Sargent had never dreamed of such an abyss of 
 uncertainty and misery as he now began to endure. 
 Day followed day, and for a week he never saw 
 Em, or even the half-friendly Rosie Clyde. A sour- 
 faced, unkempt old Irish woman opened the door 
 when he rang Mrs. Graves' door bell, ordered 
 him from the steps, and slammed the door. Night 
 after night he haunted the place, and only once 
 he met Mrs. Graves. She was coming home from 
 some evening excursion, and to Sargent's appeal for 
 news of Elsie she curtly warned him away, and 
 threatened him with arrest if he continued to haunt 
 the vicinity of her house. 
 
 The next night, while he was keeping his vigil 
 near the house, a big Irish policeman slowly 
 approached him, and laying his heavy hand upon 
 his shoulder, said, "Is this Robert Sargent?" The 
 poor fellow thought the threatened arrest had come. 
 
 "My name is Robert Sargent," he said very 
 stiffly, shaking off the large hand from his shoulder. 
 
 "Then I think I have a little business with you," 
 said the policeman; "walk along wid me, will yez?" 
 
 Sargent reluctantly paced along by the side of the 
 blue-coat for a few yards, until they stopped under 
 a street lamp. The policeman slowly drew from 
 his pocket a letter and held it up between his finger 
 and thumb so that Sargent could read the superscrip- 
 tion upon the envelope. It was his own name. 
 
 "Take it, me boy," said the unexpected 
 messenger, now grinning 9 with delight over
 
 THE RELEASE OF ELSIE. 187 
 
 Sargent's astonishment. "She's not a beauty," he 
 continued, "but there's none keeps her doorstep 
 whiter on Wabash Avenue ! ' ' And, with a playful 
 thump on Sargent's breast from his big fist, the 
 honest fellow went lumbering off upon his beat. 
 
 The cramped writing on the envelope betrayed 
 the hand of Em, and Sargent tore the missive open 
 with an impatient hand after he had run a few 
 steps to thank his new benefactor and returned to 
 the lamp-post. 
 
 Em's short letter, ill-spelled and evidently written 
 with much labor, showed that Elsie was desperately 
 ill, and that a doctor was in attendance who gave 
 but little hope for her. A nervous fever, the 
 medical man said, had prostrated the delicate girl, 
 and she had scarcely strength enough to rally. 
 "But, of course," wrote Em, "wile thers life thers 
 hope. Elsie calls yure name all the time. Wish 
 you could see her." 
 
 Sargent was at Mrs. Graves' door early next day, 
 and never left it until he had waylaid the doctor 
 when he left the house after his morning visit. Dr. 
 Hamill was a kindly man, bluff, humane and 
 sensible. It comforted Sargent to talk with him, 
 and, as for the doctor, he, of course, saw at once 
 what the anxious inquiry by the haggard young 
 fellow meant. He spoke reassuringly, and Sargent 
 blessed him for the first gleam of assured hope that 
 he had enjoyed for days. 
 
 Why prolong the story of what followed? the story 
 of days and nights of lingering anxiety, indignation, 
 savage desperation, hope and despair for this young
 
 1 88 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 man? The end came, and came before many days 
 had dragged their slow length by. One morning 
 Sargent had been sitting at the door all night, and 
 had seen the good doctor go in and come out, look- 
 ing thoughtful and grave, after midnight though he 
 gave a word of hope. Sargent was sitting in the 
 morning chill, at that hour of dawn when the world 
 looks either its best or worst, when Em suddenly 
 appeared from her door in the basement under the 
 front step, and with a cry, and a look, gave him 
 instant news. Elsie was dead! 
 
 The poor lad staggered away after the first few 
 words, words he did not hear, for in Em's face he 
 had seen what had happened. Afterwards he 
 learned only that Elsie had died with his name 
 upon her lips. That was all. 
 
 And so the strange, pitiful little love story came to 
 an end. Barnes, who had of late gotten into a way 
 of seeking out Sargent every morning, and, after 
 giving him his breakfast, taking him to the 
 surveyor's office and setting him to work, where he 
 went on mechanically until night, came at the usual 
 time, and, finding Sargent gone from his usual place 
 of vigil, sought and found him at his lodgings. 
 
 It was a day of September winds and rain when 
 the two friends saw the open grave waiting for the 
 fair body of Elsie. From a distance, over the 
 wave-like surface of the place of graves, the two 
 watched the simple burial. They said nothing, but 
 when the people who had come in the short funeral 
 train went away, Barnes went away with them, as he 
 knew Sargent desired.
 
 THE RELEASE OF ELSIE. 189 
 
 And then Sargent stood over the new-made 
 grave, and as he noted the shabby hearse followed 
 by two carriages driving away, he thought of that 
 other burial in London a few months ago, when 
 Elsie's mother, already forgotten before she had 
 ceased to breathe, had been hidden in her obscure 
 grave in an alien land. But, after all, he mused, 
 the difference between the two was as wide as the 
 ocean and the lands which separated their humble 
 graves. One had been the plaything of fortune, to 
 be dizzied for a day by flattery, and then thrown 
 away like a broken doll when her charms faded in 
 the blight of sickness. The other, neglected and 
 bruised in spirit all her short life through, had found 
 in death a refuge from what she instinctively 
 loathed and repudiated. 
 
 Even then, above his own anguish and above the 
 storm of indignation which shook him, Sargent was 
 conscious of the merciful end, which had come to 
 the girl he had pitied and loved so much. It made 
 not much impression in the stress of sharp, newly 
 inflicted sorrow, but the sense of it was with him 
 from the first, and gradually, afterward, it grew in 
 him until he could estimate with some sense of 
 proportion what had befallen the girl whose life he 
 had declared should be one with his own, and also 
 see something of his own part in the simple drama 
 of suffering which had ended, for her at least. 
 
 As the wind blew the wet leaves from the thinning 
 elm trees around him, and a light rain fell upon his 
 bared head, Sargent felt that he must rouse himself 
 as from feverish, restless dreams. He was over-
 
 ipo THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 poweringly homesick standing there alone, and he 
 found himself complaining to himself and lamenting 
 silently that he could not go home and lay his head 
 on his mother's knee. He needed the restful com- 
 fort of home before he started West on the railroad 
 survey work, he thought, but could not have it. 
 Then he walked slowly away, to find Barnes waiting 
 for him at those gates where so many heavy hearts 
 pass in and out each day. The two friends went 
 back to the town together in the close companion- 
 ship of silence.
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 191 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 To men of a certain caliber there comes, when 
 sitting in a rushing railroad train, an increased 
 clearness of thought maybe it conies from the earth 
 but the fact exists that when he is dashed along 
 on the train with the vibrations beneath him and 
 around him, the man of a type seems to think things 
 and see things more clearly. He knows better what 
 his prospects are; he knows better what the one 
 woman is ; he knows better what he ought to try and 
 do in the world to make his prospects better and the 
 one woman's prospects better, and to help the other 
 people in the world who ought to be helped. Of 
 course this effect of riding upon a railroad train 
 comes only to a few men. Maybe Mother Earth 
 gives some things to only a few of her children. 
 We can't tell about that. 
 
 As he rode on the train from Chicago westward, 
 Sargent thought over what had passed Barbara and 
 Elsie. It was all "mixed up," he thought. Barbara 
 seemed brilliant, fascinating and hard. Yet some- 
 where about her there seemed the ruby, the greatest 
 and richest of all the stones ; possibly the association 
 of red hair had something to do with that. He had 
 thought that in Elsie could be found the loving, 
 clinging, dependent creature to whom he would be 
 
 13
 
 192 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 all in all, and that in her he could forget the eyes of 
 Barbara questioning from so far away, but the 
 glowing, expressive face of the red-haired girl had 
 been in all his dreams, and he still saw it on the 
 morning when, his railway journey ended, he and 
 his peons were getting things together and doing 
 the packing. 
 
 It was all odd, it was all strange ; it was a leap 
 from one thing to another ; it was a leap from some- 
 thing feverish and heart-touching in a great city to 
 another climate and other conditions and other 
 men to meet with, and no woman, for the present 
 at least, and only those things to eat and drink 
 which are provided straitly, but which, after all, 
 will make one clearer of mind mentally and morally ; 
 all which is exceedingly good for a man. He was 
 clear headed now. He was getting gaunt, which is 
 excellent for one. He was handling the men 
 about him and thinking of the two women who had 
 formed part of his life ; the smaller, for whom he 
 had done all he could, and the other who really, as 
 he even in his half-boyishness knew, owned him 
 pretty fairly. There was much to come yet before 
 Sargent could understand how great the woman was 
 and then, God bless him there is good air up the 
 mountain slopes and it is not bad for the Anglo- 
 Saxon if he have occasion to knock another man 
 down in the early morning merely because the 
 other man hasn't belted a mule properly, and when 
 rebuked has drawn a knife. He knows more of 
 the relations of things. He sticks to his friends 
 more faithfully and loves a woman better.
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 193 
 
 He would not, when he was fairly at the end of 
 the city story, standing upon the edge of a new 
 experience as he was, acknowledge it; but, deep 
 in his heart, lay one thing out of all the years had 
 brought him the thought of Barbara. It had been 
 so all the time. He and she seemed left, the two 
 real things in the world. And he hummed under 
 his breath the old song of "The Cave of Silver." 
 
 Over him rushed the thought of Elsie, often and 
 often, but she seemed already a dream. He saw 
 her fragile, graceful figure, poised before him in 
 her gauzy robe of black for the dance, or he saw 
 her face, wistful, sweet, trusting and pathetic. 
 He knew, even now, that it would have been a 
 question whether he could have delivered this 
 beautiful soul from its surroundings, and made the 
 poor child into a happy woman. It was all unreal 
 all but the pain of it ; that was at least real. The 
 rest was a dream. 
 
 The life of a man upon the Southwestern plains 
 of America in the first years of railway prospecting 
 and building across them, made in itself a rugged 
 story. Sargent entered, with a sensation of relief, 
 upon the new and stimulating experience before 
 him. Hardships he laughed at; bodily fatigue he 
 welcomed; work which severely taxed mind and 
 body he rejoiced in ; and the wholesome tonic of his 
 ceaseless labors and of continuous outdoor existence 
 in the wonderful elixir of the air of the high plains 
 and mountains, in a few months, made him over. 
 Every trace of the youthful Squire of Dames soon 
 vanished, and a hardy young man on the alkaline
 
 194 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 soil of the half desert stood ready to front the 
 world. 
 
 The rough, squalid life of the mushroom towns 
 which sprang up along the road as it grew, 
 fascinated Sargent by the study it gave him of 
 naked human nature, human nature shown without 
 constraint or any reserve. Here men and women 
 showed themselves with character on view as 
 plainly as are revealed the bones of a skeleton. 
 Vice glared unrebuked from the eyes of whites and 
 redskins. Avarice clutched with ready hand the 
 wide-flung money of the careless adventurers, 
 laborers and engineers who led the onset of the 
 iron road. Men showed their virtues, too, as well as 
 their vices. They were full of rude kindness and 
 their hands were ready to help in all emergencies 
 and dangers. The workers who were fortunate 
 gave freely to those who were sick or poor, and 
 many a roysterer proved a tender nurse by the 
 couch of blankets on the floor upon which tossed 
 feverishly a suffering comrade. 
 
 There were few women in these towns of uncouth 
 shelters of pine boards and canvas and "dug-outs" in 
 the hillsides, and such women as were there, save a 
 few rugged wives of the petty contractors, were of 
 the sort into whose personal history one does not go 
 at length. They had, as a rule, the virtues and the 
 vices of the men except that they did not gamble. 
 It is odd, this thing about women. It is only an 
 abnormity among them who gambles for money. 
 They gamble, of course they gamble, just as men 
 do, but, as a rule, they gamble only for men. This
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 195 
 
 was shown quite as much in the shanty town over the 
 crest of the iron snake crawling toward the Pacific, 
 as it is in great cities where men are richer and 
 women plan and do things in a more graceful way. 
 
 Was it the proverbial parsimony, or speaking 
 more kindly or more flatteringly, the economy of 
 their sex which kept Moll and Jenny from the poker 
 table, or was it that trait which is strangely despised 
 in a man while it is praised in a woman, fear? 
 Sargent never reached a conclusion any more nearly 
 than to feel that women could not gamble where 
 men are, because, in the end, women could not sit 
 at the table with them. Gambling and violence, 
 rising passions, possible personal assaults and death 
 go together. The very idea of a woman in the 
 neighborhood would be grotesque. And so the 
 man, growing daily sterner of face, harder of 
 muscle, and harder, too, of thought, it may be, 
 pushed forward with his engineering associates, 
 leaving the builded road behind them, and far 
 behind them, as it chanced; for there was new 
 work to be done in a surveying and directing way 
 over the route toward the Pacific, which must be 
 outlined with more definiteness. 
 
 The little group of men, leaving the building 
 road, strove along over plain and desert and 
 mountain rises, making their camping places where 
 best they could, never resting in their work while the 
 sun was in the sky and energy for the toil remained, 
 or from their watching under sun or stars, for 
 they were in the land of the Indian, of the Apache, 
 or those who were his kindred. They were but a
 
 196 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 small party and must ever be upon the alert. Quite 
 truthful was the captured Indian of the far south- 
 west, who said, "If you see Apache sign in these 
 mountains, look out; if you don't see sign, look out 
 more!" 
 
 Many a night when Sargent was standing on 
 watch under those stars which in a clear desert 
 atmosphere seem like great lights swung down from 
 the far vault of heaven, he pondered over the short 
 drama of his life and read new meaning from it, 
 now that he was so far away from what had been. 
 Only objectively comes good reasoning. Droll 
 fancies came to him in the midst of it all. He 
 would look at the gloriously lighted sky and the 
 glooming waste, and it would seem to him that it 
 must have been some other boy who had grown up 
 in the Saginaw Valley among the trees he could 
 scarcely believe in, as only memory recalled them 
 in this treeless waste. Even when, in the moun- 
 tains, trees appeared, in all their worshipful beauty, 
 they were unlike in form and growth to the savage 
 trees of Sargent's knowledge. Upon these western 
 mountain slopes they grew apart without under- 
 growth, and in groups which gave to the landscape 
 an effect which was almost park-like. Indeed the 
 people of the western slope have named their 
 forests parks. But it was not of landscape or sur- 
 roundings that Sargent thought alone or first. 
 Never grew a tree since the world began, not even 
 the greatest of the great conifers, whose height 
 exceeded that of the woman a man might be in love 
 with. Sargent thought often of the slight and
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 197 
 
 graceful girl, of the beautiful, childish face of Elsie ; 
 and over her, ever, he wondered was she real ; had 
 she, had Mrs. Graves, had Em, and all the rest of 
 that street and that city by the lake been real? 
 And could he have been the youth who shivered 
 and shuddered upon that city doorstep, while 
 the poor girl was dying within? But ever, 
 there is something dominant. It may not be the 
 mountain crest which we can see; while we 
 never see the living, volcanic fire beneath. Ever in 
 the midst of all his thinking existed in the mind of 
 Sargent overpowering comprehension of the glowing 
 woman of the North, and she, he knew, was real ; 
 when he remembered her, he felt himself recover- 
 ing the sense of continuity of existence. While the 
 rest of his life, while even his doting mother and 
 proud father and his sisters, friends and college 
 chums, seemed shadowy and unreal in his new, 
 strange existence, Barbara was as vigorous and 
 alive to his consciousness as ever. He looked at 
 his sinewy brown hands, and as sure as he was of 
 them was he of her firm white ones. 
 
 From the Mexican border Sargent wrote to Bar- 
 bara he had been silent to her for more than two 
 years and after that, with long intervals between, 
 he sent letters to her from the desert places of the 
 world in which he lived and worked. They were 
 letters full of his pulsing life and individuality, and 
 he sent them more as a necessary relief to himself 
 than as a plea of any kind to her. They showed his 
 continuous love of her, he could not help that, 
 but they asked nothing in return. He began to
 
 198 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 receive letters from Barbara, after awhile; they 
 came to him in his remote working places long 
 after they were written, and were the treasures of 
 his life. They were not love letters, but they were 
 sufficient for love to feed upon, elusive, piquant, and 
 altogether charming. They were dangerous, these 
 letters, for they made him understand more fully 
 the woman he loved, and the more he understood 
 the more he loved her. Of all the winged shafts of 
 love that with a pen at the point is sharpest. 
 
 With comprehension and desire would come a 
 great resolve. He must have that girl ! The Indian 
 might prowl on the flanks of the march, and he 
 was a very real thing to be dealt with, 'and had a fell 
 hand when accidentally triumphant, but he had no 
 more certainty of clutch when in possession, 
 thought Sargent grimly, than had the fair Barbarian 
 of the North upon a certain man. So went on the 
 work of thrusting a railroad outline down toward 
 the softest of the oceans, and so among the 
 engineers, doing that great work and himself 
 developing into greatness in his field, went Sargent 
 until the months grew into years, and he became as 
 tawny almost as the Indians he sometimes faced, or 
 the peons who were his servants. Wiser, too, and 
 more practical in all things he grew, even as to his 
 loving. But his growing practicality did not obscure 
 hi& knowledge of a great truth. He began to 
 realize that true chivalrous love had been like a 
 wall around him during all the dangerous days of a 
 youngster's first freedom of the world. 
 
 Then there came periods of such work as absorbed
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 199 
 
 every force, mental and physical. There came 
 times of stress and danger. There came times of 
 privation, ending in marches of incredible hardship 
 from the mountain trails to the supply station on the 
 plains, and more than once Sargent stood the sturdy 
 one of a camp in which starvation held rule, and 
 from which the whole party were delivered only 
 by determination, endurance and pluck, such as 
 perhaps American pioneers and pathfinders almost 
 alone know. 
 
 And these times of trial and suffering showed 
 Sargent what manner of creatures men are ; showed 
 him the good and bad of them. He learned to 
 tolerate the man who would steal the blanket from 
 his sleeping comrade on freezing nights or cun- 
 ningly contrive to get more than his share of rations 
 when the explorers were short of food, and he 
 learned to know the man who gave up his sheltering 
 cover or let the cup of coffee in all its unutterable 
 value pass him by for a weaker or ailing member of 
 the party. 
 
 And in other ways the young man learned to 
 know his fellow men. He studied with amused 
 interest the new type, to him, the "Greasers" who 
 occupied much of the country. Many a lazy hour 
 he spent sitting in the shade of an adobe house 
 haggling over a calf or bullock with an ancient 
 Mexican, whose dark face was wrinkled until it 
 looked like a map of a city. He learned to read 
 cupidity and avarice in the strange faces of these 
 aliens as they lounged about in apparent ease and 
 carelessness, taking hours to settle upon the price
 
 200 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 of a sheep, and months to fix their terms for a strip 
 of land ; for the prospectors bought a few acres from 
 time to time, as they saw chance of future values in 
 these forgotten places of the world, and Sargent, 
 looking forward to the day when the road should 
 come into being, made more than one shrewd guess 
 and expended certain small sums of money in 
 evidence of his belief in what was as yet to be only 
 guessed at. 
 
 "It is my way of gambling," he said to himself. 
 "It is in the air out here, the spirit of staking to 
 win or lose, but I am sure that it is not lose with 
 me!" and, in reality, Sargent's ventures were 
 founded upon somewhat more than chance; upon 
 his knowledge of nature and of the ways by which 
 nature determines the movements and lines of men. 
 He knew where the railroad must go, because he 
 knew where it must cross the bed of a stream, one 
 of those channels which, dry one part of the year, 
 contain full currents of mud-colored water during 
 certain weeks or months; or he knew the pass it 
 must make far over the mountains, or the canon it 
 must cross and its most available crossing by high 
 network of trestle. And the sites of certain future 
 railway towns were purchased, and in due time 
 their titles were drawn to the name of one Robert 
 Sargent, late of Michigan, but now of the Great 
 Central Plains of the United States and Mexico. 
 Thus the foundation of the young adventurer's for- 
 tune was laid. 
 
 During the two years of his first prospecting and 
 surveying journey into and around in the strange
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 201 
 
 lands of the far Southwest, Sargent made two 
 hurried journeys East on business for the great rail- 
 way corporation upon one of whose projected 
 branches he was at work. He visited Boston and 
 New York, and remained for a few weeks at the 
 National Capital, where he had such a glimpse of 
 American political life as gave him much food for 
 thought when he returned to the far-away lands of 
 plain and mountain where his immediate work lay. 
 And he dreamed of days of power in the time to 
 come, feeling the strivings within him to take his 
 share in the public work and weal which character- 
 izes the American citizen, but he could not reach 
 his home. 
 
 Later, after years of striving and stress on the 
 Pacific slope, came a sort of period to Sargent's 
 especial branch of work, and he joined an exploring 
 expedition which would take him to the Pacific 
 ocean, and thus he saw the western edge of the 
 continent, and looked out into the mysterious ever- 
 flying West. Then he set his face homeward. It 
 was a strange sensation, the return journey over the 
 first great railway line from the salt seas to the fresh 
 inland waters of the great central valley of America. 
 
 Sargent could count the cost of such a road as he 
 came easily along, for he knew what those long 
 miles over deserts, mountains and barren plains had 
 meant to those who, farther north than his work 
 had been, had toiled across before the triumph of 
 the meeting of the locomotives, and the driving of 
 the golden spike which celebrated the uniting of 
 the two roads, could be effected.
 
 202 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 One day, he recalled as he journeyed along it, in 
 the time of rain and flowers and such grass as grows 
 when the rain falls in the far southwestern arid 
 districts, how, as the prospectors had wended over 
 the level plain, they had come to a yawning gash in 
 the earth, and, looking down a thousand feet, saw in 
 the deep black shadows a stream flowing at the 
 bottom of the canon. Sargent, planning with the 
 others how this desperate fissure should be bridged, 
 had afterward thought how a certain chasm in his 
 life must be crossed, and he had sung over to him- 
 self the song of the Cave of Silver, not in despera- 
 tion, as he had sung it once in a camp of starvation 
 high in a snowy mountain pass, when the fate of 
 Brock the Bold seemed to be his own, but in a mood 
 of contradiction and contest. 
 
 And now the man coming home from his toil to a 
 well-earned rest, felt within him the spell of the 
 love of woman more deeply than ever, and with it a 
 certain fixed and manly resolution.
 
 AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE. 203 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE. 
 
 "This town is but a great half-way house between 
 the mountains and the seas," said Mr. William 
 Barnes, attorney-at-law, as he sat at ease and 
 looked across the table at his vis-a-vis, Mr. Robert 
 Sargent, fresh from the Far West. 
 
 "Just sit here, and the world passes by," con- 
 tinued the speaker. "Everybody seems to be 
 chasse'ing east and west, north and south. We 
 catch 'em all." 
 
 Sargent had reached Chicago that morning and 
 had found Barnes at once. They were not effusive 
 when they met that's the way with the American 
 but they were glad. The junior partner, and the 
 hardest working one of a flourishing legal firm, 
 spoke briefly to his associates, shut the door of his 
 office with a bang and lugged his friend out into the 
 street. "Have you eaten yet?" he asked. 
 
 "No," said Sargent, "and I'm hungry." 
 
 Barnes grasped him by the shoulder and dragged 
 him into a glittering place. "I don't care what I 
 eat to-day," he said, "but let them do their worst." 
 
 "But I care!" announced Sargent. "What to eat 
 is a matter of importance to a fellow who has eaten 
 from the tables of the wilderness for many weary 
 moons and stms too. Many a bill of fare have I
 
 204 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 conjured up as I fasted out there on the plains and 
 now I mean to see what reality there is to one of 
 them;" and he gave an order to the waiter which 
 startled that staid functionary while it excited in 
 the breast of his friend emotions of mingled envy 
 and alarm. 
 
 Sargent was lean and brown, but the very per- 
 sonification of healthy, glowing manhood. His 
 powerful frame was yet clothed in the easy dress of 
 his active outdoor life, and so, unmarred by the 
 work of fashionable tailordom, was as graceful in 
 every pose and movement as he was strong and 
 manly. His eyes shone with joy and love of life, 
 and his face revealed the presence of a spirit, 
 strong, studying, yet playful, rejoicing in health of 
 body as well as mind. 
 
 "He's a man," thought Barnes, "to be proud of." 
 
 "It is a great moment," exclaimed Sargent, 
 interrupting Barnes' inward comments. "It is a 
 great, a glorious moment when we sit down to a 
 square meal ! Poets may rave over the joys of the 
 muse, but give me the pure, unalloyed and unim- 
 peachable happiness of a well-cooked meal ! Homer 
 may twang his lyre and Dante sing his lay, and all 
 the other fellows do all sorts of things, unenvied 
 each by me." And, with a flourish, he lifted the 
 cover of the dish before him. 
 
 "Tell me first about yourself, Barnes," he con- 
 tinued, as he began his soup. "You look as content 
 as a friar of the middle ages, so rosy about the gills, 
 so white of hands and generally well-fed and well- 
 kept. 'Property! property! property!" I'll bet
 
 AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE. 205 
 
 that's what your horse's feet beat about, to the con- 
 fusion of Tennyson's farmer!" 
 
 "It isn't 'property,' Sargent, that makes me look 
 so prosperous," expostulated Barnes; "lam doing 
 fairly well, no more, but I'm very happy " and the 
 honest fellow looked a bit confused. 
 
 "Billy Barnes, you're married!" exclaimed 
 Sargent. 
 
 "There's no 'denygin' ' of it," the Billy of ancient 
 days confessed ; and then Sargent had an excuse for 
 ordering a bottle of wine, for, so far, the two were 
 following the almost universal American fashion, 
 eating without wine or beer. 
 
 "We must have wine in which to drink a health," 
 said the returned chum. '"What shall it be? Ye 
 gods! Whitefish; broiled whitefish on the shores of 
 Lake Michigan! Have I lived to see this day! 
 Billy, look at that wine card and see what will go 
 best with whitefish in honor of Mrs. William Barnes ; 
 God bless her!" 
 
 The wine was ordered, and the toast drank, and 
 Billy told his story a short, honest story, and made 
 Sargent promise to go home with him to dinner that 
 night, and remain at his house during his short stay 
 in Chicago. 
 
 Then the two talked as men great enough to 
 remain boys will talk, and Sargent heard of many 
 of the college friends he had lost all knowledge of 
 in the years of his distant work. "The worst priva- 
 tion of all," he told Barnes, "was the want of 
 letters. I have been months without a word from 
 home, or from anywhere else. It made one feel
 
 206 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 as if the world had dropped away from under his 
 feet." 
 
 "Oh, but I'm glad you're out of the wilderness!" 
 said Barnes. "This is a red letter day, to be 
 marked with a white stone. How are things at 
 home? Have you heard yet?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, vaguely, at San Francisco, for I came 
 around that way, and later at Kansas City, but, tell 
 me about the old boys, about Lathrop, Mayo and 
 Snow, and all of them. ' ' 
 
 "There's nothing but good to tell of the whole 
 lot," said Barnes, enthusiastically. "They've good 
 stuff in them, as you know; they showed that long 
 ago; and it stayed right with them, as good stuff 
 does when it's in the original package." 
 
 Then began the comforting reminiscences. Per- 
 haps men laugh too much at women who do 
 gossiping. It may be that the fact of gossiping is 
 sometimes but a manifestation of interest in others' 
 welfare, and that if there be venom anywhere it 
 comes from the individuality. Of course, men do not 
 sit and talk of other human beings for long hours as 
 women do, but men have bread-winning to do and so 
 the time is taken up. But for real comfort give to 
 me a good reminiscent talk between two strong men. 
 
 And then began the stories and the news, how 
 this one was a rising lawyer in his native state, and 
 that one a noted professor doing good work in a 
 Western college, while another Sargent himself 
 had news of, having met him on the Pacific coast, 
 and so the confab ran on unendingly and was 
 broken off in the middle, but to be resumed that
 
 AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE. 207 
 
 night after dinner in Barnes' home after the young 
 wife had, with wisdom beyond her years and 
 experience, left the two chums alone over the last 
 fire which was lighted in the library grate that 
 summer. Barnes would have a fire, though the 
 windows all stood wide open, and the glow and 
 blaze was not uncomfortable that cool June night, 
 and morning, for it was morning when the two men, 
 having smoked the last pipe, said good night at the 
 door of Sargent's sleeping room. 
 
 "Give him strong coffee, Lucy, and with plenty 
 of cream and sugar," said Barnes to his wife at 
 breakfast, looking approvingly at Sargent. "If you 
 should ask him which dish he would take at dinner, 
 digestible or indigestible, he would probably choose 
 indigestible, to such an extravagance have his 
 spirits risen!" 
 
 "Of course," said Sargent, "I would choose the 
 indigestible anything, knowing it would be the best. 
 Everything particularly delectable is dangerous, if 
 not wrong. ' ' 
 
 Sargent walked down town with Barnes that 
 morning, and as the two men, leaving the lake 
 shore residence region, came southerly along 
 Michigan Avenue and crossed a street, Sargent 
 looked toward Wabash Avenue and said : 
 
 "Have you paid any attention to Mrs. Graves, or 
 heard of her since I went away?" 
 
 "Yes," said Barnes, "I have heard a little about 
 her. She has evidently grasped permanently and 
 utilized for herself the fund provided for Elsie by 
 Brockhurst. I doubt if the father knows that his 
 
 14
 
 208 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 child is dead. He left her entirely in Mrs. Graves' 
 hands, it appears, being convinced that she was 
 devoted to her sister's child and to her happiness, 
 and now the miserly instincts which were well at 
 the fore when you knew her have completely 
 absorbed her. She still lives in her house over there, 
 and is known as one of the hardest, coldest, most 
 rapacious of mortals, to the few who know her at all. ' ' 
 
 "Poor Em!" muttered Sargent, "I wonder what 
 has become of her!" 
 
 "Em! She was the little slavey, wasn't she?" 
 
 "She was, poor girl!" answered Sargent, then 
 suddenly seized by impulse he stopped, and turned 
 back. "I am going over there," he said, and 
 Barnes went with him 
 
 The house looked just as it did in the old days, 
 grim, closed up, forbidding, yet well cared for. 
 The neighborhood was now fast changing, having 
 fallen from its first estate as a fashionable residence 
 quarter some time ago, and the prim house had some 
 undesirable surroundings. 
 
 They asked the slipshod servant who opened the 
 door for them for Mrs. Graves, and were left stand- 
 ing on the well remembered black and white marble 
 floor of the hall until the mistress of the house came. 
 She recognized Sargent at the first glance, but chose 
 to conceal her recognition; with a slight bow she 
 stood looking at the two men, and, as neither of 
 them spoke, she, in her soft "company voice," asked 
 what they wished to see her about. 
 
 "I came to see Miss Grace Emily Ferguson, Mrs. 
 Graves," said Sargent. "Is she still here?"
 
 AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE. 209 
 
 "You mean my kitchen maid, Em, I suppose?" 
 Mrs. Graves asked. 
 
 "Yes," Sargent replied. "Your servant, Em. 
 Please call her. ' ' 
 
 He opened the door of the small parlor, and held 
 it open for Mrs. Graves and Barnes, then followed 
 the two into the room, and they all sat down. 
 
 "Kindly ring the bell," said Mrs. Graves, looking 
 sourly at Sargent. He pressed down the indicated 
 button on the wall near him, and when the servant 
 answered, Mrs. Graves commanded her to send Em 
 up at once, and then sat rigidly in her chair while 
 Sargent looked at her curiously. 
 
 She was still an attractive looking woman, at first 
 glance, still clad in that widow's uniform which 
 blots every city landscape, but her face showed 
 plainly the marks of her consuming passion, avarice, 
 the ugly thing which had set the seal on the fate of 
 the shrinking, quiet-souled Elsie. Sargent had 
 studied the world since he had last looked upon 
 that hard face, and now he understood only 
 too well what had once baffled and so puzzled 
 him. 
 
 The door opened and Em appeared. Thin, round 
 shouldered, * with great eyes staring out of her 
 homely, honest face, she stood looking at the visitor 
 who had summoned her, not even noticing or com- 
 prehending the sharp remark addressed to her by 
 Mrs. Graves. Sargent set a chair near the window 
 for Em, and, standing between her and Mrs. 
 Graves, began talking quietly to the poor girl, while 
 the tears rained down her cheeks.
 
 210 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Now Billy Barnes rose to the full height of his 
 mental powers. 
 
 Moving his chair close to that of Mrs. Graves, Mr. 
 Barnes, attorney, began to discuss the weather, but 
 soon passed from that topic to one which plainly 
 arrested the entire attention of his listener. He 
 spoke of the house in which they sat, and asked con- 
 fidingly if its owner had ever thought of selling it? 
 Had she thought of it? She would never have said 
 so, but in reality to sell her house at a good price 
 was now her one immediate object in life, dreamed 
 of by night, planned by day; and well the astute 
 Barnes divined all this. Values were falling all 
 around her, and it was little short of agonizing to 
 Mrs. Graves to see, as she had to see, that her 
 property was worth less at this moment than when 
 she bought it. 
 
 Soon Barnes had the ungracious hostess deep in a 
 discussion of possible and impossible sales of the 
 particular piece of real estate in which the woman's 
 soul was wrapped up, and Sargent continued his 
 interview with Em unmolested. At the end of a 
 few minutes he spoke: "Barnes, give me your 
 business card, ' ' and when Barnes handed it to him 
 he gave it to Em, saying, "Two o'clock, remember. " 
 
 He had made Em promise to be at Barnes' law 
 office at three o'clock that afternoon. 
 
 "Ugh!" shivered Barnes as they left the close- 
 shut house behind them. ' ' That woman is uncanny ! 
 There's nothing the matter with her, though, but 
 the root of all evil, love of money! She's got it 
 bad, though!"
 
 AT THE HALF-WAY HOUSE. 211 
 
 Before Sargent left the city he had found Em a 
 home and a kind protecting friend in the house of 
 Billy Barnes, for he easily interested Barnes' young 
 wife in the poor, friendless creature who had been 
 taken when she was a little child, an orphan, by 
 Mrs. Graves, and made into a joyless toil-worn 
 dependent, as much a slave as was ever any black- 
 skinned human being in the time of slaves. 
 
 ' ' She has such a square-toed little face, ' ' said Billy 
 Barnes, speaking of her to his wife, "and she is 
 alone and without happiness in the world ! ' ' 
 
 "We'll make her happier!" declared the whole- 
 some, joyous woman who shared Barnes' life and 
 made it bright for him, and Sargent's heart felt 
 warm and light whenever he thought of the relation 
 which was soon established between two women of 
 such differing characters and fortunes as Lucy 
 Barnes and Em. They had one point of resem- 
 blance. A great good heart beat in the bosom of 
 each, and as the years went by, Em became the 
 confidential, petted and deferred-to counselor in all 
 domestic affairs in the Barnes home, as well as the 
 faithful, tireless helper, to be trusted in every 
 strait. 
 
 Sargent's stay in the "Half-way House" was brief. 
 In a few days, having attended to affairs of 
 business of his own and for the great railroad com- 
 pany, and after certain soul-stirring meetings with 
 old college friends contrived by his host, he took his 
 place in a railway train. The Wolverine was 
 "headed for home."
 
 212 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE HOME COMING. 
 
 When the youth who has gone out into the world 
 and changed and become a man of forcef ulness and 
 reserve, he is not unlikely, as he nears his home 
 after the long absence, to become a boy again, with 
 all boyish fancies as to what he will see and what 
 may happen. It was so with Sargent, and there 
 came, as there has come to so many others, a half- 
 delighted shock at the changes he found in his own 
 family, and in all surrounding nature. 
 
 The father and mother were changed least of all, 
 and Sargent found them still in the old house, a 
 house overrun by his sisters and their children, and 
 he found himself called "uncle." To be called 
 "uncle" for the first time gives a man a queer 
 sensation, as it doubtless does a woman to be called 
 "aunt," because, when those titles are applied 
 there attaches a certain suggestion of family dignity 
 and, sometimes, the less desirable one of increasing 
 age. 
 
 The old home was still controlled by the potent 
 father and the dear mother, that is, it was theirs 
 nominally, but, practically, it belonged to the 
 grandchildren, who, Sargent soon declared, were 
 all of them being spoiled. But, though changes 
 had come, he found no change toward him, and his
 
 THE HOME COMING. 213 
 
 loving reception was all that he had dreamed of in 
 the far Southwestern deserts. His father grasped 
 his hands in the same old way, and the two 
 men, the younger affectionate and the elder proud, 
 were glad to meet each other. As for the mother, 
 well, she came out as he ascended the steps to the 
 old doorway and she came with a certain beaming 
 dignity, but, as she looked into the eyes of this 
 great brown man who was born of her, and saw in 
 those eyes the light which only the eyes of a great 
 lover-son can give to the eyes of a mother, why, 
 then she burst out crying and he leaped upward to 
 her and enclosed her in his arms of something very 
 much like steel, and there wasn't any dignity or any- 
 thing else save the mother-love to speak of. As for 
 the girls brothers always call their sisters "girls" 
 they crowded around and laughed or cried, and 
 Sargent was introduced to his nephews and nieces. 
 Even Bessie, Sargent's sister-sweetheart, had 
 married, and he was glad that it was to the one 
 man in town whom he liked best. And the baby, 
 who could already walk and talk too, though in a 
 most mumbling and ^incoherent manner, was there 
 to meet him. 
 
 Sargent declared that the child was too bow- 
 legged and that its nose was wrong, but it so 
 chanced, a few days later, that, when that wobbling 
 young person was not brought over by Bessie to be 
 around the house with him, Sargent announced that 
 he was an injured being and neglected by those of 
 his own blood. It is doubtful if there ever lived a 
 man worthy the name in the best sense of the word
 
 214 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 who could keep himself from falling in love with a 
 baby-thing. 
 
 As to his mother, the man who had lain under 
 strange skies and far from hiimanity of his kind, 
 wondered at his own good fortune in finding face to 
 face with him again and where he could put his 
 hand upon her shoulder or pat her cheeks, the elder 
 being who had given birth to him and to whom he 
 was now almost as a child again. There came to 
 him in those days an overwhelming understanding 
 of what the world is, of what woman and man-child 
 are, and of what the child grown should ever do for 
 the one who nursed him. He took his mother upon 
 trips with him, just little pleasure trips, as he would 
 have taken a woman of his own age, and he made 
 her tell him about her own young being and of her 
 life before he was born, and it was all wonderful to 
 the two. The woman of sixty, gray-haired and, 
 under other circumstances, stately, looked often into 
 the face of her son and then showed very little 
 sense for a firm lady of her age and social standing. 
 She would occasionally repeat the exploit of crying 
 a little and then her big son would hug her, if the 
 occasion offered, and "brace her up" and that was 
 all. 
 
 In later years, Sargent thanked the good Lord 
 that there had come in time to him what comes to 
 fewer than it should, the happiness, in manhood, of 
 falling in love with his own mother. 
 
 But all this was but of the life of the household. 
 Outside there were a thousand things which gave to 
 the man a keen enjoyment. He met his old school-
 
 THE HOME COMING. 215 
 
 mates again, the fellows who had licked him or 
 whom he had licked, men of his own age, and they 
 exchanged confidences and compared experiences in 
 the world. He would sit in this office or that one 
 and smoke and talk with the man of business, or he 
 would sit with dangling legs upon some lumber 
 pile and talk with some sturdy laborer who had also 
 been his playmate in the old days. He sought out 
 his sweethearts, too, and was received by them and 
 their husbands most hospitably, and passed reckless 
 opinions upon their children, as he had upon those 
 of his own sisters. 
 
 Perhaps, though, there came no keener delight 
 than when he went out to the old farm beyond the 
 town, where he was born, and revisited the old 
 places in company with an uncle, who owned the 
 adjacent place, and who, being much younger than 
 Sargent's father, had been a half-way companion to 
 him in his youth. The uncle, remaining on his 
 farm, had kept in close touch with the nature of 
 the region, and though, when they separated, they 
 had been but young man and boy, they were now 
 two men together. Sargent was excited and his 
 kindly, keen-sighted uncle became sympathetic and, 
 in a degree, enthusiastic himself as they wandered 
 through the old haunts and talked over former 
 exploits. In some ways the experience had a degree 
 of pain for Sargent. Where once was a forest of 
 beech ridges where ruffed grouse had been most 
 numerous and where they had wagered as to which 
 would do the better with a snap-shot as the fall 
 covey rose from the shelter afforded by the branches
 
 216 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 of some fallen tree, Sargent saw now only a great 
 wheat field, a green sea of verdure harboring no 
 single grouse in all its area. They visited together 
 the site of some woodchuck hole, where, long ago, 
 they had dug out its inhabitant and witnessed, as a 
 reward, a most delightful fight between a small 
 terrier and one of the largest woodchucks they had 
 unearthed in all their diggings, but there was no 
 woodchuck hole there now, and, as the college song 
 says, "the green grass grew all "round." They 
 visited the old deer-lick and, where the little pond in 
 the woods was brackish for some reason, Sargent 
 saw no trees nor pond, but only a buckwheat field 
 not yet in bloom. In a way, it was almost oppressive 
 to the visitor. This had been the most comforting 
 scene of his imagination, but all had changed. The 
 cutting away of the forest had affected the rainfalls, 
 and at one place upon a roadway, where there had 
 been a little bridge beneath which the creek ran, 
 and where Sargent had caught minnows with a pin- 
 hook when a boy, there was no bridge at all. The 
 creek had disappeared. They went into the low 
 lands through which a larger creek ran and where 
 there had once been a muskrat pond whereon ducks 
 alighted in their spring flight North, and where the 
 blue crane found in midsummer sunfish and other 
 delicacies, and where there was a great fringing 
 border of pond-lilies. But there was no such 
 border now ; the big creek had degenerated into a 
 slight one and the pond was little more than a 
 mudhole, ploughed by cattle hoofs. The tiger 
 lilies still rose, blazing and luxurious, in the
 
 THE HOME COMING. Si? 
 
 long grass of the bottoms, but the scene was 
 changed. 
 
 Throughout all the Northern country the pioneers, 
 as they cleared away all the other forest trees off 
 the land, left standing in the fields of the lower 
 slope one or two great hickories. They left them 
 because the hickory tree furnished the nuts which 
 made part of the enjoyment of a winter evening, 
 and because, as those practical men reasoned, the 
 hickory, being a slow growing and, when left alone 
 without surroundings, a somewhat wide-spreading 
 tree, would afford a shade for cattle feeding in the 
 field about it. Sargent thought of the time of the 
 ripening of the hickory-nuts, when the inefficient 
 youngsters gathered about the trees and picked up 
 such nuts as nature and the red squirrels threw 
 down to them. He thought of the later time, when 
 he was a few years older, when they threw clubs up 
 at the limbs and obtained their fullest harvest. He 
 and his uncle lingered long beneath those hickory 
 trees, standing solitary in the lowland meadows. 
 Sargent pondered queerly, and doubting himself, 
 upon the difference between the boy who had been 
 born upon and who had known and grown up on 
 this spot and the one who had come back again. 
 That hickory tree had once seemed to him one of 
 the largest trees in all the world. He and his 
 cousins had struggled in the season to get the nuts 
 from this same giant of the forest of that time. 
 Now he saw but a symmetrical, tough old tree 
 standing in the midst of the meadow, of about 
 one-half the height he had, in his imagination,
 
 2iS THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 given it. It was so with other things ; all distances 
 seemed shorter. It was but a step from the house 
 to the barn, but a step from the sheep field to the 
 spring all things were belittled. He went with his 
 uncle to the flats where once, bearing a tin pan, he 
 gathered mushrooms in the early morning, and to 
 the place in what was in his time a buckwheat field 
 where the wild turkeys found good feeding, and he 
 found nothing reminding him of the past any more 
 than a view of the mouth of the Orinoco River would 
 remind one of the mouth of the Minnehaha. The 
 sky-line bothered him most. In his time the sky- 
 line was defined by something of a blue-black hue 
 lying between it and the landscape which started 
 from his feet. Now it was all different. That 
 blue-black line had been the forest surrounding 
 every farm. Now it was all changed and the wheat 
 fields and the other fields ran into the sky 
 blurringly. 
 
 There were other buoyant enjoyments, reminiscent 
 all, into which this exile of some years plunged reck- 
 lessly. One day, walking along the street with one 
 of his sisters, one of the elder and ever compre- 
 hending, he met a woman, a widow reasonably well- 
 to-do, who had once been a schoolmate and sweet- 
 heart of his. She had been hot of temper, piquant 
 in all ways, and just a white, natty little personage. 
 They met and all three strolled down the street 
 together and the two, Sargent and his former 
 sweetheart, drew somewhat close together in their 
 chatter. They came in sight of the spire of a 
 church which was perhaps a block away. Now it
 
 THE HOME COMING. 219 
 
 so happened that once, in his boyish days, Sargent 
 had met this girl upon the sidewalk and, seeing the 
 door of this church open and knowing that there was 
 no service at the time, had half-way pulled her up the 
 steps and into the vacant entrance and there kissed 
 her with much earnestness. It was a social tragedy 
 between the two for she was much more in love 
 with another youngster and he had never kissed 
 the young lady again, but neither of the two had 
 forgotten the incident. As they walked up the 
 street together, he said to her : 
 
 "Jane, do you remember how violently I once 
 pulled you up this church portico and kissed 
 you?" 
 
 "I remember all about it," said the fair widow, 
 looking up impertinently into his face. 
 
 "Jane," said Sargent, "do you remember what 
 the Governor of North Carolina once said to the 
 Governor of South Carolina?" 
 
 Now it so happens that perhaps throughout the 
 United States the bit of nonsense best known 
 between the seas is that which occurred at an 
 unknown date between the Governors of North and 
 South Carolina. It is grotesque and absurd enough 
 to be thoroughly American. There is a flavor of 
 mint juleps and laughing conception and good fellow- 
 ship about it all. What the Governor of North 
 Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina 
 was, "It's a long time between drinks." 
 
 The fact that his fair companion admitted that 
 she remembered this also was enough for Sargent. 
 They were nearing the church now, and there was
 
 220 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 no one inside and the outer doors of the portico 
 were open as they had been years before, while the 
 discreet sister had turned aside to do some shopping. 
 The small widow, a slender, knowing and most lov- 
 able small widow, was lifted up the steps and a little 
 aside from the doorway of the silent portico, and 
 there she lifted up her lips again, and was kissed 
 again, this time without a tremor. Sargent thought 
 he might as well take advantage of the occasion and 
 did so with perhaps too much earnestness. A civil 
 engineer, one who has to deal with floods and 
 changes, gets into the habit of improving every 
 opportunity. Perhaps he rather overdid the thing. 
 
 "That's too many at once," said the widow. 
 
 "I don't know," said Sargent. "How can there be 
 too many?" 
 
 But that was the end of this episode, for each of 
 these two people understood the other, and while 
 kissing is a serious thing far more so than is 
 thought by some nine-tenths of those who kiss 
 there was nothing to it all; it was but a sort of jest; 
 they were only great friends. These were fine 
 times for Sargent in one way, but never, in the 
 midst of all the happiness of home, was he really 
 content. Ever like a strained cable was there some- 
 thing dragging him to the North. There was a 
 tugging, with a woman as an unconscious power at 
 the end of it, toward the land of swifter summer 
 growth and lower temperature. 
 
 Of course the man knew what had brought him 
 home at this time in defiance of what chanced to be 
 his own monetary interests and his relations with
 
 THE HOME COMING. 221 
 
 the great railway company, of which he had become 
 almost a part. He knew that he had hungered for 
 his father and mother and his sisters ; he knew that 
 he wanted to look upon them, and his own skies and 
 his own grass again, and to meet those who had been 
 the companions of his youth and to be more or less 
 close to them again as their varying conditions 
 might determine. He knew all that, but underneath 
 it all and he thought of something else. 
 
 One of the cleverest and sweetest writers in all 
 the world once wrote a little poem called "The Bells 
 of Shandon," and they still sound throughout the 
 resonant atmosphere of intelligent humanity. 
 They're pretty good bells, those "Bells of 
 Shandon." They're good bells and there have 
 been hundreds of other as good bells, built in blood 
 and metal throughout the centuries, summoning 
 some one to come somewhere, but the ruffed 
 grouse of the North has a wing-beating bell, as 
 good, and it mattered little to Sargent, anyway. 
 The woman has the best bell of all, and the man, 
 however she rings it, must come. And these are all 
 similes mixed, for it is almost impossible to tangle 
 up a cable and a bell. 
 
 One morning a big, brown man shook hands 
 with his father and talked with him on business 
 matters, while the elder man's eyes gleamed 
 satisfiedly and proudly, kissed his mother perhaps 
 half a dozen times more than was the ordinary 
 practice, and then, because of the tugging of the 
 cable, took a train for northern Michigan. The 
 look in his eye was very different from that of the
 
 222 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 eye of the junior from college who had made the 
 same trip some years before. The eye of the Caesar 
 who left Rome to gamble with his legions was very 
 different from the eye of the Caesar who, on his 
 return, did not ask, but ordered them to cross the 
 Rubicon.
 
 IN THE NORTH AGAIN. 233 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 IN THE NORTH AGAIN. 
 
 The northern summer is late, and its woods 
 looked like the woods of May or early June when 
 Sargent took his way through them toward the 
 center of all his hopes, before the summer's sun had 
 begun to show its full power, even in the Southern 
 Peninsula. 
 
 The years had contributed toward ease and 
 rapidity in traveling over the way Sargent was 
 taking. New settlements had sprung up, the roads 
 were at least clearly defined, though they were 
 rough and almost wholly unimproved since their first 
 rude laying out, and here and there a settler's 
 house sent up faint smoke wreaths from its wide 
 chimney. 
 
 All along the way were evidences of the new 
 work of man. At times the rugged highway would 
 pierce and twist its way into and through a forest or 
 cross what looked like some vast clearing, with the 
 work upon it but half done; but this was only 
 where the pine and hemlock, had grown so thickly 
 that there were few other trees among them, and so 
 it chanced that the lumbermen or bark-gatherers 
 had in certain areas accomplished almost the first 
 work of the farmer pioneer. 
 
 At other places along the route smoke could be 
 
 15
 
 224 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 seen rising on the distant hillsides. Men had 
 learned that beneath the hill-crests of the Northern 
 Peninsula of Michigan lay perhaps the greatest 
 copper deposits of all the world, and the area of 
 search had widened and shafts were being sunk at a 
 venture. The transformation, crude enough, was 
 somewhat striking. Certainly five years brings more 
 about of change and striving forward in the newly 
 developing portions of America than in a "Cycle of 
 Cathay. ' ' 
 
 Whoever said that "it never rains but it pours," 
 had assuredly a degree of sense with some nonsense 
 about him ; really, though, there should be a sort of 
 counter-maxim, something to the effect that "the 
 sun never shines but it shines more." The good 
 luck packages seemed to be saved up and sent, 
 ordinarily, together. It chanced that Sargent, as 
 he rode from Conway on a hired horse, on nearing 
 the homestead he was seeking, overtook Judge Sloan 
 walking along the shaded road a mile from Honey 
 Creek. The younger man fairly tumbled off his 
 horse as the two came together, and reached out his 
 hand to the old Judge, who recognized him in a 
 moment The years had seemingly not affected the 
 aged jurist's eyes nor his memory as to those he 
 liked, and his reception of Sargent was all that the 
 younger could have desired. It was glad and 
 cordial, and Sargent leading his horse, the two 
 walked together and finally up the slope to the 
 homestead. 
 
 The horse was given to the astonished but grin- 
 ning Michael, who was almost unchanged in every
 
 IN THE NORTH AGAIN. 225 
 
 particular, and who, by some accident, chanced to be 
 where he could attend to work, and the two men 
 entered the house the well remembered, hospitable 
 house but Barbara was not there. Then they 
 strolled out toward the big barn, builded since 
 Sargent's going, whose great sliding doors stood 
 open, allowing the summer breeze to play through 
 the building unobstructed, between the scented hay- 
 mow on one side and the grain-mow with the stables 
 underneath upon the other. Sweet was the fra- 
 grance still lingering about the barn soon to be 
 filled again with the product of the fields, and sweet 
 was the air, coming scented from the woods, which 
 flowed through the vast hallway across the big 
 farm building. There, as the two men turned in 
 their walk to where they had a view across, seated 
 in the swing which hung from the lofty cross-beams 
 and which in midsummer is an adjunct of almost 
 every barn in the Northern Peninsula, was Barbara. 
 A book was lying in her lap, her hand was folded 
 upon it, and she had leaned back with half-shut 
 eyes, her head resting against one of the ropes, 
 while one dainty foot just touched the floor and was 
 keeping up from time to time a softly swinging 
 motion. 
 
 It seemed ever afterward to Sargent that there 
 was in Barbara's beautiful, thoughtful face as he 
 saw it then a look of stillness, a haunting, 
 indefinable expression of slight but inexpressible 
 sadness. He hardly realized it then, though it came 
 to him afterward. The photograph was made upon 
 his mind at the moment when he looked upon her
 
 226 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 hungrily and eagerly as she sat there in her self- 
 forgetfulness, before she had seen him or her father. 
 They were talking as they walked and as they 
 turned in upon the log-built sloping bridge leading 
 upward to the barn doors, the woman heard them 
 and straightened up and saw them. 
 
 When she so looked up, her face changed, and so 
 Sargent thought, at least it changed forever, so 
 vivid was the light of welcome in every line of it, 
 a light which grew and grew and never died out. 
 There is much in the eyes that see, so much that 
 where one man sees heaven another will pass by 
 indifferently, seeing nothing, but in truth Barbara 
 Sloan's face was never again quite the same, and 
 Barbara herself was never again quite the same 
 after that minute of surprise and joyous greeting on 
 a day in summer when Robert Sargent stood before 
 her, hat in hand, greeting her as if he had but left 
 her yesterday. 
 
 A woman's face beautiful as it is to her lover 
 is never so beautiful as when she becomes a lover 
 herself, and love leaped up and held the fair 
 woman's heart and looked out of her eyes all in an un- 
 guarded moment, as she saw before her the bronzed 
 face and changed, yet unchanged, figure of the man 
 who had been sent away humming the old Norse 
 song on a winter day. 
 
 The Judge, worthy, restless man ! muttered some- 
 thing about letters to write and went away. And in 
 some way Sargent found himself seated in the 
 great swing on the wide seat by Barbara's side. 
 
 Neither said anything for a little time and then
 
 IN THE NORTH AGAIN. 227 
 
 Sargent began to talk to the girl. The words were 
 what he might have said to her when they were last 
 together, but how different the inflection ! With all 
 their lovingness and all their sweetness there ran 
 unconsciously through the words of this lover out- 
 pouring his heart the steel cable of the man who 
 knows. Apropos of nothing, this is the best lover 
 in the world, and all women should know it, though, 
 unfortunately, there are not enough of the class to 
 go around, not more than perhaps about one man 
 to a thousand women. The majority of the other 
 fellows are pretty good, though. 
 
 Barbara understood. She was as great in her way 
 as the man beside her was in his, and she under- 
 stood. She sat silent for a little while, but she had 
 what one of the hack phrases well describes as the 
 "courage of her convictions." She was a woman 
 who had thought, now, and she was not afraid to 
 say to the man beside her that she loved him : 
 
 "And she longed for the Cave of Silver! 
 And she mourned for her absent !" 
 
 She began the old air bravely, her sweet voice 
 vibrating with feeling, and then she broke down, 
 and, in a moment, she was cuddled in the man's 
 arms and there followed the old story of two human 
 beings who have found themselves, the story which 
 has probably been told some thousands of millions 
 of times since the world began, which we laugh at 
 but respect, and without which this lump of earth 
 floating in space would not be decently habitable for 
 human beings.
 
 228 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Sargent told the story of his love and longing, of 
 his faith and hope and work, and all that had 
 inspired and held him up during the years of his 
 absence. And Barbara, replying, said a little of 
 what her own heart dictated, the gist of it all being 
 that she loved Sargent, and would love him always, 
 and was not that enough? What more is there to 
 tell of the meeting of two crystal streams held long 
 apart and fretting, too, now at last rushing together 
 to become one stream? Once hand in hand here in 
 this Northern country on this summer afternoon, 
 both knew that nothing could part them again. For 
 good or ill they were one. The very dogs saw it as 
 they walked to the house, the birds saw it from nest 
 and airy perch; old Tilda, fussing over her milk 
 pans on the kitchen porch, with one swift glance 
 over her shoulder saw it, and Michael, lounging 
 along the lane with his string of freshly caught 
 trout, saw it through the brown mist of a misty 
 being who had never himself known what he never- 
 theless recognized. As for the Judge, though dim 
 the eyes of his mind in some ways, he knew all 
 about it at once, with the perception which is one 
 of the kindly things of good old age, and when the 
 lovers came into his room and stood by his chair, he 
 only looked at them and said, "I'm glad." Later 
 on, when he sat down opposite Barbara at the 
 dinner table, he remarked, his eyes comprehending 
 her heightened beauty, "How much you are growing 
 like your mother, child!" 
 
 "I'm afraid you will have to be content with the 
 'skins of foxes' after all, Barbara," Sargent had
 
 IN THE NORTH AGAIN. 229 
 
 said, as they sat together on the porch, for a little 
 time. "Are you willing to give up your dream of 
 'a golden galley?' I have found work in a world 
 that needs what I can do, and I can take care of 
 you, if you will come out into the West with me, but 
 I don't know about your lying on velvet, or any- 
 thing of the sort!" 
 
 "Don't harp on that old song," said Barbara 
 laughingly and lovingly. "I trust you for all time 
 to come." 
 
 Now if any one imagines that there is going to be 
 an explanation of why Miss Barbara Sloan fell in 
 love with Robert Sargent and confessed it all in 
 one moment of time, on a still summer's day, she 
 who some years ago had sent this same young man 
 out into the snow in the dead of winter to search 
 for a "Cave of Silver" or on some equally foolish 
 errand it seems as if she did say something about 
 "spurs" if any one imagines that this story is going 
 to be encumbered with the reasons, arguments, 
 entreaties, protestations and allegations of this 
 young woman who was very well in her way, that 
 rash imagination and expectation is doomed to fall ; 
 he or she who essays to reason upon certain high 
 and mighty mysteries is wasting time. Taking 
 Miss Barbara Sloan at her own word and whose 
 could be better? she loved Robert Sargent in that 
 moment when he returned to her, on that day of 
 July, and engaged to love him evermore. Why 
 need we give ear to all she sard about her thoughts 
 of him in his absence of her growing appreciation 
 and understanding of things in the world, and of
 
 230 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 people, and, incidentally, looking backward, of that 
 lover she had in such innocent truthfulness sent 
 away from her, cruelly wounded if not slain? The 
 two talked for hours over all the time while they had 
 been separated, and neither of them tired. 
 
 The story of Elsie, told in time, made a tender, 
 heart-stinging diversion, and Sargent had to tell it 
 all over more than once, at Barbara's command, 
 though she said, herself, that it never failed to 
 make her heart ache, and she owned that she did 
 not like to hear it or think about it. Sargent him- 
 self had a sense of pain whenever he thought of 
 Elsie, but, after a time, he discovered that Barbara 
 was always especially tender and loving to him after 
 a talk about the fragile, buried flower that had 
 withered before his hand could reach it, and so he 
 found some compensation for dwelling on an unwel- 
 come theme. So Love triumphs over Death, over loss 
 and pain and all the ills of existence. The flowers 
 which grow on graves have an especial, an appeal- 
 ing, poignant sweetness of their own.
 
 VAGARIES. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 VAGARIES. 
 
 He had his foolish, teasing moods, and though 
 Barbara professed much indignation at such times, 
 her eyes and lips betrayed her. He would demand, 
 occasionally, if she loved him as much and as well 
 as she did a quarter after three last Thursday ; not 
 that he remembered with any definiteness what 
 they were doing at a quarter after three o'clock, 
 but he wanted to know whether or not he was 
 holding his own in her affections. She would reply 
 as her fancy might dictate, sometimes admitting 
 that his condition had become perilous and some- 
 times declaring, with much graciousness, that she 
 believed there had been no jot nor particle of 
 change in any of her feelings. Then he would 
 become more or less indignant. 
 
 "You believe," he would say. "You only 
 believe! Why are you not sure? My dear girl, I 
 regret to say that you lack mathematical accuracy, 
 as so many of us do, and if ever mathematical, 
 accuracy is needed it is surely in a love affair such 
 as is ours. For instance, you, just now, very 
 sweetly, I'll admit, used the expression "jot." 
 Pardon me, but how much is a jot? Can you tell? 
 I'll venture to say, my sunbeam, that you cannot 
 even repeat the Table of Minimums!"
 
 232 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 She expressed the opinion 'that there was no such 
 thing as a "Table of Minimums. " 
 
 Shocked and surprised was the lover at such 
 ignorance in one so fair and, in most things, well 
 informed. He explained ponderously: 
 
 "The word 'jot,' just employed by you, my 
 woodling, is, in itself, one of the terms of the table. 
 I'll tell it all to you," and he repeated in a sing- 
 song way : 
 
 2 Iotas make i jot 
 4 Jots " i tittle 
 
 4 Tittles " i smitch 
 a Smitches " i smithereen 
 
 "And, oh!" he burst out as he finished the sing- 
 song, "you don't know, dear, what a comfort it is 
 to thus improve your mind! Of course, I don't 
 mean that you've not a fine mind one far superior 
 to my own but there are little things where I can 
 help you so! Aren't you glad of it all?" 
 
 And Barbara, laughingly indignant, said that she 
 had long suspected the existence of streaks of 
 harmless madness in him, and was now more than 
 ever convinced that her perception had not been at 
 fault. Take, for instance, this foolish Table of 
 Minimums. What silliness it was! What did it 
 all mean? How could he justify this outbreak of 
 the court jester. 
 
 And then he became sad-faced and earnest again : 
 "Doubt the soundness of the Table of Minimums! 
 Why, one would be as abandoned as Sidney Smith's 
 man who could speak disrespectfully of the 
 Equator!" He would tell her all about it, he said,
 
 VAGARIES. 233 
 
 and his disquisition on the subject was intended to 
 be most thoroughly convincing'. 
 
 "Now," said he, "take the Table of Minimums 
 honestly, I wonder you don't see all its significance. 
 I wonder that you don't just gasp with happiness. 
 Just think of it think of it for a minute or even for 
 a particle of a minute. You're engaged to the man 
 who invented this Table of Minimums! Now, I'll 
 try to tell you about it: 
 
 "My child with the red-head, just look me in the 
 eyes and listen thoughtfully to what I am saying. 
 I am going to do you more good within the next 
 twenty minutes, that is in a purely mathematical 
 way, than ever any man did to a girl since all of us 
 had to climb trees to get away from things. I'm 
 going to tell you about the Table of Minimums." 
 
 But Barbara interrupted his opening remarks of 
 explanation with the announcement that it was 
 time to go to dinner, adding that she was not sorry 
 to close this interview and dismiss the subject of 
 conversation. 
 
 "It was rather small, that's a fact," assented 
 Sargent; but he could not be prevented from 
 engaging in a disquisition illustrative of the relative 
 sizes and shapes of the quantities in the table. 
 
 "Now, Barbara, turn your head just a shade to 
 the left the sun hits your red hair that way and 
 I like it better. Now, my dear, to repeat, and by 
 the way, I rather like to repeat, Barbara, my dear 
 Barbara, we will proceed," and he went on with 
 the nonsense, concluding grandiloquently, "Now, 
 Barbara, do you understand? There's one comfort
 
 234 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 in explaining a thing to a red-headed girl. She's 
 impulsive and hot-tempered, but she can generally 
 see things. I'd rather have something sharply com- 
 prehensive than dully non-comprehensive, and I'm 
 hungry and it seems to me that I've done you so 
 much good to-day that, for the time, I shall try to 
 do no more." 
 
 And so they went tip from the woods and along 
 the pleasant pathway to the house and there was 
 dinner the mid-day dinner of the North and 
 after that, talking between Sargent and the father 
 of Barbara, for these two, one in his waning and the 
 other in his waxing, kept getting closer, as it should 
 be ever where gentlemen are concerned. Then, 
 of course, Barbara was dragged off again by the fond 
 and foolish lover. 
 
 The young man was not this time occupied in 
 mind with the idea of the Table of Minim urns, 
 which is a most beautiful table but was full of 
 other varieties of foolishness and new manifestations 
 of lovingness. He informed Barbara in a lofty way, 
 as they went down one of the wood roads, that he 
 believed he was the only man who had ever lived 
 who really knew how to fully appreciate a girl of 
 the best of the North Michigan sort. Here he some- 
 what blundered. The woman looked at him charm- 
 ingly but quizzically. 
 
 "When did that wonderful and' exceptional 
 appreciation begin?" she asked. 
 
 He was at ease and confident: "Oh! seven or 
 eight years ago, or whenever it was I first met you. 
 It has not varied since."
 
 VAGARIES. , 235 
 
 "But," said Barbara innocently, "though I am 
 not scientific, nothing but a poor woodland creature, 
 yet I've learned the regulation things. I've 
 learned, for instance, that the body changes every 
 seven years, and so that this is only another girl, 
 anyhow, and you needn't fret for the love of the 
 girl you met at the University. Necessarily, that 
 girl is all gone somewhere, I don't know where, but 
 she's gone!" 
 
 "Yes, I know it," he answered, "but, you see, 
 I'm in love with that particular arrangement of 
 particles and it is understood that the arrangement 
 is duplicated, after a fashion, in the successive 
 years of the individual. ' ' 
 
 Of course there was no answer to that. There 
 would be other moods and varieties of conversation 
 between the man and the woman. On another day, 
 after dinner, when nothing had been decided on for 
 the afternoon, and it was rather probable than 
 otherwise that all would be lounging about the 
 house, Barbara came down arrayed somewhat finely, 
 that is, she wore one of the best of all her gowns, 
 and above the stately ruffle about her neck the warm 
 hair and the milk-white skin were potent. It was 
 not surprising that Sargent's pulse exerted itself and 
 made a trifle better time : 
 
 "She does be a sumptuous lady," he said laugh- 
 ingly. 
 
 The girl blushed and was glad, because she knew 
 what he meant. They were alone in the room and 
 she asked him if he would come and sit with her 
 upon the sofa. It was one of the old-fashioned,
 
 236 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 haircloth kind, and she advised him, incidentally, 
 to sit at the farther end. 
 
 "Will you come?" she asked. 
 
 "Will I?" said he. "I'll come to that sofa as 
 blithely as the meadow-lark drops into the clover." 
 
 Then this was one of his more or less maudlin 
 days he told her how fair to look upon she 
 was in the garb she wore, and how often in the 
 hot Mexican nights he had dreamed of her sleep- 
 ing or thought of her when awake, and of what 
 hopeful comfort there came to him in his imagin- 
 ings. 
 
 "It was wonderful and it was good forme," he 
 said. "I thought much of the home, of the home 
 of soft luxurious things for my love, and of books, 
 and pictures and music, of a pleasant literary atmos- 
 phere in which we would rejoice together and work 
 together, we are so alike in tastes, and how you 
 could achieve what was in you and how vain of it I 
 should be and proud to have you meet the others of 
 the world. I thought of you, the stately, gracious, 
 tactful little woman who would receive her friends 
 there and rejoice in the fact that she had such a 
 home for them, and that she would make it a 
 privilege for them to come to that home, although 
 she would never know it. And I thought of our 
 love life and of how a woman should be cherished, 
 how I should always be thinking of her and make it 
 so for her that it would hardly seem like living 
 when I was away. And I thought of all that might 
 come after and the greater, broader happiness of it, 
 and the rounded-out life with her lived faithfully.
 
 VAGARIES. 237 
 
 Oh, I dreamed, dear, and I worked, too. And 
 here we are ! The dream is coming true. 
 
 "Be mine, give yourself to me literally, and 
 obey me. Let there be in all your life just an 
 abandonment of your entity for my sake. Try the 
 experiment and you will get more for it, for the 
 responsibility and the delicacy and the thoughtful- 
 ness will be thrown on me, than you would in any 
 other way. You are a woman of ambition and 
 intellect, but it is only one such as you who would 
 do this thing. The weak woman would be petulant 
 at times and not steadfast in purpose, and would 
 yield to some passing trouble. I want you to be 
 great enough to lose yourself. I do not say that it 
 is right, nor that it should be the rule in marriage, 
 for it would be evil were the right man not involved, 
 butj in such case as comes sometimes, it is the 
 perfection of dual oneness. ' ' 
 
 And to these sentimental outbursts, the crystalliza- 
 tion of desert thoughts, the young woman had 
 much to say. She was not afraid, though. Since 
 the world began, despite what some of the weaker 
 romances say, never has man been feared by woman 
 in an earnest love-making. And this woman had no 
 fear in her, though she had a certain timidity which 
 puzzled Sargent and even puzzled herself. The 
 intensity and masculine force of her lover startled 
 her, but her own high-strung nature, while it 
 responded to his, protested at the same time against 
 this power which seemed to be taking complete pos- 
 session of her. 
 
 She was a thoroughly self-reliant human being,
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 too, and revolted at the word "obey," as savoring of 
 servility and old-time notions of domestic rule, and 
 thought that to give herself to the young man was 
 enough, and, deep in her heart, resented his think- 
 ing it necessary to instruct her at all as to her 
 attitude toward him. But the strong love which 
 had grown up in her overwhelmed everything else, 
 and, silently, she thought that she would do better 
 than was asked of her ; that, with her, for duty, love 
 should always stand in her relations to Sargent and 
 rule all and, as for obedience, she was certain that 
 love never would have to issue orders. "Where 
 Love puts on the uniform of a general, discards his 
 bow and arrow for a sword, and calls out ' Present 
 arms!' he has become a new sort of a god. " She 
 ventured so to comment once when the man had 
 been talking somewhat loftily in his innocence ; and 
 the old Judge, who was sitting near them, half 
 entering into their talk, smiled to himself and 
 whispered to the same respectful listener, "He 
 will learn! He will learn, in time!" 
 
 Barbara was perfectly happy, the more so 
 because she knew how happy she was. Love 
 brought to her the crown of her existence and she 
 could think of nothing more perfect than this 
 cloudless summer of the present, with an adoring 
 strong lover to love. 
 
 It troubled the ardent man a little, the very per- 
 fection of Barbara's content and happiness in the 
 moment; for happy as he was he ever longed for 
 the completion of it all in marriage. He could not 
 think with patience of ever leaving her again. He
 
 VAGARIES. 239 
 
 had inwardly vowed to take her with him when 
 his time came to go back to the world of work. "I 
 will take my heaven with me," he had resolved. 
 
 And so, sometimes, Sargent chafed while Barbara 
 lingered delightedly in the charmed present of love 
 and dreaming, loth to cross the invisible yet potent 
 line which separated her from a husband's arms. 
 
 They were two foolish people, but not the only 
 ones in the world ; not the first nor the last. On 
 the whole, they were happy as some human beings 
 deserve to be, as do all really true lovers. 
 
 16
 
 240 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 
 
 It was at the crest and prime of the year, when 
 flowers and leaves were fresh and young and bees 
 were droning all day long in Barbara's garden. 
 
 It was almost too early for it, there were too 
 many blossoms lying atop of the lush openings in 
 the forest, or where the weeds grew beside the 
 fields, and the buckwheat lot was just blossoming 
 with its wide blown offering of all that was best for 
 them to all the bees in the world, but one day 
 Sargent, aided and abetted by the swart Michael, 
 prepared for a hunting expedition. Barbara was to 
 be one of the very select party, and the prize was a 
 bee tree. Barbara was delighted to be able to 
 reconcile her tenderness of heart for once with a 
 hunting trip, and was as joyous as a robin as they 
 started on their way, making straight for the 
 wooded hills and across country to Gibb's clearing. 
 They passed by the cabin where the farm hands, 
 wandering men from Canada, mostly, lived in sum- 
 mer, while work was to be done, and the three 
 adventurers, climbing the three-cornered rail fences, 
 were soon in the woods. 
 
 As they walked along in the welcome shade 
 Michael ran ahead of the lovers, or explored the 
 forest on either side, returning to them from time
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 241 
 
 to time much as a dog runs around and comes 
 back to his master when a free walk is under way. 
 
 "Michael will never grow old," said Sargent, 
 looking after the active figure as it wound its way 
 in the woods ahead of himself and Barbara. "He 
 is not changed, he will always be a boy." 
 
 "He seems happy," returned Barbara, "and yet 
 there is something almost tragic in his fate. He 
 has stopped growing, in mind and body, and cannot 
 get beyond a certain point, but in all his senses he 
 is almost abnormally acute, and with him instinct 
 seems to make up for a lack of intellect. ' ' 
 
 "He is a faithful soul, too," Sargent said, 
 "although he is full of mischief. He confided to 
 me the other day, that although he hates the sight 
 of a book he longs to read, just to please his 
 mother." 
 
 "Poor martyr!" laughed Barbara, "he has to go 
 to the district school every winter, and I don't 
 know which to pity most, Michael or his teacher!" 
 
 Just then the object of their conversation burst 
 out upon them from a hollow tree, in which was one 
 of his own special hiding places, and as they came 
 to a creek he pointed out to Barbara another of his 
 haunts, a great soft maple, leaning far over the 
 water, and covered with wild grape vines. Running 
 like a squirrel up the gray trunk, he beckoned 
 Barbara, and would not be content until she had 
 swung, for a few minutes, in his vine-wrought cradle. 
 The delighted fellow laughed and clapped his 
 hands, and sung in a voice, musical, with a wild 
 note in it: "Rock-a-bye, baby, up in the tree-top!"
 
 242 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Then the stalwart form of Sargent had to take its 
 turn in the airy hammock, and the two left Michael 
 crooning to himself in his swing as they resumed 
 their way. Soon he darted by them, for the thought 
 of the bee hunt had returned to him in the midst of 
 his swinging. 
 
 Michael knew bees. Sargent knew bees, too, but 
 not as Michael did, and so it came that Michael was 
 made the head and front of this vast undertaking of 
 finding a bee tree in the forest at a season somewhat 
 too early for the work. 
 
 Michael was almost a part of the woodland. He 
 loved his mistress, Barbara, because she was good ; 
 and because he understood that she now belonged 
 to him, he was henchman to the brown man, Sargent. 
 It is hard to trace the reasoning of such a mind 
 as his. He knew as friendly beings, his mother, and 
 Judge Sloan, and Barbara. He knew and hated 
 the inoffensive school-teacher who vainly tortured 
 him with those small black figures on white paper 
 which meant so much to many folk, but nothing to 
 him. And he knew horses and dogs and cattle, 
 and could sit so still in the forest that the birds and 
 squirrels grew bold, and came to his hand to be fed. 
 But best of all in the world to Michael, most loved 
 and cherished, was his red violin. But of all these 
 things he never talked, at least in words. Some- 
 thing of his soul he poured out in music, a music as 
 simple, yet as freakish and baffling as his own 
 personality. 
 
 "Oh, luckless wight," exclaimed Barbara, when 
 Sargent showed himself splashed, and with one
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 243 
 
 foot swinging wet, after a slip on the stones as he 
 crossed the creek. 
 
 "Why wight?" queried Sargent. "What is a 
 wight, Coppercrown? Tell me out of your garnered 
 wisdom. And when you have described your 
 wight, pray explain why he is always a 'luckless,' 
 'weary,' 'foolish' wight." 
 
 "I don't know," said Barbara, "what a wight may 
 be ; I seem to have a picture of him in my mind 
 but I do know that a wight has to be a somewhat 
 unfortunate being, and though I said 'him' I really 
 think there is such a thing as a feminine wight." 
 
 "Of course there is," assented Sargent. "You're 
 one yourself, a feminine wight, with red hair, and a 
 white dress, and a straw hat in her hand instead of 
 on her head, where anybody but a wight would 
 carry a hat, and one of your misfortunes just now is 
 that you look so that you have to be kissed!" 
 
 And he kissed her then and there, before Michael 
 came up with them. They stopped at the edge of 
 Gibb's clearing, and looked out upon the sunny 
 patch of greenery, while Michael busied himself 
 about his bee-catching enterprise with some advice 
 from Sargent thrown in now and again. 
 
 There are half-way pioneers as there are half- 
 way poets, generals and statesmen. So it comes 
 that in the shearing into the forest of a new country 
 there are some who venture but for a year or two 
 and then depart. All through the wild Northwest 
 with the drift of those who cut away things came 
 those who worked hardily for a brief time and then, 
 being deficient in the lower jaw, abandoned the
 
 244 THE LAUNCHING OP A MAN. 
 
 hard task. No one can tell why these certain strong 
 men made clearings and then abandoned them ; it 
 may have been that the girl in the East had written 
 to the young man that he might come back again ; 
 but adjacent to all the drift of civilization through- 
 out northern Michigan were deserted "clearings," 
 each a space hewed by some one in the forest and 
 made fit for cultivation and then abandoned. These 
 rare open spaces, little farms begun and then left, 
 were, necessarily, well known to all the people on the 
 really developed farms of the surrounding regions. 
 They were oases in the forest, great bright places 
 where the sun smote down over areas it had not 
 seen before since the trees which once covered it 
 had begun to grow. And there, upon the soil 
 where great timbers had been felled and burned, 
 upsprang a growth of such things as the land had 
 never known before, a growth such as the shrewd- 
 est and most far-thinking of all the scientific men of 
 all the world cannot yet account for. 
 
 There lay one day, as the suddenly happy or 
 unhappy pioneer abandoned it, a burned area in 
 the forest looking upward at the sun. One would 
 think that the acorns or beechnuts which had been 
 dropped for centuries on the soil might have become 
 embedded and would sprout, and that there would 
 uprise an infant forest of the same families as those 
 which were all about, but this did not happen. 
 From the beech-burned soil even the weeds which 
 first grew were different from those which had 
 existed in the region heretofore. Whence came 
 this seeding? No man can tell. For there were
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 245 
 
 none of them in the region until axe and fire had 
 come. But the gross, rank, high-growing fire-weed 
 made first harvest. And as young trees sprang 
 upward they were not beech, nor maple, but poplars 
 growing thickly as in some flourishing nursery. 
 How were sown, and who sowed, these seeds? 
 From what comes that which appears when forest 
 land is cleared? 
 
 But there were great open spaces, where, some- 
 how, the common grass of all the North which wins 
 its way eventually, had found a foothold and seized 
 upon certain territory, and where white clover grew 
 and many flowers and weeds rejoiced in its society, 
 where dandelions flourished in their season, and 
 the wild violet, and the wild phlox, and wild roses 
 in the damper places, with honeysuckles often. 
 And a little late in this region, in the higher and 
 dryer places where the grass grew more or less 
 gingerly, like the beard of Petruchio's sexton, the 
 wild strawberry, knowing better how to reach down 
 with its roots to the life juice beneath, flung out 
 great broad lush leaves and broad white blossoms, 
 and lived very well its life. A great place for wild 
 strawberries, the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. 
 There were half a hundred other honey-offering 
 things, blossoming sweet-scented in spaces of these 
 clearings. And the wild bees sought them, and 
 found what they wanted. There were two of these 
 clearings but a short half hour's walk from the Sloan 
 homestead; one, the Gibb's clearing, and the other, 
 Donahue's clearing, and to emerge from the forest 
 upon either one of them in summer or early
 
 246 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 autumn was to come into a bright world of short 
 white clover exhaling a sweet fragrance, and a world 
 of droning and humming, and of a life which we 
 call beneath us, but the quality of which we can 
 only guess at. 
 
 There was an open area of perhaps two hundred 
 yards each way, an area somewhat lighter than the 
 main clearing. Michael began his preparations for 
 the beguilement of the bees by building a little fire 
 toward the southern end of this space, and Sargent 
 and Barbara rested in the shade, not far away. 
 They were sitting in a part of the new-springing 
 forest, so that the little wood-encircled world was all 
 before them open to the eye. Together they saw 
 much. Barbara would have seen little, for she did 
 not know; Sargent saw more, for he had learned 
 some things ; but how little have the most scientific 
 and woodcrafty of us learned as yet of the under 
 world which may perhaps be the upper world! 
 They heard the droning, which was sweet, and 
 through the laden air came to their senses the float- 
 ing breath of the overflow of the growing and 
 blooming things about, which, for aught we know, 
 may feel and see in their own way. 
 
 The two sat and waited. Near to one side, where 
 the open area cut sharply into the denser wood, 
 there stood an elderberry bush, vagrant, encroach- 
 ing, with one outstanding topmost limb of a foot or 
 so, with leaves only at the end ; down, from some- 
 where, descended and perched upon the vacant space 
 of this bending, swaying twig a king-bird, and its 
 mate alighted near it. Then before the eyes of the
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 247 
 
 two onlooking human beings, themselves full of 
 their hopes and fancies and darings, occurred the 
 every day exploiting performance of the brave and 
 fortunately skillful. An insect, it might be one of 
 the bees, would rise and wing its way from some 
 flower of the open area toward the forest, and 
 darting at right angles toward its quarry with such 
 infinite swiftness as can hardly be described, one of 
 the king-birds would catch the insect in midair, and 
 there was an end to one insect life and a partly 
 gratified appetite in a light-breasted and slate-col- 
 ored thing of the tree and air and perch. Then 
 suddenly from somewhere came the wild, generously 
 alarming cry of the ever-present bluejay as a hawk 
 swooped downward toward the thicket where song 
 sparrows were in sight. As the cry sounded, each 
 bird about the open space dived into the safety of 
 the greenery, the sentinel bluejay having led the 
 way, and the descending hawk, missing the prey, 
 dipped as a wave dips, and rose again toward the 
 sky, but not alone. The two king-birds dropped 
 from their perches with a curve so insignificant as 
 scarcely to be noticeable, and then shot upward close 
 together toward the hawk, which was seeking the 
 upper air. Fast he flew, but they flew faster, and 
 soon overtook him. Either one of them would have 
 been scarce a mouthful for him, but their lightning- 
 like swiftness placed him at a disadvantage, and he 
 knew it well. They flashed about and pecked and 
 belabored him from above, and though they could 
 not kill him, his strait was sore for half a mile away. 
 Then the two king-birds darted back over the
 
 248 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 intervening distance and alighted, calmly insolent 
 and protective, into the tree where their own nest 
 was, and into the branches where no other bird 
 might venture safely. Barbara looked on amazedly, 
 and Sargent explained the qualities of this little 
 bird, called the bee-martin in some parts of the 
 country, but whose name the king-bird fits it as 
 neatly as does the shell of an acorn its nut. 
 
 Sargent and Barbara, sitting at ease and speaking 
 in but low tones according to Michael's plea, were 
 amused to see the eyes of the swarthy bee-hunter 
 fixed upon them from time to time with a wonder- 
 ing, mysterious questioning in his dark gaze. He 
 was fumbling over his little box of honey, whisper- 
 ing to himself, and then casting puzzled looks at 
 them until Sargent asked, at last: "What are you 
 thinking of?" But he was only importunately 
 motioned to by Michael for silence. This started 
 Barbara into a laugh and Sargent took the infection 
 of merriment, before long to be joined by Michael 
 himself, and the three made the wood ring with 
 happy, causeless laughter. 
 
 The lovers never heard from the lips of Michael 
 the gist of the thought which lay behind his specula- 
 tive gaze, but he confided the secret to his mother. 
 Michael was thinking in that darkened mind of his, 
 of the old and decent custom of "telling the bees" 
 when death enters the family, and was wondering if 
 that ceremony were not as important when a mar- 
 riage is celebrated. He had his own thoughts and 
 opinions about the canny bees, and on no account 
 would he have omitted any attention to the hive or
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 249 
 
 more of them in the Judge's garden which he 
 guarded as his own special property, captured as 
 they were by him from their wild forest home. 
 
 Often in summer twilights, lengthened in these 
 northern latitudes, Michael sat on a convenient log 
 in the garden near the bee-hives he himself had 
 made from a hollow basswood log, and played 
 sleepy tunes to his small black and yellow friends. 
 He talked to them, and crooned old songs and 
 rhymes to them, and was sure that they understood 
 him better than did the people around him and 
 who shall say that they did not? 
 
 When the laughter was over for a moment, 
 Michael bestirred himself for his adventure and 
 Sargent explained to Barbara the scientific lines 
 upon which bee-hunting is founded. It is true 
 that successful bee-hunting comes as a gift to cer- 
 tain unlearned folk, but there is science back of it, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 Barbara watched Michael now, having previously 
 examined at close range his outfit for capturing a 
 few of the swarming marauders who were rifling 
 every flower in sight. 
 
 He had a little box made of thin pine board, the 
 cover of which slid easily back and forth in a 
 groove and which had let into it a piece of window 
 glass enabling the observer on the outside to see 
 what was going on within. Michael drove a stick 
 in the ground, and, somehow, so managed things 
 that it stood there safely balanced at the height of a 
 man's head, so that one watching anything flying 
 from that box could get a fair sight from the start.
 
 250 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 Then he picked up a flat stone and laid it near the 
 bottom of the stake upon which the box was placed. 
 In the box was merely a bit of honey in the comb, 
 and in his pocket Michael had brought some bees- 
 wax. In his fire the stone was heated, and upon 
 it the beeswax was placed, where it melted and ran 
 about. There arose then the beeswax odor which 
 all the world knows, and it called the bees. 
 
 They came only the good Lord knows the ways 
 of the bee and the ant but they came from the sur- 
 rounding forest, drawn by the scent or fragrance or 
 whatever you may call it which told them in some 
 inscrutable way where was the sort of sweetness 
 upon which their brief life must depend. 
 
 They came dipping toward the burning wax, but 
 lifted upward and settled into the honey-laden 
 box, and there having found a small fortune for the 
 hive, began loading themselves to the utmost. 
 
 There were perhaps four or five bees upon the 
 honey when Michael shot back the glass cover and 
 left the gorging inhabitants imprisoned. Michael 
 now cared no longer for Sargent and Barbara. He 
 was as the gambler is, absorbed in nothing but his 
 game, for your bee-hunter is as great a gambler in 
 his way, though honestly and unknowingly, as any 
 man who ever threw dice when the army swore 
 terribly in Flanders, or who in later times has taken 
 his chances in Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. 
 Michael but watched the bees. One by one each 
 became surfeited or rather fully laden and essayed 
 to leave the place wherein he had become 
 imprisoned. Michael, the watchful, waited until
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 251 
 
 all were full and impatient and bumping against the 
 glass which seemed but sky to them, and then he 
 drew back the slide suddenly, and yelled to Sargent : 
 
 "Watch! look where the bees go!" 
 
 Never was word better devised than that which is 
 called a "bee-line," for straighter than bullet from 
 its powder bed since its trajectory is not inclining 
 flies the bee from its loading place to its home. 
 What superhuman instinct enables it to do this no 
 one can tell, but the fact remains. 
 
 The bees flew from the open box across the clear- 
 ing, one after the other, all in the same line, which 
 showed that they all belonged to the same lofty 
 hive, while the keen eyes of Michael and Sargent 
 followed them, noting the direction of their straight 
 course. Barbara looked on amazed and interested. 
 Twice and thrice was the experiment repeated, 
 Michael becoming oblivious to all else in the pulse 
 of his search, and Sargent himself getting almost as 
 much involved in the interest of the thing. They 
 had a "line" and a promising one, because the great 
 number of the bees indicated a hive of magnitude, 
 but how far away from them in the forest was the 
 bee-tree was another matter. They knew how to 
 settle that question, though. The bees had flown 
 northeast, almost directly. But a short distance 
 east of them was the Donahue clearing, and there 
 they went. Again were repeated all the pioneer 
 enticements for the bees, again all about the trio 
 were the wonderfully sweet blandishments of the 
 summer life of the region, and again came the bees 
 to sip to their full, and cloyed, to fling themselves
 
 252 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 away in a straight line through mid-air to the hive in 
 some great lofty tree bole. Before, they had flown 
 northeast, and now they flew northwest, to 
 Barbara's bewilderment; and Sargent and Michael, 
 the man of the world as excited as the creature of 
 the forest, discussed the matter, but not with hope- 
 lessness. The two men, each in his own way, knew 
 that the two flights must have met, and that where 
 they met was the bee-tree. Uprising above the 
 general sky-line of the forest was a gigantic pine 
 which was agreed to be a little to the north of where 
 the lines must intersect and, since this particular 
 pine happened to stand in an open space, and to 
 have been a landmark for many wanderings, they 
 could estimate as to where within a radius of not 
 many hundreds of yards must be their bee tree. 
 They bolted away all three together, Michael a 
 little in the lead, trotting with head down like a 
 beagle, and Sargent running along after, hand in 
 hand with Barbara, laughing also, but running, as a 
 matter of course, as the hind follows the hart. 
 
 They reached a place near where they thought 
 should be the bee-tree, and in a little open space 
 they found Michael repeating the exploit of the 
 clearings. Little time was required now. As soon 
 as the wax burned there was a descent, not of one, 
 but of a host of bees upon the honey in the open 
 box. No longer were they imprisoned at all, but 
 were allowed to fill themselves and fly away. They 
 were too near home now to toy with other sweets 
 before carrying their conquests to the hive. They 
 came in hosts and loaded themselves greedily and
 
 "WHERE THE BEE SUCKS, THERE SUCK I." 253 
 
 chen flew up with a slant so steep that the half 
 barbaric Michael danced about excitedly. 
 
 "We've got 'em," he said. 
 
 They moved the lure a few hundred feet to the 
 right and the bees came as before, in hosts, and 
 thus they gained another locating point, a close one 
 this time, and again making an estimate and again 
 moving, they came into an opening in the midst of 
 which stood a gigantic red oak, dead, apparently, on 
 one side, from a growth of fifty feet above its roots. 
 The bees flew straight upward now, and keen 
 eyes soon detected the opening to one of the great 
 hives of the wilds. Just above a vast dead limb 
 there was a little black hole into the huge brown 
 trunk, and about this opening weaved and buzzed a 
 coming and going swarm of little black workers, as 
 numerous as about the hives of the ordinary home- 
 stead where bees are kept. The bee tree was found. 
 
 There is a custom, which is also a law, which 
 gives to the discoverer of a bee-tree a right to it if 
 into the bole of the tree he cuts, squarely and 
 cleanly, initials, indicating ownership. Sargent 
 knew this well, and taking Michael's little axe he 
 hewed into the vesture of that not altogether pros- 
 perous forest monarch the outlines "B. S." "It's an 
 ancient compliment," he said. "Youths say it when 
 they give some caramels, but, 'Sweets to the 
 Sweet. ' " So Barbara owned a bee-tree. 
 
 As for Michael, that elfish young man was lost in 
 anticipation of the night when he should come with 
 full authority, and men to help him, to take and 
 carry home the sweet spoils of this summer day.
 
 254 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 As they walked slowly homeward through the 
 woods, Michael fairly flying on before, the lovers 
 went hand in hand, like two school children. 
 
 "I can hardly believe in this happiness of ours," 
 Sargent said, earnestly. ' ' I have dreamed a hundred 
 times of being by your side, secure in your love, as 
 I am now, and it has come true. To be happy, and 
 to know how happy one is that is wonderful. ' ' 
 
 "Yes," Barbara said, "children are happy, but 
 they don't know it. We know just how to be 
 thankful, don't we?"
 
 'MORE." 255 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 "MORE." 
 
 The wise lover has occasion frequently to pay 
 almost as much attention to some man as to his 
 sweetheart. He becomes interested in the welfare 
 of the males of the family with which he may 
 become connected. So it came that Sargent, sym- 
 pathetic and strong, was attracted anew to the 
 father of this Barbara. The men came to care more 
 and more for each other and the elder to lean on the 
 younger. It was fortunate that this was so, for a 
 man young, forceful and resolute was needed on the 
 scene. 
 
 It is a proverb that shoemakers' children go 
 unshod. This may or may not be literally the case, 
 but it appears to be a generally admitted fact that 
 not one lawyer or even judge in a dozen is a good 
 business man. His advice to others upon business 
 subjects may be perfect, but, like the physician, the 
 lawyer does not seem capable of healing himself. 
 Conditions are neglected in theories. So it happened 
 that Judge Sloan, wise and just jurist, owning, 
 because he had paid for it, a large and valuable 
 tract of land in northern Michigan, was in danger 
 of losing his estate. He, who as a judge had passed 
 upon the quality of a thousand titles, had neglected, 
 in his own buying, sufficient inquiry into the clear- 
 17
 
 256 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 ness of a title the quality of which was much to him. 
 There was a weak spot in it. Some miles distant 
 from Judge Sloan's place there lived a queer and 
 not altogether reputable old person named John 
 Tisdale, half hunter, half trapper and about one- 
 third drunkard, who, in earlier days, had secured 
 from the general government a patent on the land 
 which was now Judge Sloan's. The hunter had, 
 long ago, sold his perfect title for some small sum, 
 but had never properly transferred it, though the 
 one to whom he sold had, in all honesty, given, 
 when he in turn had disposed of it, a warranty deed 
 of usual form. From that had come the transmission 
 to Judge Sloan, but the title was not flawless. 
 
 Old Hiram Slade it is odd how regions and con- 
 ditions breed them old Hiram Slade, smooth-haired 
 and pallid, and gray-bearded with shaved upper lip, 
 the land cormorant of the big, wild county, had, in 
 his seekings among the books of the recorder's office 
 in the little county seat of Conway, ten miles away, 
 discovered the nature of the flaw in Judge Sloan's 
 title and had sought out disreputable old John Tis- 
 dale in his hut and bought from him a quit-claim deed 
 to all the property involved in the original patent. 
 He paid only twenty dollars for old Tisdale, when 
 extremely thirsty, would have sold his soul's pros- 
 pects and there might have been a profit on the 
 trade for half the sum. 
 
 So began the work of Hiram Slade ; but, later, it 
 so happened that from the same money so trans- 
 ferred came what might mar the scheme, for Tisdale, 
 squandering most of it in a debauch in Conway,
 
 "MORE." 257 
 
 became too talkative and told of how his sudden 
 wealth had come. His chatter reached the ears of 
 Judge Sloan upon his next visit to the town, and he, 
 listless though he ordinarily was, became sufficiently 
 impressed to himself seek out John Tisdale in his 
 fastness and get from him a quit-claim deed as old 
 Hiram Slade had done, for the Judge had discovered 
 that the Slade deed had not been yet recorded. 
 The irresponsible and thirsty Tisdale would have 
 given quit-claim deeds, as he had a legal right to do, 
 to any one to any piece of property in all the Pen- 
 insula of Northern Michigan. Much depended now 
 upon the exhibition of energy in the recording of a 
 deed, but neither of the two most interested knew 
 of the imminence of things. 
 
 As related, Sargent and the old Judge were draw- 
 ing more closely together, and so it came that the 
 older told the younger, in a general way, of his 
 monetary difficulties, but failed to give him details. 
 Trouble and stress would have been avoided if he 
 had but told more. The Judge had himself almost 
 forgotten that his deed had to be recorded to make 
 good the title which was his in equity. And the 
 days passed by and the young grouse were getting 
 feathers in place of down, when matters became 
 serious. The details of what happened then must 
 come a little later. 
 
 After all, there is no such thing as smooth sailing, 
 with a woman in the boat, thought Sargent, when he 
 came to press upon Barbara the setting of the time 
 for their marriage. Sargent was anxious to convey 
 his bride home with him before the fall of the
 
 258 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 leaves, but he found little encouragement to enlarge 
 upon this dream to Barbara. Whenever he ap- 
 proached the subject with an air of practical deter- 
 mination Barbara whirled away into the universe 
 anywhere for a subject of talk except in the line the 
 lover was taking. 
 
 Once, when fairly at bay, she turned on the young 
 man, and reproached him for intruding the topic of 
 marriage upon their little lover's heaven. 
 
 "Marriage is so prosaic," she cried. "Why, 
 you'll be calling me 'My Dear,' and talking about 
 rents and taxes to me, when once we are married. 
 I can just hear you say: 'My Dear, have you seen 
 the morning paper?' Ugh!" And she shivered over 
 the anticipated horrors of the bleak and humdrum 
 matrimonial existence she had conjured up. 
 
 At another time, when the great question of the 
 hour had been craftily sprung by the perplexed 
 lover, Barbara gravely explained that she had 
 serious fears about certain details of their marriage. 
 
 "You see," she said, "whom could we get," and 
 here she had the grace to blush, "to perform the 
 ceremony? The only clergyman in the woods here 
 is Elder Goings, a good man he is, but a toothless, 
 and, if he can read, he can't speak one sentence 
 straight; I mean as to grammar and pronunciation." 
 
 "What difference would that make?" said the 
 infatuated lover. 
 
 ' ' Difference ! Why, I simply will not stand up I 
 could not, and keep my countenance, while he said, 
 'Barbary, do you take Robe-r-r-t to be' " but here 
 the mimic was hushed by force of arms.
 
 "MORE." 259 
 
 "The only other possible man, " she continued, 
 when she had caught her breath, "is Squire Fletcher, 
 the young squire, but he stammers so I should die ! 
 I could not stand it ! We'll have to give it up ! But, 
 don't you think we are very happy as we are?" 
 
 "Barbara," said Sargent, "you mean to marry 
 me, don't you?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, some day," washer reply, "but mind, no 
 cold-blooded, set, ordained, and duly elaborated 
 wedding shall we ever have ! You shall come some 
 fine morning like young Lochinvar and ride away 
 with me on your saddle, or like the lover in St. 
 Agnes' Eve you shall steal me away some bitter cold 
 night and together we will ride through the pelting 
 snow! That would be something like!" 
 
 Here she was brought to an end of her discourse. 
 
 "Now, by my halidom, fair shrew!" thundered 
 Sargent, springing to the open doorway! "Married 
 thou shalt be without delay, even to me and by bell 
 book and candle! I'll saddle the snow-white roan 
 and prick to the Straits, and eftsoon bring back a 
 sleek priest, an' he can urge his ambling palfry from 
 a walk! And then, scornful though thou art, the 
 blessed rite shall join us ere set of the morrow's 
 sun!" 
 
 He tightened his belt around his waist, as for the 
 journey, but a momentary diversion cleverly 
 executed by his fair enemy and enslaver delayed 
 him, he hesitated, and the mad ride in search of a 
 parson was postponed. 
 
 One day alack the day! It must come even 
 with true lovers the two quarreled. Sargent,
 
 260 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 intoxicated with the new wine of assured love, was 
 very buoyant, and had just told Barbara as they 
 walked in the woods together, that nothing could 
 ever trouble him, now that he was sure of her. 
 Then Barbara, echoing back his happiness, at first, 
 lapsed into a dreamy silence from which she emerged 
 to announce that she had something "serious" to say. 
 
 "That is almost as bad as if you said you were 
 going to speak plainly and tell me the truth about 
 something," said Sargent, "but go on, sweetheart, 
 and be as serious as you may, if you only aver, to 
 begin with, that you love me well!" 
 
 The declaration of undying love was duly made 
 with appropriate ceremonies such as lovers know, 
 and then Barbara proceeded to unburden her mind. 
 
 It was nothing but a young woman's tender 
 thought about the father she was to leave while she 
 followed the fortunes of a husband in his roving life ; 
 and Sargent met the loving heart half-way, and 
 unfolded plans he had already made to secure the 
 comfort and happiness of Judge Sloan when his child 
 should leave him. 
 
 They had an hour of quiet, loving talk together, 
 speaking of the widowed sister of the Judge, who, 
 with her daughter, was to come and live with him, 
 and of other family affairs. Barbara was anxious, 
 not only over her father's future, but his present 
 troubles, of which she knew enough to make her 
 uneasy. To-day she was, in consequence of this 
 unspoken worry, a little out of tune with the world, 
 tender of feeling, and easily ruffled. The talk 
 drifted from personal matters after a while, and
 
 "MORE." 261 
 
 then some little word of Sargent's, it might have 
 been about the moon or stars, or how the bark grew 
 upon a tree, it happened to be the character and 
 possibilities of the American Indian that they were 
 discussing neither knew how or why, but a spark 
 of anger leaped from Barbara's eyes. Sargent 
 blunderingly fanned the blaze, and, in a minute, the 
 two were flaming in angry debate. Sargent was 
 the first of the two to regain himself, and he tried 
 to laugh the whole episode away, but in vain. They 
 walked back to the house in moody silence, and 
 Barbara kept herself oat of the light of her lover's 
 eyes during most of the day, while he resolved never 
 to boast again of complete happiness and was quite 
 miserable in a protesting, impatient way, having 
 completely forgotten what the whole wretched 
 quarrel was about ; indeed he could only recall that 
 Barbara was angry with him, and declare to himself 
 that he was doubtless a brute. 
 
 He went about like an uneasy ghost, and, at night, 
 was stalking moodily out into the moonlight for a 
 walk, just as the family were retiring to their rooms. 
 
 Barbara, in her white dress, came to the door, and 
 seeing Sargent standing on the pathway, stepped 
 upon the porch landing and slowly approached the 
 silent, brooding figure near the gate. Not a word 
 was said as the slight figure joined the stalwart one. 
 The man turned toward her silently and the woman 
 took his arm. They walked up and down the 
 pathway together and something was said in a 
 perfunctory way about the luxuriance of the night. 
 Then Sargent broke out suddenly :
 
 262 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 "I set a rhinestone in gold. The trouble with 
 me and my family and race is that we cannot pluck 
 out the rhinestone and put a real jewel in its place. 
 It is decreed that way. We must be faithful to what 
 or whom we love, be it good or bad. ' ' 
 
 The girl did not answer, except to ask him if he 
 thought he had ever seen a clearer night or when 
 the stars hung lower, even in their northern 
 country? He answered courteously but stiffly. So 
 they walked up and down and through the garden 
 until the time came when she said she must go in 
 and parted gently from him. 
 
 This was good night, he knew, and, furthermore, 
 he began to realize that he had made, in some 
 measure, an ass of himself, as men deeply in love do 
 easily. Yet he was stiff in his repentance, as men 
 sometimes are, and when, as she turned to go away, 
 he took her hands and drew her toward him, he 
 kissed her very lightly. 
 
 The girl drew back with the moonlight smiting 
 pleasantly on her fair face. She looked upward into 
 the face towering above her and lifted up a pair of 
 lips not of the sort to be resisted. 
 
 "More," she said.
 
 JOHN HALFDAY'S ERRAND. 263 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 JOHN HALFDAY'S ERRAND. 
 
 Judge Sloan seemed to be quite easy as to the 
 designs of Hiram Slade upon his property, and after 
 he had unburdened his mind to Sargent he settled 
 back into his usual abstracted yet genial mood, 
 delighting to be interrupted in his reading by any 
 conversation upon abstract subjects, but rather 
 resentful if topics of every-day import were thrust 
 upon him. 
 
 Barbara, keenly alive to all which touched her 
 father, and full of youthful ardors of love and hate, 
 had become intensely interested in the character of 
 Hiram Slade, who was, as she said to Sargent, the 
 nearest approach to a villain that she had ever seen 
 in her quiet corner of the great world, and it was 
 not surprising that such conclusion had been reached 
 by her. Cupidity is the most inexplicable of vices to 
 generous natures, and to inexperience it is incredible. 
 The lovers reasoned and argued much, as is always 
 the wont of ardent young folk, over the puzzling 
 problems of the never-ending study of man in this 
 world. They were, fortunately, not touched by the 
 rage of religious or doctrinal dispute, being content 
 to rest unquestioningly in the quieting arms of the 
 faith into which both had chanced to be born. 
 They, in their happy mood, were full of love toward
 
 264 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 God and all his creatures ; and they had no arrogant 
 idea that they were right in all their religious beliefs, 
 while all who differed from them were wrong. They 
 simply rested in loyal faithfulness to the high ideals 
 which are, after all, discernible in every branch of 
 the Christian religion, and which had been held up 
 to them wisely and lovingly in the impressionable 
 years of childhood and of youth. 
 
 But there were the endless themes of human 
 virtues and failings, aspirations and defeats, and all 
 the wondrous turns of character and incident to talk 
 about and wonder over, and there were the allied 
 fields of literature and art to compare. The two 
 found sympathies and antipathies in common, and 
 sometimes they found themselves firmly opposed in 
 likes and dislikes and as the days passed by, they 
 delighted more and more in each other. 
 
 Barbara, for example, rebelled at the more insisted 
 upon forms of the doctrine of heredity, and brooded 
 in awed pity over the saying of her father in one of 
 the talks of the three together, that "every man is 
 what he must be." Sargent, fascinated by the 
 theme, drew from the Judge tales of his judicial 
 experiences, and certain stern conclusions which had 
 come from them. 
 
 The Judge averred that the grasping man Slade 
 was the text of his homily was seldom a thief. 
 "Worldly wisdom will not allow outright theft," he 
 declared. "Of course he who cheats his neighbor 
 out of his property is as bad as a thief, ' ' continued 
 the Judge, "but he is not, after all, a thief. The 
 thief is another kind of man, has a different head,
 
 JOHN HALFDAY'S ERRAND. 265 
 
 differing eyes, hands, feet, and entirely different 
 make-up, from that of the sharper and swindler or 
 grasping- land shark we know of. But neither of 
 them can help, once he has yielded to his bent, being 
 what he is." And then to these thoughtful, 
 speculative human beings, educated and understand- 
 ing, and more or less contented together, came what 
 disturbs life swiftly. 
 
 At one side of the garden, underneath where two 
 maple trees grew close together, there had been 
 made a long seat and upon this seat the three, 
 father, daughter and lover, had been accustomed to 
 idle and talk together after the mid-day dinner 
 in the shade of the early afternoon. It was 
 very pleasant, this communing, but there was, too, 
 the almost inevitable jostle which shows the quality 
 of such human beings as may be affected by it. 
 
 One day as the three sat quietly in the garden 
 after dinner, their talk running on this very theme 
 of human failings and their almost fateful inevitable- 
 ness, Michael came running like a line of blue in his 
 jeans overalls and "jumper" which is a sort of 
 jacket across the fields from the encircling trees. 
 He came from the direction of the road which ran 
 a short distance from Judge Sloan's boundaries, 
 from the woods toward Conway, the county seat 
 and town eleven miles away. 
 
 Instead of making for the barn, his usual goal, or 
 the kitchen door, where Tilda stood looking at him, 
 and ready with an errand for him, Michael came 
 straight to the little group under the maples, and 
 without removing his cap, worn summer and
 
 266 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 winter, the swarthy youth began a hurried, half 
 inarticulate tale to Judge Sloan in which John 
 Halfday, the Indian runner, at whose cabin by a 
 lake in the woods near by, Michael spent much 
 valuable time loafing and talking about fishing, and 
 Hiram Slade, and Conway seemed mixed in 
 inextricable confusion. 
 
 Sargent, at the first word, sprang to his feet, and 
 Judge Sloan, as he gradually realized what Michael 
 was telling him, became as one fixed in despair and 
 self-reproach. 
 
 From Michael's confused talk it was at last 
 gathered that while the lazy youth was lounging 
 about the cabin of John Halfday, the Indian 
 runner who was known over the whole State alike 
 for his habitual indolence and his great feats of 
 occasional running, Hiram Slade had appeared, on 
 foot, and engaged the Indian to go with the utmost 
 speed to Conway with a paper, which must be 
 handed in at the Court House before five o'clock 
 that day. The Indian had at once made ready to 
 go, as it was then long after noon, and it was eleven 
 miles by the road to Conway. Michael had not been 
 noticed by Slade until the Indian started on his way, 
 when Michael came from his seat on the chopping- 
 log back of the cabin, where he had heard the bar- 
 gaining between Slade and Halfday. Slade caught the 
 black-eyed Norseman's cub roughly by the shoulder, 
 and threatened to "skin him alive" if he said any- 
 thing about John Halfday's errand, and Michael, 
 twisting himself out of Slade's hands, had run for 
 home with such speed as was in his spindle legs.
 
 JOHN HALFDAY'S ERRAND. 267 
 
 Slade, as he saw him go, had shouted after John 
 Halfday that he must run for his life. The Indian 
 looked back, uncertain of Slade's meaning, and 
 stood still to hear what he had to say. "Run ! Run 
 for your life ! ' ' yelled Slade. The Indian at last made 
 out the words that were being hurled at him. He 
 straightened himself up, tightened his belt, and set 
 off on a dog-trot, a gait he could keep up for hours, 
 along the road toward Conway. All this the keen 
 eyes and ears of Michael noted as he skirted along 
 the road which swerved by one side of the Sloan 
 homestead, and all this he told gaspingly, for, some- 
 how, this combination of keen and dull wits knew 
 that Slade and Judge Sloan had differing interests, 
 and h>y some instinct such as simple natures some- 
 times have, he had connected the errand of John 
 Halfday with a threatening of Judge Sloan's peace 
 and happiness. 
 
 "Father, what troubles you?" anxiously asked 
 Barbara. 
 
 Judge Sloan explained: "Hiram Slade has heard 
 that I hold a quit-claim deed from Tisdale ; he has 
 secured another himself and has sent John Halfday 
 to record it. This will cause me endless trouble, 
 and I may lose the property altogether." 
 
 "But, Judge Sloan," said Sargent, "your title is 
 all right ! You were saying only the other day that 
 you had in your hands John Tisdale 's quit-claim 
 deed to all the property of the original patent." 
 
 "I have never had it recorded," Judge Sloan said, 
 in a voice of anguish. "I have neglected it from 
 day to day and now it is too late!"
 
 268 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 "Father," said Barbara, "send Michael for my 
 pony ; I know your horse is lame ; and let him ride 
 to Con way and record your 'deed before Half day can 
 get there. ' ' 
 
 "The horses are out in the woodland ranges, 
 Barbara," the Judge spoke in a dejected tone 
 "and your pony is with them. It would take an 
 hour to find them." 
 
 "What time is it?" asked Sargent, suddenly. 
 
 "Past three o'clock," was the answer. 
 
 "See!" cried Michael, pointing southward where 
 the road reached the crest of a hill, and as they 
 looked they all saw John Halfday hurrying along the 
 road as it disappeared upon the wooded hill-top. 
 
 "I will take your deed to Conway," said Sargent 
 to Judge Sloan. ' ' I can go across country, saving a 
 mile's distance, and possibly reach the recorder's 
 office before Halfday. If I am there half a minute 
 first it will be all right. " 
 
 Then, seeing Judge Sloan hesitate, he turned to 
 Barbara. "Please run and get the paper," he said, 
 "while I make ready for the go. I think I can 
 win in a race with any Indian, even with Halfday, 
 who has won more prizes at running than I have. 
 Anyhow, I'll try it." 
 
 Barbara, directed where to look by her father, 
 sprang into the house, and returned immediately 
 with an official looking envelope from which Judge 
 Sloan took and examined the quit-claim deed before 
 giving it to Sargent. 
 
 The young man was dressed in the easy costume 
 of his western work, with blue flannel shirt, leathern
 
 JOHN HALFDAY'S ERRAND. 269 
 
 belt and corduroys. He had thrown off his coat and 
 looked well to his shoes, which were broad of sole, 
 yet well fitting his feet ; he had sent Michael flying 
 to his room for a cap in place of the straw hat he 
 usually wore, and now he stood ready for the start, 
 a tall, sinewy, well-knit figure, with energy and 
 determination showing in every line of his face and 
 every motion of his body. 
 
 Old Tilda, unable to bear the strain of curiosity 
 longer, was half-way from the house to the 
 little group of excited people of which her son had 
 been the center. What had Michael done now? the 
 mother asked herself. Had he burned the school- 
 house, out of hatred to his place of torment? a 
 vision of his crime blazed across Tilda's mental 
 horizon, for Michael had made dire threats against 
 school and school-master last winter, when he had 
 been forced to school, despite his age, for he was 
 still almost unable to read. But somehow, as she 
 approached the knot of four earnest people, stand- 
 ing in the garden, Tilda's quick instinct told her 
 that her dwarfish son was rather the subject of 
 approval from his betters than otherwise, and she 
 stood still, watching Sargent as he spoke quietly and 
 earnestly to Judge Sloan and then turned to Barbara 
 for a word before leaving her. The girl's face was 
 trustful, and full of pride as she looked up at her 
 lover. It was an hour of triumph for Michael when, 
 a little later, he stood by Tilda's chair and under 
 maternal authority submitted to her questionings as 
 to what had occurred.
 
 270 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 
 
 As he stepped down upon the walk that led between 
 the flower-beds, Sargent turned a laughing glance 
 back toward Barbara. 4 ' I must hurry, ' ' he said, then 
 walked lightly down the path to the gate and, as 
 soon as he reached the slope outside, went forward 
 at a trot. The girl had walked to the house and 
 stood in the doorway watching him and, though he 
 did not intend it should be so, saw him change his 
 gait as he turned the corner down the roadway. As 
 for him, his heart was full of her and his lungs full 
 of the pure air of the region, and, though he was not 
 assured of the outcome of the run, he felt at least 
 hopeful and resolved. He would do the best he 
 could ! What man so fortunate as to own her would 
 not do the best he could for the creature standing 
 there in the doorway! Before him was the tremen. 
 dous task of a straight-away run of more than ten 
 miles across a wooded and uneven country, the 
 sort of run that has tested all there is in man's 
 physique since the Olympian days, but he was not 
 distressed. He ran easily and smoothly, even after 
 he had reached the first upward slope. He was in 
 fair bodily condition, because of his so recent hard 
 experiences in the far southwest. And, as he 
 increased his pace, he thought of the college races
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 271 
 
 and of how a trained man of his quality should run 
 a mile in at least eight minutes easily. 
 
 But miles are cruel things. It is in the second 
 mile of such rough racing as this that the strongest 
 and best of runners becomes aware that he is run- 
 ning. So after the first up-hill work came the con- 
 sciousness to Sargent, and it came portentously. 
 He knew within a very little time that he had what 
 was very like a headache, that there was a slight 
 pain in his side, that his feet were burning a little 
 and that his eyes seemed dim in a way, while his 
 mouth was becoming dry. But he made the mile in 
 decent time. 
 
 The bodily distresses increased upon him and, 
 while the manhood in him prevented even the slight- 
 est consideration of it, the suggestion developed in 
 his mind that it would be delightful to stop and rest. 
 He had an up-hill run now, and that was trying. 
 He went at it resolutely, but his gait became slower 
 and slower as his energy was expended. The 
 upward reaching space was at least a quarter of a 
 mile and near the top he faltered into a walk and so 
 reached, at last, a long level. As he emerged upon 
 the even space the breath came back to him, and 
 the bodily infirmities decreased because the walk 
 had aided him. Into his mouth came back the 
 moisture which is comfort to the human being. His 
 feet had been dry and burning. They also were 
 now moist again. He was less absorbed in the 
 sensations of his own body and reverted more in 
 thought to what it was all about. He thought of 
 that girl of his whom he had left such a little time 
 
 18 
 
 Lr
 
 272 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 ago standing there in the doorway and he ran 
 faster all across the level and on a downward grade. 
 The grade continued sloping slightly and he 
 freshened at every step. Now that he had compara- 
 tive ease for thinking came keener conceptions in 
 every way and, so, clearer sense of obligation. He 
 worried over the thought of how the Indian might 
 be running. Then in the midst of this anxiety he 
 broke out on an expanse of soggy ground, across 
 which no runner could run with anything like 
 speed. His heart fell then, but there was no paus- 
 ing. At the end of half a mile, after steps light, 
 well placed and leg-straining, he emerged upon an 
 open, rising stretch of solid ground. What a relief 
 it was to feel what was reliable under his feet 
 again! But now the pains came back and all the 
 burnings and thirst. Then over a slight beech- 
 crested rise he looked forward upon what to him 
 seemed more beautiful than had ever appeared such 
 a common thing before. It was nothing but a creek 
 of clear water running straight across his course. 
 Somewhere in the Bible, some fine old fellow uses 
 as an illustration the expression, "As the hart 
 panteth after the water-brooks," but as compared 
 with Sargent, the hart had little of sensation. As 
 he reached that water he plunged into it half knee 
 deep and his feet were new things in a moment. 
 He bent over and with scooping hands laved face 
 and head, and then pulling back his sleeves, thrust 
 his arms half-way to the elbow, down until they 
 rested on the pebbly bottom, and so stood there bent 
 uncouthly upon "all fours" until hands and feet were
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 273 
 
 cooled together. The rest was brief, but when 
 Sargent strode out on the bank something like 
 normal existence had come again. He stood there 
 for a moment, reached up his arms and stretched 
 them outward and said to himself, ' ' I feel almost as 
 if I hadn't been running," and he started off reso- 
 lutely and easily at a dog-trot. 
 
 The course now lay up-hill for half a mile and in 
 the midst of that wearing trot Sargent found that 
 the water in his shoes and stockings made it 
 necessary for him to sit down and wring out those 
 articles of garb. They were heavy as leaden soles 
 upon his feet. He wrung the stockings dry as could 
 be done with his strong hands and put them on 
 again with the drained shoes. Somehow, even after 
 this little rest, he now felt fagged, and finished the 
 up-hill climb in a simple walk. The crest reached, 
 there seemed to come again the vigor of all his man- 
 hood. The water and the walk had freshened him 
 and half his long run was done. 
 
 There was a level stretch now and the big fellow 
 inhaled a deep breath and started out upon what was 
 like running again. There was a course of a mile 
 where the obstacles were but slight and the man 
 thought as he ran how easy it would be to beat the 
 Indian if the cross country forest route were all like 
 this. He ran this mile in admirable time, but as he 
 neared the pine-gladed end and saw another hill 
 before him in the distance, there came that sinking of 
 the heart, or, to speak with more absolute correctness, 
 that apparent sinking of the stomach which runners 
 know so well. The straining man was worried.
 
 274 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 The physical was attacking the mental with all its 
 force, and Sargent wondered if he mightn't gain 
 even something by a little rest. Then came to him 
 the thought of the fair woman and of all he was 
 running for and of what would follow if he should 
 fail. There came, too, an undercurrent of some- 
 thing of the athlete's pride and he thought of the 
 contempt in which he himself had always held any 
 one who is designated in the language of the race- 
 courses, and even of college athletics, as "a quitter." 
 He struggled forward at a reasonable speed. For 
 the first half mile it was level and then the man 
 found that he was going down-hill at a slope greater 
 than he had yet encountered, and knew that the 
 down-hill course he must now take would be more 
 killing than even the up-hill struggle. For the first 
 time he dropped from toe running to what racers 
 call the flat-foot, that is, dropping from the spring 
 of the toe to the more resisting flat of the entire 
 sole. Then came the inevitable which must always 
 come somewhere in a ten mile race of a man across 
 rough country. Sargent may have been more or 
 less wise in the things he had done in the first half of 
 his body and mind distressing race. It may have 
 been that he was wise or unwise in walking into the 
 creek and, after what he did, getting the cool com- 
 fort from head to heel which came from the creek's 
 waters. But almost any woman servant can wring 
 out a stocking or anything else better than any man 
 can and this includes Csesar and George Washing- 
 ton, and any one else one can think of and so this 
 strong man, this keen man, this brown man who
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 275 
 
 had handled other men for years, this man who was 
 exerting himself for the one woman as every good 
 man ought to do, felt that in the matter of wring- 
 ing out his stockings he hadn't accomplished all the 
 ends which might possibly be desired, and there 
 came across his forehead the perspiration which was 
 the result of what began with being an annoyance 
 and was reaching the dignity of being a torture. The 
 stockings clung clammily, there was an abrasion 
 between them and the linings of his shoes and he 
 knew and feared, from experience, before he felt 
 what was coming, that the now tender skin of the 
 soles of his feet was, by this shifting abrasion, being 
 scraped away to rawness. His shoes slipped back- 
 ward and forward beneath his feet in a little way, 
 but sufficient, with all the wetting and the heating 
 of the running, to cut away that good hard callous 
 which comes alike upon the soles of the greatest 
 statesman, philosopher or poet, or of the most 
 delicate woman who ever trod the earth, though 
 violets might scarcely bend beneath her step. It is 
 exceedingly hard, this particular sort of pain, upon a 
 man, for no man, big and strong though he be, bears 
 these sorts of the more commonplace agonies as 
 well as the weakest woman ; but he straightened out 
 upon his toes again and so saved a little of the 
 suffering. He weaved a little as he ran and worried 
 over the time lost 
 
 Then came a time when physical and mental 
 stress were nearly alike. This was, though Sargent 
 knew very little of it, so far as definite knowledge 
 of distances went, somewhere about the beginning
 
 276 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 of the eighth mile of his long run ; there was still a 
 slope downward and he drew in his breath and tried 
 to feel what was in his muscles again and exerted 
 what energy he had in covering ground until the rise 
 began. He knew now that whatever his opponent 
 might be doing, either one of them could not be at 
 a running gait save for a portion of the time, 
 though the Indian might trot. There was a half 
 mile of this good work with lungs and mouth and 
 feet all in tolerably good condition, until he faced a 
 steep uprising hill again. The very sight of the hill 
 seemed to affect the mental condition of the man. 
 The headache came back. The feet, under the 
 rasping of the wetted, half dried stockings, were but 
 raw things on their soles. Everything bore upon 
 him, and he was beginning to give out. There must 
 come a time when any man who ever lived and 
 fought or ran, whether for fame or money or a 
 woman, must feel himself beginning to give out. 
 Still, though his physical machinery was weakening, 
 the mental powers of the man were in good working 
 order. He staggered up the hill and wished he 
 could "kick" himself for being such a weakling. 
 He used bad language to himself. He wondered 
 why he hadn't kept himself in better trim though 
 there was no particular reason why he should have 
 done so and, in a general way, made little of the 
 person he was. He thought of how much better 
 bursts of speed he had made in college days over 
 even rougher ground, and became even more enraged 
 at himself and used more bad language, from the 
 stomach if language may originate there.
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 277 
 
 Then came a level stretch again and the foolish 
 fellow's mind cleared and he began again to know 
 what he was doing. He had sense enough, even 
 after all that tapping of his physical resources and 
 its effect upon his mind, to remember that his forces 
 should be conserved and, even when he again came 
 upon the level, attempted no great burst of speed. 
 He ran steadily, evenly, but within limits, for all 
 there was in him as long as the level lasted. Then 
 came to him the queer feeling which comes to 
 runners of long distances. He felt as if his arms 
 and his feet were dropping off. There was some- 
 thing the matter with the joints. The muscles 
 around where they worked seemed too flexile and 
 flaccid and his limbs departing from his body. 
 There was something the matter, too, with the 
 muscles of the top of the spinal column, for his head 
 lopped forward as he ran. And still he maintained 
 his speed. 
 
 Suddenly, the man emerged upon the crest of a 
 hill from which were slopes far down into a 
 pleasant valley where nestled a little northern town, 
 with its two church spires and its somewhat pre- 
 posterous court house dome, the court house being 
 in the center of what was known as the "City 
 Square," and surrounded by a stiff board fence 
 about seven feet in height, the sole entrance to this 
 square being upon the eastern side, opening thus 
 from what was recognized as the main thorough- 
 fare, because assuredly the best boots and the best 
 whisky could be bought along that single block. 
 Here, in open sight, was the goal of the running
 
 278 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 man. It was there before his eyes and he was run- 
 ning down-hill again, and this time as he ran down- 
 ward there was very little imagination about it when 
 he thought to himself that there were no soles upon 
 his feet. With the attrition of all this varying 
 striding, his feet were skinned, and but for the 
 excitement upon him, he would have been suffering 
 one of the various forms of torture such as were 
 devised in mediaeval times. But he scarcely knew 
 it. He saw the town in the distance and he had an 
 object. Take a strong man and some excitement 
 and some water and a woman to win, and what that 
 man may or may not do depends upon accidents 
 and the man. As he ran, Sargent knew that the 
 bottom of his feet were raw, that the stockings he 
 wore were now sticking to them and now pulling 
 away, and again came to him the feeling that his 
 arms and legs were unconnected with the rest of his 
 body. Another odd feeling came to him. His head 
 was like a furnace, and he imagined foolish things. 
 He imagined the road suddenly lifting itself up at a 
 hard angle in front of him, and then, too, he had 
 great difficulty in avoiding stumps and trees which 
 existed nowhere in the vicinity. It seemed all 
 right in a way, even the passage through these 
 varying things, but there came suddenly a gulp in 
 the throat of the man as he ran and a sort of quiver 
 through him, and he was scared. He was scared, 
 not for himself, that is as to whether he were dying 
 or not, but whether or not he could be a "quitter." 
 As he stumbled down the path way, for it was little 
 more than stumbling now, he came upon a spring
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 279 
 
 and had at least sense enough, or if not sense, 
 instinct left to throw himself beside it and bathe his 
 head and hands. Then came sudden reasoning 
 power again and comprehensiveness of all surround- 
 ings. Tottering somewhat, he resumed his course 
 and came out upon the open. The little town lay 
 before him to the east. He glanced around and 
 across and there, to the south, he saw, as he emerged 
 from the woods, the Indian, John Halfday, who had 
 issued from the forest at the same moment and who 
 stood looking at him, poised and astonished. There 
 they stood, the white man and the Indian, at the two 
 corners of an equilateral triangle. At the other 
 corner stood the court house, with the opening of its 
 high board fence on the Indian's side. 
 
 The two men, the white and the red, looking at 
 each other across the valley, knew what each must 
 try to do. The amount of time lost then would 
 have to be considered by the finest of stop-watches. 
 They simply hurled themselves down their respect- 
 ive hills together, each thinking and thinking 
 "mighty hard" in his own way. 
 
 It is very doubtful if, since the world began, a 
 man ever really knew when he had "given out," as 
 we would call it. Sargent had thought that he had 
 given out at three or four places during the 
 tremendous run, and, assuredly, he thought he was 
 exhausted when he reached the crest of the round 
 ridge surrounding the little town. But it never 
 occurred to this man who threw himself down the 
 hill that he was exhausted at all ; it never occurred 
 to him that he had been running for some distance
 
 280 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 on this particular day. And here comes in an odd 
 thing. It may be to his credit or to his discredit, 
 but as he ran he forgot that he was running for a 
 woman or for right or for anything in particular. 
 There but uprose in him in this last great strait and 
 strain of his exertion of all that was in him the one 
 feeling, which the Berserker knew, which the 
 Anglo-Saxons know and have in them to-day, the 
 feeling simply that the other fellow must be beaten. 
 And this was all that Sargent thought, and even 
 that he thought but vaguely, as he burst down the 
 hill toward that brown board fence. 
 
 Good running did that Indian as well, and he 
 knew the town and knew what he had to do. There 
 was just what might be called a streak of Indian 
 from the forest clear down to where the court 
 house square was, and each yard's advance of his 
 opponent was noticed by Sargent in his run. And 
 now, after all distress, his mind suddenly seemed 
 clarified. He gauged relative paces. He knew 
 that the Indian entering at the east gate and the 
 only gate at the Court House Square must reach the 
 Recorder's office before he could, by keen running, 
 straight away. Were it not for the high board 
 fence he had a chance. Oh, for a vaulting pole! 
 But wherever in a town of northern Michigan are 
 vaulting poles lacking? The pike poles of the 
 lumberman and the loggers lie all about, and upon 
 one of these the eyes of the fortunate runner 
 alighted. He seized upon it, and the uplifting leap 
 as he cleared that great board fence was the last 
 great effort of his long race. He fell in a heap
 
 THE FOOT RACE. 281 
 
 among some clover, fell in a heap and scrambled up 
 clumsily with bumble-bees about him, and little more 
 than stumbled through the court house door and 
 into the Recorder's office. 
 
 "This for record " he almost croaked. "Look 
 at the clock!" 
 
 There was what seemed but a shadow in the 
 hallway, and John Half day leaped in. He looked 
 about, said nothing, and then with a grunt laid a 
 paper on the nearest desk and walked out again.
 
 282 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ROSE IN BLOOM. 
 
 "And the world went very well then." Slowly 
 the belated summer fared northward; the tender 
 leaves of the maples, shaped as if patterned by the 
 fantastic hand of some artist of the exotic East, 
 were approaching their climax of beauty ; the beech 
 leaves were unrolled, and as their early red tints 
 vanished there came to them a color so delicate, so 
 refined and ideal, that looking at the sky through 
 the branches they lived upon, the heart of the forest 
 lover was exalted, so potent was their story of 
 vigorous young life. 
 
 "To call those trees green, and the sky behind 
 them blue, ' ' said Barbara, as she stood with Sargent 
 wondering over the beauty of a grove of beeches 
 outlined against the pure sky of morning, "is an 
 evil misuse of words. " And as Sargent assented, 
 she continued : "In nothing is language so poverty- 
 stricken as in its attempts at color description. The 
 poets are driven to the flowers or birds to nature 
 for words which give only a dim idea of what colors 
 really are. ' ' 
 
 "And so we have 'daffodil skies' and 'violet eyes' 
 and 'saffron dyes'," chimed in Sargent, but Barbara 
 stopped him with an imperious wave of the hand. 
 
 "I hope you are not 'dropping into poetry,' or
 
 ROSE IN BLOOM. 283 
 
 trying to do so on your own account. If you are I 
 warn you from the set of rhymes you are trespassing 
 on! They belong to the Queen!" 
 
 "What Queen? I acknowledge but one, and what 
 is mine is hers and what is hers is mine, ' ' the lover 
 answered. 
 
 "Oh! but you are a true and loyal subject to this 
 Queen!" insisted Barbara. "I have only to name 
 her Titania!" 
 
 "Of course," admitted Sargent, "and you are 
 thinking of that reaching, imperfect perfection of a 
 speech of hers, where at first the rhyme is to the eyes 
 and not to the ears, and then there is a jar at the 
 end of one line a discord, to make the coming 
 music sweeter. ' ' 
 
 "I am sure that is one of the things that has 
 always stuck fast in your memory, as it has in 
 mine!" cried Barbara, for in such discoveries of 
 common tastes and delights the two always reveled. 
 And they chanted together like two children the 
 sometimes almost cloying sweetness of the Poet of 
 all human passions as well as of the most unearthly 
 fairy fancies: 
 
 "Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
 With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries, 
 The honey-bags steal from the bumblebees ; 
 And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, 
 And light them at the fiery glowworm's eyes, 
 To have my love to bed and to arise ; 
 And pluck the wings from painted butterflies 
 To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes, 
 Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies." 
 
 They strolled into the deeper woods, along the
 
 284 THE LAUNCHING OF A MAN. 
 
 creek, and, after a little silence, when the song- was 
 ended, Sargent returned to the attack Barbara had 
 begun on words. 
 
 "They are almost good for nothing," he declared; 
 "in any stress of feeling they are useless. In 
 love" 
 
 "Then why say anything?" interrupted the girl, 
 who foresaw the coming homily and anticipated its 
 conclusion by promptly getting ready to be kissed, 
 and in this important transaction they agreed that 
 there was no inadequacy or disappointment. 
 
 Then the two sat down by the stream under the 
 trees and watched the water slipping over the 
 brown stones in sunlight and shadow. From the 
 hill rising near them, where lay the spring which 
 fed the creek, they could hear the sighing of the 
 pines ; an undertone deeper than the rustling sound 
 of the trees above their heads. It was a time of 
 measureless content; of reverential happiness too 
 deep for speech, and there was silence for a space 
 between these two who usually had so much to say 
 to each other. 
 
 At last from fullness of heart spoke one, and there 
 came from the other reply so apt in tone, in feeling 
 and thought and word, that to the keen comprehen- 
 sion of one who could understand, no earthly music 
 could compare with such harmony. 
 
 They spoke of their coming life together, of what 
 they hoped to do for each other and for the great, 
 beautiful world which held them, and as they rose 
 to turn their steps homeward, Sargent repeated to 
 Barbara the words of the Odyssey: "For there is
 
 ROSE IN BLOOM. 285 
 
 nothing mightier and nobler than when man and 
 wife are of one heart and mind in a house, a grief to 
 their foes, and to their friends great joy, but their 
 own hearts know it best. ' ' 
 
 As they reached the house the lovers paused by 
 the door, and Sargent looked closely at the climbing 
 rose vine which clambered over the rough logs on 
 either side, sending out vigorous sprays tipped with 
 buds. It was the beautiful Michigan Rose, whose 
 pink, five-petaled blossoms, growing in great 
 clusters, he had been waiting for longingly because 
 of the promise of a certain Beautiful Lady who was 
 never far from his thoughts. "It blossoms late in 
 this 'northe countree," " he complained, while 
 Barbara showed the true rose color in her loving 
 face. "But it must blossom!" he declared, tri- 
 umphantly. 
 
 A few mornings later Judge Sloan looked up as 
 Sargent's shadow darkened the open doorway where 
 the morning sun shone in. The young man was 
 coming in from the garden, looking for Barbara, 
 who was not yet downstairs. 
 
 "Why do you look so buoyant?" asked the elder 
 man, smiling as he noted the sparkling eyes and 
 springing aspect of his guest. Sargent had in his 
 hand a blossoming spray of half-opened roses. 
 They were pink, five petaled, and growing upon a 
 long, thickly leaved stem. He held it up for the 
 Judge to see. 
 
 "The Rose is in bloom," he said. 
 
 THE END.
 
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