2 98 =
 
 
 '.:'
 
 ROME . . . GAVE HIS FIRST PERFORMANCE (page 148)
 
 ROMAN 
 B I Z N E T 
 
 By GEORGIA WOOD PANGBOBN 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUQHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 tbe RmewiDe press, CambriDge 
 
 1902
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY GEORGIA WOOD PANGBORN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Publishtd April, igoa
 
 TO 
 
 M. C. W. 
 
 2137679
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE GRASSHOPPERS 3 
 
 n. AT THE HOP-HOUSE 9 
 
 HI. THE HOUSE OF THE ANT 14 
 
 IV. AJLPHONSINE 17 
 
 V. ANTOINE DEPARTS 23 
 
 VI. DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME .... 28 
 
 VII. KITTY ENTERS GOOD SOCIETY .... 41 
 
 Vin. A MARCH MORNINQ 51 
 
 IX. THE LORD INDICATES A DUTY FOR Miss TRACY. 60 
 
 X. BESSIE HEATHWAY'S ANXIETIES ... 67 
 
 XI. FAMEUSE APPLES AND THE LOUP-OAROU . . 72 
 
 XIL "UNNECESSARY" 81 
 
 PART H 
 
 I. ROMAN BIZNET is "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" . 105 
 
 n. BEHIND THE WISTARIA VINE .... 125 
 
 III. A CROP OF DANDELIONS 137 
 
 IV. PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST . . 151 
 V. ROMAN BIZNET'S AMENDMENT .... 165 
 
 VI. ADLOR ENCOUNTERS THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN . 174 
 
 VII. MIDSUMMER MADNESS 185 
 
 VIII. AFTER THE STORM 196 
 
 IX. KITTY AND THE FORNARINA 204 
 
 X. " Two NATURES WAR WITHIN us " . . . 211 
 XL A PRECEDENT WHICH DOES NOT APPLY . . 225 
 XII. A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE .... 233 
 XIII. KITTY CONTO'S HERESY AND A STRANGE VIO- 
 LINIST -. 246 
 
 XTV. KITTY SOLVES HER PROBLEM . . . "" . 255 
 
 XV. DOCTOR WINTHROP CONSIDERS AN ALLEGORY . 264
 
 PART I
 
 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE GRASSHOPPEBS 
 
 THE Biznets came to Cosmos at hop-picking 
 time, seeking Alphonsine Conto, like two unprofit- 
 able grasshoppers coming to an ant at the end of 
 summer. 
 
 Tony Biznet, frayed and gaunt, carried a fiddle, 
 that instrument of grasshoppers ; his walk, too, 
 had a light, wiry swing, more like the motion of 
 insect legs than the muscular plod of vertebrates. 
 The boy trotted along so close under the elbow 
 encircling the violin that he banged his head 
 against it now and then. 
 
 It was late twilight, a day and a night having 
 elapsed in their journey from the country of the 
 habitants. But they went now at a better pace, 
 for when they started Phoebe Biznet was with 
 them, and now they had left her, some five miles 
 back, with moles, squirrels, owls, falling leaves; 
 with some inches' depth of black earth to protect 
 her from the night and whatever might prowl in 
 it. She had always been afraid of night and lone- 
 liness ; her timidity in this particular so annoying
 
 4 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Antoine that he had tried to beat it out of her, 
 this being what made it necessary, in the end, to 
 leave her behind, with a covering of earth and 
 leaves. 
 
 Although his mother had often told him this 
 thing was bound to happen some time, now that it 
 was accomplished, Roman Biznet was put in great 
 doubt and dismay. Yet, since she could fore- 
 tell it, it must have been one of those inevitable 
 things which it is unreasonable to object to, like 
 weather or white whiskey ; and if one can't avoid 
 an unpleasant thing, it is best to be philosophical 
 about it; then, too, if one's grandmother was a 
 squaw, she probably had much to be philosophical 
 about, which makes it easier for her posterity to 
 be so. 
 
 He and his mother had accepted life and An- 
 toine without much comment, although Phoebe had 
 sometimes referred to a happy childhood in terms 
 that seemed to imply regret and desire for change. 
 One night Antoine was hunting them both with a 
 carving knife, an unusual state of affairs, for as 
 a rule Phoebe was a fugitive alone, while Antoine 
 kept the boy by him as an equal, a partisan, an 
 audience for his fiddle, since he knew enough to 
 be silent, while Phoebe talked or laughed or cried, 
 and paid no attention to fine passages. But that 
 night Roman Biznet had suggested that he would 
 like to play the fiddle himself, which was not to be 
 thought of; and they had hidden among some 
 stacked hop-poles, where it was quiet, warm, and 
 comfortable. There was something homelike and
 
 THE GRASSHOPPERS 5 
 
 consolatory in the wigwam shape of the stacked 
 poles, although they had no knowledge of wig- 
 wams; but if one's ancestors have lived in such 
 since foxes had holes and birds of the air nests, 
 hop-poles, indistinctly cone-shaped in the starlight, 
 must seem a natural sanctuary. 
 
 Antoine having gone back to his whiskey blano 
 and his fiddle, Phrabe had talked to the boy until 
 after cock-crow about a glorious place called Cos- 
 mos, where was much food and but little whiskey 
 blanc. Everybody was young there, and happy, 
 the women having beautiful dresses and dancing 
 much of the time ; and there was an event called 
 the County Fair, during which Antoine had once 
 played for the dancing. In this strange town even 
 Antoine had seemed a pretty good fellow. 
 
 Phoebe also told of a woman who lived there, 
 large, strong, and kind, to whom Phoebe said she 
 would go some day and take Eoman with her. 
 But now it was Antoine who was taking him, and 
 this did not seem fair or reasonable, to leave 
 Phoabe behind in the way they had done and then 
 to seek out Phosbe's sister. 
 
 "I'm tired." 
 
 Eoman Biznet sat down in front of his father 
 like a period. It never paid to argue a matter 
 with Antoine. That was where Phoebe had made 
 so many mistakes. If one merely did a thing as a 
 matter of course, it was likely to pass unnoticed. 
 Antoine's long legs skipped over him before their 
 momentum could be arrested. 
 
 "Sacre-edam!"
 
 6 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 He poised an instant on one foot, gesticulat- 
 ing suggestively at the period with the other, but 
 thought better of it and scratched the calf of his 
 leg instead. He peered uncertainly at the with- 
 ered bushes either side of the narrow road, south- 
 ward where a planet, in the direction of Cosmos, 
 was like a window light, but not backward, where 
 Canada was a purple bank of cloud between the 
 faded red bands of the sunset and the St. Law- 
 rence. Antoine vaguely suspected that he might 
 as well ask alms of the planet itself as of the 
 homely gleam of his sister-in-law's window. It is 
 a sordid world. 
 
 " But we can't get anything to eat here." 
 
 His voice was rasping, as one would expect of a 
 grasshopper houseless on frosty nights, but there 
 was a certain deference in his tone, as to an equal. 
 
 The period said nothing, but curled itself into a 
 rounder and more invincible full stop. Antoine 
 shuffled uneasily from one tired foot to the other. 
 But Hermes, god of grasshoppers, is a kindly 
 deity. Something within the brush fidgeted on a 
 branch, saying querulously to its fellow, " Tut, 
 tut ! Don't crowd so ! " 
 
 Antoine glided into the bushes, first placing 
 the violin, with threatening pantomime, at the 
 foot of a tree. The boy swiftly unhooked the bat- 
 tered case and poked his fingers among the 
 strings, carefully as one touches the hand of a 
 sleeping baby in its cradle, coaxing tiny guitar 
 sounds from it; grinning widely and defiantly 
 into the bushes, whence came stifled squawks.
 
 THE GRASSHOPPERS 7 
 
 When Antoine returned, two limp bunches of 
 feathers dangling from his hand, the violin was 
 as he had left it, his son still coiled in the mid- 
 dle of the road, staring moodily southward at the 
 thickening darkness. 
 
 "You've been at it!" 
 
 " Tiens ! " said the boy quietly, without turning 
 his head. 
 
 Antoine stepped forward, hesitated, then opened 
 the case, and looked at the fiddle. This reassured 
 him, and they amicably sought a near-by field, peo- 
 pled with ghostly stacks of corn and scattered 
 pumpkins, made a fire of pilfered rails, and in it 
 placed the chickens, rolled up in balls of mud. 
 These, with a few ears of corn, so old and dry that 
 none but the emptiest stomach could have consid- 
 ered them, and some bellefleur apples, stolen by 
 the boy while his father prepared the rest of the 
 dinner, soon made a better meal than the ant was 
 wont to set upon her table. They cracked open 
 the mud balls, out of which the chickens popped 
 clean and featherless, like nut-meats from their 
 shells, and they ate without salt and picked the 
 bones. 
 
 Sitting crosslegged by the fire, watching it with 
 their glowing black eyes, they laid aside tempo- 
 rarily the armed neutrality in which they were 
 journeying, and munched apples good-naturedly. 
 Antoine lit his pipe, and the boy, producing a 
 corncob pipe of his own make, received enough 
 tobacco, so that when he had pieced it out with 
 corn-husk shreds he enjoyed a full-fledged smoke.
 
 8 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Wat you gon do in Cosmos ? " he asked at 
 last with a judicial air. 
 
 Antoine puffed languidly, taking counsel of the 
 lurid coals ; his face, as the red light played upon 
 it, seemed quiet and gentle enough, but the boy set 
 his little lips grimly on the stem of his pipe as he 
 watched him. 
 
 " Wat you gon do in Cosmos, hein ? " he re- 
 peated peremptorily. 
 
 Antoine roused slightly, glancing at his son in 
 an absent-minded way. 
 
 " Do ? Oh, get a job, I suppose." 
 
 "Fiddling?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Wat if Phosy ain't there? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Me, I 'm gon to school." 
 
 " Suit yourself." 
 
 Antoine took the fiddle from its case and began 
 to play, knowing that he could thus melt his son's 
 unpleasantly practical humor; and as he played 
 a listener, understanding the ways of the world, 
 would have wondered why this man need find him- 
 self poor and ragged. 
 
 Roman Biznet cuddled into a posture whence he 
 could watch his father, the fire, the stars, while 
 puffing his pipe. 
 
 They did not sleep that night, but went on in an 
 hour or so. At sunrise they breakfasted on what 
 apples were left, and crawled into a thicket close 
 by a noisy little brook to sleep for the day.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AT THE HOP-HOUSE 
 
 IT rained on them, a drizzle that the trees would 
 have kept out a week before. But the trees were 
 going suddenly brown and threadbare. Antoine 
 slept, snoring in an unlovely manner, his loose red 
 lips open, a frown on his low forehead, which was 
 wrinkled in three furrows from temple to temple, 
 the lax skin permitting him to bristle his scalp 
 when angry, as a dog raises his hackles. 
 
 The boy kept awake, shivering, his face turned 
 toward Canada through the gray rain. Once he 
 went back to the road, and stood so long in the 
 chilly mud, looking toward the north, that he had 
 much ado to get his feet from the sucking mire, 
 when he gave it up at last, and went back to his 
 father. 
 
 At twilight the ceasing of the rain and a dis- 
 mal flare of crimson in the west roused them, as 
 normal creatures are roused at sunrise, and they 
 tramped on so nimbly that at ten o'clock they 
 reached the outskirts of Cosmos, and ate their 
 supper, sitting on a barren hill whose sand had 
 drunk up the day's rain and still was thirsty. The 
 town's lights were already winking out one by one. 
 Beneath was a valley, and a prosperous hop-yard 
 in it, half harvested. The hop-house window was
 
 10 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 alight, the sounds that came up proving the hop- 
 pickers not too tired with their day's work for 
 merrymaking. Somebody was playing on a comb, 
 and the raucous rasping of it was as if an ill- 
 advised katydid were trying a new tune and mak- 
 ing bad work of it. Feet were pounding rhythmi- 
 cally like the drumming of a piston; "thumpty, 
 thumpty, thumpty." At intervals a nasal voice 
 called off figures. 
 
 Antoine grinned. " I bet I^hosy 's there.'* 
 
 He grew suddenly sober and scratched his head, 
 taking off his hat for the purpose, and cast a side- 
 long look at the small hunched shoulders of his 
 son. Something in the expression of that little 
 back did not please him, and he burst violently 
 into a long anatomical lecture about the various 
 things he would do to the boy if he failed to keep 
 his mouth shut. But the contemptuous shoulders 
 seemed no wise impressed. 
 
 Antoine faltered in the middle of a swear word, 
 and filled his pipe with unsteady fingers. " You 
 you don't want your father hung, do you, Romy ? " 
 
 " I don't mind." 
 
 " Anyhow, I did n't do anything, or I did n't 
 mean to, and it would just make your Aunt Phosy 
 feel bad. What 's the use ? " 
 
 " Oh, well," assented his son carelessly, " I guess 
 maybe I won't tell, but you got to behave your- 
 self." 
 
 " Oh, that 's all right," said Antoine heartily, 
 drawing upon the red glow of his pipe. " Don't 
 you worry about that." He clapped his son's
 
 AT THE HOP-HOUSE 11 
 
 shoulders affectionately, and then examined the 
 violin to see what harm had come to it in the rain. 
 The air was growing dry and cold, and she might 
 come out of her case presently. 
 
 But the boy had no desire to hear his father's 
 fiddle whine that night. He had visions of mo- 
 therly women, with the smell of cooking about 
 their calico wrappers ; of boys of his own age, peo- 
 ple who knew nothing about music ; and the racket 
 in the hop-house pleased his ear ; the gleaming red 
 window drew him like an inquisitive moth. 
 
 The window was high, but a beam had been 
 braced against that side of the house to correct a 
 tumble-down tendency, and up this Roman Biznet 
 scrambled until he could look in. As he knotted 
 himself about the beam, the dancers were dwin- 
 dling, leaving only a woman, whose long 'black hair 
 switched in a braid below her waist, instructing a 
 tiny girl in a species of clog dance, something 
 with a shuffle and a kick and a stamp, most em- 
 phatic in its rhythm ; the child, screaming with 
 delight, jumped up and down and crosswise all out 
 of time, while the woman's face was as sober and 
 anxious as if it had been a sewing instead of a 
 dancing lesson. 
 
 The comb-player, a withered old Frenchman, 
 slapped the floor with his great feet in time with 
 his music. Mothers of families were fastening 
 quilts and blankets to the beams to shut in their 
 own particular households for the night, and gos- 
 siped among the draperies with cheerful nasal 
 twang.
 
 12 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Hi, Phosy Conto, you 'n' your li'P gal gon danse 
 all night ? I can't sleep, me. Gimme my comb, 
 you Pete." 
 
 A withered face poked out from a tattered quilt. 
 The comb-player meekly wiped his instrument with 
 the paper which had been wrapped about it, and 
 delivered it to the outstretched hand. Phosy Conto 
 tossed her head and pinned up her own blankets, 
 still keeping up a dancing motion as she worked, 
 while the little girl played bear with the old woman 
 who had objected. 
 
 The boy at the window flattened his nose against 
 the glass, and grinned wistfully. So that was his 
 Tante Phosy, for there could not be two of that 
 name, so tall and strong and good-natured, and 
 there was something about her a film of likeness 
 which eluded the eye if one looked at her feature 
 by feature which made her Phrebe's sister with- 
 out a doubt. 
 
 The room was resonant with nasal speech and 
 laughter. But they were suddenly frozen and si- 
 lent, their cheerful faces bleak with fear. From 
 somewhere at the edge of the night outside, a thin 
 blade of sound cut through their noise, a shrill and 
 desolate cry, which might have been the dreary 
 hoot of an owl, but was not ; nor was it the howl of 
 a dog. A human creature frightened and hurt 
 might wail like that, and yet it was hardly human. 
 
 " Qu'est-ce que c'est ? " somebody whispered 
 with stiff lips. 
 
 " Chat ! " 
 
 " Pas de tout, de tout ! "
 
 AT THE HOP-HOUSE 13 
 
 "Los'bebe?" 
 
 " Squire Heathway's bloodhound." 
 
 " Non, c'est une femme. Elle pleure." 
 
 " Loup-garou ! " 
 
 The last opinion seemed to meet the assent of 
 the crowd. There was a hissing intake of breath. 
 Mothers picked up whimpering children. Men 
 tried to get behind each other. 
 
 The boy, flattened to his beam, shook with tearful 
 laughter. He slid down backward as a cat comes 
 down a tree, and ran quickly through the sandy 
 mud. He feared pursuit. There had been a red- 
 haired man who did not shake like the rest, and he 
 had pulled on his boots while the others shivered. 
 
 The door of the hop-house banged behind him ; 
 Pete Mountain's boots were on, and he was com- 
 ing to see about that loup-garou. Roman Biznet 
 rushed to his father then, and cuffed him on the 
 ears. 
 
 " Va-t-en, you old crapaud ! " 
 
 Antoine paused long enough in his artistic en- 
 joyment to hear Pete Mountain's approaching steps, 
 then grunted and quietly put the violin in its case, 
 even polishing the bow, so nonchalant was he, and 
 the two faded gently away.
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE ANT 
 
 THE house of the ant, little, gray with weather, 
 lay with others like it at the base of a barren shoul- 
 der of a hill, but higher up than its fellows, with 
 an aloofness that was partly a mental attitude, Al- 
 phonsine St. Luce Conto being an aristocrat. 
 
 She could neither read nor write, though she 
 knew which side up to hold her prayer-book, and 
 when to turn the leaves as the priest read. Her 
 great-grandfather had been " Paris French ; " and 
 according to most emphatic tradition, this gentle- 
 man had been a marquis in his day, riding about 
 the streets of Paris in a golden coach. Afterward 
 he rode as complacently in a tumbril, with other 
 seigneurs, when tumbrils replaced golden coaches 
 as the proper thing. It was then that St. Luce 
 fils, escaping by some one of the romantic devices 
 described in the many stories of that time, came to 
 America, married a squaw, a chief's daughter, and 
 shared his father-in-law's wigwam. The next gen- 
 eration settled down in St. Regis and degenerated, 
 after the manner of half-breeds. 
 
 But the golden coach was kept bright in their 
 memories, if becoming somewhat hazy, like a solar 
 myth, from much imagining. Alphonsine rocked 
 Kitty Conto to sleep with a drowsy but gorgeous
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE ANT 15 
 
 tale of a magnificent gentleman who wore a stove- 
 pipe hat daily, whose trousers were creased ac- 
 curately, like Squire Heathway's, who kept two 
 washerwomen busy, being dainty beyond belief 
 about his linen. And the diamond studs in his 
 shirt bosom were as big and bright as the jewels 
 on Victoria's crown. If Alphonsine had one of 
 those, it was n't a dye-shop she and Kitty would 
 be having ; it was a house as big as the Protestant 
 church ; and Miss Emily Tracy and Mrs. Heathway 
 would be coming to take tea with them every night. 
 And dolls ? And dolls as big as Kitty's self. And 
 a liT p'tit rocking chair ? Mais oui, twenty liT 
 p'tit rocking chairs. And a liT p'tit chicken for 
 the ole yellow hen ? Yes, as many liT chickens as 
 the ole yellow hen could ask for. 
 
 There was a suggestion of ancient grandeur about 
 the dye-shop. One might even fancy a certain 
 military glory redivivus in the swinging cloths, like 
 banners, dripping red as blood, or yellow as lemons, 
 or blue as turquoise. The drip of many colors on 
 the absorbent pine floor stained it richly, although 
 pans were put beneath the drip and every new slop 
 was greeted with outcry and wiped up at once. But 
 for this prompt polishing, the effect would doubt- 
 less have been dingy, but with it, at least ac- 
 cording to Kitty, one might play at walking 
 about on sunset clouds. 
 
 It was after Alphonsine became a widow, Ba'tiste 
 having gone to Purgatory with great suddenness 
 in the ruck of a log jam one spring, that she de- 
 cided to rise in the social scale for Kitty's sake.
 
 16 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Ba'tiste had been no good until he saved a little 
 French village with his life, and Alphonsine had 
 supported her husband and baby up to that time 
 by washing. It was surprising how large a part of 
 the population of Cosmos wore linen of her whiten- 
 ing. There was the power of a steam laundry in 
 those mighty arms. Cosmos pleaded and almost 
 wept when it occurred to her that the daughter of 
 a dyer of cloth could meet the world with a prouder 
 face than the daughter of a washer of soiled linen. 
 
 There was less money in dyeing, to be sure, but 
 one had to sacrifice something to family tradition. 
 The old marquis, she was positive, would have ap- 
 proved the dye-shop. 
 
 This was the house, then, that the Biznets came 
 to on leaving the hop-yard, Antoine nonchalantly 
 picking the lock, which yielded as if to a master 
 key. 
 
 Even before striking a light they sniffed out all 
 the provisions, placing them together in the mid- 
 dle of the kitchen table. They made a brisk fire, 
 and cooked everything, just for the joy of smelling 
 it, and looking upon it when they could eat no 
 more. Then leaving the dishes soiled and scat- 
 tered, the stove greasy and strewn with ashes, they 
 curled up snugly in Phosy's trim bed, a frouzy 
 black head in the middle of each crisp pillow sham, 
 and slept as only weary grasshoppers can sleep, 
 who, after a desolate march, come upon warmth 
 for their idle legs and food for their empty craws.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ALPHONSINE 
 
 LATE in the next afternoon, Alphonsine re- 
 turned, she and Kitty having left the wagon of 
 hop-pickers in the valley. It was a fair warm day, 
 ripe with the odor of red and yellow leaves shrivel- 
 ing in the sun. They came slowly along the wind- 
 ing lane, for Kitty had to go through the deepest 
 places in the rustling drifts of leaves, becoming 
 delightfully lost and overwhelmed therein, for she 
 was a little body, doing all things with enthusiasm. 
 In her red calico slip, she might have been the 
 genius of all red maple leaves. 
 
 They rounded a hillock, whence they should have 
 seen their little house demurely shuttered and 
 locked, but it was wide open to the western sun- 
 shine, the grasshoppers sunning in the doorway. 
 
 Kitty whimpered. Alphonsine stood with fallen 
 jaw and angry eye. " My Lord ! It 's dat Tony 
 Biznet, come back lak one chicken for roost! 
 Were'sPhoabe?" 
 
 Antoine looked mournful, saying nothing, but 
 staring at the ground in an effective way. His 
 eyelids blinked rapidly, as if winking away tears ; 
 but once, in his youth, an angry abbe had said, 
 " I can always tell when you are lying, my son, for 
 your eyelids quiver as if you were facing a strong 
 light."
 
 18 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 The boy looked his aunt over slowly and com- 
 prehensively. Phosy turned upon him fiercely. 
 
 " Were 's you mere ? " 
 
 " Morte," answered the boy. 
 
 Phosy stood quite still and expressionless, and 
 there was no sound but the rustle of leaves about 
 her. Then she threw her apron over her head, 
 and groped into the kitchen ; Kitty put both thumbs 
 into her mouth, and scowled at the strangers ; Ro- 
 man Biznet, turning his back upon the three, sat 
 down on the door-sill, and stared sulkily at the 
 autumn sunshine. 
 
 " Wat did she die of, Tony ? " asked Phosy after 
 a long silence. 
 
 Antoine shuffled his feet, glancing inquiringly 
 at his son's back. He could lie glibly enough him- 
 self, but wished to be certain how far the boy would 
 back him up. 
 
 " Consumption," he ventured at length. The boy 
 nodded approvingly, and Antoine's face cleared. 
 Then Roman Biznet considerately left the two, 
 that his father might lie with greater ease. 
 
 Glancing back, as he shuffled into the lane of 
 leaves, he saw Tony seated, with his head on his 
 hands, as though in deep dejection. The red maple 
 leaf of a girl was coming after him, for grown peo- 
 ple in trouble are tiresome, and apt to be cross to 
 little girls. 
 
 He waited for her; and then she came more 
 slowly, making a pretense of finding things of in- 
 terest at the side of the road, from the examination 
 of which she would dart sudden glances at him,
 
 ALPHONSINE 19 
 
 keeping her thumb in her mouth the while. At a 
 yard's distance she stopped and smiled up at him 
 under her hair, which was cut short in a bang and 
 hung below her eyebrows. His gloomy face bright- 
 ened with a shadow of the same smile ; a little 
 one-sided smile it was they had in common ; their 
 mouths were alike, fine at the corners and sensi- 
 tive. 
 
 " Do you go to school ? " he asked. 
 
 " No, I ain't big enough. Lizzie Orleana goes 
 to school. I've got a doll. She hasn't got a 
 doll." 
 
 " You don't say ! " 
 
 "Adlor Santwire goes to school. But he stayed 
 out for hop-picking. That 's him." 
 
 Roman Biznet noticed the roof of another 
 house, one step lower down the hill, and sitting 
 astride the ridgepole a boy, older than himself, 
 cracking nuts with a brick he had taken from the 
 chimney, picking the nuts from an overhanging 
 branch. 
 
 "Come and see our hen's nest," said Kitty. 
 "There ain't any eggs in it. A rat gets them. I 
 made the nest myself." 
 
 She took his hand, always keeping one of her 
 thumbs in her mouth, and led him, with much 
 mystery, to a high board fence, draped with a hop 
 vine or two, and the frosted black remnant of a 
 morning-glory vine. There was a cunningly hid- 
 den symmetrical nest of hay, quite empty ; a yel- 
 low hen, much frayed from molting, scuttled out 
 of the vines.
 
 20 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " That 's her ! " said Kitty, in a tone of deep re- 
 spect. " That 's my hen." 
 
 There was a scrambling on the other side of the 
 fence, and grimy fingers appeared, clinched upon 
 the top. Then rose a shock of blue-black hair, 
 and a smile. 
 
 "Hello, Adlor." 
 
 Adlor looked doubtfully at the stranger, then 
 abruptly emptied a pint of butternut meats into 
 Kitty's outstretched apron and disappeared. They 
 sat in the hen's nest, and shared them. 
 
 They did not return to the house until after 
 dusk, Roman Biznet feeling a delicacy about meet- 
 ing his aunt, while Kitty did not like the new 
 man. The boy accepted her verdict upon his fa- 
 ther with gloomy acquiescence. He did not care 
 particularly about him himself. Yet, for the fam- 
 ily reputation, he entered into glowing accounts of 
 Tony's skill with the violin, until Kitty became 
 anxious to go back to the house for the purpose of 
 seeing such a wonder. 
 
 The ant gave them no supper that night. It 
 was long past supper time when she thought of 
 food at all. Then she looked about her, and saw 
 the remnants of the grasshopper menage. 
 
 As her grief for Phoebe had been quietly stoical, 
 her anger at the disorder was loud and fierce. The 
 larder was bare, not a pinch of tea or an ounce 
 of bacon, not an onion, not a dried pea ; for the 
 peas had been cooked in a huge pot that she had 
 used for purple dye. Evidently the Biznets had 
 hesitated to eat this strangely brilliant vegetable
 
 ALPHONSINE 21 
 
 when it was done, and had set aside the great 
 mauve mass, enough for a week's supply. 
 
 Alphonsine flung kettle and all through the win- 
 dow, nearly extinguishing the yellow hen, which 
 leaped aside with a dismal squawk, and then re- 
 turned to fill her crop, being color blind. 
 
 Tony went outside then, taking his violin. He 
 was sitting pensively on the roadside, his chin 
 propped in his hand, watching the first star twin- 
 kling above the sunset, when the children re- 
 turned to the house. 
 
 They hesitated, hearing the strident monologue 
 inside, the clatter of furniture jerked into place, 
 the chairs being spanked, the tables pulled about 
 by their ears, and the dishes knocking together 
 with a sound of cracking skulls. 
 
 Before the racket had ceased, replaced by a low 
 murmur of sobbing, the stars were all out, and a 
 thin moon hanging brightly where the sunset had 
 vanished. They could see her through the lighted 
 window, seated in a chair by the freshly washed 
 table, her gingham apron over her face, her 
 straight body swaying back and forth monoto- 
 nously* Presently she arose, and, coming to the 
 door, called for Kitty. There was anxiety in her 
 voice, as though death were about like a wolf, and, 
 having tasted the blood of one, might hunger for 
 more. 
 
 " An' you, Tony Biznet, if you gon sleep in my 
 house to-night, you come along and get upstairs. 
 I don' leave no door unlok for you you hear 
 me?"
 
 22 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Tony slunk in with his fiddle, and the boy after 
 him. So fierce was the woman in the doorway, 
 so hawk-like her tear-swollen face, that Roman 
 Biznet had a comfortable feeling that everybody 
 would be safe from Antoine in this place, that 
 carving knives and white whiskey would not be 
 allowed. 
 
 He looked up at her knowingly and caught her 
 eye, whereupon she whacked him ; and there was 
 something restful in the stern act, bespeaking, as it 
 did, law, order, authority. 
 
 When the two had ascended the rickety stairs 
 to the unfinished loft, she threw after them, with 
 high disdain, that bedding in which they had slept 
 the previous night, bolsters, frilled pillow shams, 
 gay red spread. She would have none of it, mud- 
 died and rumpled as it was by their shiftless con- 
 tact
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ANTOINE DEPARTS 
 
 ALPHONSINE had a dream-book, with woodcuts 
 in it. Although she could not read, she under- 
 stood perfectly the explanations attached to them, 
 having learned by heart from her mother, a wise 
 woman, understanding medicine according to Iro- 
 quois lore, as well as the Black Art of white men. 
 
 That night, when she heard Tony snore, she 
 went to a cupboard, where she kept poisonous 
 dyes under lock and key, took out the dream- 
 book from behind bottles and packages, and sat 
 down with it at her kitchen table, shaking a fist 
 toward the ceiling, above which her brother-in- 
 law lay. 
 
 " I '11 fin' out, you Johnny Crapaud ! I '11 fin' 
 out, me ! Mebbe you get keel yourself ! " 
 
 She read if it was reading until the roos- 
 ters began to crow, from the near-by shout of the 
 Santwire fowl, who, with Phosy's yellow hen, had 
 stolen a roost on the dividing fence, where they 
 were sheltered by a blackened vine, to the far-off 
 trumpet call of the lordly buff-cochin at the Tracy 
 barn, the aristocrat on the hill and the plebeian 
 of French Hollow answering each other. It was 
 still dark, but one could hear the uneasy stir of 
 morning, the impatience for light. She closed the
 
 24 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 book, sighing, and turned to the window. The re- 
 flection of her own face in the dark glass startled 
 her. 
 
 "My Lord! I fought it was Phoebe! But 
 I '11 fin' out. I '11 get you, my boy ! " 
 
 With which mysterious menace and many up- 
 ward looks, she went to her bedroom and lay 
 down by Kitty, fast asleep with her thumb in her 
 mouth. 
 
 " Oh, you bad liT gal," whispered Alphonsine 
 softly ; " you spoil you pretty liT fingers dat way." 
 
 She pulled out the thumb and looked at it ten- 
 derly. Her eyes were so blurred that there seemed 
 three small pink digits at least. 
 
 " An' she 's lak Phrebe." 
 
 She kissed the wayward thumb, and then no- 
 ticed an expression of discontent on the sleeping 
 face, a rigidity about the elbow. 
 
 " She wants 'er thumb," said Phosy, laughing 
 through tears, and carefully tucked it back as 
 she had found it, Kitty's lips closing upon it with 
 a smack of welcome. Then Phosy shut her eyes 
 and lay rigid ; though whether she slept that night 
 or entered into a trance and wandered forth in 
 spirit on her fierce and sorrowful errand, psycho- 
 logic, telepathic I don't know that naming it 
 makes it less a mystery. 
 
 She rose at her usual breakfast hour, and her 
 face, as she prepared the food, was black with an- 
 ger. She burnt the fried potatoes to a crisp ; the 
 johnny-cake was leaden within and black without ; 
 the tea was strong and bitter with boiling.
 
 ANTOINE DEPARTS 25 
 
 Antoine looked at his sister-in-law doubtfully as 
 he sat down to this feast. He was in an humble 
 and conciliatory mood. With him it was always 
 a period of great peace and innocence, a short time 
 before his devil awoke, for the devil is by nature 
 intermittent, being constant in but few natures. 
 On this particular morning, for all the evil in his 
 soul he might have been a Sunday-school superin- 
 tendent. He was thinking what a pity it was that 
 Phosy should look ill-tempered on this beautiful 
 morning, and that he might chop some wood for 
 her presently. He even tried to look pleasant as 
 he partook of the evil-tasting breakfast. 
 
 Roman Biznet seemed to find nothing wrong, 
 but ate with a relish ; then brought out an apple 
 from inside his shirt to share with Kitty, and with 
 this they went out together to pay their respects to 
 the yellow hen. 
 
 Tony picked up his fiddle as the children left. 
 He would play a little before chopping that wood. 
 
 Alphonsine looked long and malevolently at his 
 unconscious profile, then put some fresh tea in a 
 saucer, on which she poured some boiling water, 
 let it stand for an instant, and solemnly twirled 
 the dish three times. Then she poured off the 
 water. Tony, who was playing some classical and 
 intricate thing, was quite unconscious of her fierce 
 eyes traveling from his face to the tea leaves, from 
 the tea leaves to his face. She finished the con- 
 templation of them, rose slowly and took a step 
 toward him, but reconsidered and went to the
 
 26 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 cupboard, whence she took some tinfoil. This she 
 melted in a large iron spoon. Tony finished his 
 music as this ceremony began, and regarded her 
 with a kindly smile. 
 
 " Telling your fortune, Phosy ? " 
 
 " Tellin' my fortune yes." 
 
 Tony, being an educated man, was not supersti- 
 tious. It came to him that Alphonsine was a re- 
 markably handsome woman, as she bent above the 
 red glow of the fire. There was something regal 
 about her hooked nose and narrow eyes, about the 
 full sweeping lines of her figure. The stories of 
 noble ancestry were easy of belief. Now, Phoebe 
 had been a frail thing, with big eyes, a small chin, 
 an arm nowhere beyond the compass of a man's 
 thumb and finger. Phoebe had loved to dance, 
 had laughed or cried at everything. That was 
 what made the trouble, her laughing and crying. 
 Alphonsine, now 
 
 She dropped the melted lead, with a swift turn 
 of the wrist, into a basin of water, carried this to 
 the window, and studied it carefully. There was 
 something portentous and fateful in her manner. 
 Tony looked over his shoulder to see whether the 
 door were locked, and then rose, carefully noncha- 
 lant, and sauntered toward it, violin in hand, not 
 that he expected any ill from Alphonsine, but he 
 was a cautious man and did not feel belligerent 
 that morning. 
 
 Phosy set down the basin upon the table. Her 
 chest was heaving. One hand quietly closed about
 
 ANTOINE DEPARTS 27 
 
 the handle of a large bread knife. She looked up, 
 and Tony quailed. 
 " Va-t-en ! " she said. 
 
 When the children came in an hour later, for 
 they had been to call on Adlor Santwire and his 
 guinea pigs, Alphonsine was furiously at work with 
 a kettle of scarlet dye. There were red splashes 
 upon her face, and her arms were red above the 
 elbows, giving her the appearance of one steeped in 
 blood. 
 
 " Your fader gone off, Romy," she said kindly 
 enough. " You gon stay an' be my li'l' boy. Only 
 you got be good to Kitty. My my, 'ow you 
 look lak you mere ! " 
 
 Yet, as has been said, the boy was in every way 
 his father's miniature. Perhaps, however, Alphon- 
 sine saw more deeply, and something, after all, 
 like Phoebe was masked behind the features of 
 Antoine. 
 
 He looked up into her face long and soberly. 
 He asked no question, but as the two exchanged 
 look for look he knew she had found out Antoine, 
 and she knew that dreams and sorceries had not 
 spoken untruly. 
 
 "Eh, b'en," she said. "You wan' remember 
 to be good to Kitty else I '11 lick you ! " 
 
 And he promised that he would be good.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME 
 
 THERE were In Cosmos two important families, 
 whose houses stood side by side. The Heathway 
 house was of red brick, severely square, its 
 grounds laid out in a formal way. " Walk here. 
 Smell of these roses. You may sit down on this 
 rustic bench and admire the view, but please do 
 not step on the grass if you want to get somewhere 
 else you will find a cross-walk farther up." 
 
 The Tracy house was vaguely Greek in design, 
 with many white pillars supporting verandas on 
 three sides. The grounds were larger than those 
 of the Heathway place, but had a less conscien- 
 tious look, as though one might find unexpected 
 things here and there, some flower that had 
 no gardener for its sponsor; some litter of old 
 leaves in a fence corner, and a suggestion of un- 
 derbrush. It was largely, perhaps, the difference 
 between a man's way of arranging outdoors and 
 a woman's. Squire Heathway liked to see things 
 trim and prosperous looking, while Miss Emily 
 Tracy cared only that there should be flowers 
 enough. The rest of her attention she gave to the 
 house inside. 
 
 The houses faced a horizon made flat by the St. 
 Lawrence, some twenty miles away, and behind
 
 DOCTOR WINTHKOP AT HOME 29 
 
 them were the Adirondacks, at that time unscarred 
 by a railroad. One knew that the sun always rose 
 somewhere among them, but never thought of get- 
 ting through to anything southward. To journey 
 into the world, one must go roundabout and by 
 way of Lake Champlain. 
 
 Tucked behind well-trimmed hedges, in a corner 
 of the Heathway place, was what had been a por- 
 ter's lodge in those days of ante-bellum grandeur 
 before Squire Heathway had lost money in some 
 Southern venture. Now it had fallen to Dr. Win- 
 throp, Squire Heathway's college chum and of his 
 regiment, whom fate had treated badly in various 
 ways, whose fiery and too ambitious youth lay 
 dead somewhere on Southern camping-grounds, 
 while in its stead he bore a Promethean liver. 
 And he lived alone in his little house, " like some 
 story-book animal," as he told Bessie Heathway. 
 
 Now and then it happens in a village that there 
 is one in loco parentis, some old and lonely soul 
 who keeps watch as from a high place, and whose 
 advice is of value. He becomes something of a 
 priest in time ; confessions are made to him, and 
 in a manner he can give absolution. "You are 
 a silly child and have made a bad mistake, but 
 it doesn't matter so much as you think. Don't 
 worry." The world did not seem so difficult when 
 Dr. Winthrop had said this. Then, again, he 
 might listen to one's sorrows with an amused and 
 ancient smile, and at the end concoct some mixture 
 out of his slender stock of drugs. " Stomach, my 
 dear. Don't burden your conscience with what
 
 30 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 doesn't belong there. Take this a spoonful 
 after each meal." Or, if it were a serious case, if 
 a woman's baby were dead, or a man had failed in 
 business, or a child had broken its doll or lost its 
 dog, there were wisdom and comfort in his silence 
 and in the touch of his lean yellow hands. 
 
 On a day in early December, the short afternoon 
 darkened by a soft, blinding fall of snow, which 
 came slowly and lent itself to snowballs of de- 
 lightful bigness and hardness, Dr. Winthrop lit 
 his student-lamp with its green shade early, for 
 he was working on a doll's sled for Bessie Heath- 
 way, and it must be done for Christmas. He was 
 making it out of cigar boxes; he smoked many 
 cigars, and excused himself by the toys which he 
 carved from the cedar wood. There would have 
 been plenty of time to finish several, if a well man 
 had been doing the work, but one never could tell, 
 having a liver an illness might come upon him at 
 any time, so that the little sled would be left in the 
 lurch. In his enthusiasm and impatience, he used 
 some surgical tools in its manufacture. For bone 
 and wood are not such different materials, and 
 there were like to be no more battlefields. Be- 
 sides, there was a young doctor who did all that 
 for the village now. 
 
 He was screwing the second runner in place, 
 twisting his smiling mouth as he twisted the screw- 
 driver, when there came a light knock at the door, 
 and he hustled his work swiftly out of sight before 
 saying " Come in." But it was Bessie's school- 
 teacher, Miss Amy Bartlett, not Bessie. She, too,
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME 31 
 
 was the daughter of an old friend, and had once 
 sat on the doctor's lap and heard his stories. She 
 was a thin, dark girl, bright-eyed, and with red 
 spots in her hollow cheeks. 
 
 "Do you know any gentleman that likes choco- 
 late cake?" she inquired carelessly, as she brushed 
 the snow from her hat, and sent it hissing into the 
 fireplace. 
 
 The doctor put on his spectacles and regarded 
 suspiciously a napkin-covered parcel she had put 
 on the table. He raised the napkin and smacked 
 his lips, gathering up the crumbs that had broken 
 off, with his yellow thumb and finger. It was a 
 custom in the village for the women to propitiate 
 him with their cookery not that he needed pro- 
 pitiation, but it seemed a graceful way to open a 
 consultation concerning any trouble. 
 
 " And how does the school get on, Amy ? " 
 
 " Get on ! It does n't. They 've put more 
 French young ones in my grade, you know, so of 
 course there 's disorder unspeakable, and presently 
 I shall be asked to resign, I suppose." 
 
 " You still have Billy Tracy and Bessie Heath- 
 way. Don't you find Bessie a comfort ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I suppose so," muttered Miss Bartlett 
 without enthusiasm. " She she takes as good 
 care of me as she can, and if I make any mistakes 
 in judgment or scholarship, comes to me privately 
 after school and tells me all about it. Oh, yes, 
 Bessie is quite a grandmother to me." 
 
 Dr. Winthrop chuckled over a small piece of 
 cake he had dug out with his finger, and coughed.
 
 32 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I must speak to Bessie," he said enjoyingly. 
 " I 'm afraid she does assume rather too much of 
 the world's burden at times." 
 
 " I could stand Bessie all right, but those 
 French children will drive me to my grave. Chil- 
 dren are such brutes I 'm so discouraged ! " 
 
 " You 're tired, my dear, and have lost your 
 sense of the proportion of things. I 'm going to 
 give you some tea with a stick in it there 's 
 nothing like that to bring things back into proper 
 focus." 
 
 There was a little brass teakettle on the hob 
 and a turned-back crane, whose chains and hooks 
 showed through the smoke. Ostensibly the doc- 
 tor cooked his own meals at his fireplace ; practi- 
 cally he used kerosene oil and a spirit-lamp. But 
 the sesthetic feeling that he could cook as his 
 grandmother had done, if he chose, was of value. 
 He lit the spirit-lamp on the table and took the 
 kettle from its false position on the hob. 
 
 " There is something slightly inebriating about 
 tea, in spite of the proverb," he said, as he filled 
 the tea ball, " particularly if you put a stick in 
 it ; " and he brought out a squat black flask from 
 a corner cupboard. " But slight intoxication is 
 rather saner, to my thinking, than the dumps. 
 Allow me." 
 
 " How does it feel to be an angel, I wonder ? " 
 said Amy Bartlett, who was mopping her eyes as 
 she took the cup he handed her. 
 
 " And speaking of angels," he pursued, placidly 
 sipping a companion cup, " which of the little
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME 33 
 
 angels under your care is most in need of wallop- 
 ing and paregoric ? " 
 
 " Roman B-B-Biznet, horrid little monkey ! " 
 
 " Biznet ? Some twelve years ago one heard 
 that name frequently. I know a story or two to 
 fit it. Tell me more about this simian child." 
 
 " Ask Bessie Heathway if you want it done in 
 style. She had a consultation with me the day 
 after he entered the school, inquiring whether it 
 would be possible to have him sent to a reform 
 school. It developed later that he had been mak- 
 ing faces at her while she played the organ for 
 marching." 
 
 " Poor Bess ! " 
 
 " You may well say so. He has started in to 
 make her life miserable. Nobody catches him at it, 
 but somebody puts parlor matches where she steps 
 on them, fills her desk with torn paper, steals her 
 slate pencils, puts beetles in her lunch basket, and 
 keeps the whole room generally in a turmoil. But 
 when I look at this creature, his arms are folded, 
 his face sanctimonious. Billy Tracy, the aristo- 
 crat, has become his most intimate friend, and " 
 she leaned forward with a sudden bright smile 
 "I am actually more fond of this creature than 
 of any of the rest." 
 
 " That 's the ewig weiblicTie of it. I '11 tell 
 you something about him ; at least about his an- 
 cestry, which amounts to the same thing, for a 
 man is his ancestry to a surprising extent." 
 
 The doctor lit a new cigar, and looked medita- 
 tively into the fireplace.
 
 34 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Looked at in a general way," said the doctor, 
 " the human race and its evolution reminds me of 
 live polyps rising on the skeletons of dead ones. 
 The individual polyps don't vary greatly. They 
 only count as they help the upward tendency of 
 the mass. 
 
 ' Dost into dust, and under dust, to lie.' 
 
 That 's the human polyp under his posterity. 
 
 " When the coral island reaches the air that lies 
 above this ' sea of troubles,' there may be palms 
 and things with wings to live upon it. But that 
 need not interest the polyps, they as a race will 
 have ceased to be, yet as a foundation they will 
 be secure enough for that life of the air. 
 
 " To the individual, heredity is a very different 
 thing. It is but we all know what heredity is 
 to the individual. A man is his father, his grand- 
 father, or his great-grandfather, as much as if the 
 ancestor were reincarnated in him. Maybe he is. 
 
 To come down to the Biznets. 
 
 " There was a man once who presumably had a 
 right to the name. There was another Biznet who 
 should have been called something else. That was 
 fifty years ago, about. 
 
 " Biznet Number One was an honest Frenchman 
 
 that is, as Frenchmen go ; but my father used 
 to say that all honest Frenchmen had wool grow- 
 ing in the palms of their hands. This man, at 
 least, was plain Canuck, and a woodman. He has 
 nothing whatever to do with your little Biznet, 
 except in naming him.
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME 35 
 
 " Fifty years ago this was pretty wild country 
 woods all about, hunters, Injuns that did n't stay 
 in St. Regis, catamounts, bears, deer. If a man 
 anywhere in the world had done something to 
 make the world hot under the collar, and if he was 
 the sort of man who could stand solitude at all, he 
 could hardly do better than to come up here in the 
 woods somewhere and play hermit. That was fifty 
 years ago. 
 
 " One day in winter, my father said, one of 
 those crusty, glare-white, blue days that make one 
 blind, a big fair man hove into Cosmos Tavern 
 where the hotel now stands and asked for beer. 
 There was n't any ; nothing but cider brandy, 
 whiskey blanc, plain hard cider, and Old Tom gin. 
 He cursed the country for it in some language the 
 Canuck and Irishmen did n't understand, and 
 ended by filling up on cider brandy, whiskey blanc, 
 and the rest, until he tumbled down behind the 
 stove, where they let him lie, because, as I have 
 said, he was a big man, and not good-natured. 
 
 " He paid well, however, and hung about there 
 for a few days, grumbling monstrous words in his 
 throat. He would go to the door and look off at 
 the mountains, and then down the road, then 
 come in to the fire and sulk. Old Grandpa Conto 
 began to get tired of him, in spite of his being 
 good pay. 
 
 " Then one day the Biznet that I spoke of came 
 in and proceeded to get full, having just sold a 
 load of wood to my father. ' Hola ! mon vieux 
 w'at 's your name votre sante ! ' says he,
 
 36 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 waiting for the big fellow's name before emptying 
 his glass. 
 
 " ' Ei, was ? Meine name Vat 's yours ? ' 
 
 "'Antoine Biznet.' 
 
 "* Ja wohl. Ich auch. I am called Antoine 
 Biznet. Ve are tvins ! ' 
 
 " No one dared to contradict him, and Antoine 
 Biznet he remained to the end of the chapter, 
 though once, tradition says, he spoke of himself, 
 being very drunk, by some other name, but nobody 
 that heard could remember anything about it, ex- 
 cept that it began with ' Von.' 
 
 " Now, this big German had a violin with him. 
 Once, while he was drunk, young Conto sneaked it 
 away from him and started to play * Money Musk,' 
 some French girls having come in for the evening, 
 but he had got about halfway tuned when there 
 was a roar from behind the stove, where they had 
 thrown buffalo robes over the German when the 
 girls came in, for he was n't pretty when he got 
 filled up with whiskey blanc, and he came at 
 them bang ! 
 
 " My father sewed up what was left of young 
 Conto. Dutchie Biznet lit out and was n't heard 
 of any more until spring. 
 
 " Then there came the story of a ghost some- 
 where up on Owl's Head. There was a light, and 
 smoke, and these might have been human enough, 
 but for a wild sort of whine the trappers heard 
 like a catamount in trouble, only pleasanter, was 
 the way Mike Santwire put it. You 've got a 
 descendant of Mike's in your school, by the way.
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME 37 
 
 The family was becoming Irish at that time, but is 
 French again now. Your boy's name is Adlor, 
 but his hair is curly. I caught him stealing the 
 Tracy apples once. 
 
 "Mike Santwire said it was a banshee said 
 somebody had been frozen to death up there and 
 wanted to be buried, but nobody seemed to care 
 about finding out. 
 
 " The spring came on, and it became known, 
 gradually, that it was Dutchie Biznet up there 
 with his fiddle. He had lived on game, and with- 
 out firewater, ever since leaving the tavern in that 
 huffy manner. 
 
 " He had built him a queer little cabin, so 
 hidden in rocks, and through the winter so heaped 
 with snow, that he was like some hibernating ani- 
 mal. Toward spring he came to the tavern and 
 got sociably full again. 
 
 " Now, as I said when I began this yarn, there 
 were Injuns in those days, and of rather better 
 sort than most you will find in St. Regis now. 
 And they got drunk, and made life unpleasant for 
 their women folk, just like white anthropoids. 
 There was old Powasket, who was falsely called 
 chief, and wore a dirty blanket, and, I believe, 
 stuck dirty feathers in his hair, though this may 
 be an anachronism. Perhaps he was given to plug 
 hats. 
 
 " And Powasket had a daughter, same as Shy- 
 lock. I suppose she was dirty, too, and had a 
 flat, oily face, and toed in, and was unpleasant 
 generally. Tradition says she was a beauty, but
 
 38 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 it isn't safe to trust tradition where romance is 
 concerned. You say little Biznet is pretty ? But 
 that may come from his mother. However 
 
 " One day Powasket got friskier than usual, 
 with a carving knife stolen from my father's 
 kitchen, by the way. His daughter disappeared, 
 and they were talking of making the old gentle- 
 man give an account of himself, when this same 
 Mike Santwire reported that he had seen her hoe- 
 ing a little patch of earth near Dutchie Biznet's 
 cabin, Dutchie's fiddle, meanwhile, playing cata- 
 mount in sweetest style. 
 
 " Well, they were so far out of the world 
 Owl's Head is only a bit of blue from here that 
 nobody cared much, and Adam played while Eve 
 delved and span, just about, I imagine, as if they 
 were the first and only human critters on the 
 globe. But 
 
 " It was n't for having too much milk of hu- 
 man kindness that Dutchie Biznet left his mother 
 country, and there was n't any particularly gentle 
 streak in old Powasket's blood. It was said that 
 there was some doubt which was fiddle and which 
 was woman sometimes when they heard the crying 
 up there on the mountains. 
 
 " But nobody paid any attention to them that 
 summer, except when Dutchie Biznet came to 
 town occasionally to get full. And the next win- 
 ter came on. 
 
 " It was Christmas morning that Father Reilly 
 found the Indian woman frozen in a drift near the 
 mission house. She was almost naked, and seemed
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP AT HOME 39 
 
 at first to be carrying her clothes rolled up in her 
 arras. And when Father Reilly undid this bundle, 
 there was Biznet the Second, as snug as a bug in 
 a rug, and about three days old. 
 
 " He was the father of your Biznet, and a bad 
 one. They brought him up at the monastery, and 
 he developed a genius for music. Then a rich man 
 sent him to McGill. Then he forged, then he 
 stole, then he disappeared for about twenty years 
 and finally turned up here playing his fiddle at the 
 county fair the year the war broke out. Then he 
 ran away with little Pho3be St. Luce, who had 
 noble French blood in her veins. They were mar- 
 ried, and here is Biznet Number Three. I think 
 I should like to see this little Biznet Number 
 Three. From what you say there can't be much 
 of his big yellow-haired grandfather about him." 
 
 " No, little and black, with straight, stiff hair. 
 But what became of Dutchie Biznet ? " 
 
 "Oh, didn't I tell you that? Why, she'd 
 chopped his head open with the axe while he was 
 sleeping. They wiped the brains off the fiddle 
 and took it to the monastery for Biznet the Sec- 
 ond, when he should grow up. I believe it was 
 an unusually fine Cremona possibly a Strad. 
 Tradition and Romance would make it a Strad. I 
 am conservative myself. 
 
 " Have another cup of tea. What a pity that 
 women can't smoke ! So look sharp for little 
 Biznet the Third. Don't expect too much, nor 
 yet too little. Too many cooks spoil the broth, 
 and it 's the same way with too many kinds of
 
 40 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 ancestry. All things considered, you 've got a 
 broth of a boy to deal with. But his mother was 
 a sweet little woman. Died of consumption, did 
 she ? Now, I wonder "
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 KITTY ENTERS GOOD SOCIETY 
 
 THE Cosmos graded school was a barren brick 
 building, with sloppy looking doors and windows 
 and an empty belfry. It had once been a paro- 
 chial school, a dear ambition of Father Labelle, 
 but lost to him and to the Sisters during the past 
 fall by bad financial management ; some said by a 
 shrewd performance on the part of the town offi- 
 cials. Three class-rooms were on the lower floor ; 
 the upper part was a large assembly-room with a 
 few little cells adjoining, where the French Sisters 
 had slept. In this large room the Cosmos children 
 were to hold forth in a Christmas celebration on 
 the last day of the term ; Miss Amy Bartlett had 
 the great event in charge. 
 
 Dr. Winthrop had spent his afternoons for some 
 time in helping Bessie Heathway to write her 
 essay on " Christmas in Merrie England," and was 
 rather proud of his literary effort. 
 
 Roman Biznet and Billy Tracy were to do the 
 dialogue between Scrooge and his nephew. Roman 
 was to be the nephew, shouting shrilly, "Merry 
 Christmas, uncle ! " Billy rejoining grimly, " Bah ! 
 Humbug ! " 
 
 Billy made a beautiful Scrooge, crimping his 
 pretty plump face into all sorts of dreadful wrin-
 
 42 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 kles, shouting in a deep voice, but Roman's part 
 was no easy matter, though he might have said it 
 in French. 
 
 When they went upstairs for the first rehearsal, 
 his eyes had brightened at sight of the music and 
 words of the " Adeste Fideles," written upon the 
 blackboard, large and plain. He and Billy were 
 waiting at the back of the room while Bessie re- 
 hearsed her essay, and Roman Biznet, pointing a 
 thin finger, read the words with much pride to 
 Billy, who stared with rather doubtful respect, 
 wondering if it might not be wicked. Then Roman 
 showed how it went when Abbe Thevierge had 
 showed him how in Montreal. He used a desk as 
 an organ, playing with a rapt expression, his eyes 
 half shut. 
 
 " Adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes, 
 Venite, venite, in Bethlehem." 
 
 The boys were so interested that they had not 
 noticed the approach of a square man wearing side 
 whiskers, spectacles, and a frock coat. 
 
 " Miss Bartlett," said this gentleman suddenly, 
 interrupting the imagined chords that Roman was 
 bringing about his ears, " Miss Bartlett, ex- 
 cuse me for interrupting, but I notice ah 
 something remaining on the board here ah a 
 sign of the previous occupants which would as well 
 be erased before we go any further. It is as well 
 to get these notions out of the pupils' heads as 
 soon as possible." He patted Billy's head enthu- 
 siastically with his right hand as he spoke, and 
 Roman's patronizingly with his left.
 
 KITTY ENTERS GOOD SOCIETY 43 
 
 Miss Bartlett stopped Bessie Heathway, and 
 came over to the Reverend Mr. Wells. 
 
 " Oh, do you think so ? " she answered blandly. 
 " Of course, I will erase it if you think best. I 
 left it because it was so pretty, you know, and 
 appropriate to Christmas." 
 
 " But the Latin words " Mr. Wells shook 
 his head. " You might erase them and write our 
 words instead, ' Come, all ye faithful ! ' : 
 
 " I may as well erase it all, I think," said Miss 
 Bartlett quietly. " I confess I like the Latin 
 words best myself." And she went back to Bess 
 and Merrie England. 
 
 Roman Biznet could not have explained just 
 why, but he decided that he liked Miss Amy Bart- 
 lett, and wished he had not spent his last Cana- 
 dian penny on parlor matches to scatter about the 
 schoolroom floor. He would have preferred now 
 to have bought a Christmas card for her. 
 
 But, the " Adeste Fideles " being erased, ex- 
 orcised with the black-robed Sisters who had placed 
 it there, he found a new interest in giving ex- 
 aggerated attention to Bessie Heath way's essay, 
 placing a hand to his ear and leaning forward as 
 if with agonized suspense, while the faithless Billy 
 giggled, he who had once been Elizabeth's fidus 
 Achates. But she was in a severe and lofty mood, 
 taking no notice, and presently Roman had sor- 
 rows of his own. 
 
 " ' Merry Christmas, uncle ! ' ' 
 
 " * Bah ! Humbug ! ' " said Billy, with a careless 
 glibness born of many repetitions.
 
 44 KOMAN BIZNET 
 
 " ' Christmas a humbug, uncle ! You don't mean 
 that, I 'm sure ! ' : But there was lifeless uncer- 
 tainty in his tone. 
 
 " You must study it, Roman," said Miss Bartlett 
 severely, when they had stumbled through it. 
 
 " Bah ! Humbug ! " said a sharp voice, as he 
 left the building; a stinging snowball sunk into 
 his coat collar, as the Heathway sleigh disappeared 
 around the corner, the peak of Elizabeth's blue 
 toboggan cap standing out behind like a pennant ; 
 and he put his thumb to his nose, but dispiritedly, 
 for Bess was far away, with jingling bells about 
 her, caring nothing for a small French boy who 
 dreaded the morrow. 
 
 The hall was brave with greens and flags an 
 arrangement somewhat messy, if one were critical, 
 but enthusiastic at least, and patriotic, whatever 
 that may mean in graded-school parlance. The 
 town turned out in force, particularly the mothers, 
 who brought the baby brothers and sisters to gaze, 
 round-eyed, upon the actual grandeur of which they 
 had heard so much. Dr. Winthrop listened with 
 satisfaction to Bessie Heathway's rendering of his 
 ideas; the Reverend Mr. Wells beamed upon Benny 
 Wells, who declaimed " Ring out the old, ring in 
 the new," and upon little Gladys Wells, who 
 drooped her black eyelashes demurely as she piped 
 a Christmas carol. Gladys was the " Beautiful 
 Child " of the town, but Bessie Heathway called 
 her a " nasty little thing." Madam Tracy and 
 her daughter, Miss Emily, were there in honor of
 
 KITTY ENTERS GOOD SOCIETY 45 
 
 Billy's Scrooge, and the Heathways sat near them 
 Dr. Winthrop between as was a right and 
 proper arrangement of neighbors. Madam was 
 very little and old, her head shaking behind her 
 black lace veil as though in eternal negation of 
 the things of this world. She ate peppermints^ 
 and heard nothing, but Billy was the only man- 
 child among her posterity and she felt something 
 of reverence for him. Miss Emily had a little of 
 this feeling, but tempered by her nearness to mod- 
 ern ideas. To both, the ten-year-old Billy was head 
 of the house, and some day he was to have what- 
 ever was left of the ancestral estate. 
 
 Miss Emily's face was long and ascetic. Per- 
 haps her eyes were too near together and the lines 
 about her mouth not altogether lovable, but she 
 meant well, none better. 
 
 Alphonsine wore a resplendent gown of black 
 moreen that looked much like Mrs. Heathway's 
 silk, and Kitty came, too, in a red frock dyed and 
 made up the day before. She kept her thumb in 
 her mouth all the while, except when she giggled 
 out loud at Billy's " Bah ! Humbug ! " for she 
 knew Billy Tracy well, having made his acquaint- 
 ance in the Tracy kitchen. Billy had shared 
 candy with her, and his aunt had given her his 
 old out-grown stockings, which were red and very 
 beautiful, when the feet were made smaller and a 
 patch put on the knee. So she knew that it was 
 only play when Billy made up faces and said, 
 "Bah! Humbug!" 
 
 But what was the matter with Homy? He
 
 46 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 mumbled and stared and turned white. Suddenly 
 he put his thumb in his mouth, just the way she 
 had hers, and there was a silence. 
 
 " I have always regarded Christmas time, apart 
 from the reverence," said a disturbed voice 
 which was not Roman Biznet's ; but he shook his 
 head and kept his thumb in his mouth, and pre- 
 sently the two turned and came down from the 
 platform, ingloriously. Alphonsine looked fierce 
 and said something under her breath. Dr. Win- 
 throp watched the boy with some curiosity. It 
 was the first time he had seen him, and Amy 
 Bartlett's description had been interesting. The 
 round black head beside the round yellow one, as 
 Roman and Billy sat together in the front row, 
 seemed of good outline, and was held up stiff and 
 proud, as though its owner did not care partic- 
 ularly about the recent embarrassment. Bessie 
 Heathway, who was sitting in front of the two, 
 presently turned around with a wrathful face, 
 showing that something in the way of pin-stick- 
 ing and hair-pulling was going on ; and the doc- 
 tor, who had sympathized keenly with the boy's 
 failure, felt a warming toward mischief so quick 
 in recovery, an egoism that took itself so lightly. 
 
 Billy was to have a tree on Christmas Eve, and a 
 party of the dozen or so children of the town who 
 were found worthy to associate with him. These 
 were not, by any means, the mates he chose at 
 school for himself. Roman Biznet was not among 
 them, for instance, though Alphonsine came to
 
 KITTY ENTERS GOOD SOCIETY 47 
 
 help Louise in the kitchen, and Kitty sat behind 
 the range and pulled Susan's tail, sharing with 
 her the lickings of the dishes in which maple 
 sugar was boiled for the candy pull. The bub- 
 bling noise of a roomful of children laughing and 
 talking came to her there, and when the piano 
 played for Musical Chairs or the Virginia Reel, she 
 kept time with her hands and feet, softly, jouncing 
 Susan up and down until she got scratched. The 
 door opened, just as Billy was leading Gladys 
 Wells, with bewildering grace, down a fairy lane 
 of children, all clapping their hands rhythmically, 
 and Billy caught a gleam of phosphorescent black 
 eyes peering at him as from across a gulf. Billy 
 was always something of a fairy prince, a King 
 Cophetua. He nodded and waved his hand at 
 Kitty, who sucked both thumbs harder than ever 
 and drooped her eyes behind her bang ; but when 
 the dance was over, he rushed out, resplendent in 
 blue velvet suit and lace ruffles, and bore her back 
 with him before Alphonsine and Louise could 
 exclaim. She looked very tiny and conspicuous 
 in her red gown, as she stood, demure and blink- 
 ing, among fluffy white dresses and perky sash 
 bows. 
 
 "What child is that?" asked the terrible little 
 old lady who sat in the chimney corner and ate 
 peppermints. Her voice was very deep, and Kit- 
 ty's mouth corners quivered as she clung to Billy's 
 hand. Miss Emily Tracy explained, deprecatingly, 
 and Dr. Winthrop looked stern, but not at Kitty. 
 Billy led her to him with a troubled face.
 
 48 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I think it 's mean ! She was out there just 
 playing with Susan, and Aunt Em did n't let me 
 know ! And it 's Christmas, and Gladys 
 Wells, you keep quiet ! Her hair is twice as long 
 as yours." 
 
 Bessie Heathway, scowling under a mop of light 
 hair and blue ribbons, bent down and looked at 
 her long and earnestly. " You Homy Biznet's 
 cousin ? " 
 
 Kitty nodded and swallowed a lump. She won- 
 dered if they would have greeted her differently if 
 her dress had been white like theirs, instead of 
 red a mist wavered about her and she burrowed 
 her head under Billy's blue velvet arm, which 
 smelt sweet and was soft. 
 
 " What a pretty dress you have on ! I wish 
 mine was that color," said Bessie Heathway. 
 Somebody else tittered, and Billy said : " You be 
 still, Gladys Wells." 
 
 " You look like Roman Biznet, but I think 
 you 're a nice little girl," pursued Bessie ; and 
 then, with a plaintive sigh, " I wish you were my 
 little sister." 
 
 Kitty gathered courage once more. All this 
 had not a condemnatory sound, and Billy was 
 holding her hand very tight. She peered out of 
 her blue velvet refuge and smiled at Bessie Heath- 
 way, then past her at Doctor Winthrop, who gath- 
 ered her into his lap, where she sat enthroned for 
 the rest of the evening, though the old lady shook 
 her head in continual negation until she fell asleep 
 and was helped off to bed by Louise. Miss Tracy,
 
 KITTY ENTERS GOOD SOCIETY 49 
 
 however, murmured something about " Christmas 
 Eve," and looked at Dr. Winthrop with a saintly 
 smile, which he returned with a grave, searching 
 glance, then looked from her to Kitty and the 
 other children and Bessie, thinking, as one must 
 who is old, about the quick passage of time and 
 its little consequence, and that it was hard to 
 fancy these young heads grown gray like his own. 
 
 Bessie Heathway came up to him with a confi- 
 dential idea, one with which he was familiar, for 
 no Hindoo wife prays more earnestly for a son 
 than did Bessie for a little sister. " Her mother 's 
 poor, is n't she ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Don't you think she might give her to me ? " 
 
 " I 'm afraid not, Bessie. Good mothers, like 
 Kitty's, don't give away their little girls." Kitty 
 giggled. She could understand jokes of this na- 
 ture. 
 
 Bessie looked wistful, then brightened, and whis- 
 pered in his ear. He nodded emphatically, and 
 she sped away, coming back with a waxen creature 
 in blue silk and spangles. Its cheeks were pouched 
 as if with mumps, its eyebrows of a supercilious 
 expression. 
 
 " You were n't here when the things were taken 
 off the tree," she said ; " this is your doll." 
 
 "That is very sweet and thoughtful of you, 
 Bessie," said Miss Tracy ; " you shall have an- 
 other." 
 
 But Bessie scowled at the toe of her slipper. 
 She did not like to be told she was good. Kitty
 
 50 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 accepted the doll without question, as one takes 
 celestial gifts, not reasoning whence or why. Bes- 
 sie said it was hers, and that was enough. And 
 Alphonsine, peering anxiously through a crack in 
 the door, turned away with her apron to her eyes. 
 She felt, somehow, that Kitty had come to her 
 own.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 A MARCH MORNING 
 
 SPRING in Cosmos is not like spring elsewhere. 
 This must be so, for if one has been a child in 
 Cosmos and felt the rush of young blood at the 
 time when the sap of the trees feels the same im- 
 pulse, one understands, by contrast, how nerveless 
 is the spring of other parts of the world, and its 
 homesickness. 
 
 March is always a lion in Cosmos. It comes 
 with great trampling and roaring of wind and 
 water. It is not sickly and muggy, as it is a few 
 degrees south. To be sure, it sweeps away the 
 old and the feeble, but so great and god-like is that 
 warm wind, that I do not see why they should 
 mind it any more than do those few dead leaves 
 that cling to trees all winter and only drop when 
 young sap, and pushing buds, and the March wind 
 dislodge them. 
 
 Madam Tracy did not seem to mind it very 
 much when it took her away, about three o'clock, 
 one gusty morning. She had been a rather literary 
 soul, doting on Tennyson, though eighty-five and 
 past the years for romance. Her daughter slept, 
 and only Dr. Winthrop sat, wakeful, by the win- 
 dow, watching the hurry of black clouds, listening 
 to the rustle of water as brown patches of earth
 
 62 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 grew larger and the snow dwindled from ice-floes 
 to spread-out sheets to pocket handkerchiefs. 
 
 Suddenly Madam Tracy sat up, her white hair 
 scanty and disheveled, her eyes bright and deep 
 in the sickly glimmer of the night lamp. As the 
 doctor bent over her, she quoted, with a strange 
 air of eagerness and mystery : 
 
 " And in the wild March morning, I heard them call my soul ! " 
 
 She had been the kind of person of whom it is 
 said : " She looks as if she would dry up and blow 
 away." And so it was. 
 
 That was the passing of a dead leaf. In an- 
 other part of the house, things were taking place 
 which belonged to the sap and the bud. 
 
 Generally, Billy slept like a little pig, but, 
 owing to his grandmother's illness, somebody had 
 been careless of him the night before and let him 
 stow away a good third of a whole mince pie. So, 
 he tossed about and dreamed strangely, until at 
 last he woke, feeling quite unhappy. He believed 
 that he was unhappy about his grandmother, and 
 this was a natural mistake. 
 
 He went to the window, at length. There would 
 be no more skating, he thought pensively, as he 
 heard the roaring of the Powasket River, plung- 
 ing its broken ice about somewhere on the edge of 
 the darkness. There was something final and 
 poetic about this ending of the skating season. 
 It seemed to speak of the change of all things, the 
 ceasing of joy and youth in general. His grand-
 
 A MARCH MORNING 53 
 
 mother had missed much, not being able to skate, 
 he thought, and now they had given him to under- 
 stand she must even give up breathing. 
 
 AH these things seemed strange and sad. He 
 thought about them until he felt quite frightened, 
 and heard sounds and saw sights in the noisy 
 morning that could not possibly have been there. 
 
 His room being warm and his cheeks feverish 
 with indigestion, he threw up the window and 
 leaned out. As he did so, a faint shadow that had 
 been dodging about among the leafless shrubs 
 passed between him and a patch of snow. It 
 seemed the shape of a man, going uprightly. Of 
 its size he could not be sure, not knowing its dis- 
 tance, but he felt that it was watching him, it stood 
 so still. If he had not seen it take its place in front 
 of the snowdrift, he would have concluded that he 
 was mistaken ; that it was the trunk of a tree. 
 
 Then it disappeared from its white background 
 and crept nearer, while he strained his eyes pain- 
 fully. It seemed to come forward and look up, 
 with the stealthy motion of a cat. A small white 
 patch moved to meet it, and he heard the familiar 
 voice of Susan, his cat, giving friendly greeting to 
 the stranger. He hardly knew whether to con- 
 sider Susan a traitor or to accept the stranger as 
 harmless upon her recommendation. He thought 
 of burglars and glanced behind him to make sure 
 that his grandfather's sword still hung above the 
 mantelpiece, gleaming faintly in the firelight. 
 When he looked out of the window again, a ray 
 of light from the floor below had sifted out upon
 
 64 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 the lawn, and the stranger stood within it, still 
 uncertain of outline, but too small to be greatly 
 feared, if human. 
 
 " I know you, Biznet, you can't scare me. 
 What are you doing to my cat ? " 
 
 " Come on out ! " 
 
 " Yah ! This is a pretty time of night ! Is it 
 a game ? " 
 
 " Yes, come on out ! " 
 
 " I can't I My grandmother 's sick ! " 
 
 " Grandmother nawthin' ! You 're afraid." 
 
 " Do you stump me ? " 
 
 " Yep. I stump you." 
 
 Susan was languishingly rubbing herself back 
 and forth round and about the French boy's legs, 
 her tail erect, her purr almost audible to Billy. 
 She glanced up at him, with green in her eyes, and 
 mewed knowingly. There was an undefinable air 
 of excitement about these two, and a suggestion, 
 borne out by the tigerish purr of running water, 
 that there was something going on outside which 
 one should not miss. Billy dressed with fumbling 
 haste a foolish toilet, completed by hanging his 
 skates about his neck. Of course there could be 
 no use for them, but they had stood by him all 
 winter. It was a habit, like the wearing of a 
 sword upon all occasions in the last century. He 
 pulled his scarlet "tchook" a Cosmos corrup- 
 tion of toque over his ears, then raised it to 
 scratch his head, perplexed. 
 
 " How '11 1 get down ? " 
 
 " Jump."
 
 A MARCH MORNING 55 
 
 " Jump your grandmother I mean " This 
 had been one of his favorite oaths. There seemed 
 something wrong with it to-night, as though it 
 were profane. 
 
 " I can't jump," he amended, in savorless lan- 
 guage. 
 
 " Climb down on your sheets." 
 
 This was a good suggestion. Boys that ran 
 away to sea nearly always made ropes of their 
 bedclothes as the first step, escaping from people 
 who treated them cruelly. His heart was soft and 
 kind toward his aunt, his grandmother, and the 
 servants, but instantly these changed and entered 
 into the game, becoming ogresses, from whom es- 
 cape was the wisest and noblest course. Cer- 
 tainly, he would run away to sea, and be back 
 for breakfast. 
 
 The knots held, and Billy athlete from his 
 cradle made the descent with credit, though he 
 slipped at the end on a small convex piece of rot- 
 ten ice. He remembered that on the previous 
 morning indeed for half the winter it had 
 been a curled drift that obscured the dining-room 
 window below. 
 
 At his arrival, Susan, with a buffoon's pretense 
 of fear, laid back her ears and tore away on a gal- 
 lop about the house, to return from the other side 
 almost before they had missed her. 
 
 "Well," said Billy, in a business-like way, 
 " what 's the game ? " 
 
 The French boy looked reflectively at his squdgy 
 wet shoes, at the cat, at the sky.
 
 56 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I dunno," he said finally ; " it 's fun to be out 
 in the dark, don' you think ? " 
 
 " But what do you do ? " persisted Billy. 
 
 " Well," in some scorn, " I don't skate. Wha' 'd 
 you bring them things for ? " 
 
 " D' you mean you just walk around and don't 
 play anything ? " 
 
 " No, I don't. You can play anything you want 
 to. Only it 's nicer at night. Don't you know 
 nothin' ? " 
 
 "I played running away to sea when I came 
 down. Let 's play that." 
 
 " All right. Come on." 
 
 This pleased Susan also. Night was a time for 
 cats. The day belonged to dogs and people. But 
 here were two sensible creatures racing off into 
 the darkness on some delightful errand that a cat 
 might understand. She was young and vigorous. 
 It was her first spring. Born in the fall, her kit- 
 tenhood had been drear and cold. When their 
 progress was too slow for her, she climbed trees 
 and waited in security, sometimes finding empty 
 bird's-nests that made good sniffing. 
 
 They plunged through the squelching mire of 
 the garden, blundered into a web of raspberry 
 brambles that yanked off Billy's cap, then slipped 
 and slid down the long icy slope, honeycombed 
 with gutters, that led to the railroad track and to 
 French Hollow beyond. 
 
 The roar of the Powasket was plainer then, and 
 every few minutes, from far away, one heard the 
 rasping whine of a log going through the sawmill.
 
 A MARCH MORNING 57 
 
 They reached the track and walked along a rail, 
 their arms outspread for balance, Susan tiptoeing 
 in the rear. They felt the vibration of a coming 
 train, and suggested to each other various ways of 
 wrecking it and escaping with plunder, but it was 
 upon them before they could lay any definite plan. 
 Susan and Billy slipped down the embankment, 
 but Roman Biznet danced in front of the cow- 
 catcher, until the face of the engineer was gray 
 with anguish, and the locomotive shrieked like a 
 girl at a mouse. 
 
 Then he rejoined Billy, but Susan had fled ; she 
 had not articled with them for the hunting of such 
 large game supposing it was something in the 
 way of rats and chipmunks that was in the wind. 
 
 " Now, what you goin' to go ? " asked Billy. 
 There was some asperity in his tone. He would 
 not have confessed it, but there had been a gla- 
 mour of safety and assurance about the Biznet 
 boy at first, which was now being replaced by 
 something less pleasant. The very fact that he 
 could treat the huge night with such nonchalance 
 had something terrifying about it, not to speak of 
 a trick of turning his head this way and that, as 
 though he followed the motions of creatures invis- 
 ible to Billy. It was growing qualmishness that 
 caused Billy to adopt a swagger. 
 
 " Don't you know nothin' ? " he inquired, lof- 
 tily. 
 
 " You see that thing over there looks like a lit- 
 tle snowdrift ? " said Roman Biznet mysteriously. 
 
 "Y-yes. 'T is a snowdrift."
 
 68 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " No, it ain't. Don't you see its arms ? " 
 
 " N-no ! " 
 
 " Don't you see its hair ? " 
 
 N-n-no ! " 
 
 " Don't you hear it say something ? Woo-o-o, 
 like that?" 
 
 " W-what is it ? " 
 
 " I dunno." 
 
 " My aunt does n't let me get my feet wet," said 
 Billy, with sudden dignity. " I 'm going home. 
 I don't think this is a very interesting game." 
 
 " You see that black thing over in the pasture ? 
 Just this side the stone wall 'bout 's big 's a 
 dog?" 
 
 " That 's a bush. You can't fool me. I 've 
 picked raspberries there in summer." 
 
 " It 's behind the bush ! " 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 " Never mind. You might be scared." 
 
 " I ain't scared, but I 'm going home. M-my 
 aunt does n't like to have me play with French 
 boys." 
 
 " All right. My aunt does n't like to have me 
 play with Yankee boys, either. You better run. 
 It 's comin'. It 's a loup-garou ! " 
 
 And Billy ran. His aunt had repeatedly told 
 him the loup-garou was a myth. Louise, and 
 Phosy Conto, who often visited their kitchen, 
 thought differently. He did not know exactly how 
 he reached the house. 
 
 There was a light in the dining-room window, 
 and he peeped in before making the ascent of his
 
 A MARCH MORNING 59 
 
 swinging sheets. His aunt lay upon a lounge ; 
 Louise, disheveled and sleepy-looking, was bathing 
 her temples. Dr. Winthrop stood by the bright 
 wood fire and poured hot water into a glass of 
 some liquid that gleamed like a ruby. The door 
 which opened into the grandmother's room was 
 shut. 
 
 He climbed up his knotted sheets, what sound 
 he made being lost in the universal slatting and 
 rustling of branches and shutters, and, construct- 
 ing a muddy rat's nest of his disordered bedding, 
 curled up to sleep. And in his dreams the Biznet 
 boy led him into many adventures and through 
 many troubles.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE LORD INDICATES A DUTY FOR MISS TRACY 
 
 THE Tracy parlors were large and dim ; filled 
 with things that had once been treasures, but were 
 become faded and out of date, like the shriveled 
 petals in a rose-jar. The carpets were soft, deeply 
 piled, patterned with huge roses, that had been 
 crimson fifty years ago, but which Time had 
 brought to brick-dust and gray. The furniture 
 was of crimson corded silk, but Time had incon- 
 siderately made it an acrid magenta that fretted 
 at the brick-red roses, once so congenial, just 
 as people, once matching delightfully, sometimes 
 fade into a grumpy discord. It 's all in the 
 dye. Under the buttons of the chairs there was 
 still a gleam of crimson as evidence of past splen- 
 dor. 
 
 On the walls, whose crimson stripe had faded 
 in still a different way, hung family portraits. 
 Not post mortem crayons, such as one finds in 
 other Cosmos homes, but "real oil paintings." 
 Stiff men, with curly topknots and bristly shirt 
 frills. Smiling ladies, who wore their hair over 
 their ears, and always kept one hand flatly hold- 
 ing folds of lace in such a way as to show its 
 elaborate pattern and display to the best advan- 
 tage remarkably pointed finger tips. They wore
 
 A DUTY FOR MISS TRACY 61 
 
 many jewels, too, each with a careful high light 
 in the middle to indicate its brilliancy. There 
 were suggestions of a Tracy who had been to far 
 countries a curved sword in a strangely carved, 
 scabbard, a Japanese lady embroidered in high 
 relief upon a banner, traveling one way upon im- 
 possible feet while her impossible face looked an- 
 other, a tea-set of bronze from Benares, to whose 
 ornament a lifetime may have gone. Hanging in 
 the arched doorway that led to the dining-room 
 was a wedge-shaped piece of brass, a gong that 
 had once hung in a Burmese temple and summoned 
 dark-skinned heathen to prayer with a high, waver-i 
 ing voice, ethereal, plaintive, of another world. 
 Now it called the Tracy family to meals. 
 
 Between the tall windows, shaded by a veranda 
 roof like an old-fashioned poke bonnet, stood a 
 square piano of antique pattern. One would have 
 expected its voice to be cracked and jangling, like 
 the colors of the room, but here was a touch of 
 youth and harmony. The case was old, but the 
 strings and action were new and good. 
 
 It was sentiment, and not poverty, that pre- 
 vented Miss Emily Tracy from rejuvenating the 
 room throughout. She loved to keep things as 
 they had been in her childhood ; to see, in the pier 
 glass, that her own face faded in equal ratio. She 
 was a contemplative, shy soul, loving those who 
 had died years before better than any one who 
 lived, even Billy, her brother's little boy. Billy's 
 sister was still abroad somewhere, with relatives. 
 Miss Tracy very much feared that it was her duty
 
 62 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 to have her come home and live with her and 
 Billy. She had been thinking about it for a year 
 now, and wondering what the Lord wanted her to 
 do about it. Miss Tracy always preferred let- 
 ting the Lord decide things for her to taking the 
 initiative herself. Women who have no man in 
 the family to direct them are given to this pious 
 habit. And, if the devil's instruments do not get 
 hold of their worldly goods, it is surprising how 
 well they get along. 
 
 The truth was that she did not like her niece, 
 who had been a rude, selfish child the last time 
 Miss Tracy had seen her, some ten years before. 
 Miss Tracy always meant to do her duty. There 
 had been duty enough and to spare while her 
 mother lived, but now the world seemed curiously 
 vacant and still, without the sound of that queru- 
 lous voice ; she felt uneasy, as though this new 
 idleness were a sin. The Lord must have a duty 
 for her somewhere ; she wished that He would be 
 explicit. Must she send for Maud? And then 
 Billy would give his allegiance to his sister in- 
 stead of to her. Perhaps that would not be best 
 for Billy. She wished she knew. 
 
 After sending her nephew to bed, Miss Tracy 
 was fond of playing on her old piano, particularly 
 during summer evenings, lit only by late sun- 
 sets, or the later shimmer of moonlight, delicate, 
 rippling things which rarely obliged her to lift 
 her foot from the soft pedal. She had been taught 
 well in her youth. There was a tradition that she 
 had talent.
 
 A DUTY FOR MISS TRACY 63 
 
 There is unrest and sadness in the odor of roses 
 for all but those too young to understand the 
 transient nature of what is pleasant. On this 
 June evening, as Miss Tracy sat at the piano 
 in the twilight, the odor of the rose garden came 
 to her through the open windows, and her eyes 
 were wet. Playing so softly that she could still 
 hear the long sigh of the wind in the grass, to 
 her blurred vision there seemed a shadow lurking 
 by a pillar, small and stealthy ; and, looking more 
 intently, it took on human shape. She kept on 
 with her music as she stared, and presently it 
 crept nearer, until its head was silhouetted in the 
 window frame. 
 
 " I think you might let me at it, once," said a 
 small, hoarse voice. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I ain't touched a piano since we left Montreal. 
 Abbe Thevierge used to let me." 
 
 "Who are you?" 
 
 " I sh'd think you might know me by this time, 
 even if you don't let Billy bring me into the 
 house. I 'm Roman Biznet. Phosy Conto is my 
 aunt, and I ain't touched a piano for more than a 
 year." 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 " I would n't hurt it none. I know that piece 
 you were just playing. Won't you let me try ? " 
 
 It had been Schubert's " Serenade." He scram- 
 bled over the window-sill and stood by the key- 
 board, looking up at her. There was an in- 
 describable luminosity about his eyes. She felt
 
 64 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 uncomfortably that she was seen better than she 
 could see. 
 
 " If you will play softly " 
 
 The goblin sprang to the vacated piano stool 
 with a chuckle of delight. He stretched out his 
 hands, drew them back, twisting and rubbing his 
 fingers, and gently rippled a few scales up and 
 down ; then, with a touch so light that some of 
 the keys did not respond, he whispered over a part 
 of the music that she had been playing. But 
 this he abandoned and fell to trying chords and 
 scales. 
 
 " 'T ain't in tune," he said presently. 
 
 " It was tuned last week," said Miss Tracy, in 
 feeble remonstrance. Her accurate ear was her 
 pride. He struck a chord that jangled slightly. 
 
 " I suppose it 's too damp for it near the win- 
 dow," she admitted reluctantly. 
 
 " I 've got a make-believe piano over to Phosy's. 
 I marked it out on the window-sill. But you get 
 tired of pretending all the time." 
 
 Miss Tracy stared stupidly. Since when had a 
 small French boy, of mongrel ancestry, been dis- 
 covered eating his heart out for such a thing as a 
 piano? Since when had a creature of this sort 
 contained more soul than could be satisfied by a 
 comb with paper over it, or a mouth-organ ? The 
 small fingers were wandering over the keys, gain- 
 ing firmness with every touch. 
 
 "The Abbe used to play this a lot," he said, 
 fumbling at the solemn chords of Chopin's 
 " Funeral March." " I can remember it, but I
 
 A DUTY FOR MISS TRACY 65 
 
 can't play it. I wish you'd do it. You don't 
 play as well as the Abbe, but I 'd like to hear it 
 again." 
 
 She played it for him, and when she had fin- 
 ished looked anxiously at her listener. She had 
 played it well, and her dignity began to reassert 
 itself. 
 
 "You didn't do it as well as the Abbe\" he 
 complained. Then he squatted down at her feet, 
 with the air of a bargain-maker ready for a long 
 bicker. 
 
 " Say, you lemme play on your piano some- 
 times, and I know something I '11 do for you ! " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I won't steal any of your apples when they 're 
 ripe, and I '11 keep the other boys away, too." 
 
 "Humph!" 
 
 " Ain't that worth something ? I heard one of 
 'em saying how he got ten dollars' worth last 
 year." 
 
 "You did, did you?" 
 
 "And another one got enough potatoes out of 
 the field next the track to last all winter, just by 
 digging round the roots and leaving the tops stand- 
 ing!" 
 
 " I suspected as much." 
 
 " I could keep 'em away from there, too." 
 
 "Indeed? How?" 
 
 " Scare 'em ! They 're easy to scare. But say 
 would n't that be worth while ? " 
 
 "Perhaps." 
 
 " I would n't hurt the piano none. I 'd be just as
 
 66 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 careful, and not play loud. Billy could stay in the 
 room to see I did n't steal anything." 
 
 " Of course you can come and I '11 give you 
 lessons and you shall be a musician, and 
 and Oh, run away home now ! I want to 
 think." 
 
 He disappeared promptly into the night, and 
 Miss Tracy went to bed with a happy and thank- 
 ful heart, because the Lord had pointed out a 
 duty so interesting. 
 
 A genius! And she would give him to the 
 world !
 
 CHAPTER X 
 BESSIE HEATHWAY'S ANXIETIES 
 
 A WEEK or so after the close of school, on a 
 sultry July morning which had withered the pur- 
 ple and pink morning-glories before they were 
 fairly open, Bess Heathway was rolling a hoop 
 languidly in front of her father's house. She wore 
 a pink starched dress, the inside seams of which 
 scratched her thin arms and bony neck until she 
 was exceedingly cross, without knowing why. 
 Her heavy crimped hair hung hot and moist about 
 her shoulders. 
 
 Billy Tracy had not been near her since school 
 closed, although she could plainly see him, day 
 after day, from her windows capering about the 
 Tracy grounds. Miss Tracy let him bring that 
 Biznet boy to her house. They were together all 
 the time ; Mamma Heathway said it was a shame, 
 and if she were Emily Tracy she 'd no more have 
 a ragged French Catholic young one in the house, 
 corrupting Billy's morals and stealing things, than 
 well, than anything. And who knows what 
 ideas he might give Billy on religion ? She won- 
 dered if Miss Tracy was going to turn Catholic 
 herself. She had been seen to bow to Father La- 
 belle in broad daylight ! 
 
 Bessie crossly batted her hoop about, keeping
 
 68 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 one eye toward the big house on the hill. Billy 
 sometimes went for a ride on his pony. It was a 
 pretty pony. 
 
 The pony and Billy came not, but presently she 
 saw down the street, under the archway of elms, 
 another figure, coming at a rapid trot. It was 
 smaller than Billy, but quite as well dressed, 
 dressed, indeed, so much like him that it might 
 have been his twin brother, scarlet stockings, 
 scarlet tie, straw hat with scarlet band. She 
 leaned her arms and chin on her hoop and waited, 
 staring scornfully as this new boy approached. 
 
 " Oh, Romy Biznet ! 'fore I 'd wear other 
 folks' old clo's ! Oh, Homy Biznet," she chanted, 
 in that singsong which all children in the world 
 know without being taught. 
 
 He turned upon her with a wicked gleam in 
 his eyes. She spat at him, like a spiteful kitten 
 at a puppy. 
 
 " You need n't watch for Billy to go by," he 
 said, " him and me are goin' fishing. Besides, 
 the horse is goin' to be shod. You might wait and 
 see the horse if you want." 
 
 He put his thumb to his nose, and Bessie went 
 into the house, howling. She was coming down 
 with the measles anyway, and the world was a 
 dreary place, at best. The Biznet boy kept on 
 up the hill. 
 
 Bessie Heathway, with the heaviness of all the 
 world's sorrows in her sobs, could hear the Tracy 
 piano banging away nearly all the rest of the 
 morning. Her head ached. Papa Heathway let
 
 BESSIE HEATHWAY'S ANXIETIES 69 
 
 her come into the library and look at the great 
 tome called " Dante's Inferno." She was almost 
 forgetting her troubles in those delightful horrors 
 of Dore, when Mamma Heathway came in and 
 took it away. 
 
 " The very idea ! To let the child have such a 
 book," whereupon Bessie began to cry again, and 
 utterly refused her "St. Nicholas," some bright 
 bits of cloth for dolls' dresses, even the loan of 
 her father's mathematical instruments. She wan- 
 dered tragically out to the barn, and crawled to 
 the hay chute, pretending that it was the pit at 
 whose bottom lay Satan, eating up Judas, crunch- 
 ing his little bones, just as one crunches the legs 
 of those yellow-red crabs that come with oysters. 
 Satan was Pegasus, the squire's old blooded Ara- 
 bian, nuzzling with his pink nose to see if any 
 oats happened to have been mixed with his hay 
 by mistake. Bess lay gloomily on the edge of this 
 abyss and fed him wisps of fresh hay, pretend- 
 ing that they were sinners by the name of Biznet. 
 Presently, feeling the need of a confidant, she went 
 over to Dr. Winthrop. 
 
 Did you ever notice what a queer, nice smell 
 there is about clean children ? Particularly in a 
 little girl's hair. Take one in your lap and rest 
 your nose gently on the top of her head, taking 
 care that she does n't bump up like a guinea pig, 
 and give you a nosebleed. It is partly soap, partly 
 crimping irons, partly perspiration, and partly her 
 own young deliciousness ; but it is as real as the 
 fragrance of those maligned flowers which we
 
 70 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 claim have no odor because our noses are not fine 
 enough to perceive it. 
 
 Dr. Winthrop loved to rub his cheek against 
 Bessie's head while she sat in his lap. She was 
 getting rather long-legged for it now, and awk- 
 ward. The little man was really too weak and sick 
 to have great, half-grown children sprawling over 
 him. He would not have allowed a patient of his 
 to be bothered so. 
 
 " But Bessie," he was saying in amused perplex- 
 ity, " I don't think Homy Biznet is a bad boy. 
 You you nag him, my child. Men critters never 
 like to be nagged. And as for smoking of course 
 he ought not to, if Miss Tracy has forbidden it, 
 but between you and me, if a man is fond of his 
 pipe why don't you lecture me about smoking ? 
 It 's bad for me." 
 
 " That 's different." 
 
 " Well, perhaps it is. I daresay it is. Will 
 you hand me down that box of cigars ? Thanks. 
 Smell 'em. Does n't it make you wish you were 
 a man? Ah!" 
 
 Bess always had the weight of the world on her 
 shoulders, from the time before she could walk 
 alone, when she tried to make two puppies, eating 
 scraps from the same dish, respect a dividing line 
 through its exact centre. 
 
 " Well," she said, with a mature frown, " it 's 
 Billy I 'm worried about." 
 
 The doctor choked slightly behind his cigar. 
 " Why, what 's wrong with Billy ? " he asked, un- 
 steadily. Bess, who was leaning against him, 
 turned around with suspicion.
 
 BESSIE HEATHWAY'S ANXIETIES 71 
 
 " You need n't laugh," she said sternly. 
 
 " I was thinking of something I read yesterday," 
 he murmured, discreetly. " But what did you say 
 was wrong with Billy ? " 
 
 " I saw him smoking the Biznet boy's pipe yes- 
 terday," said poor Bess, and leaned her head upon 
 her hands. 
 
 " And and did it make him sick ? " asked the 
 doctor, sympathetically. 
 
 "I don't know. I guess probably. That's 
 what comes of having a French Catholic young 
 one in the house." She sighed tragically. The 
 doctor, combing her long crimped locks with his 
 yellow fingers, pondered deeply. 
 
 " Well," he said at length, " I guess I '11 talk to 
 the boys a little. It is n't very good for them, 
 and that 's the truth. Komy is n't a bad fellow, 
 though ; I would n't worry about him and Billy. 
 Why, my dear, don't tell anybody, but Romy will 
 be a famous man some day. Don't offend him 
 now. We shall all be proud to say we knew him, 
 in a few years."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 FAMEUSE APPLES AND THE LOTJP-GAROU. 
 
 THE Fameuse apples were in their prime. Now 
 there is something about a Fameuse apple which, 
 if one has ever known and loved it, makes all 
 other apples meaningless and stale forever. The 
 Fameuse apple is cool, even while it lies with its 
 crimson cheek to the September sun. It is juicy 
 beyond all other juiciness. It is white and crisp, 
 and in its red skin there is romance. If a tooth 
 once pierces its deliciousness, no dream of a happy 
 life can be dreamed that does not make a liberal 
 allowance for Fameuse apples. Therefore, it is 
 well to keep a watchful eye upon any tree which 
 one is fortunate enough to own. Otherwise the 
 crop is prone to fail. 
 
 The potatoes were ready to dig, but slept a little 
 longer, sluggard-like, being very well off where 
 they were. The corn still stood bravely in regi- 
 ments and battalions, though beginning to look a 
 bit seedy and out at elbows. The hops were green 
 and dusty and pungent, until you could n't rest 
 for the tantalizing suggestion of Beer to Be. 
 
 Roman Biznet considered these things, as he set 
 out late one Saturday afternoon from the Tracy 
 house, carrying a particularly grateful and melo- 
 dious little heart in his bosom, for Miss Tracy had
 
 FAMEUSE APPLES 73 
 
 warmed to him beyond the point of good judg- 
 ment, letting her golden opinion of his future 
 shine to sultriness upon his hopes. He bethought 
 him that it was time for the payment which he had 
 promised for his tuition. 
 
 On the Santwire side of Phosy's fence, Adlor 
 Santwire and some bigger boys, supposed to be 
 unutterably evil and worldly because they had not 
 been in school for a year or two, and because their 
 changing voices sounded strange and foreign in 
 the twanging French words which school children 
 were forbidden to use Adlor and his friends 
 used to range themselves with their backs to this 
 board fence and swap lies and smoke immoral 
 corn-cob pipes, with tobacco from their own back 
 yards, and plan whatever of infamy was within the 
 compass of their intellects. At first Rome joined 
 them, but when Miss Tracy made him stop smok- 
 ing, a feeling that he was small and limited kept 
 him to himself. Yet, loving the smell of their 
 pipes and the pleasant sensation of eavesdropping, 
 he was fond of curling up in the softest of Kitty's 
 architectural efforts in the hen's behalf to pass an 
 indolent hour or two after supper. 
 
 He had filled his pockets with Fameuse apples 
 as he went through the Tracy orchard. In fact, 
 habit had so overcome him that he had stuffed 
 about half a peck between his shirt and himself 
 before his sense of honor asserted itself. Then, 
 nobody having seen him, when he thought of Al- 
 phonsine and Kitty it hardly seemed worth while 
 to unload. Particularly as he remembered how
 
 74 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 fond Miss Tracy was of him, and was practically 
 certain that she would have given them to him if 
 she had happened to think of it. 
 
 So he ate Fameuse apples and watched the little 
 stars come out, and listened to Adlor and his 
 friends. The world seemed a very comfortable 
 place. Alphonsine, clattering dishes about, was 
 singing in a high nasal voice ; Kitty, sent to bed, 
 sat on the window-sill in her pink calico nightie, 
 swinging her bare feet and eating her Fameuse 
 apples, the cores of which she threw at Rome as 
 fast as they were nibbled down. But Rome had 
 become too interested in the conversation on the 
 other side of the fence to throw anything back. 
 His jaws were motionless ; his eyes were bright 
 with attention. 
 
 Presently Adlor and his cronies departed, talk- 
 ing among themselves in the mumbling way of 
 evil-doers. Rome still sat, with his jaws fixed in 
 the action of biting, thinking deeply. Presently he 
 finished his bite with a sharp champ of satisfaction 
 and rose stiffly, nodding portentously to himself. 
 
 There was no moon that night, but the stars 
 were fair. A little wind whispered ghost stories 
 to itself, shivering among the dark trees at its own 
 inventions, making sudden panic runs of terror 
 through the orchard, then sitting down abruptly, 
 panting, whispering to itself again, making ready 
 for another burst. 
 
 Its fidgeting was disconcerting. One could not 
 hear whether a footstep might not be sounding
 
 FAMEUSE APPLES 75 
 
 beside one in the dark, or if a creature breathing 
 stertorously, shrank against a tree trunk that it 
 might not brush against the passer-by. 
 
 But the darkness was sweet with apples, and 
 one could see their fair round bodies against the 
 sky, cheek by cheek with the stars. One had only 
 need to shake the tree to bring them plumping all 
 about, like frightened frogs jumping into a pond. 
 Then, in the invisible wet grass, one could find 
 them by touch and smell. 
 
 Enter three long black figures, stepping softly, 
 breathing tenderly. Only a cat or a creature with 
 cat's eyes could have seen them at all in that ob- 
 scurity. A cat would have perceived that each 
 carried an empty flour sack, that their black eyes 
 were wide and peering. 
 
 " Qui va la ? " muttered a startled voice. 
 
 " 'T wan't nothin'." 
 
 " Did n't you hear some one snicker ? " 
 
 "Naw." " 
 
 Yet to all three it seemed that some light, swift 
 body crept side by side with them, stopping when 
 they stopped, holding its breath, peering about 
 tree trunks, taking advantage of each fresh gust 
 of wind to perform some mysterious and fearful 
 evolution under cover of the trees' rustling. But 
 the apples were sweet, and the boys were brave as 
 French boys go. 
 
 Adlor seized a branch and shook it, looking over 
 his shoulder the while ; his companions gathered 
 with skillful rapidity, unheeding the apples that 
 struck their heads and shoulders.
 
 76 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 But, suddenly, all three stood erect in frozen 
 attitudes of fear. It was four-footed. It had two 
 eyes that shone shone with blue and wavering 
 flames, like sulphur matches moistened and rubbed 
 in the dark. It looked at them. 
 
 " G-g-g-good doggie," said Adlor. A low growl 
 answered them, a growl that carried with it the 
 unspeakable horror of a human voice. A human 
 growl, a four-footed beast, phosphorescent eyes. 
 It was most certainly the loup-garou, a beast rarely 
 seen, but only too common ia this region. 
 
 Adlor could only gasp, " Loup-garou ! " Char- 
 lie Orleana sent forth one howl of mortal terror, 
 Pete Premo shivered out a Pater Noster, and they 
 ran. They stumbled, they sobbed, they prayed, 
 and the Thing came after. As they reached the 
 fence and were about to scramble over it, like flee- 
 ing cats, Adlor glanced behind, and with one awful 
 yell fainted dead away. The loup-garou was out- 
 lined in that instant against the starlit sky, and 
 was seen to be running on two legs like a man, its 
 flaming eyes, as big as silver dollars, still blazing 
 where, if it had been a man, its forehead would 
 have been. It was this awful upright posture, its 
 clear outline, and its Eyes that Adlor saw last when 
 he fell. When he opened his eyes, blankly, he 
 was being pinched and patted by small strong fin- 
 gers, and a rather scared voice was saying : " Wake 
 up, you old fool, you Johnny Crapaud, you. Don't 
 you play your monkey tricks on me ! " 
 
 " Loup-garou," stuttered Adlor, sitting up and 
 looking wildly around.
 
 FAMEUSE APPLES 77 
 
 " Loo which ? There ain't been no girl here. 
 I heard some hollerin' and seen you three fellers 
 runnin' like something was chasing you. I stood 
 by, and pretty soon 'long came a funny-lookin' 
 dog." 
 
 " Loup-garou," said Adlor. 
 
 " Naw ! It was ole Heathway's Bose. Wat 
 you doin' in Miss Tracy's orchard, anyway ? Run 
 home to your ma and ask her not to let the 
 ghostses at you ! Baby ! " 
 
 Adlor rose giddily and got feebly over the fence. 
 When Rome saw that he could walk, it seemed 
 such a pity to waste good material prepared, that 
 he said, craning as much of his face as possible 
 through the pickets, " Maybe it was a loup- 
 garou ! " 
 
 Adlor groaned and staggered on. 
 
 " Maybe Miss Tracy 's got one to keep thieves 
 out of her orchard ! " 
 
 " Loup-garou," repeated poor Adlor. 
 
 " There 's somethin' comin' now ! I hear 'em ! " 
 
 Adlor broke into a feeble run. Just before he 
 disappeared over the railroad track, a dismal shriek 
 rent the air wild, unearthly and then a pier- 
 cing, wailing voice which reached even the still 
 fleeing Pete and Charlie : 
 
 " Oh, Adlor 1 Oh, mon vieux ! 
 Adlor Santwire, tout perdu ! " 
 
 And while Adlor, having gained the ruddy 
 kitchen, was having an hysterical fit at the feet 
 of his scared old mother, Roman Biznet, having 
 found a corn-cob pipe lost by the trio, was trying
 
 78 KOMAN BIZNET 
 
 vainly to light it with some wet matches, of which 
 he had his pockets full. They smelt of brimstone 
 and glowed with blue flame as had the eyes of the 
 loup-garou. He polished his forehead with his coat 
 sleeve, and it glimmered faintly. His cap had 
 been pulled down over his brow when he minis- 
 tered to the fallen Adlor. 
 
 At last a match, drier than the rest, sputtered 
 into flame. He lit his pipe, which was still half 
 full, and smoked, his head thrown back, his eyes 
 half shut. He rose at last, when the corn-cob had 
 nearly followed the tobacco to ashes, and saun- 
 tered homeward, having loaded one of the half-full 
 bags of apples on his shoulder. He would tell 
 Miss Tracy there were two thieves and show her 
 the two bags. There was no need to mention so 
 small a matter as the third thief and his bag. 
 
 As he passed the Heathway woods, he saw a man. 
 The man was smoking and his pipe lit up his face. 
 It was so dark that even Roman Biznet's cat-like 
 eyes would not have recognized him if it had not 
 been for that ruddy glow. 
 
 The boy stopped short, dropping his bag of 
 apples ; for an instant his heart beat so queerly 
 that he feared he might flop over as Adlor had 
 done at sight of the loup-garou. The man was 
 leaning pensively against a tree, his hands in his 
 pockets. At his feet was a small, dark thing that 
 might have been a dog except that it was so still. 
 He looked around mildly as Rome stopped, and 
 said pleasantly : 
 
 "Well, son?"
 
 FAMEUSE APPLES 79 
 
 " What you doin' here? " asked the boy sternly. 
 
 Antoine replied with a shrug. The shrug is a 
 gesture which, in its primitive essence, means 
 shaking a burden from the shoulders. Responsi- 
 bility for his own actions was a burden with which 
 Antoine Biznet would have nothing to do. " How 
 do I know ? " 
 
 Roman Biznet cursed his father profusely, both 
 in French and English. Antoine listened humbly, 
 but tipped a sly wink of parental pride to the stars. 
 
 "An' now you're comin' to Phosy again, and 
 what do you think she '11 do to you ? " 
 
 Antoine shrugged again. Responsibility for 
 other people's actions was even less to his taste 
 than responsibility for his own. But this small 
 tempest of a son seemed to need pacifying. 
 
 " Oh, I ain't going to stop here," he said sooth- 
 ingly, and picked up the violin case. " Come on 
 into the woods a bit. I'm going to play." 
 
 He led the way through the dense, crisp dark- 
 ness of the woods to where a lively little brook 
 was churning away, Undine fashion, throwing out 
 gleams of white foam from its obscurity. If the 
 eyes of the two had not been rarely good, they 
 must have broken their necks a dozen times in 
 tripping over fallen logs, or plunging into miry 
 muck beds. One would have thought it a terrible 
 place for the violin to take cold in her brown 
 throat. But if Antoine had the whim to play in 
 a damp wood by a splashing stream, she must 
 serve him as he liked, whatever befell glue or cat- 
 gut.
 
 80 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I 'm taking lessons now," Rome confided dur- 
 ing a lull. 
 
 Antoine peered sideways at him, and nodded 
 sharply. " Violin ? " he asked. 
 
 " Piano." 
 
 Antoine made a face and shrugged. " Bah ! A 
 piano is a horse that goes trot, trot, trot, as his 
 master wills. A violin is a woman that can be 
 made to cry. Piano turn turn turn tiddle 
 diddle ! " The violin shrieked with derisive laugh- 
 ter. Rome hung his head. 
 
 " Well," he said sadly, " piano is all Miss Tracy 
 knows. It 's better 'n nothin', ain't it ? " 
 
 " Oh, oui." 
 
 Antoine played half the night, and when he had 
 finished was so restored to his own self-esteem and 
 had so plunged his son into nonentity that he sent 
 the lad home with a vainglorious box on the ear, 
 which Rome accepted without protest, stumbling 
 home dumbly, his ears ringing with many sounds. 
 
 Phosy was still up with some promised work, 
 steeped in red dye to her elbows, wet red draperies 
 hanging throughout the kitchen. She was tired 
 and fierce. 
 
 " My my ! You one bad boy ! Were you 
 been ? You mighty lucky the loup-garou ain' got 
 you ! Adlor Santwire seen one. You get to bed, 
 toute suite ! "
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 " UNNECESSARY " 
 
 THE next Monday was the first day of school. 
 Miss Kitty Conto was to go to school for the first 
 time. She was to enter the Blackboard Class 
 and be the littlest one in a shrill row that lined up 
 several times a day to consider such cabalistic 
 propositions as 
 
 I have a cat. 1 + 1 = 2 
 
 I have a man. 1 + 2 = 3 
 
 I have a dog. 1 + 3 = 4 
 
 She was to balk at the very first statement, re- 
 fusing, even for the sake of argument, to assume 
 that she had a cat, confiding to the hilarious school 
 that she "hadn't nothin' but an ole hen." She 
 was to be suppressed and to weep, but at present 
 she had no foretaste of these sorrows. Even being 
 stood in a corner a ceremony that Rome de- 
 scribed menacingly at great length, once in Eng- 
 lish, once in French savored of joy and romance 
 to her heated imagination. It is always so when 
 one starts out in life. Whatever does become of 
 that rainbow halo, I wonder ? 
 
 Alphonsine was even more excited than Kitty. 
 It was in some ways the greatest event of her 
 own life. She clattered about with pins, dye-pots,
 
 82 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 fried pork and onions, all at once. The milk 
 pitcher had been used previously in mixing a blue 
 dye, and enough had settled in the cracks of the 
 glazing to discolor many successive quarts of milk, 
 though the dose of aniline was practically so small 
 as to be innocuous. Kitty's bread and milk had a 
 brilliancy of color which she found extremely 
 pleasing. 
 
 While she ate, Alphonsine stood behind her 
 chair, braiding her hair in two slim braids, which 
 would have been quite thick but for the enormous 
 bang, starting halfway back on her crown and 
 falling roughly down in her eyes. 
 
 Alphonsine took this opportunity to deliver a 
 long, comprehensive and emphatic lecture on the 
 behavior to be expected from a little girl whose 
 ancestors were " Paris French " and who was 
 wearing for the first time a beautiful new red 
 gown, red stockings, and black ankle-ties; also 
 red ribbons in her hair. 
 
 "Always say 'Yes, ma'am' and 'No, ma'am.' 
 Keep your arms folded and your toes turned out. 
 Don' let 'em tink you 're one liT Irish gal. Tell 
 'em your grandpap was Paris French, but don' 
 say it right off firs' ting. Sit nice an' quiet till 
 some nice liT gals ask you to play wid 'em. Don' 
 play wid no common liT washwoman's gals." 
 
 "You was a washwoman once," piped Kitty, 
 her voice sounding hollow within her bowl of 
 bread and milk. There was a last pale blue 
 crumb for which her tongue was angling. Al- 
 phonsine smacked her.
 
 UNNECESSARY" 83 
 
 " An' you, Roman, you take care of Kitty now, 
 w'at I tole you ! " 
 
 As the two trudged off, apparently none the 
 worse for blue interiors, Rome looked back and 
 saw Alphonsine standing in the doorway, shading 
 her eyes with her hands. The sun distorted her 
 face curiously, as if with pain or fear. 
 
 Having deposited Kitty in the primary depart- 
 ment, he promptly sought his teacher and informed 
 her, in the pained tone of virtue common to liars, 
 that his aunt wanted him excused for that day to 
 help her. The teacher was new and unsuspicious. 
 She even looked sympathetic as she gave permis- 
 sion, and he betook himself quietly to the autumn 
 woods, partly to get in another day of vacation, 
 partly on business of his own, which was to find 
 out whether Antoine had gone, as he had promised. 
 
 He found the spot where Tony had sat and 
 played to him on the Saturday night previous ; it 
 was marked by ashes from his father's pipe and 
 an inch or two of discarded catgut. Farther on, 
 chicken feathers and corn-cobs, scattered about 
 a blackened cairn of stones, reminded him of the 
 trail of their exodus from Canada the year be- 
 fore. 
 
 It had been pleasant, on the whole ; that is, not 
 pleasant, exactly, with that memory of Phosbe in 
 her shallow grave and the feeling that she might 
 burrow her way out and come after them with 
 awful swiftness, dead leaves and black earth mixed 
 with her hair and fallen in her eyes ; but aside 
 from that, there was always a tang of sweetness
 
 84 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 about the memory of that journey as long as he 
 lived. And did n't he know just how good those 
 chickens must have tasted as Antoine cooked 
 them? He hoped it might have been the Heath- 
 way roost that had suffered, but, on considering 
 the feathers, found they matched the Tracy buff 
 cochins, and was sorry. 
 
 Prowling along the edges of the stream, poking 
 his fingers into the doorways of moles and chip- 
 munks, teasing spiders to the pitch of murder, un- 
 raveling the mechanism of empty birds' nests, he 
 began to feel that eyes were watching him some- 
 where from within a prehistoric forest of frost- 
 nipped brakes the other side of the brook. 
 
 The mutter of water among the stones lay like 
 a fog between his ears and all other sounds. 
 There might have been stealthy footsteps and 
 voices everywhere. So he sat down, cross-legged, 
 and matched his eyes against the invisible stare. 
 His face was as vacant as that of a toad point- 
 ing at a fly, but his heart thumped disagreeably. 
 He wondered if Adlor had felt like that when he 
 saw the loup-garou. He hoped that he had. 
 
 When he had looked for so long that the spot 
 where his eyes were focused began to radiate 
 little painful fires, a sudden laugh cut through 
 the noise of the stream; the brakes shook, and 
 Antoine's head rose slowly from their middle. As 
 the morning sunlight slanted across his eyes, little 
 disks of rose-colored fire glimmered where the 
 pupils should have been black. He smiled ami- 
 cably.
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 85 
 
 " Come here, you devil's brat ! " 
 
 The boy perceived, with a feeling of discour- 
 agement, that something had dissipated his father's 
 dreamy, compliant mood ; that he had become fero- 
 ciously good-humored and insubordinate. Stum- 
 bling across a broken brown glass bottle, when he 
 had crossed the stream with an agile jump or two, 
 he understood the reason. 
 
 He stood before Antoine, his legs braced to 
 meet any attack ; his eyes narrowed to slits. An- 
 toine took one of his son's ears between his thumb 
 and finger, wagging the boy's head backward and 
 forward in a sort of lazy caress. With a quick 
 motion, Rome sunk his sharp little teeth into his 
 father's wrist, crunching until he tasted blood in 
 his mouth. 
 
 Antoine roared with laughter, not flinching in 
 the least from the pain. 
 
 " Take your ear, Romy, and give me back my 
 wrist, what's left of it. Say, I'm going to see 
 Phosy. Don't you think she'll be glad to see 
 me?" 
 
 "Better not," said Rome, grimly, spitting out 
 his father's blood. " She '11 do worse 'n that to 
 you!" 
 
 " Oh," said Antoine, placidly, licking the small 
 wound as a cat licks its paw, " I don't mind a 
 little thing like that. Kisses are a matter of 
 taste." 
 
 "You better keep clear of her," said Roman 
 again. 
 
 "But why?"
 
 86 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " You 're drunk, an' too big a fool to know it. 
 D' you suppose she 's forgotten about your killing 
 Ma by this time ? Well, she ain't ! " 
 
 " Has not ! I thought you were going to school. 
 Guess you ran away, did n't you ? Better trot back 
 again. Only bad boys play truant. I notice you 
 had fried pork and onions for breakfast. I '11 go 
 and see if Phosy 's got any left." 
 
 He turned away toward French Hollow. 
 
 " She won't give you anything, you darned old 
 drunk Crapaud ! " 
 
 " Oh, I guess she will," replied Antoine, as he 
 disappeared in the underbrush. 
 
 Rome threw several stones at the point where 
 his father had vanished, and with that action 
 washed his hands of him. For a little longer he 
 wandered aimlessly about the woods, but his soul 
 was disturbed; the trees twisted themselves into 
 goblin shapes and made faces at him with their 
 seamy bark, the wind growled menacingly in their 
 tops, the brook chattered some terrible story that 
 he could not understand ; by degrees fright pos- 
 sessed him, and he ran out of the woods in a panic 
 almost as disgraceful as that which had driven 
 Adlor, Pete, and Charlie from the orchard. 
 
 Recess was just over ; he reached his seat at the 
 last clang of the gong. Miss Johnson, the new 
 teacher, was organizing the geography class when 
 he tiptoed to his seat, the room being in that buzz- 
 ing, snuffling, after-recess silence, when lungs are 
 still full of oxygen and the air is restless with left- 
 over animal spirits.
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 87 
 
 Miss Johnson was a pale, nervous little crea- 
 ture, a normal-school product, much inclined to 
 believe the best of her pupils and of the rough 
 world in general, and to blame herself when other 
 people went wrong. The importance of an ani- 
 mated manner had been impressed upon her, and 
 she wore a nervous conciliatory smile, which was 
 apt to be overlooked in favor of a chronic frown. 
 That she tried all sorts of cosmetics, massage, and 
 what not, for this scar of time, availed her no- 
 thing. It was a poor day that some one who had 
 her welfare at heart did not take her aside and 
 lecture her more or less sternly on her expression. 
 
 Amy Bartlett had been a scoffer and a cynic 
 on the subject of any goodness whatever among 
 school children, with the result that the good- 
 natured contempt of her keen, dark face had kept 
 her little mob in pretty fair subjection, with one or 
 two exceptions. 
 
 Miss Johnson smiled doubtfully at Roman Biz- 
 net as he tiptoed to his seat and sat down meekly 
 with folded arms. 
 
 " We were talking about Colorado," she said, in 
 a tone that admitted the tardy youngster to equal- 
 ity with herself and caused wickedness and egotism 
 to bubble up within him. 
 
 " Benny Wells, why do you think we should be 
 particularly interested in Colorado to-day ? " 
 
 Benny Wells, the minister's son, grew pink in 
 the ears as he stood up and said : " 'Cause, well, 
 Miss Bartlett 's went there." 
 
 " ' Has gone,' Benny, not ' has went.' I wonder,
 
 88 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 now, if any one can tell me by what railroad Miss 
 Bartlett went to Colorado. Can you, Roman 
 Biznet?" 
 
 " By the Central Vermont." 
 
 " But would the Central Vermont take her all 
 the way ? Bessie Heathway, what can you tell us 
 about it?" 
 
 But Bessie Heathway had for some reason 
 turned red and sullen. Her chest heaved and she 
 broke the end of her slate pencil in the ink-well, 
 then burst out gustily, with many tears : "I I 
 d-don't think it 's nice to talk about Miss Bart- 
 lett's going off to Denver, w-when we all know 
 w-why she went, and maybe she '11 die of c-con- 
 sumption, and never come back ! She was my 
 m-most particular friend ! " Bessie rushed from 
 the room with a dismal whoop. 
 
 Miss Johnson, bewildered and vexed, remem- 
 bered then that Amy had solemnly warned her 
 against Bessie Heathway. She did the best thing 
 possible under the circumstances. 
 
 " Perhaps we would all feel better for a little 
 music," she said. 
 
 " Bessie Heathway is the only one that can play 
 the organ," said Roman Biznet, with the air of 
 one ready to stand by and assist with valuable 
 counsel. 
 
 " I think I know a boy that plays," said Miss 
 Johnson, archly. 
 
 " Me ? I don't play. Bess Heathway would lift 
 the hair all off me ! " 
 
 Miss Johnson looked sternly at her black-eyed
 
 " UNNECESSARY " 89 
 
 counsellor. " Go to the organ, Roman Biznet. 
 We will sing from page 57." 
 
 He shrugged his little shoulders and went, his 
 cat-like smile unchanging, scuffing his feet. At 
 first he planned to make the organ do strange 
 things and tangle up everybody in a discordant, 
 timeless snare of sounds, but vanity came to his 
 rescue, and he finally did as well as he knew 
 how. They sang : 
 
 " Think gently of the erring one, 
 
 And let us not forget, 
 However darkly stained by sin, 
 He is our brother yet." 
 
 Then they all felt better, and Bess Heathway 
 returned from the cloak-room, sniffing and red- 
 nosed, but peaceful, and forgiving Miss Johnson 
 with a watery smile as she reached her seat, but 
 baleful-eyed when she saw the Biznet boy's bristle 
 of black hair above the organ. 
 
 At noon, Rome and Kitty sat under the big 
 elm, where was the only spot of grass in the play- 
 ground, and shared their luncheon from the same 
 tin pail, while Kitty chattered and giggled enthu- 
 siastically about the nice little girls and boys in her 
 class, not mentioning her first faux pas in connec- 
 tion with " I have a cat." 
 
 He did not tweak her long, black braid, nor 
 drop ants down her back, but sat with meditative 
 scowl. His fright in the woods had suggested 
 work for Miss Tracy's piano, something that 
 should ripple like the brook and thunder in the 
 bass with dreadful suggestions. He took his
 
 90 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 slate, ruling it from top to bottom in bars of five 
 lines, covering them with notes in pairs, like rabbit 
 tracks. 
 
 " Make a picture of a little girl," said Kitty, 
 breathing into his ear and leaning heavily on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Those are all little girls running down the road 
 to school," he explained, craftily. 
 
 " Make their arms and legs." 
 
 " There they are," he answered, pointing to some 
 eighth and sixteenth notes. 
 
 " Let me make a little girl." 
 
 " No, sir ! You let it alone ! There 's a nice 
 little girl coming," he added, wickedly, as he looked 
 up and saw Bessie Heathway coming over the 
 grounds. " Go and ask her to play with you." 
 
 Kitty promptly jumped up and ran toward the 
 stiff pink gingham figure. Rome watched from 
 the corners of his eyes, with an evilly expectant 
 grin, which changed to amazement as the unap- 
 proachable Bess Heathway swung Kitty into the 
 air to kiss her, produced a piece of ribbon from 
 her pocket, and harnessing Kitty as a horse, pro- 
 ceeded to drive that spirited animal about the now 
 rapidly filling playground. 
 
 Rome grunted and returned to his rabbit tracks. 
 They would not do his bidding, however, so he 
 smeared them out, and lay back, with his hat over 
 his face, thinking the sounds he could not write. 
 His rest was broken by Billy Tracy sitting down 
 upon his head and then apologizing profusely. 
 
 " You 're getting too funny ! " growled Rome, 
 trying to resuscitate his hat.
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 91 
 
 " Bess Heathway seems to like Kitty better than 
 she does you," mused Billy. 
 
 " What do I care ! " growled Rome. " She 's a 
 a codfish " it was the most uncomplimentary 
 term that occurred to him "a salt codfish," he 
 repeated, relishingly. 
 
 A number of girls were playing " Miss Jinny 
 O' Jones." Kitty acted the part of the versatile 
 Jinny, while Bess chanted the responses of the 
 sympathetic neighbor : 
 
 " We 've come to see Miss Jinny O' Jones, 
 
 And how is she to-day ? " 
 " Washing." 
 " That 's very good for Jinny O'Jones ; 
 
 We '11 call another day." 
 
 And so on until the reply that Jinny is dead, when 
 the query anxiously turns upon the color to bury 
 her in. While this part of the game was going on, 
 however, Kitty's red legs began to kick violently, 
 and sitting up, she declared vehemently that she 
 was n't dead and never would be, and she would n't 
 wear anything but red anyhow. Whereupon half 
 the girls began to scold, and the other half said 
 she should play at being their little girl. This 
 suited her perfectly, and she was joyously receiv- 
 ing her fifth spanking at the hands of her third 
 mother when the gong sounded. 
 
 Rome, thinking comfortably that a weight of 
 responsibility had been lifted from his shoulders, 
 returned to his rabbit tracks under the shelter of 
 his geography. 
 
 The afternoon droned away. A cicada outside
 
 92 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 the door whetted his scythe and the teacher's 
 nerves. Bess Heathway went to sleep with her 
 head on her arm, and Rome, turning about, filled 
 her lax palm with torn paper, and pulled the hair- 
 pins out of her topknot ; growing bolder, he even 
 purloined her pink ribbon, and was unbraiding 
 her hair amid the approving grins of all the school 
 when Bess stirred, and he returned studiously to 
 his slate. Presently he felt the point of a pin 
 pressing into the back of his neck. He gave no 
 sign. It kept on until it drew blood, and then 
 was withdrawn. "You felt it just the same!" 
 said a wrathful whisper in his ear. 
 
 He was turning about with a languishing look 
 when the teacher rapped sharply. The hands of 
 the clock pointed to quarter to four. Bess went to 
 the organ, and the school marched out to the thin 
 strains of the " Titus March." 
 
 Rome found Kitty crying at the door of her 
 class-room. " There 's a liT gal says my mamma 's 
 a washwoman, and that her mamma won't let her 
 play with me," she wailed. 
 
 They lingered to eat unripe wild grapes, tres- 
 passing daringly some six feet within the Heath- 
 way pasture, while a mild black bull turned his 
 pink-white face doubtfully toward Kitty's red dress. 
 When he sauntered nearer possibly thinking a 
 red poppy out of season would flavor his cud 
 they scrambled a retreat over the fence, tasting all 
 the joy of a hairbreadth escape, and made friends 
 with him through the cracks when he arrived, blow-
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 93 
 
 ing his fragrant breath at them, rolling the whites 
 of his eyes terribly as he wrapped his great pink 
 tongue around an apple that Rome offered, swal- 
 lowing it with a single crunch, as one takes a 
 homeopathic pill. 
 
 Kitty looked at him timidly under her bang. 
 " Mamma says it 's bad luck to dream of cows," 
 she said, pensively. " When she dreams of cows 
 she cries. She dreamed of cows last night." 
 
 " What 's that man running for, I wonder ? " 
 said Rome. Up the road they saw the dust rising, 
 and from it came not only one man, but two, three, 
 four a dozen ! They came so fast that they 
 were abreast of them and had passed before the 
 children could shut their open mouths enough to 
 ask a question. Among these running men they 
 had seen the butcher, in his white apron with its 
 red smears ; John Premo, the tailor, his yellow tape 
 measure streaming from his neck ; Aby Frechette, 
 his bare arms all flour, and various customers trail- 
 ing on behind, one man wearing a half -stitched 
 coat, a boy carrying an unwrapped loaf of bread 
 in one hand and the five cents to pay for it in the 
 other. They were all going toward French Hol- 
 low. Then passed Constable Flaherty on horse- 
 back, his red face shining with excitement. When 
 he saw the children, who had come out farther into 
 the road, a troubled look crossed his face, and he 
 started to rein up. But his lumbering horse was 
 under a momentum not easy to arrest. He turned 
 in the saddle and shouted to them. 
 
 " What did he say ? " asked Kitty.
 
 94 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " He said, ' Don't go home ! ' " answered Rome, 
 adding, " Come on ! " And taking hold of hands, 
 they ran toward Phosy's house. 
 
 All the people were gathered about their own 
 door, the constable's horse standing with puffing 
 nostrils in the flower bed, boys clinging to the 
 window-sill and peering within, a group of women 
 crying and gesticulating by themselves, and one 
 man (to whom the others were listening) repeat- 
 edly making a strange gesture drawing his finger 
 across his throat. 
 
 In the doorway, seated on one of Phosy's kitchen 
 chairs and mopping his head with a bandanna, was 
 Constable Flaherty, whom nobody but the sheriff 
 and the undertaker might pass, unless possibly 
 a doctor or a priest, though there was no work 
 there for either of them. 
 
 " I told yez to shtay away ! " he said, angrily, as 
 he saw the children. " Can't somebody take thot 
 little girl away ? You 're a noice boy to bring her 
 here ! " 
 
 " What 's the matter ? " asked Rome, stupidly. 
 " Why can't we go in ? " 
 
 " Matther ! O Lord ! " groaned the constable. 
 The women set up a shrill cackle of grief. The 
 man had stopped his story and put his gesticulat- 
 ing hands into his pockets. 
 
 " Come here, Kitty," said a quiet voice ; " and 
 you too, Roman Biznet." Before the children, 
 utterly uncomprehending as yet that something was 
 very seriously wrong, knew what they were doing, 
 each had hold of a lean, yellow hand and was
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 95 
 
 walking away, one on either side of Dr. Win- 
 throp. 
 
 " I will tell you all about it presently," he would 
 say when they questioned him, " all in good 
 time, in good time." Kitty became so reassured 
 that she confided to him her marvelous experiences 
 at school. But about Roman's heart a sick horror 
 and conviction were creeping, for he saw tears roll- 
 ing down the doctor's sallow cheeks. 
 
 Then he knew everything in a flash. Knew more 
 than the doctor or the constable or the sheriff 
 were ever to know, for they had not seen Antoine 
 Biznet in the woods. 
 
 The doctor was taking them to his own house. 
 As they went up the wide respectable street, chil- 
 dren they knew at school, who had been forbidden 
 to leave their yards since their parents had heard 
 of the murder, looked over the fences at them, 
 with awe-stricken respect. 
 
 Bess Heathway opened her gate halfway. " I 'd 
 like Kitty to stay with me," she said; " I'd like 
 her for my little sister." 
 
 " I '11 ask mamma," said Kitty, with a skip. 
 Bess looked startled. 
 
 " We can talk of all that by-and-by, Bessie," 
 said Dr. Winthrop, as they went on. 
 
 " I know," said Rome, gruffly, unheard by Kitty, 
 who had found Susan on the doorstep washing her 
 face, surrounded by a family of kittens, which for 
 some reason she had chosen to raise in Dr. Win- 
 throp's woodshed instead of at the Tracys', where 
 she belonged.
 
 96 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I know," said Rome to the doctor ; " I 've 
 guessed." 
 
 " Then keep Batty from guessing," said the doc- 
 tor. 
 
 " Somebody 's killed her. That 's it, ain't it ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do they do they know who ? " 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " Don't they even give a guess ? " 
 
 " No. You may be able to help them, if you 
 answer truthfully everything you are asked when 
 the time comes and say nothing to anybody until 
 then. And you must be a man, my son." 
 
 The boy sat down in a chair by the window, 
 staring out fixedly, his chin leaning on his palms. 
 He was wishing he had had sense enough to get to 
 Phosy before Antoine. The idea of doubting his 
 father's guilt entered his head no more than did 
 the idea of betraying him. 
 
 Had he not seen his mother die ? To be sure 
 there had been no blood about that, and Phoebe 
 was long in dying. Then he thought of Antoine's 
 playing on his violin, and something caught in his 
 throat, something that shook his chest and blinded 
 him. He so seldom cried that he hardly knew what 
 it was, nor why Dr. Winthrop came and sat with 
 his arm around him and finally, when the shaking 
 and gasping would not cease, gave him a spoonful 
 of something, at once sweet and bitter, after which 
 he felt quite drowsy. 
 
 He heard Kitty ask some wondering, sympa- 
 thetic question and the doctor say that Komy did
 
 " UNNECESSARY " 97 
 
 not feel quite well. Then the great bull with the 
 pink nose looked at him out of a mist, and came 
 near and sniffed at him, and he was afraid because 
 he could not move away from its horns and hoofs. 
 Then it was not the bull, but Antoine who leaned 
 over him, asking him if he would like to hear the 
 fiddle, but as he spoke, blood ran out of his mouth, 
 and ran and ran until Rome felt it rising about 
 him like water. He struggled awake. 
 
 Dr. Winthrop's quiet voice was saying : " Your 
 mamma is sick, Kitty, and you are going to stay 
 and be my little girl for a while." 
 
 The boy's ears seemed to have gained keenness 
 with the drug. In the road he heard a man run- 
 ning and a voice from a distance calling : " Where 
 goin' ? " 
 
 " Heathway's bloodhound ! " replied the man 
 who ran. It was growing dark and clouds were 
 shutting out the sunset. 
 
 Rome, in a vision, saw Pete Premo getting the 
 beast, a creature so terrible that it was allowed to 
 be hardly more than a tradition in the neighbor- 
 hood and was seldom seen, a fabled monster, 
 with the skill of a devil, the wisdom of a man, the 
 strength of an ox, whom nothing could escape. 
 
 Rome hardly knew what mental processes or 
 physical exertion brought him, nor what time had 
 elapsed in his getting there, but he stood by the 
 fern clump at last. If his father had not left 
 the neighborhood entirely, it seemed quite likely 
 he would have returned to his lair. He whistled 
 a bar of Antoine's music, and listened sharply.
 
 98 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Within the brake was a faint rustle, like a snake 
 slipping on its coils. 
 
 "You are there, then," said the boy. A sigh 
 answered him. " What did you do it for, anyway ? " 
 
 " I don't know," mumbled a voice. " I asked 
 her for something to eat and she would n't let me 
 have it, so I started to help myself to a slice of 
 bread, and she came after me, and I had the knife. 
 Do they know it was me ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Orleana saw you go away. They know 
 what you look like, but don't guess who you are. 
 They 're after you now. They 're looking in the 
 other woods, though, but Pete Premo has gone for 
 Judge Heathway's bloodhound. I 'd just as soon 
 they 'd hang you, but I heard them telling how 
 bloodhounds chawed people sometimes, so I thought 
 I 'd let you know." 
 
 " Much obliged, I 'm sure," sneered the voice. 
 " Why did n't you tell them where I was and save 
 them the bother of going for the dog ? " 
 
 He rose out of the brake. 
 
 " I did think of it, but I used to like to hear 
 you play the fiddle, so I thought I 'd give you a 
 chance." 
 
 " How old are you ? " 
 
 Twelve." 
 
 " Ever steal anything ? " 
 
 "N-no." 
 
 " KiU anything ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Real nice little boy, hey ? " 
 
 " No. How can I be, with you for my father ? "
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 99 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 " Phosy. But I knew it anyway." 
 
 " Yes. I used to think that when I was your 
 age, and they told me about my father. See here, 
 boy, go ahead and be famous, and be as good a 
 man as you can. You 've got it in you, I guess. 
 I had n't, someway " He stopped and listened. 
 Far in the distance came a long, deep bay. 
 
 " Run ! run ! " said the boy. The man jumped 
 into the stream and waded up through its wind- 
 ings. 
 
 Rome, plunging blindly through the under- 
 brush, never stopped running until he found him- 
 self in Dr. Winthrop's kitchen. Mrs. Orleana 
 was there, holding Kitty, who had fallen asleep 
 with wet cheeks. Lizzie was squatting before the 
 stove, and in a dim corner sat a trim black-robed 
 figure, which he did not know at first, seeing it in 
 that unaccustomed place. When he saw that it 
 was Miss Tracy and that she held out a hand to- 
 ward him, he went up to her, and standing by her 
 side leaned his head against her breast. She 
 passed her arm about him, and with one hand put 
 his stiff hair back from his forehead. The friendly 
 touch seemed to snap the steel wire that had held 
 his nerves together, and he began to tremble. 
 From trembling, he shook as if with ague. 
 
 " They 've set the bloodhounds after him ! " he 
 shrieked, and fell upon the floor, crying hysteri- 
 cally. 
 
 Miss Tracy picked him up and held him in her 
 lap. He had thought himself almost a man, but
 
 100 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 presently falling asleep with his thumb in his 
 mouth and his long lashes wet with tears, he 
 seemed hardly so old as Kitty. 
 
 " My poor little genius ! " said Miss Tracy, 
 softly. " Doctor, I 'm going to take him alto- 
 gether. I I believe the Lord means I should. 
 I shall make him a gentleman and he shall be 
 Billy's brother." 
 
 The doctor looked apprehensive. 
 
 " Do you realize all that would mean, Emily ? 
 I would n't do such a thing on impulse, be- 
 sides " He had been going to say that he had 
 thought of taking the children himself, but he was 
 a poor man and feeble. Emily Tracy, if she chose, 
 could do much more for them. 
 
 " What about Kitty? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh I suppose I '11 have to take her if I take 
 the boy. I fancy she 's a good little thing. I 
 can train her to be self-supporting at least. As a 
 teacher, perhaps. Roman Biznet seems fond of 
 her. They are as alike as brother and sister." 
 
 " It would be a fine thing to do," said the doc- 
 tor, gravely. " But would you have the patience 
 to carry it through? It would be sad if you 
 should wish some day that you had left them as 
 you found them ignorant and well, perhaps 
 happier than knowledge and dependence may make 
 them. I speak plainly." 
 
 But Miss Tracy had only one argument, tearful 
 and pious, " I believe the Lord means me to do it. 
 Oh, doctor, my life has been so empty ! " 
 
 The doctor, who had no one, looked puzzled.
 
 "UNNECESSARY" 101 
 
 He did not see how a woman with such a manly 
 little fellow as Billy for a nephew and with a 
 supposedly charming niece abroad, who could be 
 brought home any day for the asking, could find 
 life quite empty. He also knew something of the 
 half -tamed, French-Indian temperament ; that it 
 might prove troublesome to so Anglo-Saxon and 
 conventional a mind as that of Miss Emily Tracy. 
 He glanced wistfully at Kitty, such a tiny thing, 
 as she lay nestled into pillows he had propped 
 about her when Mrs. Orleana brought her in. She 
 was still wearing the red dress that Alphonsine 
 had made. The stiff, new ankle-ties had been re- 
 moved. There was a hole in the little red stock- 
 ing. Alphonsine would have been mending it that 
 evening, probably. 
 
 The whole thing seemed unnecessary and ter- 
 rible to the doctor. " Unnecessary " was a word 
 he often used for cruel and heart-breaking things. 
 In his vocabulary it was a kind of rebuke to the 
 God that made things so. 
 
 " I '11 take them with me to-night, doctor." 
 
 "To-night?" 
 
 He did not see why she need hurry so. He 
 could at least have kept them over night; he 
 should not have slept anyway, what with his liver 
 and they could have been quiet and comfortable 
 on his wide bed, where he could watch their little 
 dark faces and dream that the children of his 
 imagination had at last taken on flesh and blood. 
 He had once loved a woman as dark as they. 
 That was before the war. Men who live alone
 
 102 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 and who suffer physically must perforce dream 
 many things, surround themselves with mirages of 
 cheerfulness, if only to keep out the bloodthirsty 
 phantoms of despair. He had peopled his little 
 house with the ghosts of children who had never 
 been born, with a shadowy wife who came and 
 went silently, and sometimes kissed him as he 
 slept. Her face never changed. The children's 
 faces, until to-night, had been vague. But he was 
 a poor man, and if Emily Tracy would do well by 
 them 
 
 He took up Kitty, tenderly. The boy waked 
 enough to walk, and the four went over to the 
 Tracy house. 
 
 After the door had shut between them and Dr. 
 Winthrop, he was almost minded to open it again 
 and demand Kitty at least. It did not seem right. 
 Emily Tracy was so impulsive ! What of the 
 years to come, when her impulse should have 
 worn out?
 
 PAKT H
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ROMAN BIZNET IS "GIVEN TO THE WORLD." 
 
 THE children grew up swiftly. Twelve-year- 
 olds are more nearly men and women than one 
 realizes. Doctor Winthrop received a call one 
 day from a young woman with her skirts down to 
 her ankles. 
 
 "Not Bessie Heathway! You were nursing a 
 doll yesterday." 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ! I have n't played with dolls 
 for ever so long." 
 
 " Is it possible ? " 
 
 And a day or two after, or a month or a year, a 
 huge young fellow, with evidences upon his face 
 of a recent razor, called to shake hands with the 
 doctor and say good-by before he went to Yale. 
 
 " Bless me ! Whatever has become of little 
 Billy Tracy? Surely last week I helped you 
 make a kite ! " And the doctor became even 
 more meditative than usual, and for some time 
 after these surprises had hard work keeping his 
 pipe alight. 
 
 But there was one child who stayed little for a 
 long time, and did not grow too heavy to sit on 
 his knee, was demure, quiet, and a little sad ; that 
 was Kitty Conto, who remained a child so long 
 that people began to call her stunted. Then she
 
 106 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 spindled up far enough to bring her eyes to a level 
 with Billy's vest button second from the top, 
 whereupon they lengthened her skirts, put up her 
 heavy black braids, and sent her to the new Nor- 
 mal School to learn to be a teacher. 
 
 As for Roman Biznet, Miss Emily Tracy's plans 
 concerning him had turned out much as she ex- 
 pected. He was a genius, and she " gave him to 
 the world," whatever that may mean. Cosmos 
 understood it to mean great philanthropy and 
 greater resources on Miss Tracy's part ; and many 
 were the young aspirants during those years who 
 managed to let Miss Tracy know, one way or 
 another, that they, too, would like to be " given to 
 the world." There was Gladys Wells, the minis- 
 ter's daughter, who thought the world would find 
 a use for her voice if it were cultivated, and her 
 brother, Benjamin Junior, who wanted to study 
 medicine; and little Patience Bartlett, who wanted 
 a bit of help to take her through college but it 
 did n't matter, for she died that year, instead. 
 That was the year when Roman Biznet went 
 abroad, and they said she had been very much 
 in love with him. There was a romantic notion 
 about, that she would have lived if it had n't been 
 for Rome's going away and her disappointment 
 about college coming together. Children grieve 
 terribly over these things. 
 
 Miss Tracy kept Roman until he was nearly 
 twenty, a slim, swarthy lad, of little physical 
 strength, dreamy, lazy. He had not finished his 
 work at the high school in the class with Elizabeth
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 107 
 
 Heathway, but one did not mind his stupidity in 
 those matters when one considered his music. In 
 that year when Bess entered Smith (Billy was then 
 a Sophomore at Yale) Biznet was sent abroad. 
 
 Budding genius is not always ill-treated. The 
 youngster climbing the ladder is not inevitably 
 kicked in the face by the heel of him next above. 
 If the genius is real, he is just as likely to fall in 
 with some old Elijah who wants nothing so much 
 as a worthy understudy for his mantle ; and Herr 
 Zukoffsky, the Herr Direktor, rejoiced over his new 
 disciple. 
 
 Zukoffsky was a bit of an alienist, something of 
 a biologist, an ethnologist, a philologist ; these 
 studies were merely his playthings, music being 
 his serious business in life. There were strange 
 conformations in Roman Biznet's face and skull. 
 Zukoffsky took him to various laboratories, where 
 he measured him, and questioned him until it 
 dawned upon the boy that Herr Zukoffsky would 
 have considered him better placed in the criminal 
 class, and with this understanding Biznet set about 
 coloring his past life vividly, giving much anxious 
 thought to his confessions, that he might keep the 
 golden mean between an utterly atrocious villain 
 and a pretty good fellow. He generally let it 
 go at mysterious temptations, to which he had 
 not yielded ; and that he might shine as a racon- 
 teur, spent much time and pains on the German 
 language. 
 
 Somewhat to his alarm, on making this mental 
 inventory, he found that there was quite enough
 
 108 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 that was curious and needed no embellishment, to 
 keep the professor happy, indefinitely. The Herr 
 Direktor's questions, like a policeman's bull's-eye, 
 showed him lurking figures of evil that he had not 
 suspected. 
 
 " Your tendencies are thus and so," quoth the 
 old gentleman, after various manipulations recall- 
 ing Alphonsine's, and the Black Art. 
 
 And behold, it was so ! And some might say 
 that it was the old man's folly that put it all into 
 the boy's head, that Antoine the First, and 
 the Second, though dormant in him, might have 
 remained so, while his soul was steeped in music 
 and his environment good. However, there is an- 
 other argument, " Know thyself ; " and if one is 
 skillful about it, and the dog is sleepy enough, he 
 may be chained while quiet, and then, if some 
 shock wakes him up, the chains may hold while 
 one escapes. It causes some worry to know he is 
 there, to be sure, but may save trouble, ulti- 
 mately. 
 
 But he felt no particular evil stirring in him at 
 that time, nor indeed thoughts of any kind except 
 such as he could readily write out on bars of five 
 lines, or express upon his 'cello. The 'cello was 
 the Herr Direktor's gift. It had belonged to a 
 young Zukoffsky, long dead. 
 
 Toward the end of the third year he fell ill, at 
 least he said he was ill, but it was not an illness 
 easy of diagnosis. One of the most aggravating 
 things about it was that his body was stronger than 
 ever. His cheeks, which had been thin and sallow
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 109 
 
 all his life, began to have a flush of red blood in 
 them like those of a white man, a freshening of his 
 complexion, as of another race showing through 
 the red. His eyes were bright and clear; he 
 could outwalk, outfence any man of his size. 
 
 But his good nature was gone. Between his 
 eyebrows there came a fine, hard line. Men who 
 stood opposite him with a foil were nervous about 
 the button on his tip. He lost his popularity. 
 
 He had plodded along in a business-like way at 
 his studies, absorbed and cheerful ; now, suddenly 
 a Maenad was at his shoulder, threatening vague 
 disaster. Not petty, every-day disaster, like death 
 or disgrace, but something that rumbled subter- 
 raneously, got into his ear-drums, quaked in his 
 Adam's apple. He rushed at music in a panic, 
 like a cat taking to a tree. Then it was that the 
 Conservatory stood by in wonder and Fame blew 
 upon her trumpet. 
 
 But he did not care, for he was homesick, and 
 thought much about a little yellow man in Cosmos 
 who kept good bitter medicines, which he adminis- 
 tered with wholesome acrid advice, doing good 
 to soul and body. The German doctors said there 
 was nothing the matter with him, while looking 
 at him sidelong, and Zukoffsky put up his deli- 
 cate soul-measuring instruments, fearing the red 
 disks in Biznet's eyes, and the hard line between 
 his eyebrows, like the cut of a sharp tool. 
 
 " Ach, mein Sohn," he said sadly, " for such as 
 thou art, God should have existed." 
 
 " Don't you mean the Devil ? "
 
 110 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " The Devil ? I have never doubted him at any 
 time." 
 
 Biznet had a room-mate, a weak-eyed young art- 
 ist who would have been a cartoonist if he had 
 possessed a sense of humor ; and this man he so 
 seriously annoyed, being sleepy by day, wakeful 
 at night, unreasonable at all times, that a duel 
 nearly came to pass. This would have pleased 
 Biznet immensely, but somehow the challenge 
 never came. 
 
 He would edge Baumgarten and his dreary jokes 
 away from the only window and plant himself 
 there with his 'cello, not needing the light for that 
 or for anything else, while Baumgarten, like a cat 
 chased into a corner by a broom, sat in helpless 
 indignation within a cloud of smoke, looking out 
 with round face, his round eyes exaggerated by 
 near-sighted glasses, while Biznet sawed away with 
 such unspeakable discord of false notes with rough 
 edges as could only be accomplished by perfect 
 technique and knowledge of harmony. There was 
 also a medical student, named Bauer, who was 
 very young and proportionately wise, loving to 
 practice surreptitiously. 
 
 One day, Biznet announcing with a carefully 
 selected stock of German oaths that he was sick, 
 for sleep had forsaken him, and that he should 
 probably murder Baumgarten presently, because 
 he was out of catgut, and did n't feel able to go 
 out to buy any, and Baumgarten looked so much 
 like a cat anyway that it would n't make any par- 
 ticular difference, Bauer felt his pulse, noticed a
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 111 
 
 nervous pulsation at his mouth corner, and shook 
 his head ponderously, then produced a little needle 
 with which he pierced his arm, pumping therein a 
 night's sleep. 
 
 " That 's the stuff ! " mumbled Biznet, while his 
 nerves untangled like a skein of yarn. He grinned 
 sleepily at Baumgarten. " Go to work, old chap, 
 you can have the window." 
 
 The medical student's cap twisted spirally to 
 the ceiling, his attenuated neck following like a 
 swaying bell cord. The room blurred, little zig- 
 zag golden lights twinkling in its gray obscurity. 
 Vague voices in his ear-drums debated earnestly, 
 but as he listened eagerly for the outcome the 
 sound dwindled and receded. 
 
 It was still his own bed, he knew, and the same 
 room. His eyes were half open and focused on 
 the door of the white tile stove, but he could not 
 move the pupils by a hair's breadth to increase his 
 arc of vision. Within him was a struggle as of 
 two concentric bodies disputing for their common 
 centre, as if one of the involved spheres of a 
 Chinese puzzle should begin to grow, and this 
 contest finally caused some microscopic fissure in 
 the inert outer shell, through which he emerged 
 like steam, looked back, and saw the shell still 
 lying on the bed, one arm under its head, the other 
 thrown wide across the plump blue feather-bed. 
 The eyes were half open under their heavy lids 
 and looked dull and glassy. The room was full of 
 moonlight and the night lamp flickered dingily. 
 Baumgarten snored.
 
 112 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Yet the room was not altogether as it should be. 
 There were present those things that children fear 
 in the dark, and he knew himself to be in that ob- 
 scure border world of murky substance which has 
 no landmark or guide. The room, Baumgarten, 
 and the Roman Biznet on the bed had little sig- 
 nificance, but there were other creatures about, 
 though they eluded his sight. Every time he 
 turned his head something stepped out of the 
 range of vision. He spun about in anger, trying 
 to be too quick for this evasion. It spun after, 
 faster, faster until both of them in a spiral eddy 
 swept out through the shut window and twirled 
 away over the city, dizzily, for a year. 
 
 He sat down at last beneath Alphonsine's old 
 kitchen table. It was crowded and cramped there, 
 for he was of man's size, though Kitty, in a red 
 dress, trotting about, was the Kitty who had be- 
 longed in that kitchen at that time, with eyes just 
 on a level with the table-top. He held his breath 
 and drew back to escape contact with Phosy's feet 
 and skirt. It seemed some terrible calamity would 
 befall if she found him, yet she was in a good hu- 
 mor, singing French songs with nasal cheerfulness. 
 
 He held up a warning finger to keep Kitty quiet. 
 She put her thumb in her mouth, frowning. Some- 
 thing scratched at the door, and whined. He 
 remembered swiftly that this was the Heathway 
 bloodhound, old Cerberus, from whom he had been 
 running away for many years. He signaled fran- 
 tically to Kitty to keep her mother from opening 
 the door, but she stood sulkily sucking her thumb.
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 113 
 
 Phosy lifted the latch. Pat pat pat ! he could 
 see the four great feet approaching. Phosy slowly 
 raised a corner of the tablecloth. She and the 
 dog looked in upon him, cheek by cheek. But it 
 was not Phosy's face. It was the Gorgon Medusa. 
 He woke with a yell. 
 
 " Thunderweather ! You must have a bad con- 
 science," grumbled Baumgarten. But before Biz- 
 net could retort, Baumgarten changed to Bess 
 Heathway in her graduating gown ; Bess Heath- 
 way, with uplifted, monitory finger, who lectured 
 him severely about many things, until he groaned 
 with weariness, and turned aside to dig, dig, dig 
 in the leafy black soil of the Adirondack woods. 
 He was working with the bow of his 'cello, and as 
 he dug, the soil crumbled and heaved as if over a 
 mole's burrow. The bloodhound was with him 
 again, but this time as a friend, helping to paw 
 away the earth dig, dig, dig. 
 
 " She has gone deeper," said the dog. 
 
 "Who has?" 
 
 " Kitty." 
 
 Dig, dig, dig ! 
 
 " Here she is," said the dog cheerfully. They 
 came upon a child's hand deep down in the soil. 
 Rome grasped it. It was warm and living. The 
 fingers closed about his own. 
 
 " Got her ? " said the dog. " Pull away ! " 
 
 And when he had pulled, it was not Kitty that 
 came up, but Bess Heathway, quite indignant, 
 brushing the soil from her long, light hair. 
 
 Then came a strange voice singing a strange
 
 114 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 melody, yet as he listened he knew both voice and 
 tune. He fled and the song pursued. He could 
 not have told whether it was for minutes or hours, 
 but gravitation let go of him, and he flitted lightly, 
 like a bat, through obscure places. This air, with 
 an elaborate accompaniment, stayed in Roman Biz- 
 net's ears when he awoke finally to reason in the 
 early dawn. 
 
 He glanced with blurred vision toward Baum- 
 garten, his bristle of flaxen hair poked out at one 
 end of the pudgy blue gingham feather-bed, but 
 that solid Teuton seemed rather less real than the 
 flimsy and vanished nightmare. Opening the door 
 of the white tile stove he put on coal with a crash. 
 
 "Ach, Donner wetter," moaned poor Baumgar- 
 ten, " he is awake again ! " 
 
 " Shut up and go to sleep. Ass ! " 
 
 He hauled out a pack of music paper and worked 
 until the sky beyond the Dom had run its gamut 
 of watery gray, mottled pink and yellow, and broad 
 sun-shot blue, glancing up now and then as he 
 wrote. The music that he was writing was thin, 
 evil, of the darkness ; in some way that he did not 
 understand, the sunrise touched it with little golden 
 lights and lines of fire r giving it beauty as it gave 
 beauty to other mournful exhalations of the night. 
 Other themes came singing in his ears, something 
 fine, high and shrill beyond what a violin can do, 
 something deeper than a bass viol's compass. He 
 thought of the stones that sang at the rising of 
 the sun ; it seemed that the great Dom was not 
 entirely silent.
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 115 
 
 Baumgarten got up and made coffee, putting 
 some at Biznet's elbow as a peace offering. Bauer, 
 with professional solemnity, had said that Biznet 
 must have coffee on awakening. Baumgarten's 
 coffee was always good. It was the only thing 
 about him that Biznet never found fault with. 
 
 He had finished when Herr Zukoffsky came. 
 The old man had learned that he was ill and came 
 trembling. Death and young genius were nearly 
 associated in his mind, for he had lived long and 
 knew the ways of the gods in these matters ; but 
 when he saw Biznet well and working, his anxiety 
 turned to petulance, for he was asthmatic and had 
 walked rapidly. He took up the manuscript in a 
 scathing mood. After he had read a bar or two, 
 he looked bewildered. 
 
 " Your work, this ? " 
 
 " I dreamed it last night." 
 
 The professor's brow cleared. He did not like 
 plagiarism. 
 
 " Ach so ! A freak of memory, then, and remark- 
 able. You heard it and forgot. I went to school 
 with the man who wrote it. Von Kettner it was. 
 But that he killed a man and left the country se- 
 cretly there was none like him none. But he 
 was bad. Of his work only this and a little more 
 is left. You rarely hear it now, and only here. 
 It was never published. This is the Brocken frag- 
 ment, and the song of the Red Mouse. He planned 
 to do a Faust. Gounod was n't is n't wie 
 heisst es ? is n't in it with him." 
 
 He beamed proudly at his little exhibition of
 
 116 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Yankee slang. Philology was one of his weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 " I swear I never heard it," said Roman be- 
 wildered, then stopped short. 
 
 What was that about his grandfather's name 
 having begun with a Von, before he rechristened 
 himself Biznet ? 
 
 Something inside him heaved and quivered, like 
 a startled compass needle when a piece of iron sits 
 down beside it. He knew as well as he knew the 
 scale of C that he had never heard any "Red 
 Mouse " song, nor that thin sneering tenor voice 
 of subtly wicked timbre, before it came into his 
 opium dream, but he acquiesced blankly when 
 Zukoffsky declared it a freak of memory. 
 
 Freak of memory ! It was his grandfather him- 
 self, long crumbled to dust among Adirondack 
 sand and boulders, who now took substance within 
 his brain. 
 
 Biznet nervously poured a glass of brandy, drink- 
 ing it without remonstrance from Zukoffsky, who 
 was looking into the past with a little reminiscent 
 devil leering from his bleary eyelids. 
 
 " Ach, lieber ! But he was bad ! " he murmured 
 relishingly. 
 
 " You bet your life he was bad," said Biznet 
 tensely, thinking of when Powasket's long-suffer- 
 ing daughter chopped his head open, wastefully 
 strewing that musical brain in the dust and cinders. 
 
 " I bet my life he was bad," assented Zukoff- 
 sky, cheerily. 
 
 " Of course, as you say, I must have heard it
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 117 
 
 and forgotten. A man's brain is an odd thing, 
 is n't it ? ' Genug, die Maus war doch nicht 
 grau.' " His voice was harsh, and impossible in 
 singing. Its few notes were tenor. 
 
 Zukoffsky looked up with a puzzled expres- 
 sion. " I wonder why your voice should remind 
 me of Franz Von Kettner's ? A trick of my own 
 brain probably. The imagination of the ear is as 
 great as the imagination of the eye ! " 
 
 Whereat Biznet sat down on the floor and 
 laughed long and shrilly. " ' Ein rothes Maus- 
 chen.' Oh, the brain is queer all right ! ' Ihr 
 aus dem Munde ! ' Don't you want to measure 
 me some more ? There are lots of queer things in 
 my head that you have n't got at yet." 
 
 But the Herr Direktor, whose dignity was a sen- 
 sitive-plant, stumped downstairs fuming. Biznet, 
 left alone, threw up his arms with a dramatic, de- 
 spairing gesture. 
 
 " And I wanted to be good ! " he said, plain- 
 tively. He locked the door and cried himself to 
 sleep, like an hysterical girl, sleeping well into the 
 afternoon, his long lashes stiff with dried tears. 
 
 Perhaps in some way Bauer with his well-inten- 
 tioned hypodermic had done a mischief. It is not 
 well to experiment upon the brains of geniuses, say 
 those who know ; they bear too strong a likeness 
 to other brains good for nothing but to be shut 
 away where they may not trouble those of us who 
 are sane and quiet, living within our three dimen- 
 sions methodically. 
 
 Bauer's illicit tampering may have sprung from
 
 118 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 its hinges the door of a Bluebeard's chamber, caus- 
 ing a lesion of some infinitesimally small, thin mem- 
 brane, through which thereafter inhabitants of a 
 not understood region might have access. When 
 the mediaeval vampire had once filtered vapor- 
 ously under the crack of a door, could he not 
 afterward go and come at ease by the same en- 
 trance ? There are as many curious phenomena 
 about now as when men used to talk of ghosts and 
 devils, fearful, but not puzzled, concerning them. 
 Now we are wise enough to be very much puzzled, 
 indeed, are as bewildered inventing a nomencla- 
 ture and making a catalogue, as Adam was when 
 he considered his lions, lambs, and dinosaurs. 
 
 So the shut door, once opened, afterward showed 
 a tendency to spring ajar from time to time, when 
 nerves were overwrought and the bodily tension 
 was wrong throughout ; and he grew familiar with 
 that region where something is wrong with Time, 
 which may reel off a thousand years while the 
 clock strikes one, and with Space, for one may be 
 chased swiftly to the moon and back, yet still keep 
 his hand on the anchor-rope that holds him to his 
 body. 
 
 And in all these dreams there was a Jekyll- 
 Hyde polarization of two men, distinct, though 
 folded up in each other like spheres united by that 
 incomprehensible Fourth Dimension which mathe- 
 maticians find amusing. These things bothered 
 him, and yet interested him like a new toy during 
 his last year at the Conservatory, and out of his 
 abnormal sensations he sometimes evolved musical 
 ideas, thus turning them to account.
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 119 
 
 It was in February that one Isaac Liebermann 
 visited the Conservatory and made his acquain- 
 tance. Liebermann was a man who dealt in genius, 
 and understood the science of introducing it to a 
 fastidious and moneyed public. But Herr Zukoff- 
 sky grew rather sober when he learned that Biznet 
 had signed a contract which made him the con- 
 ductor of a new orchestra under Mr. Liebermann's 
 management. He said nothing discouraging, to be 
 sure, confining his observations to the single mono- 
 syllable, " Ach !" 
 
 It seemed odd to be planning his return. But 
 for the quarterly arrival of money from Miss 
 Tracy, Cosmos had become an immaterial place, 
 so distant as to be practically non-existent, like 
 Mars. He sometimes wondered if he could ever 
 repay Miss Tracy, and if she really expected him 
 to do so ; but he spent all the money she sent, 
 and said little about the fact that he made a third 
 more from his pupils. He could have lived en- 
 tirely by his own efforts had he chosen ; but it 
 takes a rather stronger moral sense than he pos- 
 sessed to say, " Get thee behind me ! " to unearned 
 increment. 
 
 Kitty had not been a good correspondent, and 
 her letters had been prim little notes inclosed in 
 Miss Tracy's ; but one day there came a plethoric 
 envelope in Kitty's handwriting. He tried to im- 
 agine, as he slit the envelope, how she probably 
 looked, these days, in long dresses and with her 
 hair put up. " Pretty, I '11 bet. Wonder if she 
 and Billy will make a match of it ? Only she 's a 
 damn sight too good for him. Hello ! "
 
 120 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 An unmounted print fell out of the envelope. 
 She was pretty, but thin, and her hair top-heavy 
 in contrast to her childish chin. And how big 
 her eyes were ! She held her head with its charac- 
 teristic droop, and looked up as of old under her 
 lashes. The neck of her gown was low, and evi- 
 dently the photographer had touched out hollows 
 and cords at the throat. 
 
 DEAR ROMY, This letter is just from me to 
 you. Miss Tracy always wants me to show her 
 what I write ; but I 'm not going to this time. 
 I;'ve been thinking a long time about what I ought 
 to do. Dr. Winthrop is the only one I can talk 
 to much, and I don't like to worry him. He seems 
 to blame himself for letting Miss Tracy have me. 
 I don't see why, I 'm sure. She has always been 
 very kind. 
 
 I think maybe I 'm not very well, and that is 
 why I 'm so stupid. I am going to the Normal 
 School, you know. They thought I could learn 
 to teach and be independent, and I was glad to 
 think I might be able to pay Miss Tracy some 
 time. Of course in your case, as she says, you 're 
 a genius, and spending money on your education 
 is like endowing a college, or something like that, 
 it 's giving something to the world. But with 
 me, of course she does n't say this, but I under- 
 stand, I 'm only a little French girl from the 
 Hollow ; and I would have worked in the factory 
 or gone out to service if it had n't been for her 
 kindness. I used to hope that she would grow
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 121 
 
 fond of me ; but there is something I suppose 
 my stupidity. 
 
 But some way I don't get on in the Normal. 
 I was all right until it came to Methods. In 
 Methods, you know, you have to plan exactly what 
 the teacher must ask to get the right answer from 
 the child without directly suggesting the answers. 
 
 I 've been flunked twice in Primary Methods and 
 once in Language Methods. Geography Methods 
 is the only one I was n't flunked in. And next 
 semester comes Arithmetic Methods, and then I 
 shall certainly die ! 
 
 Miss Tracy says I don't study. But oh, Homy, 
 if you knew how hard I've tried [The Spen- 
 cerian chirography was uneven here, and a blot 
 had been carefully erased.] 
 
 I know perfectly well that I never can get 
 through ; and if I did, I could n't teach. Children 
 don't mind me ; they just won't do it. And the 
 Model teachers get so cross ! as if I would n't do 
 better if I could. 
 
 And Billy tries to help me when he comes home, 
 but they don't like to have him. And he does n't 
 help much, anyway, just sits around and makes 
 fun of the Methods, and tells me I don't want to 
 teach. Well, I don't. But what then ? Billy is 
 part of my puzzle, Romy, I can't say more than 
 that. I wonder what makes men act so, anyway ? 
 
 And I 've been thinking of everything I could 
 do instead of teaching, and there does n't seem to 
 be anything but housework. I 'm good at that ; 
 I 'm better at that than Bess Heathway is, /can
 
 122 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 keep mended up, and she can't ; and I put up six 
 dozen glasses of currant jelly last fall. I make all 
 my own clothes, too. But try as I may to econo- 
 mize and not be a burden oh, well, I don't mean 
 to complain about it ; and it 's nobody's fault but 
 mine, because I 'm stupid. 
 
 But what I was wondering was this: If you 
 come home next spring, and then if you live in 
 New York the next winter, why could n't I keep 
 house for you ? I could make it cost less, I 'm sure, 
 than just your board would be. It 's just the same 
 as if we were really brother and sister, and you 're 
 all I 've got. I don't want to be a bother to any- 
 body, and this is the only way I can think of to be 
 really useful. 
 
 Billy has two new dogs; they are only half 
 grown. Adlor says they are n't the right sort for 
 Adirondack hunting. Did you know that Adlor 
 is our coachman now ? And Billy says they 're all 
 right to take when you go fishing. Of course he 's 
 joking when he says that. Bess Heathway has 
 done her four college years in three, which is 
 considered wonderful. What would n't I give for 
 about a teaspoonful of her brains ! 
 
 Miss Maud Tracy is with us all the time now. 
 We are all well ; and if they knew I was writing, 
 they would send their love. 
 
 Your affectionate sister, KITTY. 
 
 Roman Biznet, having read, found a place among 
 the steins for Kitty's picture. The finding a place 
 consisted largely in the ejection of other photo-
 
 "GIVEN TO THE WORLD" 123 
 
 graphs, tightly corseted women, more or less 
 lightly clad. 
 
 " Who 's that ? " asked Baumgarten, when he 
 had rescued the discarded ladies from the coal 
 scuttle. > 
 
 " The girl I 'm going to marry," said Biznet 
 grimly. 
 
 " Oh ! Looks so much like you I thought it must 
 be your sister." 
 
 " You think too much ! " 
 
 His letter to Kitty was as follows, and his inten- 
 tions were really too good to be used as paving- 
 stones for the road to a certain place. Biznet 
 meant as well as though his skull were formed on 
 moral lines. He addressed the letter to Bess 
 Heathway outside. 
 
 DEAR PUSSY, Don't you care ! I 'm com- 
 ing home the last of May, noble and famous, to 
 paint Cosmos red, and kill all the Normal School 
 teachers that flunked you, and the children that 
 would n't mind. Tell them that. Tell them that 
 no one can be mean to a Big Injun's squaw and 
 live. 
 
 Homy is It ! There 's a chap from New York, 
 by the name of Liebermann, has been snooping 
 around here for a brand new conductor for a brand 
 new orchestra to make a brand new popular hit. 
 You will see me make that hit next winter, and 
 there '11 be money to burn. 
 
 I would n't say anything to anybody else about 
 your housekeeping idea. It is a good one, but
 
 124 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 needs a few amendments which I think I can sup- 
 ply when we come to talk it over. So keep your 
 hair on. What a lot of it you 've got, by the way ! 
 And wait for Homy to fish you out of the soup. 
 
 You will please excuse the slang. There 's an 
 old fellow here by the name of Zukoffsky who fairly 
 lives on it. He calls it Philology. Sometimes I 
 have to make np things to please him. If you 
 know any new slang I wish you would send me 
 some. I know mine is out of date. 
 
 Affectionately, ROMAN BIZNET. 
 
 To Bess he wrote : 
 
 MY DEAE Miss HEATHWAY, Is it tres- 
 passing too much on your good nature to ask you 
 to give the inclosed letter to my cousin ? I un- 
 derstand she is expected to show my letters to the 
 family, and this one concerns a matter which 
 interests her alone. 
 
 I hear you have finished your college course in 
 three years ! Will you accept my heartiest con- 
 gratulations, also envy? But it makes me feel 
 rather scared when I think of meeting so much 
 intellect again, as I shall have the pleasure of do- 
 ing in about a month. 
 
 Most sincerely yours, ROMAN BIZNET. 
 
 Then he put the letters in his pocket, where they 
 remained. He left the coat behind him when he 
 sailed, and the conscientious Baumgarten mailed 
 them on the next steamer a month after they 
 were written.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BEHIND THE WISTARIA VINE 
 
 COSMOS schools close on the last day of June. 
 During that month good little girls are sentimental 
 about parting from their teachers for ten weeks, 
 conceiving that those persons of curious tastes must 
 miss them greatly during the summer, and yearn 
 for the reopening of school. What else can one 
 think after watching their behavior through the 
 year, their enthusiastic punctuality, their animated 
 manner of imparting uninteresting facts, the vari- 
 ous tricks they resort to in order to persuade chil- 
 dren to learn a thing ? One does what one likes 
 when one grows up. Teachers must like teaching 
 as well as little girls like playing with dolls, and 
 it seems reasonable, too standing up in front of 
 a class and waving a pointer about and selecting 
 little boys to erase the blackboard, and having 
 things your own way generally. When Gladys 
 Wells and Bessie Heathway and Roman Biznet 
 used to attend school, teachers even smacked 
 naughty children on the fingers. But the new 
 Normal School, where their little brothers and 
 sisters went, had changed all that, pupils and 
 pupil-teachers being on an equality wherein the 
 pupil-teachers were only kept from becoming infe- 
 riors by the protection afforded them by heads of
 
 126 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 departments. Nobody was ever smacked now, and 
 yet it seemed a dull, modern way of doing things ; 
 there must have been romance in the danger of a 
 licking, and where was the use of wicked daring, 
 bringing frogs and beetles to school in your pock- 
 ets, throwing spots of sunlight about with little 
 mirrors, pulling the girls' hair, if one could get 
 nothing but a talking-to from a head of depart- 
 ment, which was apt to make one cry and feel 
 silly. But that was the masculine view point, 
 boys not having any particular sympathy for 
 teachers. 
 
 Tudy Wells gave the impression that her older 
 sister Gladys had dwindled, taken to wearing her 
 hair in braids, and blossomed out in very short 
 pink petticoats. Tudy's intimate friend at school 
 was Molly Santwire, sister to that Adlor Santwire 
 who had once seen a loup-garou, and who was now 
 become the Tracy coachman ; but this friendship 
 had to be indulged in secretly, Molly being a 
 French Catholic young one, while Tudy was the 
 daughter of the Presbyterian minister. In the 
 " School of Practice " Miss Kitty Conto was their 
 music - teacher poor Kitty ! who never could 
 sound with her voice quite the same note as that 
 struck by the tuning fork, and got into much 
 trouble thereby from the criticisms of her class- 
 mates, whose business it was to sit in the back of 
 the room and " observe " her failings, take notes 
 thereon, and make out as bad a case as they could 
 to the Model teacher, who frequently came in, 
 looking bored, and took the class away from her,
 
 BEHIND THE WISTARIA VINE 127 
 
 but who somehow understood Kitty, music, and 
 human limitations generally so that on the Day of 
 Judgment Kitty was marked just high enough to 
 pass, though it made little difference in the end, 
 and Kitty did not care. 
 
 Tudy and Molly could take the pitch from the 
 tuning fork very well, however, and always did so 
 with all the strength of their raucous little voices, 
 being fond of Miss Conto in a motherly way, and 
 anxious to help her out. There was a little song 
 she was trying to teach them. They were to sing 
 it on the great last day, and these benevolent two 
 would get together in odd corners and practice, 
 determined that it should not be their fault if the 
 programme faltered in that part for which Miss 
 Conto was responsible. The song consisted chiefly 
 of a heavy, sing-song refrain, "We know not 
 why ! " It rhymed variously with butterfly, sky, 
 high, and die, there being four stanzas, and implied 
 that the writer of it found something to puzzle 
 him in all that these words suggest. From fre- 
 quent repetition Tudy and Molly also became 
 aware of some lurking puzzle in the universe, and 
 practiced with a wealth of expression which con- 
 vulsed Dr. Winthrop as the sounds came out of 
 some hollow place in the hedge, but rendered Miss 
 Maud Tracy, whose ear was sensitive, extremely 
 nervous. 
 
 " We know not why, 
 We know not why, not why " 
 
 " I believe I '11 stop them," said Maud between 
 a frown and a smile.
 
 128 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " But soon you '11 die, 
 Poor butterfly ! " 
 
 " We know not why," hummed Miss Tracy. 
 " The worst of those wretched little tunes is that 
 they get into one's head so, and buzz there like a 
 fly behind a pane of glass. But don't stop them, 
 they are practicing for Kitty, I believe, and I sup- 
 pose the better they can do, the better it will be for 
 her." She spoke with some impatience, and sighed. 
 
 " We know not why," sang the harsh little voices 
 in the hedge, as tuneless as locusts. But to Dr. 
 Winthrop, who sat in his garden chair on the other 
 side of the hedge, smoked, and felt that he was a 
 spectator only of the droning green summer, the 
 passing people, and the passing clouds, there seemed 
 a certain appropriateness in this little insect tune 
 from the hedge, as if it voiced the ignorance of a 
 young and puzzled planetful of creatures better 
 than the same sentiment lamented over by a skilled 
 orchestra, or a mighty-lunged and tender-throated 
 singer. 
 
 There are some hearts so curiously constructed 
 as to have but a single compartment, with room 
 for but a single idol. If a newer and prettier idol 
 appears, the old must come down forthwith. Some 
 little girls, if offered a new wax doll in exchange 
 for the grimy remnant from a previous Christmas, 
 will keep the grimy remnant ; others will throw it 
 aside for fresh paint, curled hair, a body stiff with 
 sawdust. Every one knows, too, how cats lose all 
 interest in their kittens, when kittens no longer.
 
 BEHIND THE WISTARIA VINE 129 
 
 New kittens, new dolls, and sometimes new human 
 beings, are certainly desirable. 
 
 The Lord had finally thought best to bring home 
 Miss Maud Tracy from abroad, and settle her at 
 her aunt's. The Lord had also softened Miss 
 Emily Tracy's heart toward her niece. Neither 
 of them understood how they could have done with- 
 out each other all these years. They vied in find- 
 ing pet names for each other, and talked everlast- 
 ing " baby talk," a vice to which many good and 
 otherwise intelligent people are prone. Miss Maud 
 Tracy, tall, dignified, with features generally de- 
 scribed as " classic," became " P'essus " in her 
 aunt's vocabulary, and Miss Emily Tracy was 
 "Dearie" or its equivalent in other languages 
 when Miss Maud wished to indicate that she had 
 been abroad, and talked several languages. 
 
 In the years that had passed since Alphonsine's 
 murder, a wistaria vine had grown from incon- 
 spicuous childhood to spreading maturity, cover- 
 ing one end of the Tracy veranda and making it 
 a bower whence one could watch the street and the 
 neighboring grounds, one's self unseen. 
 
 It was a restful place, much loved by Miss 
 Emily Tracy and her niece, who here embroidered, 
 mended, talked, or read Browning together the 
 summer through. It was the middle of June. 
 Roman Biznet was expected soon, though he was 
 to stay for a while at Long Branch with his man- 
 ager, Liebermann. Miss Tracy had been rather 
 disturbed that morning at hearing from Mrs. Heath- 
 way, who had it from Mrs. Wells, who had learned
 
 130 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 it from her son Benny, whose classmate, a " theo- 
 log," had visited Roman Biznet on his journey to 
 the Holy Land, tfyat the deceiving genius had been 
 making money enough from pupils for the past 
 two years to have supported himself easily, had he 
 chosen, without using the money Miss Tracy sent 
 him. 
 
 " Well, Dearie," said Maud, yawning classically 
 behind her large white hand, " is n't there a say- 
 ing in this part of the world that all honest French- 
 men have wool in the palms of their hands ? You 
 did n't expect him to grow any wool while he was 
 abroad, did you ? " 
 
 "Look at these stockings," was Miss Tracy's 
 unanswerable argument. " They are darned until 
 you can't see the original fibre in some places 
 and I have done it all willingly, gladly, for the 
 sake of that boy. I have been giving him to the 
 world, as one gives a church or a school." She 
 had said this so many times that it was as thread- 
 bare as the stocking she held up. 
 
 " Well," said Maud, " you have your reward. 
 He will be famous. One cannot expect everything, 
 even honesty, from genius." 
 
 " No," answered Miss Tracy, " but I am done" 
 She bit off a thread of black floss with a finality 
 there was no gainsaying. " I have made my sac- 
 rifice. And in those first years I sacrificed you, 
 P'essus, without realizing it. But you have for- 
 given me, and now you and I are going to be happy 
 together." 
 
 " I 've been wanting to speak to you about 
 Kitty," said Maud.
 
 BEHIND THE WISTAKIA VINE 131 
 
 " Kitty means well," said Miss Tracy. 
 
 " Y-yes. Do you feel that you quite understand 
 her?" 
 
 " I don't know. Just how do you mean ? " 
 
 "I daresay I'm mistaken, but I had an idea 
 the other day. It would be awkward " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't want to be unkind to the child, 
 or unjust and I did n't want to worry you " 
 
 " Don't keep me in suspense ! " 
 
 " Kitty may have no intention whatever of be- 
 coming a teacher. That may be why she takes so 
 little interest in her studies." 
 
 But " 
 
 " My small brother is, unfortunately, fond of 
 pretty faces and little appealing women. He is 
 also, to use his own frightful slang, ' well-heeled.' ' 
 
 " But he 's been away. They have n't seen each 
 other except at vacation time." 
 
 " But he is back, now, graduated, and I heard 
 him saying something yesterday about ' settling 
 down.' He said it to her." 
 
 " What did she say ? " 
 
 " That it would be nice, and that New York must 
 be a nice place to live in." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 " And then I turned the corner, and remarked 
 that it was a pleasant afternoon. Billy's face was 
 as red as this embroidery silk, and hers was as 
 white as this ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " It would be something of a mesalliance, don't 
 you think?"
 
 132 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Impossible ! What have I done ! " 
 " Don't worry, though, Cherie ; as you say, I 
 have some influence over Billy. We won't let him 
 make any mistakes, will we? Here they come! 
 What did I tell you ? Look at the angle at which 
 he holds her parasol, and those books of hers under 
 his arm. They may be ' brother and sister,' but 
 I'm his sister, and he never takes that attitude 
 when he walks with me." 
 
 " Oh, dear me ! " 
 
 " If they only knew how silly they look to- 
 gether ! He 's twice too big for such a midget as 
 that." 
 
 The two came up the hill slowly. It might have 
 been because Kitty was languid and ill. Maud 
 insisted that it was the lovers' stroll. Kitty's eyes 
 were fixed upon the green screen of wistaria behind 
 which the two women sat. Billy was as handsome 
 as young men grow when their bodies become re- 
 ligion to them. His face had been sweet and hon- 
 est when he was a little boy. One could say little 
 more for it now, except that it held possibilities, 
 when the boy should have become more of a man. 
 A little trouble and disappointment would do won- 
 ders in that direction. 
 
 " Hello ! " he said, closing the red sunshade as 
 they mounted the steps. " You hide away in there 
 as snug as a couple of bugs in a rug." 
 
 " Some people might choose more elegant sim- 
 iles," said Maud. Kitty went upstairs with her 
 books. 
 
 " Or spiders. The modern Arachne, or Clotho,
 
 BEHIND THE WISTARIA VINE 133 
 
 maybe," he took up a bunch of his sister's floss, 
 " who does n't spin, nor toil, particularly, but 
 embroiders, and weaves, and designs destinies in 
 purple and pink. Is that for me ? I 'd rather 
 have a blue silk cushion with a white Y. I lost 
 that one you gave me. Oh, I forgot letter 
 from Bizzy." 
 
 " What an odd handwriting," said Maud, taking 
 it to pass to Miss Tracy. 
 
 " It 's just like him, though," said Billy. " Kind 
 of joggly and sprawly slants over too far, and 
 all the letters have too long tails, and the tails 
 can't make up their minds to any particular slant." 
 
 " Do you pretend to read character from writ- 
 ing?" ' 
 
 " Oh, no. I don't know." 
 
 " It is as good as yours." 
 
 " Here 's the handwriting for you ! " said Billy, 
 with sudden enthusiasm, and pulled out a normal 
 school exercise paper of Latin sentences, in a 
 painful Spencerian hand, with much careful punc- 
 tuation, and many errors. 
 
 " I 'm going to coach her," he explained. " Holy 
 Moses ! what work she makes of it ! " But his 
 tone suggested affectionate admiration for the mis- 
 takes. 
 
 Miss Tracy and her niece exchanged glances 
 while Billy lit a pipe and went around to the gar- 
 den, taking a Latin grammar with which to freshen 
 his own memory. 
 
 " He 's going to coach her ! " said Maud. 
 " And what does lionian Biznet say ? "
 
 134 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " He will be here next week. There comes 
 Bessie. How untidy she is ! If it were n't for that, 
 I should say that Billy might do worse than to 
 How do you do, dear ? Kitty is upstairs, I think. 
 "Wait a minute, until I take a few stitches in your 
 skirt-binding. You might trip and be badly hurt." 
 
 " I 'm frightfully careless, I know. I hear 
 Rome is coming back soon. I don't know what 
 the town will do with such a celebrity." 
 
 Elizabeth had grown to a generous figure which 
 might become heavy at middle age. She wore her 
 clothes with something of the careless nonchalance 
 with which a statue wears drapery. The effect 
 was considered sloppy, but Elizabeth was rather 
 pretty, and had gained all sorts of honors at col- 
 lege. Her forehead might be top-heavy, and there 
 was a little crease between her eyebrows, but one 
 liked to look at her eyes. They were difficult eyes 
 to meet, however, looking at one rather too squarely 
 and steadily for comfort. 
 
 " Well, Kitty, here 's your letter," said Bess in 
 a tone of strong disapproval. " Of course I do as 
 I am asked, but I don't see why you need be so 
 underhanded about a letter from Rome." 
 
 Kitty took the letter, looking subdued and un- 
 happy. " I did n't think you 'd mind," she said. 
 "There were some things I wanted to ask him 
 about that they 'd have thought queer." 
 
 " But you would n't have to show them his let- 
 ters ! " said Bess. She was a young woman so 
 singularly her own mistress in every matter that 
 she could not understand a different state of affairs.
 
 BEHIND THE WISTARIA VINE 135 
 
 " They 'd think it queer, if I did n't," said 
 Kitty. " There is n't anything wrong about it. 
 I was only so worried about ray Normal work, and 
 I wrote to ask him what I should do if I failed. 
 This has been examination day, and I know I 
 did n't get through. I 've failed once already, 
 you know, and there 's still another year. I can't 
 get to be a Senior, somehow. You 're so bright I 
 suppose you think I'm just lazy. May I read my 
 letter ? Why ! It was written a month ago 
 and I 've wanted it so ! " 
 
 Her eyes were brighter when she had finished it, 
 and she hummed a tuneless little song as she care- 
 fully put it back in its envelope and looked medi- 
 tatively about as if for a place of concealment. 
 
 " Why, you foxy little thing ! " exclaimed Bess 
 disgustedly. " I hate deceit. They would n't 
 prowl around and read your private letters." 
 
 " Wait till you 're adopted," said Kitty, still 
 humming happily. " I have to be very careful 
 not to be misunderstood. I said the other day 
 when Miss Maud was playing the piano that I 
 wished I knew how, and they thought I was com- 
 plaining because I had n't been taught music, and 
 hinting that I wanted lessons." 
 
 " Nonsense, you are too sensitive." 
 
 " Am I ? Maybe. But I know they 're tired 
 of me. And they think I 'm bad. I don't know 
 just how. But they watch me out of the sides of 
 their eyes. Miss Tracy used to like me well enough 
 before Miss Maud came." 
 
 " Billy likes you well enough," said Elizabeth 
 meaningly.
 
 136 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Oh ! Billy. He does n't count," said Kitty 
 with a cheerless laugh. She had finally pinned 
 Rome's letter securely inside her dress and sat 
 down by the window frowning abstractedly at 
 the garden. " There 's Billy studying my Latin 
 grammar," she laughed ; " he thinks he 's going to 
 coach me this summer so that I can get through 
 next year." 
 
 Bess picked up a photograph from Kitty's dress- 
 ing-table. It was a very German picture of Rome 
 with his 'cello. " It seems odd to think of Rome 
 as grown up," she said. " I wonder if he and I 
 will fight as fiercely as we did in the high school." 
 
 " I remember," smiled Kitty ; " sometimes for 
 about ten minutes you 'd perfectly love each other 
 and he 'd send me away because I was too little to 
 play your games. But I 'd sit down and wait till 
 you slapped his face, and he would come back to 
 me, his eyes all red inside the black, and swearing 
 French that you could n't understand. Remem- 
 ber the time he and Billy and you and I all played 
 tag, while a thunderstorm was coming up ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Bess doubtfully. Then 
 she blushed. " Oh, yon mean " 
 
 " That time he kissed you yes. How mad 
 you were ! He wore court-plaster on his cheek for 
 a week, and I put witch-hazel on his head where 
 the hair came out." 
 
 " How dreadful ! I don't believe it." 
 
 " Oh, but I did. I wonder how you and he will 
 get along now. I shall enjoy watching."
 
 CHAPTER m 
 A CHOP OF DANDELIONS 
 
 IT was a cool sweet morning, well washed by a 
 rainy night. The train that brought Biznet came 
 into it dusty and unclean with the savor of a hot 
 yesterday in New York about it, and took its noisy 
 drink, in the middle of the far-reaching silence of 
 that region, in which human beings, birds, insects, 
 church bells make but little stir at any time. St. 
 Mary's Church was tinkling for early mass like a 
 bell-wether, and Sunday lay upon the land. 
 
 Roman Biznet, the only passenger for Cosmos, 
 looked about him with delight as he stood by his 
 luggage on the deserted platform. Down the yel- 
 low winding road he could see the Tracy carriage 
 approaching at a rapid trot. They had counted 
 on the train being late as usual, whereas it was, 
 for once, on time. 
 
 Feeling that he was watched, he turned to meet 
 the very bright eyes of a small French boy, who 
 carried a formidable whip, and evidently belonged 
 to a cow at that moment strolling across the track. 
 " Hello, Bub, what 's your name ? " doubting 
 somewhat whether this might not be his former 
 Self thus greeting him at the town's threshold, 
 not altogether approving him. His former Self 
 had once worn just such flapping and torn straw
 
 138 KOMAN BIZNET 
 
 hats, had been barelegged and colored by the soil, 
 but with a rather clean little soul inside. He 
 blinked uneasily under the child's stare. If the 
 youngster had claimed the name " Roman Biznet," 
 Rome felt that he would have yielded the point 
 courteously and returned upon the next train, a 
 new King Robert of Sicily. 
 
 " Napoleon Orleana. Wat 's yours ? " 
 
 " Me, I 'm Roman Biznet," he replied with the 
 twang of his youth, and gave the child a left-over 
 fifty pfennig piece. 
 
 He had not thought to be so glad to see Cosmos 
 again, and wondered if it might not have been 
 simple nostalgia that had ailed him abroad. 
 
 " Hello, Adlor ! " That model servant put a 
 finger to his forehead in most approved fashion, 
 but there was a wide grin of equality upon his 
 face. 
 
 " Seen any loups-garoux lately ? " asked Rome, 
 when the boxes, with their many foreign labels, 
 had been piled behind and they were under way to 
 the Tracy house. Adlor's blue flannel shoulders 
 shrugged in uncoachrnan-like style, and he wag- 
 gled one ear, an accomplishment for which he had 
 been famous in the days that were gone. 
 
 " Not till now," he answered quietly. 
 
 Billy met the carriage halfway on his bicycle 
 and acted as outrider. Miss Tracy stood upon 
 the veranda with outstretched hands and a some- 
 what pathetic smile, there were tears in her 
 eyes and she did not speak, but looked at him 
 very earnestly and questioningly. He had grown
 
 A CROP OF DANDELIONS 139 
 
 handsome, she thought this strange toy of hers. 
 Now he was a toy no longer ; other and more 
 skillful hands had had the making of him. He 
 kissed her hand in a foreign way, and then her 
 withered cheek. Some dormant youthful instinct 
 brought bright young color to her face and made 
 her draw back shyly. 
 
 " You have improved," she said rather stiffly, 
 and introduced him to Maud, who just then 
 emerged from the shadows of the hall. 
 
 Her greeting was cordial and easy, and he 
 smiled at her, serenely, but there was an ill-tem- 
 pered line between his eyebrows, and his hand was 
 lax as it touched hers. 
 
 " And Kitty ? " he asked. 
 
 She was coming down the stairs, with light, 
 slow step, for it was ill-bred to be in haste, to put 
 one's self forward in any matter whatever. But 
 brushing rudely past the others, he met her half- 
 way up the stairs, and she hid her face in his neck 
 and cried quietly, whispering under her breath: 
 " I thought you would never come. I I failed 
 at the Normal I knew I should you must take 
 me away I I" 
 
 "Why, Kitty! The child is nervous," said 
 Miss Tracy in an annoyed tone. Rome, turning 
 slightly toward the group below, noticed Billy's 
 face, as black as a thundercloud, and Maud smiling 
 queerly. It seemed to him that she was watching 
 everybody, like something hidden among jungle 
 grasses and peering out, itself unperceived. It oc- 
 curred to him that she was rather worth watching
 
 140 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 herself. Their eyes met for an instant. She raised 
 her eyebrows ever so slightly and strolled back to 
 the veranda. 
 
 But Kitty grew suddenly gay after a moment's 
 gusty weeping. It never took much at any time 
 to arouse happiness in her, and still less to quench 
 it; as a firefly lets flare his rocket, and shivers 
 into darkness again. But a firefly can use his gay 
 little fireworks for protection also, and if you 
 catch him and handle him roughly, he sometimes 
 runs off into obscurity, leaving his lantern shining 
 brightly in your hand. Doubtless his heart is 
 broken for its loss, for Nature has no more to give 
 him, so far as I know. 
 
 Rome led her back upstairs, and they sat down 
 in a recess at the end of the hall. 
 
 " And are you really so glad to see your little 
 sister again ? " she said, with a moist smile. " It 's 
 so nice to be liked. Most people don't like me. I 
 don't know why." 
 
 " Most people are jackasses." 
 
 "Isn't that a swear word? They're so par- 
 ticular here about slang. Miss Maud " 
 
 " Where are the red cheeks you used to have ? " 
 
 " You 've got them, I guess. You are n't nearly 
 so much of an Injun as you were. And what 
 funny clothes you wear ! You look like a German 
 Jew." 
 
 " Men have been killed for smaller insults than 
 that. I will merely ask for another kiss." 
 
 She turned her cheek quickly, before he could 
 touch her lips, and this was annoying, for her
 
 A CROP OF DANDELIONS 141 
 
 mouth was the prettiest one he had seen for many 
 a day. 
 
 " You said you had some amendments to my 
 housekeeping plans that would make them all 
 right. It 's so dreadful not to be liked and to be 
 in the way and to be accused of things. Of course, 
 it 's my fault, but " 
 
 " I take it you followed my suggestion and 
 did n't mention your ideas to any one here," said 
 Biznet, looking oddly at her. 
 
 " Of course. I I never talk to them about 
 my ideas. They don't seem to understand, some 
 way." 
 
 " I want to wait a little while before telling you 
 what my amendment is. You mightn't like it. 
 But we '11 fix things some way, and don't you fret. 
 And so I can only have the cheek ? I wonder 
 what lucky fellow the lips are reserved for ? " 
 
 " Oh, don't say such things." 
 
 "There, there, liebchen; at least you needn't 
 be afraid of me." 
 
 Then the sad voice of the Burmese gong an- 
 nounced breakfast, its slow vibration curling up 
 like a thin wave of incense smoke, through the 
 banister sticks, around the chandelier, touching 
 their ears delicately. " I 'm glad that thing is 
 still in existence," said Borne. " It would n't seem 
 home without it." 
 
 "I don't know," said Kitty. "It takes away 
 my appetite some way, as if it said, ' Oh, what 's 
 the use of Caking all this trouble to eat and eat 
 and eat one dies so soon.' "
 
 142 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 There were coffee, baked beans, brown bread, 
 slices of delicately broiled ham. It had always 
 been so on Sunday morning. The only difference 
 now was that Rome preferred no cream in his cof- 
 fee, and found greater zesthetic enjoyment in the 
 deep amber gleam of the perfect beverage as it lay 
 in the bright spoon. 
 
 A ray of sun crept through the vines and 
 twinkled on the coffee urn, by Miss Tracy, and 
 reaching across the table, burnished Billy's fair 
 hair and pink cheeks until he edged away from it, 
 which brought him some six inches nearer Kitty. 
 In the centre of the table were half-open roses, 
 the raindrops of the night still upon their petals, 
 their odor mingling daintily with that of the 
 breakfast with as much appropriateness as if a 
 woman in evening gown should take a notion to do 
 her marketing so attired. Everything about the 
 table was peaceful, well-bred, good-natured. Maud 
 was an expert at impersonal conversation about 
 weather, a book, anything far enough away or 
 abstract enough to hurt nobody. If Kitty had 
 fallen into a way of being absent and sad, one did 
 not mind. She was supposed to be thinking of 
 her difficulties at the Normal. 
 
 But Rome, watching, was positive, when she 
 dropped her napkin and Billy picked it up for 
 her, that he squeezed her hand under cover of it, 
 and he wondered if Maud chose to sit by himself 
 and opposite Kitty because the place was of stra- 
 tegic value if one wished to watch. 
 
 As they sat on the veranda after breakfast he
 
 A CROP OF DANDELIONS 143 
 
 picked up the roll of music which Maud was to 
 take to church. It seemed she sang in the choir : 
 
 " Love not the world, 
 Nor the things that are in the world ; 
 For the world passeth away, 
 And the lost thereof." 
 
 Kitty came out in a gray, nun-like gown, wear- 
 ing a bunch of sweet peas, hooded like novices. 
 She looked inexpressibly churchly, as she sat down 
 and began to draw on a pair of white gloves. It 
 seemed absurd that there should be any difficulty 
 whatever in stretching gloves to fit such small 
 hands. It occurred to Biznet that it would be 
 within the privileges of a cousin to assist at the 
 ceremony, but while he was doing so Billy strolled 
 up with his dogs and eyed them gloomily, which 
 attitude on Billy's part caused Rome to linger un- 
 necessarily over the slim, blue-veined wrist, and 
 deepened that peaceful Sabbath feeling which he 
 had toward all the world, as if the discontent on 
 Billy's face had eliminated the last shadow from 
 himself. 
 
 It was odd, on that walk to church, to see the 
 boys and girls he had known in the high school. 
 Some were married. That seemed unreasonable. 
 Patience Bartlett, the girl whom he had been al- 
 most in love with, was dead, which seemed like 
 something read in a book. He remembered that her 
 hair had been very beautiful, brown, like bronze, 
 and curly. Her lips had been very red, and she 
 had been over-fond of being kissed. Then, there 
 was Benny Wells, swinging along with a Bible in
 
 144 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 his hand, his frock coat wrinkling between the 
 shoulders, and Gladys, wearing an enormous bunch 
 of yellow marigolds pinned to her aniline pink 
 gown. That was all as it should be, and their 
 faces were as smug and good as they had been at 
 school when they stole the Regents' question 
 papers, and were almost caught. Rome had shared 
 in the profits of that raid, but he had no great 
 affection for his fellow sinners. They greeted him 
 warmly and fell in behind the Tracys in the pro- 
 cession across the Green. 
 
 " He is n't changed one bit," he heard Gladys 
 say, and a low murmur from Benny, in which he 
 only distinguished the word " Canuck." And this 
 set him meditating on the many different ways in 
 which he was superior to Benny Wells, and how 
 he would demonstrate it. He was walking with 
 Miss Tracy. Kitty was behind with Maud. Billy 
 had stayed at home with pipe and dogs and the 
 magazines. 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Tracy," said a voice, and 
 on the other side of the little lady he saw the 
 gleam of a white gown, and a face, amused and 
 curious, peering at him under the edge of the sun- 
 shade which he was holding. 
 
 " So this is the celebrity," said Bess Heathway, 
 holding out her hand in a quick, awkward way. 
 She looked back at the crowd of church-goers 
 behind them. " There won't be many empty pews 
 this morning," she said, with obvious application. 
 "I'm not sure that isn't why I'm coming to 
 church myself. I 'm not morally obliged to go.
 
 A CROP OF DANDELIONS 145 
 
 I 've reckoned it up, you see at college we had 
 to go to chapel once a day, and every time I went 
 I said, ' There 's a Sunday off ; ' I went enough 
 then to last me ten years, I estimated." 
 
 " Why, Bessie," remonstrated Miss Tracy. Biz- 
 net grinned. 
 
 " I thought you believed in infant damnation," 
 said he. 
 
 " Why, Rome ! " said Miss Tracy. 
 
 " Did you ? " replied Bess, serenely. " Maybe 
 I did. Is n't this a lovely morning ! I used to 
 think the Lord made Sundays especially, that 
 nice Sundays smelt different from other days. I 
 said that once to Mr. Wells, and he put it in a ser- 
 mon. How proud I was ! " 
 
 In the church was the usual whispering of silk, 
 starch, hymn-book leaves. The women bent for- 
 ward devoutly, with their foreheads upon the pews 
 in front. Bizuet, covering his eyes with his hand, 
 had a homesick qualm for the holy water and the 
 incense of St. Mary's Chapel, whose bell was again 
 clamoring for wandering lambs, interfering with 
 the rhythm of the deep-mouthed peal from their 
 own spire. 
 
 Then the organ began to make sullen remarks 
 under unskillful fingers, and he sat up stiffly, feel- 
 ing that his ears clung flatly to his head in protest. 
 He recognized Maud's hat among the others in the 
 choir, and Benny Wells's red head, just match- 
 ing his sister's marigolds. Mr. Wells, sitting in 
 his chair behind the pulpit, one plump knee crossed 
 over the other, his white hand with short, square-
 
 146 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 tipped fingers before his eyes, was a landmark, and 
 something unchangeable in a land of change. His 
 voice in prayer was the same ; the prayer itself was 
 the same ; and one felt that the Person whom he 
 addressed had not in any way developed broader 
 views nor departed from his curious prejudices 
 during the last few years. 
 
 " Love not the world, 
 Nor the things that are in the world ; 
 For the world passeth away, 
 And the lust thereof." 
 
 Such was the very good advice offered by the 
 choir. Biznet looked thoughtfully at Kitty's de- 
 mure profile and the already perishing sweet peas 
 under her chin, and he did n't see why one should n't 
 love a thing merely because it is perishable. 
 
 Maud sang well. Some singers would have 
 thought they must attempt to express pity and 
 concern for that habit of men of holding tightly 
 to their fragile toys, and for the necessity which 
 wrenches their fingers open; but Maud chose a 
 large and bland indifference, the attitude of 
 a child that puffs away dandelion down with its 
 breath. He liked her better after hearing her 
 sing, for she did it in a sensible way, without fuss. 
 
 And after the long sermon was the usual long 
 Sunday dinner, with several of its courses served 
 cold out of regard to the servants, and irresistible 
 sleepiness settled upon the afternoon. Miss Tracy 
 took her Bible and concordance and fell asleep over 
 them in a steamer chair behind the wistaria. Maud 
 read Emerson in the hammock. Kitty and Roman
 
 A CROP OF DANDELIONS 147 
 
 Biznet in the garden considered a book of blue 
 prints that he had brought home with him. Billy 
 with his dogs strolled up to them with an expres- 
 sion of uneasiness, and then strolled away again in 
 the direction of Bess Heathway, the glimmer of 
 whose dress was visible through the trees. Biznet 
 looked after him meditatively, and then glanced 
 stealthily at Kitty, whose mouth corners were 
 twitching, and whose eyes were very bright under 
 her lashes, and as he looked at her her glance 
 flickered sidelong to him, and she giggled. 
 
 " So ! " said Biznet. 
 
 Presently Kitty declared herself too sleepy to 
 live, and went into the house ; and Roman, fol- 
 lowing, found Dr. Winthrop and a cigar seated in 
 mild obscurity on the veranda steps. He seemed 
 smaller, older, yellower than he had been three 
 years before, more ready, perhaps, to admit himself 
 an invalid, for he did not rise and come forward 
 in his pleasure at seeing the young man, but sat 
 where he was, beaming and holding out one hand 
 in greeting all the time Rome was coming across 
 the lawn. 
 
 Miss Tracy was still somnolent behind the wis- 
 taria, though she had tried to get up a discussion 
 with the doctor about the Sunday-school lesson, 
 which was something about " sounding brass and 
 tinkling cymbal " and people that " have not 
 charity." 
 
 The doctor said nothing as he shook Roman's 
 hand, but looked him over with quiet satisfaction, 
 yet with a lurking anxiety.
 
 148 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " But what are you doing with red cheeks ? " he 
 said at length. " You have n't any right to red 
 cheeks." 
 
 " I came home to get you to prescribe for them," 
 said Rome. But there was serious meaning under 
 his careless tone which brought additional sharp- 
 ness to the doctor's scrutiny. 
 
 " You 've been thickening up some, too," he said. 
 " They 've been making quite a German of you. 
 Beer and sausages, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Biznet, " and music." 
 
 " I understand people are predicting great things 
 for you. How about that ? " 
 
 " Oh, that 's as may be ! " 
 
 " Let 's hear that big fiddle of yours." 
 
 Rome brought his 'cello to the veranda and 
 gave his first performance in Cosmos, choosing 
 things of simple melody for the doctor's pleasure, 
 and afterward, when Maud appeared, the most in- 
 tricate things he knew. 
 
 Miss Tracy wept ; the doctor leaned back with 
 a smile of absolute enjoyment ; and Maud, stand- 
 ing in the doorway, looked at Biznet very intently, 
 studying his hands, his face", as though it were 
 there that the interest lay. Kitty stole out of her 
 room into the upper hall to listen, but crept back 
 yawning, and went to sleep again. 
 
 Rome ended with a rather brilliant and showy 
 composition, which he announced as his own. 
 
 " H'm ! " said the doctor. " How badly con- 
 ceited are you ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Rome. There had been
 
 A CROP OF DANDELIONS 149 
 
 a lighting and softening of his face as he played, 
 a curious erasing of any lines that might be 
 called sensual or sinister. 
 
 " I should think you had a pretty good right to 
 be, if anybody has any right," said the doctor. 
 " It 's a youthful disease, like the measles and 
 whooping cough." He smoked for a while thought- 
 fully, and then delivered one of his small lectures. 
 
 " Conceit is silly. A hen cackles because she 
 has laid an egg, as if she had any choice in the 
 matter! 
 
 " The germs of books and of music are n't gen- 
 erated spontaneously in the brains out of which 
 they sprout. The air is thick with ideas, drifting 
 about with every wind like dandelion down. Most 
 of them, maybe all, come from lives gone to seed. 
 You see a white-headed old fellow " (he touched 
 his gray hair) " ready to go to pieces presently. 
 But the whole of him won't descend to Orcus, 
 only the withered stem and leaves ; all that is 
 worth while in his brain will somehow get out 
 into the drift of things again. You can't chase 
 the metaphor indefinitely," he apologized. 
 
 " Yes," said Biznet dreamily, " people talk an 
 awful lot of rot about inspiration, don't they? 
 There were some long-haired fellows over there used 
 to make me ill. It 's so contradictory, you know, to 
 pretend you 're inspired by some outside influence, 
 and then go around cackling over the big thing 
 you 've done. I could never make out that there 
 was anything to it but being built on a certain 
 plan to begin with, and then working like the
 
 150 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 devil for the rest. Inspiration means that you 
 enjoy your work." 
 
 Maud leaned forward. "But go back to the 
 doctor's dandelion simile. Your being built in a 
 certain way means good soil ; your working like 
 the what 's his name is the making it ready : then 
 along comes a little dandelion seed and tumbles 
 in, and that 's your inspiration ! " 
 
 " Um ! " said Biznet. " That 's all right, I guess. 
 I wish dandelions were a more profitable crop."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 
 
 SQUIRE HEATHWAY said that Roman Biznet 
 had a bad face, and that he did n't want him hang- 
 ing around. His daughter set her jaw to the exact 
 counterpart of her father's, could one have seen 
 beneath his thick white beard, and argued the 
 matter. 
 
 " He has had a good environment," said she, 
 " and the racial characteristics of his ancestors, if 
 you 're talking about phrenology, are very differ- 
 ent from those of the Anglo-Saxons, so it is n't 
 fair to judge him by comparison. Besides, he is 
 so wrapped up in his music he has n't had time to 
 get very bad." 
 
 " He has a bad face," said Squire Heathway. 
 " He has a low forehead and looks tricky. There 's 
 no good Injun but a dead Injun, and I won't have 
 him hanging around." 
 
 " But, papa, he is n't hanging around. Good 
 gracious ! If I were Gladys Wells you might be 
 anxious, but I 'm not silly like other girls. So 
 does Billy come over here, and Benny Wells, and 
 I can't refuse to receive him when he comes with 
 Billy, so long as he behaves as he always does. 
 And you like to hear him play, you know you 
 do."
 
 152 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 "Young Tracy is a fine fellow," said Squire 
 Heathway. 
 
 " Yes," said Bess ; " I hope he '11 marry Kitty 
 Conto." 
 
 The squire grunted. He had other ideas, but 
 knew in what century he was living, and that 
 young people attended to their own marrying and 
 giving in marriage now. 
 
 It was about the time when Elizabeth won this 
 partial victory over her father that Roman Biznet 
 began the practice of watching from his window 
 until the figure of the squire, white felt hat, gold- 
 headed cane, ancient Bose at his side, had passed 
 down the walk and disappeared under the arch- 
 ing elms, before he himself strolled over to the 
 Heathway grounds, to swing Bess in her hammock, 
 or read German with her, or tell stories of student 
 life abroad. 
 
 It seemed odd to him that a girl with such a 
 pretty profile and hair that lighted up so well in 
 the sunshine should have registered a vow never to 
 marry. By and by he began to think it was a 
 pity. It did not occur to him to question the 
 durability of such a vow, nor its wisdom. He had 
 always had a strangely humble respect for Eliza- 
 beth Heathway's wisdom since the day when she 
 was valedictorian of her class at the high school 
 and he was ingloriously dropped. 
 
 He constantly made new discoveries about her. 
 One day he was annoyed at a rip in her sleeve that 
 she had pinned up instead of mending neatly. 
 The next he found something attractive about it,
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 153 
 
 because her arm was so full and round, and because 
 it proved her mind above trifles. 
 
 He decided she was a pretty good friend for a 
 fellow to have, and planned to take her into his 
 confidence about Kitty before long. 
 
 Elizabeth had been taking old Pegasus for a 
 long constitutional. Pegasus went slowly, now, 
 with an uncertain movement in one of his hind 
 legs, and he was renewing his youth as a saddle 
 horse by galloping in harness whenever he could 
 get a chance, though his enemies said he got over 
 the ground no faster in this manner than when he 
 was allowed to walk at a gait which did not inter- 
 fere with switching the flies with his tail, which 
 was long and gray, like an old man's beard, and 
 generally in a beautiful state of crimp and gloss 
 from Elizabeth's skillful fingers. There was a 
 saying in Cosmos that Pegasus's hind leg had 
 pretty nearly paid for the veterinary's new house, 
 but this was a malicious slander, traceable directly 
 to Billy, whereupon Bess in retaliation had vilified 
 his dogs with a wealth of adjective which left them 
 a by-word throughout the town. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon. At that time of the 
 year afternoon stretched out long after tea-time. 
 Bess leaned back in the phaeton, holding the reins 
 laxly, and Pegasus drowsed along, picking his own 
 way in a state of somnambulism, even turning 
 into a ditch with absent-minded skill, to let a tower- 
 ing load of hay go by, which Bess had not noticed. 
 Foolish white butterflies fluttered up about his
 
 154 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 hoofs, and one of them perched on Elizabeth's 
 glove. 
 
 She stared at it unseeingly. The crease be- 
 tween her eyebrows was unusually deep. And she 
 was gowned with astonishing neatness, a trim gray 
 figure with everything put on straight, just as 
 Kitty Conto, that little pattern, would have had 
 it. Even the white veil about her hat, instead of 
 being crumpled and soiled, was crisp with newness 
 and hemmed at the ends. 
 
 " Well, what 's happened ? " her mother had ex- 
 claimed when she appeared thus. " You almost 
 look as if you were some relation to me." 
 
 Pegasus, striking the main road, pricked up his 
 ears, and lunged into his absurd canter, planning 
 to go home, but Elizabeth, waking up at the same 
 time, turned his head another way and sent him 
 moping through French Hollow and up the narrow 
 sumac-bordered road that led past the little empty 
 house where Alphonsine Conto had once lived. It 
 was haunted, of course, and vacant but for that. 
 The windows were broken ; the door hung sideways 
 from its hinges. But leaning against the window 
 was a spindling hollyhock, with two feeble red 
 flowers, whose great-great-grandmother had been 
 tended by Alphonsine. 
 
 Pegasus halted, turning an eye of mild inquiry 
 upon Bess, as she descended from the carriage, 
 and walked hesitatingly through the jungle of 
 weeds to the door. She looked about her a little 
 fearfully and then pushed it open. 
 
 From a broken window a beam of late, redden-
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 155 
 
 ing sunshine lay upon the kitchen table. There 
 were no chairs, for they had been long ago acquired 
 by neighbors who needed them more than they 
 feared the " haunt." But it seemed to Bess merely 
 desolate and empty, whatever horror had once 
 clung about it having evaporated. And even if 
 there were a ghost there, Alphonsine had been a 
 kindly soul. Bess remembered many of her de- 
 lightful, dreadful stories, of the black cat that 
 got to be seven years old, and at that age being 
 doomed to death by Alphonsine's father, had 
 flown to the ceiling and lit there upside down like 
 a fly, walking about and swearing, " Sacree 
 s-s-sacree ! " And there was the loup-garou who 
 chopped wood by day, but at night left his wife and 
 baby and went out to chew his neighbor's throat. 
 Bess reflected sorrowfully that Alphonsine's reality 
 had proved as dreadful as her fancies. 
 
 She had not meant to do it, but now that she 
 wa.s there, she went to the table and peered beyond 
 it at the place where people said there was still a 
 large brown stain. It was there, dingy, and vague 
 of outline under the drifted dust. Elizabeth had 
 expected herself to quail at this, but no she 
 found only a cold and curious feeling within her, 
 as when one looks at things in a museum. But 
 something else made her jump back, and the blood 
 sang in her ears. It was one petal of a geranium, 
 red, bright, and fresh, and it lay by the table leg, 
 where the stain had spread under and crept along 
 in a narrow channel. 
 
 " Rome has been here ! " she said, and looked
 
 156 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 about as if he might step out of a corner. " They 
 think he 's heartless and cynical, and does n't care 
 about things, but he 's been here alone." 
 
 It must have been he, dandy that he was, and 
 always with a red flower in his buttonhole. 
 
 She picked up the petal ; then replaced it as she 
 had found it. There seemed something symbolic 
 about it as it lay there, though just how she could 
 not have told. But the picture in her mind of 
 Biznet standing in the desolate room, looking down 
 sadly upon that gloomy reminder of his child- 
 hood's tragedy, was as vivid as if she had seen him 
 there. And she found herself wishing that she 
 might see in reality the expression upon his face 
 which she fancied it had then worn. She wondered 
 if he had stood uncovered, like a man at a grave 
 if there had been a lump in his throat. There was 
 one in hers as she considered the question. 
 
 As she came out the robins were in full cry 
 from the tops of hop-poles, from the elms, their 
 little faces and red breasts turned to the setting 
 sun. The light was all red gold, with purple 
 shadows among the hills, and the various sounds 
 of French Hollow came up pleasantly as the peo- 
 ple buzzed like insects over their supper-getting. 
 
 Just why Bess was happy as she turned Pegasus 
 toward home and drove back through the sunset, 
 she could not have told. Perhaps it is always 
 pleasant to catch a stray glimpse of something 
 good in the depths of somebody else's soul. 
 
 As she passed the post-office she saw him stand- 
 ing in the doorway, lighting a cigarette. There
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 157 
 
 was a bunch of red geranium in his buttonhole, 
 and one of the flowers was dropping to pieces, two 
 petals lying at his feet as he stood there. She 
 smiled at the accuracy of her reasoning. 
 
 " Don't you want a ride home ? " she asked. 
 
 He accepted with pleased surprise, dropping the 
 freshly lit cigarette beside the red petals as he 
 stepped forward. 
 
 "I've had quite a long walk, and I'm pretty 
 tired," he admitted. 
 
 " Where did you go ? " She did not expect him 
 to tell the truth. But he did. He settled down 
 in a rather inelegant and tired attitude at his end 
 of the seat and did not answer at once. Then 
 he said abruptly, " I went to Phosy's house." 
 
 Bess could think of nothing to say. It occurred 
 to her that he must have something on his mind to 
 tell the truth in such an abrupt, unskillful way. 
 
 "I wonder why I went?" he added presently. 
 " I wish I had n't." 
 
 " I was very fond of Phosy when I was a little 
 girl," said Bess. " It seems a great pity the mys- 
 tery never could be cleared up, does n't it ? " 
 
 " Yes," he answered dryly, " a great pity." 
 
 She glanced at him in surprise. His light and 
 cheerful mockery she was accustomed to ; but this 
 mood was one that might be tragically bitter and 
 earnest, if she read his face right in the growing 
 dusk. 
 
 " Let 's drive around a bit more, won't you ? " 
 he said. " I 'm not in just the mood to go home, 
 yet."
 
 158 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 She turned down a road that led along the 
 banks of the Powasket toward the sunset and the 
 even horizon of the St. Lawrence country. 
 
 " I 'd rather you would n't tell anybody I went 
 there," he said. " I don't know why I told you, 
 I 'm sure. Not that there 's any reason why I 
 should n't go, but I have a morbid dislike of com- 
 ment. I even dread what success I may have in 
 New York next winter. People are such fools." 
 
 " I understand," said Bess. 
 
 " Do you ? I had an idea you were fond of 
 glory and honor and so forth." 
 
 " I used to be. One outgrows it, though, don't 
 you think?" 
 
 " Yes. I seem to remember having it once, but 
 it was when I was a boy and lived at Phosy's. 
 It 's odd how some things can knock one's notions 
 endwise. I 've sometimes wondered in just what 
 way I 'd have been different if that had n't hap- 
 pened. Do you know you 've improved wonder- 
 fully ? You have n't boxed my ears since I came 
 back. You 're quite welcome to, you know, if you 
 like." 
 
 The serious mood had vanished in the middle of 
 a sentence, and he was smiling the twisted smile 
 that was like Kitty's, as his eyes shone through 
 the dusk. 
 
 " I will box them," she replied, " if it 's neces- 
 sary. You may be sure of that." 
 
 " Remember infant damnation ? " 
 
 " I do, inasmuch as this is the third time you 've 
 mentioned it since you came back."
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 159 
 
 " You 're quite sure you don't believe the babies 
 get the ' easiest room in hell ' ? " 
 
 " Quite sure." 
 
 " You 're a Buddhist now, are n't you ? " 
 
 " I don't know. Are you ? " 
 
 " Me ? I 'm a Roman Catholic. I went to the 
 Cathedral regularly abroad, but don't tell Miss 
 Tracy. I knew the organist. He was a bird ! " 
 
 " Do you hear that? " asked Elizabeth suddenly. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 She motioned back with her head. " The Cosmos 
 band. They 're practicing on the Green. We 're 
 going to have a big Fourth, you know." 
 
 " What in the world are they playing ? " asked 
 Biznet, and laid his hand on the reins to stop the 
 carriage and the noise of the wheels. After a 
 moment's listening he doubled up with mirth. 
 " And this," he gasped, " is Fame ! " 
 
 " Well," said Bess, " what is it ? I can't make 
 it out." 
 
 " Oh, nothing but a march that I wrote in my 
 misguided youth. Somebody else has the copy- 
 right, and this is the sixth time I 've heard it since 
 I came back. I wish I had the money it 's bring- 
 ing in to somebody, and I wish, too, I could tack 
 some other fellow's name to it." 
 
 " But why? I think it's splendid," said Bess, 
 listening. 
 
 It was so far away that not much was audible 
 but the throb of the drum and the melody carried 
 by the cornet. Biznet listened, too, with a queer 
 little smile that was partly of enjoyment.
 
 160 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 "I wonder," he said, "what's become of the 
 young chap who wrote that and thought he was 
 doing such great things ? It is n't so bad, for a 
 kid that did n't know how. What becomes of the 
 people we used to be, anyhow? Is that down in 
 your philosophy? It ought to be, for I haven't 
 met Bess Heathway since I came back. I 've 
 looked for her, too." 
 
 She shook her head with a smile. " She 's just 
 as well gone, don't you think? She was an im- 
 possible little creature." 
 
 " Do you suppose she and little Romy Biznet 
 are still scrapping somewhere ? " 
 
 Bess turned the carriage about. " It 's quite 
 probable making snowballs of the 'snows of 
 y ester year ' ! " 
 
 "And little Kitty Conto is still too young to 
 play their big games, and Billy Tracy is still older 
 and wiser than all three." 
 
 " And Pegasus is still a colt," concluded Bess. 
 " I wonder where ? " 
 
 Biznet leaned back with his hands behind his 
 head, one foot dangling out over the wheel. They 
 were facing the Adirondack horizon again, where 
 the mountains were like a bank of dark clouds, 
 and the stars were out. 
 
 The Cosmos band was not unpleasant. Biznet 
 hummed the march they were playing, laughing 
 now and then when the instruments stuttered, 
 flatted, or lost the rhythm. 
 
 "It spoils pleasure to know too much," said 
 Bess. " Now, to me, that little thread of music,
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 161 
 
 mixing itself up with the night, the sound of the 
 carriage wheels and the crickets, is satisfactory in 
 every way. Why don't you take it as a whole in- 
 stead of letting little discords spoil everything for 
 you?" 
 
 " But I do. Only I see the fun of it, as you 
 don't. Yes, I can take it as a whole, just as you 
 do. Seems funny to think of the chap that wrote 
 it, though. He took things so seriously ! " 
 
 " This road is going to take us right past them," 
 said Bess apprehensively. 
 
 " Well, you said you liked it." 
 
 " But Pegasus will dance ! " 
 
 " That will be nice." 
 
 " Oh ! will it ? Perhaps we can get by in a 
 hurry during an intermission." 
 
 "I thought you didn't grudge Pegasus any- 
 thing. Billy was saying " 
 
 " I know. About Pegasus's hind leg and La 
 Barge's new house. Tray killed some of our 
 chickens the other day. I 'm going to shoot those 
 mongrels next time I get a chance." 
 
 " Mongrels ! Why, their pedigree " 
 
 " And Pegasus is the best horse in the county. 
 But I don't like him to dance. It is n't dignified, 
 and pleases little boys. He just stands still in one 
 spot and goes up and down." 
 
 " I 'm glad I came," said Biznet. 
 
 " But perhaps we can get by in a hurry during 
 an intermission." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Biznet, straightening up in an 
 alert way. "Don't you want me to drive for a 
 while ? " he insinuated.
 
 162 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Not you ! " 
 
 They let the horse amble along slowly until the 
 last note of " Marching through Georgia " had 
 flattened into silence, and then Bess rattled the 
 whip in the socket, a proceeding as near to cor- 
 poral punishment as Pegasus knew. He puffed 
 indignantly and lumbered into a gallop. " Oh 
 dear me ! " said Bess, " we '11 never get by at this 
 rate." 
 
 " Better let him walk," suggested Rome. 
 
 " And he used to be the best trotter ! I don't 
 see what 's got into him. You remember how he 
 was when we were all children." 
 
 " Sic transit. 'T is n't so hard on his hind leg, 
 I suppose." 
 
 Bess rattled the whip again nervously; they 
 were in sight of the band-stand now. The leader 
 was wiping his forehead. There were many of the 
 townspeople strolling about the Green, and all the 
 small boys were gathered at the fence, which con- 
 sisted of horizontal iron bars, on which one could 
 swing by the hands. If the Cosmos male popula- 
 tion is unusually strong in the hands and wrists, it 
 is probably due to unremitting practice in youth 
 upon these bars of the Green fence. 
 
 " I used to do that," murmured Rome wistfully. 
 " I 'd like to do it again. I 'd like to steal apples, 
 too!" 
 
 " They are n't ripe yet." 
 
 "There's nothing so good as an apple three 
 weeks after it 's been in flower," said Rome sadly. 
 
 " Gracious ! And you live to tell the tale ! "
 
 PEGASUS PROVES A SENTIMENTALIST 163 
 
 They were just passing the band-stand ; Bess 
 looked anxiously over her shoulder, set her teeth, 
 and took the whip out of the socket. But Biznet, 
 as the tap of the leader's baton sounded, quietly 
 replaced the whip and gathered the reins out of 
 her hands. 
 
 " I 'm a better friend to Pegasus than you are," 
 he said ; and the band, with a toot and a bang, 
 started up his own march again. Bess, who had 
 been wildly indignant, decided that the joke was 
 not entirely on herself after all. And Pegasus 
 danced. He threw up his head and kicked out 
 with his hoofs, and spun round on his hind legs, 
 while the little boys left the fence and made a 
 circle about him. 
 
 " You see," said Biznet, " I 'm killing two 
 stones with one bird. It is n't only Pegasus I 'm 
 pleasing, but pretty nearly the whole rising gen- 
 eration of Cosmos. These youngsters don't often 
 get a free circus, neither do I." 
 
 " I shall pay you back for this some day," said 
 Bess meditatively. She was taking it quite philo- 
 sophically, having shrunk back as far as possible 
 into shadow. " I don't know just how I '11 do it, 
 but I '11 think up something." 
 
 " I don't doubt," said Rome, " but just think of 
 Pegasus ! " 
 
 " He does seem to enjoy it," said Bess. " I 
 wonder why ? Why do horses like music, do you 
 suppose ? And why do dogs hate it so ? I nearly 
 laughed myself ill yesterday when you were try- 
 ing to practice on your 'cello and Bose and Tray
 
 164 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 tuned up. They got the best of it, too, until you 
 banged your window shut." 
 
 " That 's a thing I 've often wondered about," said 
 Rome, " particularly since I 've got down more to 
 the science of music and see how abstract and ab- 
 struse it really is. It makes me sick to have a 
 woman mopping her eyes while I play, yet here is 
 Pegasus dancing around to this old idea of mine, 
 and I take it as a compliment ! And the dogs, 
 well, I fancy they liked it, too, but a dog is a sen- 
 timentalist, like a woman." 
 
 The march ended, and the excitement ebbed 
 from the old horse's hoofs. 
 
 " I have to thank you for a most delightful 
 evening," said Biznet, as he left her at the barn 
 door.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 BOMAN BIZNET'S AMENDMENT 
 
 IF Maud Tracy had not roused Biznet's an- 
 tagonism he might not have discovered any great 
 tenderness for Kitty. But there was a poison in 
 him. If it stagnated, he was sour and diseased 
 throughout. If it found an outlet it left a very 
 good sort of fellow, companionable and soft- 
 hearted. It was a process of mental and moral 
 surgery, merely, for the reduction of fever. And 
 Maud bled him of his black blood, like a judi- 
 ciously applied leech. 
 
 But she did n't know it for a while for he 
 found, on sorting over his stock of masks and 
 dominos, a sweet, grim suavity to turn toward 
 her. It was long before she suspected that he 
 wore a mask at all, and longer still before he 
 dropped it. 
 
 " Can you help me for a moment, Mr. Biznet ? " 
 Maud was coming from the attic, carrying a pic- 
 ture. 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 " I was going to hang this in Kitty's room ; it 
 seems a pity to keep pretty things tucked away." 
 
 She set the frame on a divan and stood off from 
 it, dusting her palms together. 
 
 "The Fornarina." He laughed slightly, mut- 
 tering something under his breath.
 
 166 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I beg pardon?" 
 
 " I was just quoting a line of Faust." 
 
 " I like quotations ; I did n't catch it." 
 
 " Ein rothes Mauschen ihr aus dem Munde." 
 
 " Oh, you mean she looks wicked ? It had n't 
 occurred to me. She is pretty, anyway, and Kitty 
 needs cheering up." 
 
 " So ! " he said softly, but as he helped to hang 
 the picture he kept whistling under his breath the 
 Red Mouse melody which his grandfather's ghost 
 had taught him. The Fornarina smiled slyly. 
 
 Kitty came in and thanked them both sweetly 
 for their trouble. 
 
 " How good you are to me ! " she said to Maud, 
 and kissed her cheek. 
 
 " You little Judas ! " reflected Biznet, and when 
 Maud was gone out took a kiss himself. 
 
 " You said you would n't, Romy. Won't any- 
 body at all do as I ask ? " 
 
 " Come out in the garden, Pussy ; I believe 
 you 've been sewing all day." 
 
 "I was helping Miss Maud put some afghan 
 strips together. Will you tell me about that 
 ' amendment ' you spoke of ? I 'm so anxious. 
 I 've been thinking so much about it. I should 
 feel more independent with you. Tell me." 
 
 "Perhaps I will," he answered. They were 
 standing in the hall. He glanced swiftly to right 
 and left. There was no one, and he kissed her 
 mouth, hotly. " You think we 're brother and 
 sister ? You must marry me if you come to New 
 York. I want you, Pussy for a wife. Do I
 
 ROMAN BIZNET'S AMENDMENT 167 
 
 hurt you ? I want you to feel I could make you 
 forget Billy." 
 
 Then he released her, for there was a step in 
 the hall below as of Maud returning. Kitty fled 
 into her room and locked the door : but first she 
 looked at him over her shoulder, and he never for- 
 got the terrified misery of her face. 
 
 That afternoon he spent in the society of his 
 'cello. There were simplicity and reliability in 
 her stiff, brown body and responsive strings. 
 Women were too strangely complicated. And 
 he seemed to have found new complications in 
 himself. If you hold a string, so, with a steady 
 finger, and draw the bow so you know what 
 you are going to get. But if you feel that you 
 yourself have been taken in hand and that un- 
 known fingers are tuning you, that your own vitals 
 are become catgut, you naturally feel a flutter of 
 anxiety about Fate's skill in the matter. The 
 breaking of a string will be painful. You hope 
 there will be enough resin on the bow. Then you 
 perceive that other people are also being put in 
 tune ; they are off the key, their strings break, 
 will the overture never begin? For the discord 
 is confusing ; and that great music for which we 
 are being prepared can it be played at all upon 
 such toys as we ? 
 
 Roman talked the matter over with his 'cello 
 during the afternoon, and although they reached 
 no particular conclusion, he felt " more like a white 
 man " at dinner time.
 
 168 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Kitty's place was vacant. It was Billy who 
 asked sharply where she was. " She has a head- 
 ache," answered Miss Tracy, but there was no 
 sympathy in her tone. Sometimes there was a 
 harsh, dry quality in the little lady's voice, and 
 when you heard it and looked, startled, into her 
 eyes to understand the reason, you would see a 
 redness of the lids there, and a fine veining of 
 blood in the eye itself. It was not the redness 
 that comes from tears, but was an hereditary 
 characteristic in the Tracy family. There had 
 been warriors among them, people with tem- 
 pers. 
 
 " Kitty is so mortified over her failure at the 
 Normal," said Maud kindly. " Of course it is 
 hard to look back on lost opportunities." 
 
 Billy brought his hand down on the table with a 
 crash. It must be pleasant not to be bought and 
 paid for, to be able to let fly opinions from 
 one's mouth without fearing the effect on the bread 
 and butter that goes into it. 
 
 " The idea of making her a teacher was idiotic. 
 If I had been at home " 
 
 " Billy ! To your aunt ! For shame ! " 
 
 " If I had been at home, it never would have 
 been tried, when there are good schools for girls, 
 where they are not browbeaten and worked to 
 death." 
 
 " You speak as though Kitty had some claim on 
 your aunt." 
 
 " Yes, I thought aunt Em was fond of her, and 
 wanted to make her a gentlewoman and of our own
 
 ROMAN BIZNET'S AMENDMENT 169 
 
 class ; but it seems not. I thought I 'd have 
 given my money, if that was all. Why did you 
 tell me it was her own choice ? " 
 
 " Do you accuse me of prevaricating ? It was 
 her own choice." Miss Tracy rose in a stately 
 manner, and left the room. 
 
 Biznet heard her light step in the upper hall, 
 heard her knock at Kitty's door. He pushed back 
 from the table, his eyes upon the door through 
 which she had gone, his napkin pressed tightly 
 over his lips, his attitude as one who listens 
 keenly. Maud sat back, frowning slightly, crum- 
 pling her napkin into precise folds and creases as 
 it lay under her hand upon the table. 
 
 " Billy, gentlemen don't make scenes," she said 
 at length, gently. Billy became humble and con- 
 trite at once. 
 
 " I know it, sis, and I 'm a brute. But I know 
 I 'm right about Kitty. She 's such a little thing, 
 I " He leaned forward as if on the point of 
 making a confidence ; then glanced at Biznet and 
 drew back. 
 
 " Your aunt has been perfectly sweet to her 
 always," went on Maud. " Why, she 's gone up 
 now to try to comfort her ! " 
 
 " I know," said Billy ; " aunt Em 's an angel." 
 
 Biznet rose quietly, without making excuses to 
 Maud, and strolled out into the garden, feeling in 
 the back of his head that she watched him as he 
 went. 
 
 It was late twilight, a faint smear of sunset still
 
 170 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 showing beyond the St. Lawrence. He sat for 
 half an hour or so examining an unlit cigarette, 
 with a vacant stare. Throughout the garden the 
 roses were holding their last court : the last buds 
 were open now, and with their odor was a faint 
 suggestion of the decay of fallen petals. A 
 light, uneven step sounded on the cinders behind 
 him. 
 
 " Rome ! " 
 
 "Well, Kitty," he answered gently, without 
 turning. He had thought they might drive her 
 to him ; but his cheeks were still hot from his 
 repulse that morning. He knew now how fac- 
 titious that wooing had been. She was his little 
 sister, and he had hurt her. 
 
 " Rome, I want to talk to you as if everything 
 between us were as I imagined before this morning. 
 You used to be so good ! And I have n't anybody 
 else." 
 
 " I promise, Pussy." 
 
 " Rome, I 've got to go away from here. I 
 don't know what Miss Tracy thinks I've done, 
 but" 
 
 " So the final row has come, has it ? " said Biz- 
 net sadly. " Too bad ! " 
 
 " If I could only die ! I 've thought about it 
 all day. Perhaps I 'm cowardly. I thought 
 about the different ways to die and then the 
 world looked so pretty from my window that I 
 wanted to stay in it." 
 
 " Don't, Pussy. Was the row about Billy ? " 
 
 " Yes." She sat down beside him and bent over
 
 ROMAN BIZNET'S AMENDMENT 171 
 
 with her face in her hands. " They called me an 
 adventuress." 
 
 Biznet laughed discordantly. He found himself 
 in a sudden rage against Billy. If Billy loved her, 
 why did n't he Biznet would not have submit- 
 ted to a couple of women, if he had been free like 
 Billy. " Who called you that ? " 
 
 " Miss Tracy. But I think Maud gave her the 
 idea." 
 
 Biznet sorted Billy and his sister into one pack- 
 age with his enemies. 
 
 " Since I 've made such a failure at the Normal, 
 they 've perfectly hated me ; they seem to think 
 I fail on purpose. Rome, you don't know how I 
 tried ! What can I do ? Of course I see now that 
 my plan about keeping house for you was not 
 well-bred and I think what you said this morn- 
 ing I think you worked yourself up to it. It 
 was my fault for having been so stupid. But 
 couldn't I be a salesgirl or something in New 
 York ? Or I could be a servant." 
 
 " Would you mind telling me if Billy asked you 
 to marry him ? " 
 
 "Yes, oh, yes!" 
 
 " Why did you refuse ? " 
 
 " If I had n't, I 'd have been the adventuress 
 they called me. Besides, I think it was only a 
 fancy on his part." 
 
 " You must n't mind my asking, if I 'm to help. 
 Did you care so very much about him, Pussy ? " 
 
 " I hardly know I tried not to think. Don't 
 ask me ! "
 
 172 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " If it were n't for Billy, could you think of 
 me?" 
 
 " I don't know perhaps. You 're all I have." 
 
 " I 'd try to make you happy, Pussy ; I could 
 support you nicely. I have been thinking I could 
 make some payments to Miss Tracy soon." 
 
 " You may be right," said Kitty wearily. 
 
 " We belong to Miss Tracy," he said, half to 
 himself. 
 
 "Yes, that's it, bought and paid for, just 
 like a couple of wax dolls. Oh dear ! " 
 
 " Well, she 's been very good to us, you know. 
 Think of what I owe her ! " 
 
 " Is it more than you can pay, do you think ? 
 Would our marriage please her enough to help 
 pay it off?" Kitty asked. She had taken his 
 hand in hers, dragging and twisting his ring with 
 the red stone until it cut his finger. He took the 
 restless little hands in his, where they still worked 
 and twisted between his palms. 
 
 " Yes. And it would please me, Pussy ; I 
 thought of it long ago." 
 
 " I supposed you would fall in love with Bess 
 Heathway, or else some great singer. I 'm such a 
 dull little thing! I don't know enough to ap- 
 preciate you." 
 
 " They say, you know," said Rome, " that people 
 learn to care after they are married." 
 
 " Do you think we should ? " 
 
 " I care now. Perhaps you would learn." 
 
 " I '11 try." 
 
 "Then shall I tell Miss Tracy we are en- 
 gaged?"
 
 KOMAN BIZNET'S AMENDMENT 173 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 " Will you marry me in the fall, before I have 
 to go back to New York ? " 
 " Yes."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 ADLOR ENCOUNTERS THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN 
 
 THEY did not linger in the early starlight, like 
 newly plighted lovers, but walked back slowly to 
 the house with bent heads and unsmiling mouths. 
 She leaned on his arm with dragging weariness. 
 
 "Who is that?" asked Kitty suddenly. A 
 shadow was going quietly across the lawn, paral- 
 lel with them, and gliding stealthily from shrub 
 to shrub. 
 
 " It 's Adlor," answered Rome, puzzled. " I 
 thought he was a fairly honorable chap, too, but 
 he has evidently been listening to us, or trying to. 
 Perhaps he wants to pay me back for that scare 
 I gave him when we were boys. I 've told you, 
 you know, how I drove him and his pals out of 
 Miss Tracy's orchard. I sometimes think I must 
 have scared him too hard, and done something or 
 other to a piece of his brain. Even to this day 
 he more than half believes I am a loup-garou. 
 There 's nothing so easy to get as the reputation 
 of being a devil. Well, I had lots of fun out of 
 him." 
 
 " Adlor is * one good boy,' " said Kitty. " If 
 Miss Tracy had only left me alone, and Mrs. Or- 
 leana, or somebody like her, had taken me instead,
 
 THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN 175 
 
 I might have married Adlor, and we should have 
 done very well." 
 
 " You don't mean he is in love with you ? " 
 
 " I 'm afraid so. He sometimes looks at me as 
 though he were. Perhaps if you had n't asked me 
 to marry you, just now, I might have gone back 
 with him to French Hollow after all ! " 
 
 " I can hardly imagine that ! " 
 
 " Well," Kitty sighed, " Adlor is a good boy, 
 and I don't quite see how my wonderful educa- 
 tion has made me so very much better than he is. 
 I hope he does n't feel bad about me. Those 
 things hurt so ! " 
 
 At the end of the veranda was the glimmer of 
 dresses. " It 's Miss Tracy and Maud," said Rome 
 in Kitty's ear. " Go upstairs and I '11 have it out 
 with them. What! Without kissing me good 
 night ? " He spoke lightly, but with a shadow of 
 sternness in his voice. She came back, and turned 
 her cheek obediently. He looked at her fixedly, 
 and she glanced up, as if not understanding why 
 the kiss did not come. " Oh ! " she said at last, 
 smiling, the merest twitch of one corner of her 
 mouth ; " but I don't see what difference it 
 makes," she added when their lips had touched. 
 
 "A mere matter of form," said Rome ironi- 
 cally ; " I believe it 's a custom among lovers." 
 
 Kitty ran swiftly upstairs as though fearing to 
 be called back, and Rome sauntered over to the 
 women at the end of the veranda. 
 
 "Kitty and I have been out in the rose-walk 
 this evening."
 
 176 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Have you ? " said Miss Emily, with a guilty 
 start which was a gleam of hope. 
 
 " Yes, we had quite a long talk, and I have 
 something to tell you. Don't go, Miss Maud, for 
 I want you to hear it too. In fact I want you 
 both to congratulate me." 
 
 " Oh," said Miss Tracy, trembling greatly ; " I 
 I with all my heart, Rome. I want you both 
 happy, I 'm sure ; I want everybody to be happy." 
 And the little lady, shedding sudden tears at the 
 end of her scheming, ran into the house. 
 
 Maud congratulated him with well-bred sincer- 
 ity ; and yet as they stood there alone, her hand 
 trembled on meeting his, her voice died away, and 
 her eyes were frightened and miserable as he saw 
 them through the dark. 
 
 He watched her out of sight with a satisfied 
 leer, then lit a cigarette and went for a stroll 
 about the grounds, chuckling to feel what a fine 
 fellow he was, reveling as he had when a child in 
 his mischievous knowledge of the world at night, 
 his companionship with its mysteries. He had 
 solved his problems with credit, and was gay with 
 freedom. He felt as though he were even capable 
 of deciding that continually rustling leafy debate 
 of the branches, silhouetted grotesquely against 
 the light spot in the sky where the moon was ris- 
 ing, and wagging solemnly in portentous assent or 
 dissent. They had gone over the same debate, 
 and the moon had risen just so, like a great red 
 fire, in that same notch between the hills, when he 
 was a boy. The world seemed to have kept its
 
 THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN 177 
 
 habit of youngness ; he saw no good reason why 
 he should grow old himself. 
 
 Turning the corner of the house he stopped 
 suddenly at sight of a figure like an Aztec mummy 
 sitting stolidly beneath Kitty's window, its back 
 to the house, rigid and silent as if on guard. 
 
 "What! Adlor again! 'Those things hurt 
 so ! ' eh ? Actually crying ! " 
 
 He came softly behind the man and leaned over 
 him, still undiscovered. " What, tears, Adlor ? " 
 he asked with soft mockery. 
 
 Adlor jumped up with a frightened grunt. 
 " Loup-garou ! " he stuttered. 
 
 "Yes," said Biznet, "same old loup-garou." 
 
 Adlor leaned forward threateningly. His hands 
 at his side were clenched and he breathed stertor- 
 ously. Then with a quick motion he crossed him- 
 self, letting his fingers remain in the position 
 known as " making the horns," a safeguard 
 against the evil eye. 
 
 " No use, Adlor," chuckled Home, highly enter- 
 tained. "That don't faze me a little bit. But 
 what are you doing under Kitty's window ? " 
 
 " What are you doing, loup-garou ? " retorted 
 Adlor in a fierce, snarling voice which was new to 
 Biznet. 
 
 He did not reply, but stood, quiet, with his 
 hands in his pockets, regarding Adlor critically. 
 He began to feel a trifle sorry for him, and 
 vaguely envious. Why should all men except 
 himself find it such an easy thing to fall in love 
 with Kitty ?
 
 178 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Loup-garou," said Adlor again, " you 're one 
 bad man , whether you 're a devil or not. Wat 
 for you make Kitty marry you, hein ? You don' 
 lak her, an' she don' lak you." 
 
 Rome still quietly puffed his cigarette, but he 
 was getting angry. What business had this fel- 
 low to come blundering into the truth like a June- 
 bug into a lamp? He could see that Adlor was 
 working himself up to the pitch of battle. Adlor 
 made several attempts to swallow his Adam's ap- 
 ple. He was trying to be cool, and to submit the 
 thing peaceably to Reason according to the cus- 
 tom of these people who had attained immeasur- 
 able superiority over him by means of the mys- 
 teries of education. " Wat for you act dat way ? " 
 he said almost pleadingly. " Wat for you wan' 
 make her feel bad, jus' lak your fader treat your 
 mere?" 
 
 " None of your damn business ! " said Roman, 
 and struck out with his fist. They clinched and 
 rolled in a flower-bed, snarling, until a thunderbolt 
 struck them from above, and they were wrenched 
 apart, gasping and wriggling, while Billy, tower- 
 ing over them, with a mighty hand twisted in 
 each coat collar, shook them until their teeth rat- 
 tled. 
 
 " What the devil ! " he thundered ; " must you 
 two Canucks make night hideous like a couple of 
 cats ! What do you mean by it ? " 
 
 " Damn it, Billy, you 're no peeler. Let go my 
 collar ! " Rome squealed like an indignant rat in 
 the jaws of a terrier.
 
 THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN 179 
 
 Billy gave a little extra shake to both of them. 
 " What were you fighting about ? " he demanded. 
 
 " None of your business," spluttered Rome, and 
 by a skillful twist wrenched free, leaving his coat 
 in Billy's possession. 
 
 "Well," assented Billy, "I suppose it isn't. 
 But I 'm going to keep this place free of cat-fights. 
 Go to the barn, Adlor, and no more nonsense. To 
 be fair, I don't believe you were much to blame." 
 
 Rome smiled into space at Billy's remark and 
 went on coolly remodeling his toilet, brushing the 
 dust from his trousers, shaking down his cuffs, and 
 smoothing back the stringy black locks that had 
 tumbled over his eyes. Billy tossed him back his 
 coat, for which Rome thanked him courteously. 
 
 As Adlor slunk away through the uncertain 
 glimmer of the now risen moon, Biznet, putting 
 his hands trumpet-like to his lips, sent after him 
 a dismal falsetto shriek, the same couplet which 
 he had composed for Adlor's benefit years before : 
 
 " Oh, Adlor ! Oh, mon vieux ! 
 Adlor Santwire, tout perdu ! " 
 
 They saw Adlor, a wandering ghost frightened 
 by the cry of a fellow spirit, throw up his arms, 
 put his hands over his ears, and run unsteadily to 
 the stable door, which he wrenched open and 
 locked after him with a bang. 
 
 Even Billy felt his scalp prickle at the banshee 
 wail. " What in thunder do you mean by this 
 performance ? " regaining his hold on Rome's 
 already limp coat collar, Rome being helpless with 
 hysterical laughter.
 
 180 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Gentlemen don't scrap with servants as a rule," 
 went on Billy magnificently, laying down the law. 
 
 " Don't they, really?" 
 
 " And now I 've got you," continued Billy, 
 " let 's have it out and do up the whole business 
 at once." 
 
 " You 're doing me up pretty fast," gasped 
 Rome, " if that 's what you mean." 
 
 " Oh, sit down, then," replied Billy, pushing him 
 to a bench, " but don't you try to get away until 
 I 'm through." 
 
 Biznet sat down and lit a fresh cigarette. Billy 
 turned away from him and was silent for some 
 time, staring abstractedly at a dim light burning 
 in the upper story of the house. Biznet followed 
 his gaze with a smile. 
 
 " Come, don't be bashful," he said encouragingly ; 
 " speak your little piece." 
 
 Billy bit his lips, staring toward the house, and 
 then upward, with a sigh, at the round moon which 
 now stood like the halo of a protecting saint over 
 the dim orange oblong of the window. The light 
 had been turned quite low. One might guess that 
 it was left so while the occupant was at her prayers, 
 and that she was overlong at them. 
 
 " Rome Biznet," he said at last, " there 's some- 
 thing about this engagement between you and 
 Kitty that is n't all right." 
 
 " They 've told you already, have they ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I met Kitty in the hall and she was 
 crying." He did not say that during the quarter 
 of an hour in which Roman was announcing his
 
 THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN 181 
 
 engagement to Miss Tracy and Maud, he had once 
 more been asking Kitty to marry him. He had 
 met her, as he said, crying. He had taken her in 
 his arms, and she had rested there limply, as if too 
 weak to care or resist. Then they heard the chairs 
 pushed back on the veranda. While Miss Tracy's 
 foot was already on the lower stair Kitty had locked 
 her little thin arms around his neck, kissed him on 
 the mouth of her own will, whispering, " Good-by," 
 vanished into her room, and turned the key. 
 
 " Then I met Maud," went on Billy, passing 
 over the chronological hiatus in his story, " and 
 she told me you had just announced your engage- 
 ment. If you 're such a happy pair, what was she 
 crying about? " 
 
 "Possibly she had a toothache." 
 
 " Toothache ! a lot ! What have you been up 
 to?" 
 
 " I don't see that it 's any of your business, but 
 I asked her to marry me, and she said she would." 
 
 " You can't make her happy ! " 
 
 " Speaking of happiness, is n't it a good deal 
 like Santa Glaus, a thing to talk about, but not to 
 believe in ? " 
 
 " You won't make her happy. You don't love 
 her." 
 
 " What makes you so sure ? It was for saying 
 something about as polite as that that I knocked 
 Adlor down ; but you 're so big and brave that 
 you 're quite safe in being as impudent as you 
 like." 
 
 "It isn't in you to love anything or anybody;
 
 182 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 you are a loup-garou, as Adlor says, I mean 
 you're nothing but music, and Kitty is even 
 more tone-deaf than I am. You will hate each 
 other." 
 
 Rome spoke in a quiet, confidential tone, ad- 
 dressing space. " I am getting tired of being civil 
 to you on account of your fists. Speaking of love, 
 though, and granting I'm merely an unpleasant 
 compound of loup-garou and music, I don't see 
 why that prevents my knowing how to love." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Billy, suddenly 
 changing his manner. " I have been rude. I 'm 
 sorry, as you say, that I have such good mus- 
 cles for we should both feel better for a good 
 fair fight." 
 
 " There are pistols, you know," said Rome with 
 eyes blazing. 
 
 " Pshaw ! This is n't France, or melodrama. 
 Here, shake hands, and let 's act like men." 
 
 Rome hesitated and looked curiously at the out- 
 stretched hand. 
 
 " I think, if you don't mind, I 'd a little rather 
 not," he answered quietly. " We can talk as well 
 without. Shaking hands would symbolize a change 
 of heart I don't exactly feel." 
 
 Billy impatiently drew back his hand. "You 
 might make a few allowances, I think ; for I know 
 I 've been wearing my heart on my sleeve where 
 everybody could see it and laugh. Rome, promise 
 me you will be good to her. She 's so little and 
 helpless, and I 've been thinking so long that it 
 was I You might be unkind without meaning
 
 THE LOUP-GAROU AGAIN 183 
 
 it. You talented fellows are said to be a sort of 
 heartless lot." 
 
 He drew his hat over his eyes and turned his 
 back. Rome looked at the tall, athletic figure 
 with a mixture of envy, pity, contempt. A spasm 
 of pain tightened his lips. 
 
 " I will be as good as I know how, Billy," he 
 said at length. " You are thinking of my grand- 
 father and father. They were a pretty unsavory 
 lot, and I don't blame you for being anxious, but 
 I 'm not so like them as you think at least not 
 in all ways. I give you my word, Billy, that as far 
 as I can, I will be a good husband to the woman 
 you love ! " 
 
 " There 's no use," muttered Billy, his shoulders 
 heaving, " in making a corkscrew of the knife after 
 it 's jabbed in." And with that he flung off toward 
 the house. 
 
 Rome, still smoking placidly, watched him with 
 something of that stony scorn which one of his 
 ancestors might have felt toward a captive flinch- 
 ing at the stake. 
 
 He rose, stretching like a cat that has lain quiet 
 too long, and went over to the Heathway grounds. 
 There he laid himself down on a bench beneath an 
 arbor vitae in deep shadow, and propping his chin 
 on his hand watched Elizabeth's window. He 
 hardly knew why. He found himself imagining 
 conversations with her, and asking for her con- 
 gratulations. Yet as the two of them talked within 
 his brain, they did not say much about Kitty. 
 " But don't you think I 'm a lucky chap ? " he
 
 184 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 insisted, eyeing Elizabeth's white curtain. " I 
 don't know," said the imagined Bess, looking pale 
 and sad. " Do you care whether I 'm happy or 
 not ? " " Yes, I care about that. You 've seen 
 that in my face a good many times." "Yes, I 
 have. Did I see more, I wonder ? " " No, I 'm 
 different from other women, you know. I 'm not 
 the sort of woman that would ever fall in love and 
 marry." " No, that is so ; you are on a different 
 plane from other women." 
 
 But the imagined Bess insisted on saying, in 
 one way or another, " I don't know. Would you 
 have cared for me if it had n't been for Kitty ? "
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 MIDSUMMER MADNESS 
 
 ELIZABETH was awake, Roman Biznet's 'cello 
 humming within her brain like an insistent mos- 
 quito. No matter which side up she turned her 
 pillow, there it sang, fine and plaintive, just within 
 the hollow of her ear. 
 
 For an hour or so she reasoned quite sensibly 
 about it. The nerves of her ear, she argued, were 
 remembering sound, as one's retina keeps a vivid 
 color. But a white night is not conducive to mat- 
 ter-of-fact self-diagnosis. 
 
 She went to the window at last to cool her hot 
 cheeks, frowning uneasily at the dark outline of the 
 Tracy house, quietly asleep among its trees. And 
 outdoors the eldritch strings still vibrated, in the 
 drowsy creak and chirr of insects, in the long sigh 
 of grass and leaves, in the smell of passing roses. 
 
 " Very well, then," she said curtly to herself ; 
 " if I can't sleep I '11 wake up. There 's no sense 
 in this sort of thing." 
 
 So she sternly made her toilet as if for morning, 
 except for arranging her hair, nervously snapping 
 off a button or two in putting on her shoes, and 
 remarking bitterly that she was " glad of it " as 
 they flew into far corners. " Such nonsense ! " 
 she muttered, as she bathed her eyes. " If I were
 
 186 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 anybody else I should almost think " But even 
 to herself she would not put the humiliating con- 
 clusion into words. 
 
 The solemn pendulum of the hall clock accom- 
 panied her quiet footsteps through the dark to the 
 front door ; it droned midnight after her, the Tracy 
 clock agreeing in its slower, deeper voice. From 
 the warm stillness a little cool breeze crept out, 
 like the ghost of a dead childhood, and stroked her 
 cheeks. 
 
 She stood for a while by a rose-bush, watching 
 the insects there. They were chiefly beetles and 
 little moths whose beauty was on too small a scale 
 to please human fancy ; but it is worth lying in 
 wait near a rose-bush at night, for sometimes Roy- 
 alty mingles with this small fry, and he is good to 
 see. And he came presently, as silent as a shadow, 
 lighting upon a rose so near her that she could 
 see the little lamps in his eyes. There are few 
 things in the world so beautiful as a lunar moth. 
 But presently he wheeled away on some swift 
 errand toward the Tracy garden. 
 
 As Elizabeth passed the arbor vitse, she peered 
 into the blackness of its shadow, amused to fancy 
 it the lurking place of something mischievous and 
 of the night, even looking back at it once or twice 
 over her shoulder as she stood among the flower- 
 ing shrubs. She stood idly for some time beside 
 the white blossoming branches of a syringa, gently 
 chucking under the chin a flower or two ; stealing 
 near enough to the busy night creatures to see their 
 little red eyes. Quite in the centre, she knew, was
 
 MIDSUMMER MADNESS 187 
 
 the nest of a chipping sparrow, and she longed to 
 put the tip of her finger on that tiny brooding 
 head. Was the little lady awake, she wondered ? 
 She had read that they kept their eyes open all 
 night long, watching. Perhaps she was even then 
 peering out in alarm at Elizabeth as at a frightful 
 nightmare. Bess felt a sudden sympathy for all 
 married creatures ; and for the blind featherless 
 birds within the bush the mother within her awoke. 
 She turned away softly, as if it had been a woman 
 nursing her baby in there, instead of a bunch of 
 warm feathers hardly bigger than her thumb. 
 
 She thought she would go to the bench under the 
 arbor vitae. It would be a good place to sit and 
 think about things for a while. 
 
 As she pushed aside the hanging branches that 
 shut it in, she stumbled backward, with a faint 
 cry, and Roman Biznet stood up. 
 
 " I 'm sorry," he said. " I have been here for 
 some time. I 'm a night hawk, anyhow, you 
 know. I did n't know you were taken that way, 
 too." 
 
 " You should n't scare people so. I I You 
 might turn a body's hair white ! " She was twist- 
 ing nervously at her long, disheveled braids to get 
 them into more conventional shape. They sat 
 down side by side on the bench, and he picked up 
 the tangled end of a braid, looking at it closely 
 with a little smile. 
 
 " It looks all right now," he said. " It is still 
 yellow " he brushed it across his cheek, " and 
 it smells sweet. What do you put on it ? "
 
 188 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Nothing, of course ! Let go ! I 'm going into 
 the house." 
 
 "No; don't go in. I hardly ever have any- 
 body to talk to in my night prowlings. If there 
 were n't any people to be waked up by it, what a 
 time this would be for some music ! Those little 
 chaps," he waved his arm to indicate the small 
 fiddlers in the grass, " they have it all to them- 
 selves, don't they ? Don't go in. I never before 
 saw anybody mooning around just for the fun of it 
 the way you were doing just now." 
 
 " I never did it before. I could n't sleep, some- 
 way." 
 
 " Neither could I. I 'm apt to wake up, like a 
 cat, at night. It 's the only time I feel fit to live." 
 
 "I think," said Bess, "I can understand that 
 feeling. I sometimes dream of coming out and 
 pottering about like this only it 's as if I were 
 out of my body when I dream, without any law 
 of gravitation to bother me. There 's a line of 
 Tennyson, 
 
 ' blown along a wandering wind, 
 And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.' " 
 
 Biznet nodded approvingly. "I wish I could 
 quote poetry. Do you ever write any yourself ?" 
 
 Bess looked guilty. "What gave you that 
 idea ? " she asked, with an unnatural giggle. 
 
 " Oh, I thought you might. It 's nothing to be 
 ashamed of." 
 
 "I wish I could. We were speaking of 
 dreams. I dream very oddly sometimes. Last
 
 MIDSUMMER MADNESS 189 
 
 night I thought I left my body. It was a bit 
 drizzly, you remember, a nasty sort of night; I 
 seemed to float out of my window in a most de- 
 lightful way. I was real enough, but the branches 
 of the trees seemed to pass through me, and the 
 rain, in falling, fell through me. And I felt fine. 
 I was just planning to get above the storm some- 
 how, and have fun with the moonlight, which I 
 knew must look pretty on top of all those clouds, 
 when I woke. You were still playing, I remember. 
 It was about eleven." 
 
 "What, do you have that dream, too? It's 
 something like one of mine that is the getting 
 out of your body and wandering around only 
 you seem to like yours. I don't like mine. Things 
 chase me. I 'm not afraid, exactly, but it 's a great 
 bore, you know, to be chased around and fight with 
 things you can't see. Are n't you ever afraid ? 
 And do you ever have the feeling of two people 
 being mixed up inside you?" 
 
 " No. It 's a dream I 'm very fond of. Some- 
 times I get confused and lost for a while, but the 
 places are interesting, and it comes out all right in 
 the end." 
 
 He looked at her uneasily, and put his hand 
 to his throat, as though something had tightened 
 about it. He quite understood, for she had told 
 him, that she was different from all other women, 
 that she was a sister to all the world as a nun is 
 sister. But the air was heavy and sweet, and far 
 away in the mountains there was a murmur of 
 trouble presently for the quiet leaves.
 
 190 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 It came to him how, when something had been 
 wrong with his nerves abroad, and that idiot Bauer 
 had given him morphine, he had dreamed of dig- 
 ging Kitty out of a smother of earth, and of how 
 she had been Bess Heathway instead. 
 
 " Dreams are certainly queer," he said. " You 
 say you were alone, and like what you quoted, 
 * blown along a wandering wind.' I could fancy 
 a wind coming up kind of Western cyclone, you 
 know that could pick up you and me, bodies 
 and all, with no more trouble than if we were a 
 couple of dead leaves. How warm it is! The 
 roses smell sweet to-night. A good wind would 
 clear the air." 
 
 " But not a cyclone." 
 
 " I don't think I 'd mind a cyclone. With a 
 cyclone you don't have to be a thin, vapory ghost 
 to go off through the air, and we 'd take hold of 
 hands, you know, and hang on tight." 
 
 Bess was fingering her braids absently. Pre- 
 sently she asked in a small, shy voice, "Would 
 you lose all respect for me if I confessed that I 've 
 tried to write verses sometimes ? " 
 
 " It would depend largely on the verse." 
 
 " I sometimes I think of things I would like 
 to hear in music." 
 
 " That 's in my line. Where 's your poem ? " 
 
 " Oh, it 's nothing, you know, only it might 
 be pretty if it were sung." 
 
 " Let 's have it." 
 
 " It 's about a moth and a rose. It 's rather 
 sentimental."
 
 MIDSUMMER MADNESS 191 
 
 " Go ahead ! How can I tell until I hear it ? " 
 
 " You '11 make fun." 
 
 " No, I won't." 
 
 " I '11 write it down. It sounds so silly to re- 
 peat." He found an old letter in his pocket. It 
 happened to be Kitty's, but he did not notice that 
 until the next day. Bess wrote : 
 
 " One night in a garden a -white rose woke 
 
 (Sigh for the beauty a breath will stain), 
 And oh ! the treasure of scent that broke 
 (Sigh for the sweet that is sweet in vain). 
 
 " There came a moth, and his eyes were fire ; 
 
 His royal wings, like the leaves, were green ; 
 The king of the leaves ! she thought, and he 
 Of all white moths he believed her queen. 
 
 " They were dead when the dawn wind found them there 
 
 (Sigh for the things of a night and day), 
 The moon was paling, but round and fair 
 (Sigh for the things that must last alway)." 
 
 " Umm yes. I get your idea. Kind of rough 
 on them, was n't it ? " A suitable melody occurring 
 to him, he hummed softly, somewhere behind the 
 natural harshness of his vocal chords. " It needs 
 music to bring out the meaning of it," he said, 
 " the symbolism, that you mean a man and a 
 woman, instead of a moth and a rose." 
 
 " I don't know that I did mean that exactly." 
 " Well, that is what I shall make it mean." 
 " I 'm glad you think it 's worth putting to music. 
 Was n't that thunder over there ? " She felt ill at 
 ease, as one does before a storm. 
 
 " Yes. It 's been fixing for a thunderstorm all
 
 192 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 day. How do you suppose moths understand each 
 other, and find each other out ? They don't make 
 the sort of mistake you've indicated here, you 
 know." 
 
 There was a subtle vibration in his hardly audi- 
 ble words. She sought about for something sen- 
 sible to relieve the situation, but nothing of value 
 occurred. 
 
 " Who knows ? Some sort of instinct. It 's 
 all very scientific, I believe. But people do the 
 same thing sometimes. For instance, one would 
 have supposed I knew that you were here and came 
 out on purpose to talk to you whereas " 
 
 He jumped up to walk back and forth. " Damn 
 it all, Bess, what are you trying to do to me ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Those roses they they go to one's head. 
 The wind you were so anxious for is rising." 
 
 " I am going ih." 
 
 " No, you won't go in. We '11 stay, both of us, 
 and let the wind blow us where it will. It 's your 
 fault. You said you were n't like other women, 
 and I believed you. But could n't you remember 
 that I was a man ? or I thought I was. What 
 right have you to call yourself different from 
 other women ? Yes ! You came out to ine here 
 just as one moth goes to another. And that was 
 what brought me to you. And I did n't know " 
 
 " What have I done ? " 
 
 " Done ! Oh, nothing ! The same old trick 
 that women play " 
 
 " I have played no trick ! "
 
 MIDSUMMER MADNESS 193 
 
 " I thought you a sort of saint. I I wanted 
 to be a decent fellow." 
 
 " Rome, what have I done ? " 
 
 " But it 's got me by the throat now and what 
 can you do when it 's got you by the throat ? Oh, 
 Lord ! what can one do ? " 
 
 Suddenly, with a light, easy gesture, he seemed 
 to cast some responsibility or other burden into 
 the air, and turned a bright, smiling face upon 
 her. If, in the action, a subtle degeneration fell 
 upon him, something suggesting the way a snake 
 flattens its head before striking, she did not know 
 it, for she could not look at him just then. 
 
 " I did not mean to offend you," she said, and 
 put out a hand with awkward appeal. He took it 
 and held it hard against his cheek. 
 
 " Bess, do you believe what you 're so fond of 
 saying, that a man and a woman may be just as 
 good friends as two men and without falling in 
 love?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Her voice was weak and scared. He laughed 
 and drew back, making a gesture that invited the 
 rest of the world to contemplate a folly, then turned 
 upon her with ferocity. 
 
 " Well, I don't, and I think you 're a fool, but 
 I 'm willing to act up to your theory, if you like. 
 You 've said a good deal lately about our friend- 
 ship. We '11 be ' blood-brothers.' " He seized 
 her arm roughly with savage intention. 
 
 " No oh, no ! " 
 
 "Afraid of blood?"
 
 194 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " You know I'm not only " 
 
 " Well, why won't you, then ? 'T is n't so much 
 to ask of this cold-blooded friendliness of yours. 
 If you cared about me as I do about you " 
 
 " Do you care like that ? " 
 
 " Do I ! And yet all I 'm asking is a few drops 
 of the blood that 's been through your heart." 
 
 Her reply was so low that her voice was obscured 
 by the rustling leaves and he must lean very close 
 to ask her what it was she said. 
 
 " I was mistaken," was what he finally heard ; 
 and then, with a rush, " It was because I was 
 afraid I was going to love you that I talked so 
 much about our friendship, and all that. I 
 tried to believe it because I had to keep you in 
 my life somehow." 
 
 The panic of shyness overcame her again, and 
 she shivered within his tightened arms. 
 
 " We did n't make the world," he said defiantly, 
 " nor the laws in it for moths and people. What 
 will happen when I kiss you ? Will God throw a 
 thunderbolt for that?" 
 
 All about them was the terrified whisper of the 
 leaves. His voice even at her ear was hardly dis- 
 tinguishable, seeming made up of other sounds of 
 the storm. 
 
 Then the moon was obliterated by the clouds, 
 and the sky crashed and blazed as if the gods were 
 really trying to frighten them with portents. For 
 he remembered how, years before, he had kissed 
 her as a malicious prank, and the heavens had been 
 angry then, as now.
 
 MIDSUMMER MADNESS 196 
 
 And yet, to see her face, by the lightning, smil- 
 ing faintly to feel her in the intervals of black- 
 ness, warm and throbbing one might thus dare 
 thunder and lightning, angry deities, or men. 
 
 But the breaking of the storm seemed to remove 
 a tension. He said quietly, " I don't know how it 
 is. My mind feels clearer. There 's lots of trouble 
 coming, I suppose, but just now, someway, I can 
 see so far! And in the end I mean, the end 
 that's somewhere back of all this row overhead, 
 you and I will look back and laugh." 
 
 He pulled her loosened hair about them both 
 and kissed her in its shelter, then let her go back 
 to the safe, dry house just as the first drops 
 splashed them. 
 
 He stayed out himself, lying on his face in the 
 wet grass, while the rain drenched him and the 
 thunder condemned him with its unanswerable and 
 vociferous " Thus saith the Lord ! "
 
 CHAPTER 
 AFTER THE STORM 
 
 THE storm that night was hard on the birds. 
 Nests were overturned here and there, and where 
 this had happened there was no song next morn- 
 ing. 
 
 At the first watery red of sunrise, Biznet, walk- 
 ing in the Tracy garden, saw a dead bird lying 
 in the drift of muddy rose petals. He picked it 
 up by a slim leg, as one takes a flower by its stem, 
 and placed it in his palm. There seemed question 
 and complaint in its inertness, protest against 
 destruction of happy things that do no evil. " I 
 wonder if this is the little chap that Kitty was 
 telling about ? " Kitty in a gay mood had once 
 called his attention to a faint, plaintive note float- 
 ing from a high tree in the Heathway woods. 
 
 " His wife 's making him wash dishes. Can't 
 you see his little elbows working ? And he 's dis- 
 couraged. He keeps saying, ' I don't see 
 how I can stan' it any longer.' " And 
 Kitty, notoriously without ear, had somehow caught 
 the pathetic cadence exactly. " Well," said Biznet, 
 " so he does n't have to ' stan' ' it any longer ! " 
 
 The aged Susan came tiptoeing up the path to 
 meet him. Susan was no longer shapely, and age 
 sat so heavily upon her that she seldom had birds
 
 AFTER THE STORM 197 
 
 for breakfast now. Deep wrinkles had settled be- 
 tween her yellow, anxious eyes. She received the 
 bird thankfully. There happened to be no kittens 
 just then, so she had it all herself. Biznet watched 
 her grimly as she ate. 
 
 " Sic transit. Yesterday the world was a pretty 
 good place to him, no doubt, plenty of cherries 
 with worms in them; to-day I wonder what 
 the gods had against him ? 
 
 " I wonder now if Bess is asleep ? " He looked 
 toward her window. " I can't see any particular 
 reasonableness in my being alive this morning. 
 Still I suppose Kitty counts upon me. Honor is 
 a queer thing. I wonder why it comes ahead of 
 happiness ? Honor is a pig-headed sort of thing. 
 Just because a couple of women don't see the point, 
 she has got to refuse Billy and marry me. Now, 
 if I were Billy But come to think of it, there 's 
 some fun for me in this business, after all. It 's 
 * so interesting,' as Maud says, to rile Billy ! What 
 an ass he is ! If it were n't for Bess, now, I could 
 take solid comfort in going off with his girl, 
 particularly as I flatter myself I can make Kitty 
 happier in the end than he ever could. I believe 
 I am tired of music. That would be hard luck ; 
 there 's nothing else for me." He hurried into the 
 house, as if to forestall a threatened calamity, and 
 took his 'cello out of its bag. 
 
 Elizabeth was asleep then. It was late when 
 she woke, and the cool freshness of the morning 
 had turned to sultriness. From the Tracy house 
 as she dressed she heard a faint sound, like the
 
 198 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 droning of a night insect unaware of the arrival 
 of daylight. It was Rome's 'cello. He was ex- 
 plaining his troubles to whatever ear might sym- 
 pathize. Billy's hounds in the stable answered 
 with tears in their voices. 
 
 All the languid morning Bess sat idle and 
 alone in the darkened parlor, watching the Tracy 
 house expectantly through a crack in the blind ; 
 but nothing stirred in her range of vision, ex- 
 cept Dr. Winthrop, whose straw hat was visible 
 above the hedge as he pottered about in his garden. 
 And there was a fat robin getting his dinner on the 
 lawn ; between runs and dives he kept his wings 
 away from his hot little body and panted with the 
 heat. 
 
 The 'cello, which had droned along in a melan- 
 choly way for an hour or two, broke off in the 
 middle of a bar, as though there had been some 
 interruption. She fancied him laying down his 
 bow and turning his head as some one spoke. She 
 wondered if he smiled, and what interruption could 
 be worth the stopping of all that harmony. He 
 would come over soon. She leaned forward again 
 to peer through the blinds. 
 
 He and Kitty were walking up and down the 
 veranda. Billy came out presently, and the three 
 stood talking, at least Billy and Kitty seemed to 
 have something to say, while Roman Biznet leaned 
 against the rail and looked over toward the Heath- 
 way house. It seemed to Elizabeth that he must 
 somehow see her behind the blind, so intent was 
 his look. Billy shook hands with Kitty in a soci-
 
 AFTER THE STORM 199 
 
 ety manner, and then offered his hand to Kome, 
 who seemed to deliberate for a moment, and then 
 put out his own carelessly. Kitty went in. As 
 the two men talked to each other Borne grew more 
 animated, until at last he threw up his hand with 
 an almost solemn gesture, like one who takes an 
 oath. Then they shook hands again, more heartily, 
 as though closing a compact, and Billy went in. 
 
 Rome, left to himself, put his hand to his fore- 
 head, and stood so for a moment ; then he stretched 
 himself comfortably in a steamer chair and lit a 
 cigarette. 
 
 " And there he sits and smokes," thought Bess 
 wrathf ully, " exactly as if we were n't engaged ; 
 and I watching him here, lovesick as as the 
 girls I thought I was n't like ! " And she was so 
 cross at luncheon time that she arrayed the whole 
 family against her, from her father to the second 
 girl, who gave warning. 
 
 It was nearly three o'clock before he came. She 
 had gone back to her old seat, where she could 
 watch for him best, and she saw him come out, 
 a cool, dapper figure in the white flannel of mid- 
 summer. He walked slowly, with his head down. 
 As she threw open the shutter he looked up with a 
 smile, and, changing his course, climbed over the 
 veranda rail and stepped in through the window. 
 
 They stood quite still for a while, their arms 
 about each other, their smooth young cheeks to- 
 gether. Then she told him in a confused stammer- 
 ing way that she had dreamed of him all night. 
 
 " I did n't sleep at all," he said simply. There
 
 200 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 were dark rings under his eyes, which were heavy 
 and dim. 
 
 " I heard your 'cello this morning. Why could n't 
 you sleep ? " 
 
 " For thinking of you," he answered quietly, 
 so quietly as to suggest that whatever fiery thoughts 
 he might have had were burnt to ashes now. 
 
 They sat down together in the window-seat. He 
 kept her hand tightly in his, but leaned away from 
 her, his elbow on a marble-topped table, upon 
 which was a bowl of pond-lilies. 
 
 " Roses last night ; to-day these pond-lilies. What 
 is there about perfume, I wonder, to influence one 
 so, to change one's will ? Poets are always talk- 
 ing about roses and lilies. I begin to understand 
 why." 
 
 " So do I," said Bess shyly, and nestled toward 
 him, but drew back and grew pale at the trouble 
 and doubt in his face. 
 
 " I 'm a bad sort," he remarked sadly. 
 
 She laughed, but shivered a little too. " As if 
 I cared!" 
 
 His eyes brightened ; then he shook his head and 
 looked away. 
 
 " You don't know " 
 
 " Nothing could make any difference." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! it will." 
 
 " Is it is it something that will take you away 
 from me? some girl? Boys do foolish things 
 when they go abroad, I know." 
 
 He laughed. " There 's no grisette or Icellnerin 
 following me home that I know of. But I wish
 
 AFTER THE STORM 201 
 
 I could have died last night, it would be such an 
 easy way out for all three of us." 
 
 " What do you mean by ' all three of us ' ? 
 Who is the other ? " cried Bess, drawing away from 
 him. She was standing near the pond-lilies, and 
 seemed to his wretched fancy drifting away from 
 his grasp, like an elusive pond-lily into the middle 
 of a lake. Looking past her through the window, 
 he saw Miss Tracy and Maud coming over the 
 grounds for a social call on Mrs. Heathway, loaded 
 with the news of his engagement. 
 
 They heard them admitted and Mrs. Heathway 
 receiving them in the adjoining room. They could 
 hear every word, polite little exclamatory greet- 
 ings, the weather, the church. Biznet breathed 
 heavily, like a man who is afraid in a dream. 
 
 " And oh, my dear," Miss Tracy said, " I have 
 such a delightful piece of news concerning my own 
 little household ! " 
 
 A purr of interest from Mrs. Heathway. Rome 
 straightened his shoulders and lost his look of 
 fear. Now that the blow was ready to fall, he 
 could meet it as a man meets death. 
 
 " Roman Biznet and Kitty are engaged," said 
 Miss Tracy. 
 
 Elizabeth flushed red with anger, amazement, 
 and shame. 
 
 " Is it so ?" she asked in a low voice. 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " So exactly suited to each other ! " went on 
 Miss Tracy's voice. " And per-f ect-ly devoted ! 
 perfectly."
 
 202 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Why," said Mrs. Heathway, " that is delight- 
 ful, I 'm sure. Do you know I was rather afraid 
 it was Billy!" 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Maud placidly. " That never 
 would have done never. But as it is it could n't 
 be better." 
 
 " Certainly not," assented Mrs. Heathway, who 
 was relieved for reasons of her own. " You de- 
 serve a great deal of credit, Emily, for your man- 
 agement of those children." 
 
 Then he changed. With a sudden hitch of his 
 shoulders the old goblin-like impudence reappeared. 
 He was the same boy who had cruelly teased her 
 at school, and he wore the same triumphant leer 
 of those old days. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, trying to hark back to her 
 defensive tactics of that time ; " this was a pose, 
 was it ? " 
 
 " Not exactly." 
 
 " I don't know why you should have gone to so 
 much trouble to hurt me. I did n't know there 
 was anything that could hurt so much. But 
 I shall get over it. Poor Kitty ! " 
 
 She was very pale, bracing herself heavily with 
 one hand against the table, and trembling so that 
 the lilies shuddered in their bowl. She tried hard 
 to smile and be proudly indifferent, remembering 
 vaguely that it was so that women in romances 
 masked their shame. Women in romances, she 
 reflected, always hated a man who treated them 
 badly, and hated the other woman. She won- 
 dered if it would be so with her. She did n't want 
 to hate Kitty.
 
 AFTER THE STORM 203 
 
 "I I shall get over it," she repeated faintly, 
 and looked up at him pitifully. 
 
 His only answer was to kiss her once more be- 
 fore he stepped through the window to depart as 
 he had come.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 KITTT AND THE FORNABINA 
 
 THERE was a febrile uncertainty in the family 
 atmosphere of the Tracy house at this time ; Miss 
 Tracy keeping her room with headaches, Rome 
 and Billy pompously civil toward everybody, after 
 the custom of those toward whom the world has 
 not been behaving in a gentlemanly manner, while 
 Kitty went about her affairs somewhat pale and 
 with eyelids drooped demurely. It was difficult 
 in these days to come upon the little Marquise 
 squarely face to face. Billy might think he 
 heard her light step in the hall and that she was 
 standing by the window, some click or rustle be- 
 traying a presence there, but when he went out, 
 just to afford her a glimpse of his stern and heart- 
 broken expression as he passed her gloomily on 
 some errand to nowhere, a door would be just 
 closing gently or a quiet step in the hall above 
 showed that she was returning to her room. 
 
 Except for Maud, who still remained as good- 
 natured and forbearing as ever, one might have 
 fancied that witches were about, and had found 
 no sieve or horseshoe over the Tracy door to shut 
 out the whisk of their evil wings. Maud would 
 begin genial, impersonal conversations, such as 
 should be kept crackling like a cheerful wood fire
 
 KITTY AND THE FORNARINA 205 
 
 in all well-bred households, but they died in their 
 inception, like the flame of a match against wet 
 wood, or if they did at last catch fire after much 
 patient manosuvring and expenditure of breath, it 
 would be only to smoulder and smoke with mis- 
 anthropy and ill temper. 
 
 " Come, Billy, let 's sing some of your college 
 songs." 
 
 " Throat 's sore." Billy took his pipe outdoors. 
 It was a moonless night. A warm wind seemed 
 looking nervously among the bushes for something 
 that it could not find, but must have at once if 
 some calamity were to be averted. 
 
 Billy gone, Roman Biznet rose with a yawn and 
 returned the great tome of the Inferno to its slen- 
 der table, which vibrated under its weight. He 
 looked down upon it with a slight sneer while he 
 lit a cigarette, as who should say that he could 
 have given Dante and Dore points. 
 
 " And is your 'cello's throat sore, too, Mr. Biz- 
 net ? " inquired Maud, with mild asperity. 
 
 " I 'm sorry," he answered blandly, " but I 
 broke a string yesterday and have n't any to re- 
 place it." 
 
 " How interesting ! You were n't playing yes- 
 terday at all." 
 
 " Well then, perhaps I did n't," he admitted, 
 undisturbed. " But really I wish you would sing, 
 even if we don't help you out. It might put Billy 
 in a better temper in spite of himself." 
 
 " Very well," replied Maud in an expressionless 
 tone. " I will sing things that everybody knows,
 
 206 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 and any one may join me on coming out of the 
 sulks." 
 
 This was a concession. It was her rule never 
 to admit the possibility of anybody's being uncivil. 
 To lose one's temper was ill bred. 
 
 " As freshmen first we came to Yale." 
 
 Her well-trained voice sounded querulous and 
 lost. Biznet, puffing his cigarette smoke out of the 
 window, watched through half-shut eyes a figure 
 pacing aimlessly the various paths of the garden. 
 And at the end of the veranda, half hidden by the 
 wistaria, lurked a little shadow which only his 
 eyes could have made out to be Kitty. He knew 
 that she was supposed to be upstairs working on 
 that everlasting trousseau, and was glad that she 
 had accomplished this small peccadillo of idle ob- 
 scurity. 
 
 His ears were shut to Maud's singing. The 
 years at the Conservatory had taught him that 
 trick of stopping the keyhole of one's brain with 
 cotton wool. 
 
 He had nothing to do with Eli Yale, nor the 
 man who had six cents to spend, nor Peter Gray, 
 nor the bold fisherman who sailed out of Billings- 
 gate, whose exploits Maud was so patiently rehears- 
 ing: 
 
 " Oh, lift me from the grass ; 
 
 I die, I faint, I fail. 
 Let thy love in kisses rain 
 
 On my lips and eyelids pale. 
 My cheeks are white and cold, alas, 
 
 My heart beats loud and fast, 
 Oh, press it to thine own again, 
 
 Where it will break at last."
 
 KITTY AND THE FORNARINA 207 
 
 " Was n't it Shelley wrote that ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " He 's the chap who was drowned, was n't he ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You sang it well." 
 
 She looked at him strangely, a still, cat-like 
 alertness in the turn of her head. His back was 
 toward her as he sat at the window. She rose 
 and took a step toward him, half put out her hand, 
 then drew it back clenched, and swiftly left the 
 room. 
 
 He continued peering at something outside 
 which interested him enough so that he presently 
 turned out the light to render himself invisible 
 and extinguished his cigarette. The little shadow 
 had left the veranda corner and was going down 
 the path, halting now and then, but keeping the 
 course, waveringly, toward that other pacing fig- 
 ure. 
 
 "Poor devils," thought Rome as he watched 
 the meeting of the two. " The song, I suppose. I 
 don't wonder. Seems to have been too much for 
 Adlor, too." 
 
 The coachman stole out of a pillar's shadow and 
 lagged toward the barn. He had not seen Billy 
 and Kitty, nor understood much of the song, ex- 
 cept that now that it was sung, it lay heavily upon 
 him. 
 
 Roman saw the two face each other. He saw 
 Billy jump toward her and put his arms around 
 her. There was the sound of a kiss. " Oh, you 
 cad ! " he muttered. " "What 's the use of making 
 it harder for her ! "
 
 208 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 But she broke away and came running back to 
 the house, almost brushing against him, going 
 to her room. He heard the click of the lock as 
 she turned the key. 
 
 He drew a deep breath and laughed, but his 
 lashes were wet. " It 's a queer world. It is cer- 
 tainly a queer world. I don't like it particu- 
 larly." 
 
 Kitty's room was dark but for a rippling patch 
 of light from the street lamp sifting through the 
 elms and maples. Flickering unsteadily about 
 the walls, it had finally adjusted itself to fit the 
 frame of the Fornarina, who thus contemplated 
 any one who looked at her as complacently as if it 
 were daylight. 
 
 " I must never," whispered Kitty, as she groped 
 into the room, her hands pressed to her burning 
 cheeks, "I must never let him kiss me again. 
 I 'm going to be married married ! Married 
 people have to forget." 
 
 She looked about the room wildly, in the way of 
 a trapped animal. It is not a bad idea, sometimes, 
 to be theatrical when alone. It may be a safe- 
 guard. The brightest spot in the obscurity drew 
 her eyes, and she saw the Fornarina looking side- 
 ways at her. 
 
 "I was married," remarked the Fornarina. 
 Kitty went up to the frame and shook a small fist 
 at the handsome face. 
 
 "You were a wicked woman. I don't know 
 much about you, because I 'm stupid and can't
 
 KITTY AND THE FORNARINA 209 
 
 remember. But I know you were a wicked wo- 
 man." 
 
 " I was a woman," smiled the Fornarina. 
 " Everybody is just a little wicked, don't you 
 think?" 
 
 " I am wicked," sighed Kitty. 
 
 " Of course," said the Fornarina kindly. " You 
 and I are both women, you know. I was married, 
 once." 
 
 " Perhaps," suggested Kitty, twisting her fin- 
 gers together, " perhaps your husband was n't nice 
 to you, but I am going to marry liomaii Biznet, 
 and he is good." 
 
 " I really don't remember," replied the Forna- 
 rina carelessly, "whether my husband was good 
 to me or not. Another man was, though." 
 
 " You are wicked. Just as wicked and horrid 
 as you can be, and I 'm not going to look at you 
 or talk to you any more. I shall take you down." 
 
 " Maud Tracy put me here. Do they ever let 
 you change the arrangement of a room, even your 
 own?" 
 
 " I shall cover you up." 
 
 " I can see through." 
 
 Kitty placed a palm-leaf fan in the ledge of the 
 frame, but it only reached as far as the sidelong 
 eyes. " How silly I am ! " she laughed, and caught 
 her lip hard between her teeth to keep from cry- 
 ing out. 
 
 She left the wicked lady smiling at her over the 
 fan, and leaned out on the window sill, to cool her 
 cheek against the rough stone. Below she could
 
 210 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 hear Billy tramping up and down the veranda, 
 and could smell his pipe. She even heard his 
 groaning sigh when at last he sank heavily into a 
 willow chair which creaked with his weight. 
 
 " If I were you," said the Fornarina, who was 
 watching above the fan, " I 'd go down. There 's 
 nobody in the halls." 
 
 But Kitty knelt softly at her bedside and clasped 
 her hands. She did not care for the Protestant 
 prayers which she had been taught, and tried over 
 instead the few words which she could remember 
 from Alphonsine's repertory. It was something 
 about Pater Noster. Then there was Ave Maria. 
 And the Fornarina flattened back into a photo- 
 graph again. She had posed for many Madonnas 
 in her day, too. 
 
 It was with " mea maxima culpa " on her lips 
 that she fell asleep, still kneeling, and so dreamed 
 herself a child again, lying against Alphonsine's 
 warm bosom, caring about nothing farther away 
 than to finger the bright buttons on her mother's 
 calico wrapper.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US " 
 
 BUT Roman Biznet did not sleep that night nor 
 the next. He began to long for the injudicious 
 Bauer, who carried about a tiny cylinder of dream- 
 ful sleep, and was not stingy with it. And on the 
 third morning he looked so forlorn at the break- 
 fast table that Miss Tracy said there should be no 
 more nonsense about it and sent Adlor for Dr. 
 Winthrop. 
 
 Kitty and Rome had the breakfast table to them- 
 selves, he having been late, and she staying to keep 
 him company with his coffee. " I believe you 
 drink too much coffee," Kitty said. " I 've watched 
 you, and you hardly take anything else. I think 
 it 's horrible, the way you have it so black and 
 strong." 
 
 " Bosh, nothing ails me." 
 
 " Why, you said you could n't sleep ! " 
 
 " Oh, well, that 's conscience, not coffee." 
 
 Kitty smiled affectionately. "If everybody's 
 conscience were as good as yours, Romy, this would 
 be a very nice sort of world." 
 
 " Um that 's nice. I wish more people were 
 of your opinion." 
 
 " People don't know you as I do." From which 
 it will be seen that Kitty was becoming reconciled 
 to the situation after a fashion.
 
 212 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I ought to be a good sort with you," he said. 
 " Do you ever dream ? " he asked suddenly. 
 
 Kitty looked a little scared. One sometimes 
 dreams about the wrong man. It is hard to keep 
 one's dreams demure and colorless, and if you 
 can't help remembering the Wrong Man ? 
 
 " Why, of course. Everybody dreams." 
 
 "I suppose you are n't superstitious about 
 dreams ? We 've been so carefully brought up." 
 
 " I think nearly everybody believes in them, in 
 a way. You can't help it, you know, when things 
 turn out as queerly as they do sometimes." 
 
 " I wonder if you could play Daniel for me ? 
 But Dr. Winthrop will give me a liver pill, and 
 that will be more to the point, I dare say. Those 
 things are all physical, merely. Do you ever get 
 to wondering, Pussy ? " 
 
 "Oh! don't I?" 
 
 " Ever have a pain in your soul and wonder 
 whether it was indigestion or because there was 
 nothing there ? " 
 
 "I thought it was a dream we were talking 
 about. If you 've got a pain in your stomach I 'm 
 sure Dr. Winthrop can fix it for you." 
 
 " They say if you tell a dream at the breakfast 
 table it comes true I guess I 'd better not tell 
 mine." 
 
 " Bess Heathway believes in dreams." 
 
 He set down his cup abruptly. 
 
 "She says that our our higher egos know 
 what 's going to happen and make us dream alle- 
 gories about it."
 
 "TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US" 213 
 
 " I should n't wonder ! " 
 
 " She says, just as mamma did, that if you 
 dream of dreadful animals and things coming after 
 you it means trouble. You remember how Mamma 
 Phosy dreamed of cows before before " 
 
 " I remember." There was a twitching at his 
 mouth corner which seemed to pain him ; he put a 
 finger against it, as if steadying this one jangled 
 nerve might bring the rest to order, and did not 
 meet her eyes. 
 
 " And she says that to be drowning in muddy 
 water means trouble, too I don't know just what 
 kind." 
 
 Dr. Winthrop came in then, and Kitty went up 
 to her room to work on her trousseau. 
 
 The doctor felt Biznet's pulse and studied his 
 heavy-lidded, dark-circled eyes. " What can a 
 boy expect," he complained, " who does n't eat or 
 sleep properly, swills black coffee by the quart, 
 smokes cigarettes till he can't breathe plain fresh 
 air any more than a fish ? You might take pills 
 until the end of time, and it would n't do you any 
 good, if you did n't take care of yourself." 
 
 " I take as good care of myself as most fel- 
 lows," grumbled Rome. "I can't help it, can I, if 
 I can't sleep ? Dr. Winthrop, what sort of a fellow 
 am I, anyhow ? " 
 
 " A pretty poor specimen." 
 
 " Is it my forehead ? How much is there in the 
 shape of a man's head ? " 
 
 " Not much. Not as much as people used to 
 think, at least."
 
 214 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Ever see my father? " 
 
 The little doctor looked attentively and long at 
 the boy's profile. " What makes you ask that, 
 Romy?" he asked gently. 
 
 " I wondered if I am much like him, that 's all." 
 
 " You think too much about yourself." 
 
 "Am I like him?" 
 
 " A physical resemblance means little." 
 
 "Am I like him?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I thought there might be some difference. I 
 I hoped you might see some difference." He 
 put his hand to his throat as if his collar choked 
 him. " I did n't want to be like him," he said 
 wearily. 
 
 " You had a good mother, and a good environ- 
 ment." 
 
 " His environment was just as good when he was 
 young McGill, you know and all the rest." 
 
 " You had a good mother. One hickory-nut is 
 like another until they are cracked. I am no seer 
 to look inside the shell. The meat of one may be 
 worms and dust, of the other whole and sweet. 
 You know best." 
 
 "No, I don't know. What makes a fellow 
 dream?" 
 
 " Coffee, conscience, drugs, underdone potato." 
 
 " Could there be anything else ? " 
 
 " It 's quite likely." 
 
 "I I can't sleep. And when I do I dream. I 
 don't understand things. I 've been thinking a 
 good deal."
 
 "TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US" 215 
 
 " I thought what mind you have was too soaked 
 in music to be bothered with other things." 
 
 " It 's in the music, too," he said vaguely. " I 
 suppose I 'm just not well." 
 
 *' What is the dream you were speaking of, and 
 what has started you to worrying about your 
 father?" 
 
 " I don't know ; at least I 'm not sure what 
 started it. I dream the same thing over and over. 
 There seems to be something wrong in the room, 
 a burglar or something. It 's a long time before 
 I can move to get up and go for him, and instead 
 of waking I get out of my body somehow. I 
 hear the thing breathing and think it 's going to 
 murder somebody." 
 
 He stopped and bit his lip, looking furtively at 
 the doctor. 
 
 "I sometimes used to think," he said slowly, 
 " that my father was capable of murder." 
 
 The doctor smiled. 
 
 " Oh, don't make him out any worse than neces- 
 sary," he said. " He was more of a ne'er-do-weel 
 than vicious, after all." 
 
 Rome opened his lips ; then shut them until 
 there was no blood left in them. " Perhaps," he 
 admitted at length ; " but I knew him pretty well. 
 Anyhow, in the dream, after I get out of my body 
 to go after this creature, I pass the mirror, and 
 instead of seeing myself there, I see him. Then 
 I am him, and I go ahead and I am this creature 
 I was after, too, and I do all sorts of horrible 
 things and enjoy it. Sometimes it 's blood
 
 216 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 and suffering, and I do harm to people I care 
 about. I did n't mind the dream so much, but 
 lately I 've begun to feel the same way when I am 
 awake." 
 
 " ' Two natures war within us,' " said Dr. Win- 
 throp thoughtfully. 
 
 " Now, my father did n't always want to be 
 bad. He 'd get remorseful, and then go and get 
 drunk." 
 
 " You have n't tried that yet ? " 
 
 " No. It used to put me right to compose things, 
 or just to play. But lately that is, since I 
 mean it would be hard luck if music were to fail 
 me, don't you think ? I thought maybe if I could 
 sleep and without dreaming " 
 
 " Have n't you any will of your own to conquer 
 this thing?" 
 
 " That 's the discouraging part of it. I have a 
 will but it is n't the will I have now I could 
 choose if I would, but, somehow, I don't choose. 
 And if I wake I 'm sorry for a while that it was a 
 dream that the wicked things are undone." 
 
 His voice was almost inaudible, dry with de- 
 spair. " Not long ago I did injure some one, 
 though I did n't mean to. Somehow, since then, 
 I don't know how it is, but you know that yarn 
 about Pandora's box ? " 
 
 He met the doctor's eyes for an instant with a 
 shadow of a smile at having found a simile that 
 pleased him. Bess talked in similes and quota- 
 tions. 
 
 "Well," he went on, "it's like that. I've
 
 "TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US" 217 
 
 always felt there was something wrong inside me 
 that I had to keep a tight grip of or " 
 
 "Could that injury be repaired?" asked the 
 doctor. 
 
 " No ; it 's spilt milk. I did n't really know I was 
 doing harm. But are people made like that ? Is 
 it fair that one wrong thing not so very wrong, 
 either should throw a fellow so completely off 
 the track ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said the doctor sadly, " that 
 there's much question of fairness about those 
 things. I used to have all sorts of opinions. Now 
 I have only one, and that is, that a man has to 
 put up a pretty good fight, and not feel too bad 
 over failure. It 's all summed up in that, though 
 I might spin it out to any length." 
 
 " Yes," said Biznet slowly, " put up a good 
 fight ; but what can you do when you don't want 
 to fight ? If I always felt about it the way I do 
 now but I don't. If it were just a case for pills 
 but it is n't. If anything, I feel better physi- 
 cally when I 'm when I 'm a bad Injun ! " 
 
 He smiled and threw out his chest a little, as 
 though his confession had shifted a load from his 
 back The doctor, on the other hand, grew round- 
 shouldered, as if assuming the burden himself and 
 helpless under it. His liver began to wake up. 
 Eome still smiled tentatively. He felt that he 
 must be a rather unusual and interesting specimen. 
 It was pleasant, too, that Dr. Winthrop found him 
 worth sorrowing over. 
 
 " If pills could make a fellow well in his soul," 
 he suggested.
 
 218 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 The doctor wrote out a prescription and tossed 
 it over with an impatient gesture. " That 's all I 
 can do," he said. " Sleep, eat, live by schedule, 
 stick to your music, then your better nature will 
 get a chance. And you 've got to stop thinking 
 about yourself," he hesitated and looked at the 
 boy vaguely, as though from a great distance, as 
 though it were a difficult thing to remember the 
 idiosyncrasies of youth, like something learned by 
 rote, long ago, and of little meaning. Then he 
 continued, "and wanting things too much. It's 
 been said that it is unwise to desire a thing too 
 much. And one man says that the chief danger in 
 desiring a thing too much is that you 're apt to 
 get it." 
 
 " Is that so ? " said Rome, with an eagerness 
 almost ferocious. " Who says that ? " 
 
 The doctor eyed him narrowly. "And when 
 you do get it, you find it 's only a handful of dry 
 sand." 
 
 Biznet's face was deeply flushed, and the fire 
 fading from his eyes left in them a dim and far-off 
 look. His hand on the table was clenched, his 
 nostrils dilated with his heavy breathing. 
 
 " What I desire," he said at length, " would not 
 turn to dry sand in my fingers." 
 
 "Are you so sure?" asked the doctor sadly. 
 " Myself, I find that Fate is a good enough man- 
 ager in the end, and patience is the only thing 
 worth desiring." 
 
 " I have been patient," said Biznet. 
 
 " Patient ! " said the doctor wearily, pressing
 
 "TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US" 219 
 
 his hand to his side. " Come to me again in forty 
 years and tell me then what you mean by patience. 
 You know nothing about it now." 
 
 "Don't I?" 
 
 " Young people," mused the doctor, " have such 
 heavy and mysterious sorrows! What's the use 
 of taking things so seriously ? But I suppose they 
 can't help it. I could n't. Stop biting your lip 
 like that it does n't do a bit of good, and when 
 you draw the blood it just proves you the Injun 
 you are." 
 
 " I 'd stop wanting if I could. How can one 
 get rid of one's self, as you said a while ago? 
 How did you do it ? Since you know so much " 
 
 " Only little by little. By wanting to, and not 
 getting reckless at failure, by taking punishment 
 like a man when it comes. I knew a young chap 
 who was drinking himself to death, and breaking 
 people's hearts, he used to hold a lighted match 
 against his arm after he 'd been on a spree. His 
 arm looked like small-pox most of the time. He 
 fancied he could mark his moral improvement by 
 the comparative freshness of the scars. I don't 
 say it was a good plan, but it at least showed a 
 proper desire." 
 
 Biznet remembered that when the doctor's sleeves 
 had been rolled up he had noticed a curious white 
 pitting in the yellow skin. 
 
 " Did it do any good ? " he asked. 
 
 "I think it may, a little. At least it did no 
 harm. You see, it was a form of spanking. He 
 remembered that spankings had once been a good 
 remedy for jam-stealing."
 
 220 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 The old man mused, his eyes shaded with his 
 hand, as if the better to see things very far away, 
 and to get from them some precedent to apply to 
 the ease in hand. 
 
 " It need not have been a defeat," he said, as if 
 to himself. "Yet I'm not sorry. One learns 
 comparatively little from success. Success is just 
 a flimsy bit of comfort, candy given to a good 
 child. There 's a poem somewhere that explains 
 how failure and success have got each other's 
 names not a bad idea." 
 
 He came back from his brief review of his own 
 mistakes and studied the boy's face carefully. The 
 Indian was there, sinister and cruel ; the musician, 
 wide through the temples, level-browed ; the mouth 
 was fine and sensitive at the corners, though the 
 lips were full that was probably the French 
 blood, the best heritage he had. Yet perhaps he 
 must go back to his savage ancestors for help. 
 Perhaps his weakness and his strength were but 
 two sides of the same coin, and it was from old 
 Powasket, or rather, from some old chief further 
 remote and unpolluted by white men, that victory 
 would finally come. 
 
 " Eomy," said the old doctor, " don't fight too 
 hard, and don't worry. After all, the problem is 
 mostly a physical one. A strong body is really 
 strength added to the side of one's better nature." 
 He pointed with a yellow finger at a cigarette stub 
 and smiled whimsically. " Let 's see your cigar- 
 ette case. Ah, I thought so ! Some girl wanted 
 to please you silver monogram in turquoise
 
 "TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US" 221 
 
 and opals. I think I want that. Take this in- 
 stead." 
 
 He put the pretty trifle in his own pocket and 
 handed over a well-worn leather case full of cigars. 
 
 " These may be immoral Mr. Wells preached 
 against them last Sunday but they 're not coffin 
 nails." 
 
 " But I it helps me to write, you know." 
 
 " Can't help it. And about coffee. I 've heard 
 how you go at it always with coffee things in 
 your room great cup that holds a pint, black 
 and strong. Now, tobacco and coffee are splen- 
 did things, but they are n't food. And you must 
 exercise. A saddle horse would be just the thing 
 for you, better than a bicycle, for there is some- 
 thing about the feel of that great barrel of health 
 and strength beneath you that is a tonic, or ought 
 to be. Why, I used to have a horse but he has 
 been clover these twenty years." 
 
 " I can't afford a saddle horse," said Biznet, 
 flushing. 
 
 "Then take long walks. And see here: all 
 these moral struggles it 's mostly stratagem and 
 understanding one's self ; and then one's growth 
 in strength is surprisingly out of proportion to the 
 effort made." 
 
 " Do you mean that ? " 
 
 " Yes ; for I know. I sometimes think that any 
 battle at all is in some sort a victory. It 's just 
 to keep your nose upstream, like a fish ; to keep 
 headed against the wind like a bird caught in a 
 storm. There is a knack about it."
 
 222 KOMAN BIZNET 
 
 Biznet smiled rather unbelievingly. " You would 
 solve the world's problem simply " 
 
 " No, nobody does that. It 's only my observa- 
 tion of the way the world solves its own problem 
 just by growing." 
 
 In some indescribable way the gloom lifted a 
 little. Dr. Winthrop, watching as if to observe 
 the effect of medicine, thought he could discern a 
 firmer setting of the mouth, a locking together 
 throughout the whole body of muscles and will, a 
 smoothing out of the forehead lines. 
 
 " Well," said Biznet, " I '11 try to behave but 
 I 've got such a beastly headache just now. And 
 can you make me sleep ? " 
 
 They kept him smokeless and coffeeless for two 
 days, and then much to Miss Tracy's alarm, he 
 insisted on rising, dressing for dinner, and spend- 
 ing the night in the hammock. He lay back on 
 the pillow Kitty had gently forced upon him, but 
 the afghan they had spread over him he rolled 
 into a ball and flung as far as he could. He 
 would have liked to worry and tear it, for he had 
 watched Maud Tracy crocheting the last of it 
 when he first returned. He would rather take 
 cold and die ; in fact he wished he might. Then 
 Bess would come to the funeral and see him 
 stretched out pale and interesting, his face white 
 for once, and his hair very black against it. His 
 'cello would be too big to put in the coffin with 
 him why in thunder had n't he thought of that 
 sooner and chosen a violin instead ? They might
 
 "TWO NATURES WAR WITHIN US" 223 
 
 build an addition to the coffin, he thought lazily, 
 but there was a line where romance ended and 
 farce began, and so 
 
 He felt quite comfortable and at peace with the 
 world, thinking of Elizabeth with a satisfied smirk, 
 and that he must be a pretty attractive sort of fel- 
 low. He wondered why he should have been so 
 down in the mouth when talking to Dr. Winthrop. 
 He could not at all understand his own mental 
 attitude of the last few days. To-night, at least, 
 he was himself ; alert, well, mischievous. The air 
 was full of life, tingling with music. Lying back 
 in the hammock he beat time with his forefinger 
 for an imaginary orchestra beckoning up the 
 crickets here, the flopping of a toad there, the dis- 
 tant solo of a screech owl. It was good to be 
 alive, and awake in the night. 
 
 Then he curled down in a comfortable position, 
 drowsily planning great things for violins, 'cellos, 
 horns. 
 
 The trees against the sky seemed spelling out a 
 wonderful score, phantom instruments stood about 
 in the shrubbery, and he harangued their shadowy 
 players grandly. They looked up at him, and 
 their faces were as the face of his father. 
 
 He started awake, with a little cry of fear. The 
 trees were trees once more, and the wind was only 
 a wind, but there was moisture on his cheeks, 
 which might have been dew or tears. The impish 
 joy of living in which he had fallen asleep was 
 gone, leaving him sick and afraid. 
 
 He turned on his face with a heavy sigh and
 
 224 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 slept again. The trees spelt the score, the phan- 
 tom orchestra stood about in the shrubbery. He 
 stood up before them, baton in hand. " The Le- 
 nore Symphony the march remember, gentle- 
 men, that this is a march of ghosts, and play it 
 so : 
 
 ' Sieh da, sieh da, am Hochgericht 
 Tanzt um des Rades Spindel 
 Halb sichtbarlich beim Mondenlicht 
 Ein luftiges Gesindel.' " 
 
 But he knew that he was asleep and alone out- 
 doors. Some one came out of the shadows and 
 bent- over him. He scurried back from his orches- 
 tra to wake himself up, but it could not be done. 
 Nearer and nearer the figure bent, and still he 
 could not stir. It departed finally, and then he 
 slept dreamlessly until morning.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A PRECEDENT WHICH DOES NOT APPLY 
 
 MIDSUMMER was green and drowsy throughout 
 the land, having lost the romance of those flowers 
 that grow of their own desire, unless one cares for 
 such weedy things as daisies and yarrow. In the 
 woods great brakes replaced trilliums and adder- 
 tongues, spreading their umbrellas over the wasted 
 brook that it might not perish. The thrill of pre- 
 paration was over for the year, only a dull waiting 
 in the heat for the fruit time, a beginning of the 
 decay of such things as bore no fruit, having been 
 spendthrift in the matter of leaves. 
 
 It was a time for sitting about in cool clothing, 
 meditating and gossiping if you were old or mid- 
 dle aged, getting into idle mischief if you were 
 young. Some of the Cosmos people spend these 
 lifeless days at their lake cottages, and there one 
 can row about on the never stagnant water and 
 listen to whatever remarks the never dying pines 
 may make. The lake and the pines are judicious 
 counselors if one is bewildered. They echo and 
 reecho any wise conclusion one comes to, and take 
 no notice of a foolish one except to sigh and laugh 
 until its foolishness becomes apparent. Pines and 
 lake were visible from Elizabeth's window as she 
 lay ill for a while. But she was too young and
 
 226 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 impatient to lie there long with the lake laughing 
 and the pines sighing at the very notion of being 
 disappointed or discontented about any matter. In 
 three weeks she found it worth while to investi- 
 gate a robin's family in one of the pine-trees, hav- 
 ing become interested in their rearing from her 
 window, and then, the lake being near with its 
 ripple of quiet merriment, rowing about in a boat 
 seemed more sensible than lying in bed. One 
 could see the sunsets better, and if one lay quietly 
 on the oars, queer birds were likely to appear in 
 the submerged treetops and say pleasant things 
 with unexpected quirks and chuckles. She be- 
 came quite interested in trying to decide whether 
 it was the more desirable to be an ornithologist, 
 an entomologist, or a botanist. 
 
 The Tracys stayed in Cosmos, the women sew- 
 ing on Kitty's wardrobe. Most of the work was 
 done behind the vines of the veranda, while Rome 
 looked on with a serious air and played his 'cello, 
 or smoked quietly, studying space with an ab- 
 stracted frown that suggested musical puzzles be- 
 ing worked out in his curious brain. 
 
 Kitty, Miss Tracy, and a seamstress had been 
 working eagerly on a pink affair, while Maud read 
 aloud from a magazine. She read well, in a placid 
 voice that suggested elocution lessons from some 
 good teacher. After a flurry of departure within 
 doors for the purpose of " trying on," Biznet took 
 up the book and opened it at random to a rather 
 interesting picture of the uniforms and hoopskirts
 
 A PRECEDENT WHICH DOES NOT APPLY 227 
 
 of war times. A black-robed girl seemed spurn- 
 ing a gallant looking fellow in shoulder straps. 
 There was a suggestion of moonlight, mystery, and 
 unhappiness that promised well. 
 
 " Is that an interesting story ? " Kitty asked. 
 She had returned without his hearing her. Sew- 
 ing was dismissed for the day. 
 
 "It interested me." He wore the blank, sur- 
 prised expression of one who sees some important 
 matter in an unexpected light. 
 
 "What 'sit about?" 
 
 " About a girl that would n't marry a fellow be- 
 cause his father killed hers in the Civil War. 
 What do you think of the girl's mental attitude, 
 Pussy?" 
 
 "Would depend on how much she thought of 
 the man," said Kitty, languidly judicial, "and on 
 how much she thought of her father, and oh, on 
 lots of other things." 
 
 " I should have supposed I don't see what the 
 old gentlemen had to do with it. They did n't ' go 
 for to do it.' " 
 
 "I guess somebody wanted to write a story," 
 said Kitty carelessly. 
 
 " Now to emphasize that situation a little," said 
 Biznet, studying Kitty's plaintive little profile with 
 interest, " if it had been murder if the young 
 chap's father had killed the girl's father in cold 
 blood, would the girl's ideas be inevitable ? " 
 
 " How can I tell ? It would depend upon the 
 girl." 
 
 " Suppose you were the girl?"
 
 228 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 "I don't like to talk about murders, Romy. 
 I shouldn't think you would, either." Her lip 
 trembled. 
 
 Was there no way to make her reply to an 
 hypothetical question? Did Alphonsine's ghost 
 stand between them ? And if it did ? 
 
 " What in the world is the matter with you ? " 
 asked Kitty. 
 
 " This story interested me very much. I thought 
 you might be willing to talk about it with me." 
 
 " Why, I 'm willing. I only thought it was the 
 sort of subject that you and I avoided." 
 
 " But not because it does n't interest us ! " 
 
 She looked at him with grave attention now, 
 and nodded her head with a wise air, as one who 
 holds the key of some perplexity. 
 
 " I know what you 're going to say, I think. Is 
 it about mamma ? Is it who killed her ? " 
 
 He stared. 
 
 " You need n't mind, for I guessed long ago. Of 
 course I was n't sure, and I did n't like to speak 
 to you about it, though I 've often wondered if you 
 did n't think as I did." 
 
 " You cared enough about me about my fu- 
 ture?" 
 
 " I don't know that I put it that way, but that 
 may have been why. I did n't think it out until 
 after you went abroad. And then it all seemed 
 so long ago, and you were all I had. He had 
 killed your mother, too. It made no difference 
 about my feeling for you. While you were abroad 
 I read something in a Montreal paper. I thought
 
 A PRECEDENT WHICH DOES NOT APPLY 229 
 
 first I would send it to you. Then I did n't see 
 the use." 
 
 " I 'd been hoping he was dead," said Borne. 
 
 "I think he is, Romy. There was a fiddler 
 named Tony who played at a habitant wedding 
 and and insulted the bride, you know, and 
 they chopped his head open." 
 
 Biznet laughed without mirth. " I don't won- 
 der you thought that filled the bill. Probably it 
 was my noble father. We '11 hope it was. But 
 suppose it was n't, Kitty ? Suppose when we get 
 prosperous he should come around and try black- 
 mail what should we do ? Hang him ? " 
 
 " It will be time to decide that when he comes," 
 said Kitty sagely. " But I think he 's dead." 
 
 " No," said Biznet, " not quite dead as long as 
 /live." 
 
 " I wonder what you mean ? " 
 
 " Dr. Winthrop says I 'm like him, that 's all." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Dr. Winthrop knows a good deal, 
 but not everything. Do you think I 'd marry you 
 if you were like your father ? " 
 
 " I don 't know. Tony used to be able to make 
 women believe in him. There was more than one 
 woman who would have cut off her ears for Tony, 
 when he had on pretty clothes and pretended to 
 be a gentleman. I can remember that much, kid 
 as I was." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Kitty contemptuously, " I 'm 
 not attracted to you in that sort of way at all. 
 You can't scare me with your badness after being 
 good so long. I think I '11 go into the garden and 
 get some carnations for the dinner table."
 
 230 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Biznet leaned back in the steamer chair, his hands 
 clasped behind his head. The droning afternoon 
 grew remote, and he shut his eyes with a greater 
 feeling of peace than he had known for some time. 
 It is pleasant to be believed in. One feels more 
 of a man, somehow, and one's faults do not seem 
 so overwhelming. 
 
 A little breeze rustled over the grass like a trail- 
 ing skirt, or was it a trailing skirt that stopped 
 near him? 
 
 "Where's Kitty?" 
 
 He looked up quickly. Bess was there. Her 
 face was turned aside, but did not seem shy or 
 ashamed rather as if avoiding some noisome and 
 repulsive thing ; there were dignity and contempt, 
 immeasurable aloofness. She was pale and thin, 
 and her dress had become careless again. 
 
 " Kitty is in the garden," he said. 
 
 " I came to congratulate her," said Bess, with a 
 slight smile that set his cheeks on fire. " It 's 
 nearly two months since I heard of the engage- 
 ment ; I don't know what she '11 think. I have 
 been away, and I was ill for a while." 
 
 "111?" 
 
 " After our attempt at melodrama." 
 
 " I only heard you had gone away. I am sorry." 
 
 "Are you? I had supposed it would please 
 you. I hope Kitty will have better luck." 
 
 " It does please me," he said, looking at her in 
 a way that she could not face, but she shrugged 
 her shoulders with some bravado as she turned 
 away.
 
 A PRECEDENT WHICH DOES NOT APPLY 231 
 
 "I wish I believed in you enough to think it 
 worth while to ask you to be good to her. But I 
 don't." 
 
 When she was gone he walked up and down 
 restlessly, with a foolish desire to follow. Not 
 that there was anything further to be said nor any 
 comfort, now, in her presence. He turned whither 
 the invisible ropes were pulling, first picking up 
 the abandoned magazine to give some color of non- 
 chalance, and sat down at one end of the path, 
 where he could watch at the other end Elizabeth's 
 white umbrella and the sweep of her white gown 
 on the grass as she sat by Kitty. 
 
 Presently they rose and without turning toward 
 him strolled arm in arm toward the downward 
 slope leading to the Heathway woods. 
 
 He returned to the story of which he and Kitty 
 had been talking, and read it again with mental 
 comments. The black-robed girl spurning her 
 Northern lover seemed a stagy minx, and human 
 nature more complex than literature would have 
 us believe. 
 
 He let the book fall to the path, and leaned back 
 with his hands behind his head, his cap visor pulled 
 down. The trailing of a skirt upon near-by grass 
 startled him with the notion that Bess was coming 
 toward him again. But it was Kitty this time, 
 returning alone from the Heathway woods. " How 
 thin Bess has grown ! " she said thoughtfully, sit- 
 ting down beside him. "And how much nicer 
 than she used to be ! I used to think she was 
 noisy and conceited, though she was always gener-
 
 232 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 ous. Now I wonder what has changed her 
 so?" 
 
 " She has been ill, I understand." 
 
 " Yes, while they were at the Lake. She says 
 her hair is all coming out. I promised to make 
 her some sage tea." 
 
 "Sage tea? What for?" 
 
 " It keeps the hair from coming out. You rub 
 it in. She has such pretty hair ! It would be a 
 great pity. I don't see anything to laugh at ! "
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 
 
 IN the cool of a late August morning Miss Tracy 
 and Maud were together on the veranda, Maud 
 with the family stockings, Miss Tracy mending a 
 three-cornered tear in the sleeve of Roman Biz- 
 net's coat. She daintily abstracted the remains of 
 something crumbled to dust. 
 
 " Those nasty cigarettes ! And he knows I don't 
 like him to smoke." 
 
 " But he says it helps him in his music," said 
 Maud, lifting an eyebrow with humorous incredu- 
 lity. Natures constructed like a thermopile, vibrat- 
 ing to the heat of moon and stars, their emotions 
 fed by a cigarette, puzzle those of strong character, 
 but are amusing and interesting to meddle with, 
 like any other delicate machinery. 
 
 "And of course," said Maud, "we don't want 
 to interfere in any way with that." 
 
 " I thought when he came back last June he was 
 really going to be a gentleman at last," said Miss 
 Tracy plaintively. " I thought his life abroad had 
 done that for him. But he 's showing his ancestry. 
 Half the time he even forgets to say good-morn- 
 
 ing! 
 
 Strange," said Maud, " how blood and breeding
 
 234 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 will tell, in spite of genius and accidental advan- 
 tages, as in the case of the Conto girl." 
 
 Miss Tracy looked troubled. " I am sometimes 
 afraid I have been unjust. I never dreamed of 
 her scheming about Billy until you mentioned it. 
 My life has n't been particularly easy since I took 
 those children, Maud." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " Duty is an unsatisfactory thing. It is like " 
 she burst out passionately with a simile she had 
 read somewhere " it is like dry sand to a hungry, 
 thirsty soul ! " 
 
 " And you have never questioned it 's being 
 your duty ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I thought then the Lord meant 
 it so. But mother used to say I always went to 
 extremes." 
 
 " Extremes of kindness, perhaps," said Maud 
 gently. She laid down her work and sat back in 
 her chair, holding up her hand in a ray of sun- 
 light, studying the facets of an old-fashioned ame- 
 thyst ring, as was her habit when pondering deeply. 
 It may have been the reflection of the vine-leaves 
 that made her eyes green at that moment ; and 
 there was a hint of satisfaction in her expression. 
 Miss Tracy returned to the examination of Rome's 
 coat pockets. 
 
 " It 's odd how men and boys will carry around 
 old messes in their pockets. Here 's a whole coil 
 of broken cat-gut. Why does n't he throw it away ? 
 And here 's a woman's handkerchief." 
 
 " How interesting ! "
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 235 
 
 " It must be Bessie's, for here 's an H in the 
 corner. I '11 have it done up and sent home." 
 
 " And what are those papers ? " 
 
 " Scraps of manuscript. What a tangle of 
 notes ! Oh, here are some verses scrawled on the 
 back of an old letter ! ' One night in a garden a 
 white rose woke,' oh, yes ! the words of that 
 song he 's been working at lately." 
 
 " The envelope is addressed in Kitty's hand- 
 writing, isn't it?" 
 
 " Yes ; I wish the rest of her education were 
 equal to her penmanship. I have her address let- 
 ters for me sometimes. This is probably one I 
 sent him last winter. I wonder what I said ? " 
 
 She drew out the letter ; then put it back hastily 
 with a troubled expression. " Oh, it is n't one of 
 mine! It's from Kitty herself. She generally 
 shows me her letters." 
 
 " I should think that was a good rule. You '11 
 read it now, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Why no." Miss Tracy had got as far as 
 " This is just from me to you." " It would be 
 dishonorable." 
 
 " Nonsense, under the circumstances ! " Maud 
 leaned forward, looking at the letter with narrowed 
 eyes. " It 's your right to know what 's going on," 
 she said. " It might throw some light on various 
 things." 
 
 " But they 're engaged. I 've no right." 
 
 " They were n't engaged then. I want to know 
 for Billy's sake ! " 
 
 It was not clear in just what manner Billy was
 
 236 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 to be benefited ; but one must do many things in 
 the name of wisdom when one has the care of 
 young people. One must always know what is 
 going on in one's house. 
 
 " But whatever it is, now that they are to be 
 married " 
 
 " Well, they 're still dependent on you, are n't 
 they ? How do you know what scheme may be on 
 foot? You can't be too careful. You ought to 
 know everything, everything, that goes on. You 
 say it is a rule that she must show you her corre- 
 spondence. She must have had a reason for violat- 
 ing it." 
 
 "But" 
 
 "Your conscience is too tender, dearie," said 
 Maud, smiling. " Come let me read it. I 'm 
 willing to shoulder the responsibility." 
 
 It is hard always to know exactly what is right. 
 Doubtless Maud's judgment was best, Maud was 
 so wise and broad-minded. One must be broad- 
 minded to do the expedient thing. 
 
 When Maud had read the letter through she 
 handed it to Miss Tracy, with lifted eyebrows. 
 " About what I suspected." 
 
 Miss Tracy read slowly, growing first pale and 
 then red, while her eyes moistened. 
 
 "I've been unjust," she said, feeling for her 
 handkerchief. " She was unhappy, and I did n't 
 realize." 
 
 "Unjust! you!" exclaimed her niece with 
 righteous indignation. " I never heard of such 
 ingratitude as that letter shows. And the very
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 237 
 
 idea of her suggesting to keep house for him in 
 New York ! " 
 
 "Why, I don't know; that seems natural 
 enough. They 've been like brother and sister." 
 
 "And the idea of her speaking so about Dr. 
 Winthrop ! ' He seems to blame himself for let- 
 ting Miss Tracy have me.' How is that for fab- 
 rication, pure and simple ? " 
 
 " I don't know ; I remember he seemed to 
 doubt the wisdom of it at first." Miss Tracy put 
 her hand over her eyes and leaned back, trem- 
 bling. 
 
 When we have reared an edifice of good inten- 
 tion, self-sacrifice, long endeavor, and have grown 
 accustomed to considering it a rather fine affair, it 
 is disheartening to find that there has been all 
 along a stratum of shifting sand under the founda- 
 tion, to suspect that the Lord may not have given 
 the matter as much thought and approval as we 
 had supposed. Or was it unskillful building 
 merely ? At any rate, it is disconcerting to con- 
 sider the cracks, fissures, and general tawdriness 
 of the result, that it may presently crumble to 
 ruin, and that things are worse instead of better for 
 its having been at all. 
 
 " She goes on to say," said Miss Tracy, "that I 
 have been very kind." 
 
 " And so you have. ' And Billy tries to help 
 me when he comes home ; but they don't like to 
 have him. . . . Billy is part of my puzzle. . . . 
 What makes men act so, anyway ? ' I should say 
 it was a fortunate thing you found this letter ! "
 
 238 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " But, Maud " (Miss Tracy was wiping away 
 tears) " but I don't seem to see anything in the 
 letter except the natural unhappiness of the child 
 at her failure in her studies." 
 
 " Oh, if the letter were all ! But can't you see 
 how it was written when she began to doubt the 
 success of her plans about Billy ? She thought she 
 was justified in not paying much attention to her 
 studies because she was counting on him for her 
 future. Then she saw I understood her game, and 
 started another which has succeeded." 
 
 Miss Tracy looked at her niece in some bewilder- 
 ment. " You are speaking almost as if you did 
 not approve of the marriage. I thought we had 
 agreed it was such a good thing." 
 
 Maud hesitated, bewildered also. That was not 
 the idea she had intended to convey. 
 
 " It is her neglect of her opportunities at the 
 Normal that angers me. It is only as an alter- 
 native that the marriage is desirable, two penni- 
 less children, and dependent." 
 
 "I I seem to have failed," said Miss Tracy 
 wearily. " I meant her to be a gentlewoman 
 
 and truthful I thought when I was old 
 
 it would be something to be happy about. I 
 suppose I lack discernment." 
 
 " It 's not you who have failed," said Maud. 
 " You know what the saying is about making a 
 silk purse out of a sow's ear." 
 
 " I wish I had had you long ago ! Yet I thought 
 I was doing so well. And what an influence for 
 good you have over Billy ! I have done my best ;
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 239 
 
 but you are nearer to him than I you are so 
 like your mother." 
 
 " Billy, and of course you, are all I have," said 
 Maud, pressing her aunt's hand and sighing. 
 
 A heavy tramp sounded in the hall, and Billy 
 appeared at the open door in knickerbockers and 
 sweater. The two hounds, leashed together, were 
 tangled madly about his legs, whining with tremu- 
 lous eagerness, their yellow eyes moist with joy. 
 
 " I 'm off for the Lake," he announced. " There 
 are some fellows I know camping down there. 
 Will you say good-by for me to the rest of the 
 folks and to the Heathways when you see them ? " 
 
 " Why, Billy ! " said Maud. " Is n't this a sud- 
 den notion ? How long are you going to stay ? " 
 
 " Until the second week in October," he an- 
 swered, bending over Bose and pretending to loosen 
 his collar. The two women exchanged glances of 
 dismay. 
 
 " You must be back for the first," said Miss 
 Tracy in a low voice. 
 
 " Da I mean I don't think I can, pos- 
 sibly." 
 
 " You must, Billy," said Maud authoritatively. 
 " You must n't sulk like a silly schoolboy. Do 
 you want to be laughed at by the whole town ? 
 Bess Heathway is to be bridesmaid, and you 
 know Home wants you to be best man." 
 
 Billy looked at his sister defiantly. His face 
 had lost its bright color and was thin and worn. 
 
 " Women are queer," he said at last in a puzzled 
 way. "What do you think I'm made of, any- 
 how?"
 
 240 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " I think you are very cowardly," said Maud, 
 avoiding his look, " if you can't face a little disap- 
 pointment and chagrin like a man. If it 's only 
 out of kindness to the Conto girl " 
 
 " I don't think," said Billy slowly and sternly, 
 looking straight at his sister's flushed face, " that 
 I 've ohserved so much kindness toward the ' Conto 
 girl,' as you call her, from you as to warrant you in 
 fretting about my kindness toward her." 
 
 " Billy, how can you be so unjust ! " 
 
 " For shame, Billy ! To your sister ! " said 
 Miss Tracy. 
 
 " Aunt Emily," said Billy wearily, " I don't 
 pretend to understand women or their ways. You 
 and Maud tell me I 've been a fool, and that Kitty 
 has what is best for her. I 'm in the way, and 
 I 'm going to get out and stay out until it 's all 
 over. You 'd better not object, or I might inter- 
 fere with your plans again." 
 
 " My plans ! " echoed Miss Tracy in a frightened 
 tone. 
 
 " Everybody's plans ! " rejoined Billy. " I had 
 one plan, and it seems to have made a fool of me. 
 I don't care to be a marplot and a spectre at the 
 feast and all that ! Good-by." 
 
 His voice in the last words trembled like a dis- 
 appointed child's. He stepped back into the hall 
 to take his gun from the rack. They heard him 
 go out the back way, and presently saw him, with 
 his brier in his mouth and Bose and Tray wad- 
 dling unevenly at his heels, striding down the 
 driveway toward the hotel where the stage was to
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 241 
 
 stop. His soldierly swing and the rifle on his 
 shoulder gave him the look of a man off to the 
 wars. Before he was out of sight he met the phae- 
 ton in which Biznet and Kitty were returning from 
 an early morning drive. 
 
 '* Well, at least he has the decency to stop and 
 speak to them," said his watchful sister. 
 
 Then he strode out of sight, and the cousins 
 drove up the lane. Presently Rome strolled through 
 the hall from the back of the house, having left 
 Kitty to wander about the garden alone. 
 
 " Did you have a pleasant drive ? " asked Maud, 
 looking up with a smile from her embroidery, 
 which she had resumed with sudden industry. 
 
 " Charming. So Billy's off, is he ? I don't see 
 what fun such a hunter as he is can have in the 
 close season ! " 
 
 " Oh, well, he can shoot at marks, and eat 
 canned stuff, I suppose ; but the game protector is 
 a great friend of his, so I dare say he will get 
 along very well." 
 
 " I 've just had a letter from Liebermann, my 
 manager, you know," said Rome, turning to Miss 
 Tracy, " asking me to come down to Long Branch 
 through September as his guest. I shall have to 
 start next week, I suppose. Then I will come 
 back for Kitty at the time you have already set 
 for the wedding, that is, if my programme suits 
 everybody else." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Miss Tracy indifferently. " My 
 head aches. Don't move. The day is pleasant for 
 people who can enjoy it. You and Maud stay
 
 242 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 out here. But I think I will lie down for a 
 while." 
 
 Biznet sat down in the chair she had left, laps- 
 ing into artistic abstraction, frowning into space, 
 his eyes focussed on some point beyond Maud's 
 head, and through her, while his fingers drummed 
 a fancied melody into the arm of his chair. He 
 was bewildered presently to hear Maud say with 
 unwonted sharpness, "What are you looking at 
 me like that for? Don't you know it is very 
 rude?" 
 
 " Is it ? " he answered blandly, rising to the situa- 
 tion at once with enthusiasm. He had intended to 
 quarrel with Maud at some time or other, and was 
 rather pleased that she should begin it. 
 
 "I should have supposed you might have ac- 
 quired at least the veneer of a gentleman after all 
 this time." 
 
 'T is queer, is n't it?" 
 
 Maud rose angrily, gathering up her work to 
 depart. But as she stood up Kitty's letter fell 
 from among her silks at Biznet's feet. He stooped 
 courteously to pick it up for her. 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" he drawled, returning it to his 
 own pocket. Maud looked angry and startled. 
 
 " As to my having a letter addressed to you, 
 it is one Miss Tracy took from the coat she was 
 mending for you. Here are some 'cello strings, 
 too." 
 
 "Well, what then? I didn't accuse you of 
 having read it, did I? (I don't care for the 
 strings, thank you.) "
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 243 
 
 " I should hope not ! " she blazed, righteously. 
 
 " You did, though," he went on calmly. 
 
 Confusion of one's real character with one's 
 working model is easy. Maud's ideal was very 
 high, an infallible pattern, and she did not dis- 
 tinguish that she had in any way departed from it, 
 nor recognize the reductio ad absurdum in her in- 
 dignation at Biznet's suspicion that she had done a 
 thing well reasoned out as not dishonorable. 
 
 Perhaps it is wisdom to obey the letter of the 
 law as well as the spirit, and not to meddle with 
 any old established rules of good breeding ; for 
 etiquette is merely skin deep, but honor a very 
 jugular vein in importance, and the jugular vein 
 lies quite near the surface, and must be treated 
 with respect. 
 
 Maud lifted her head with the magnificent air 
 of one too innocent and maligned to attempt de- 
 fense. 
 
 " How dare you speak to me so ! " 
 
 " And what do you think of it, now that you 've 
 read it ? " he pursued confidentially. " You see, 
 there 's nothing like a little trick or habit. I al- 
 ways put a letter in the envelope with the edges 
 up not a good way a careless way, but it 
 saves trouble. You and Miss Tracy put the fold 
 upward, because it 's easier to take out, I believe 
 better form. This letter, by the way, is one 
 that might be misunderstood, I suppose, by any 
 one who preferred to misunderstand it." 
 
 " I should think that its meaning was only too 
 plain!"
 
 244 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 "I didn't think you'd walk into the trap in 
 quite such a hurry! " he grinned. 
 
 " Well, then if I did read it ? Kitty is sup- 
 posed to show all her correspondence to my aunt. 
 Miss Tracy read it and asked my opinion, as she 
 had a perfect right to do." 
 
 " No, she had n't. And she would n't have read 
 it if you had n't advised her to ! " 
 
 She would have crowded past him into the house, 
 but he caught her wrist with a vicious wrench and 
 pushed her back into her chair. There was a 
 moment's canine uplifting of his upper lip as he 
 did so, and the defiance ebbed from her face, leav- 
 ing fright there. 
 
 " I 'm going to call a spade a spade," said Biznet. 
 " I 'm going to tell you what I think of you, and 
 it is n't going to be a love story, either. You 're 
 green with jealousy of Kitty. Why? Because 
 your aunt adopted her when she was a baby ? She 
 had no more to say about it than a child has about 
 the family it 's born into. Because Billy fell in 
 love with her ? If this letter proves anything it 
 proves she had nothing to do with that. Because 
 she 's going to marry me ? But that 's what you 
 wanted from the first, is n't it ? You wanted her 
 to marry me, did n't you ? " His black eyes nar- 
 rowed disagreeably. 
 
 Her lips were white and stiff. She held both 
 hands against her breast, clasping the wrist on 
 which the marks of his fingers were still red, and 
 stood up, unsteadily but with dignity. " You are 
 cruel, and you don't understand. I'm sorry I
 
 A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE 245 
 
 read the letter. I have not meant to hurt any- 
 body nor to be dishonest. I meant for the 
 best." 
 
 "Then," said Biznet, dropping the insolence 
 from his voice, but with some sternness, " be good 
 to her while I 'm gone."
 
 CHAPTER XIH 
 
 KITTY CONTO'S HERESY AND A STRANGE 
 VIOLINIST 
 
 WITH the departure of Billy and Rome the 
 world got along more amicably with itself in Cos- 
 mos, and Maud's invincible good temper made 
 headway. The women settled down to Kitty's 
 wardrobe with real enjoyment. Bess Heathway 
 came over to lend her skill, such as it was. While 
 she worked for Kitty, setting awkward stitches and 
 patiently taking them out again, Kitty would be 
 busy about her, pecking here and there with needle 
 and thread. Perhaps she was glad of an excuse 
 to find something else to do than the endless trous- 
 seau for which she cared so little. 
 
 " My dear, I thought this spring you were really 
 going to spruce up and attend to your clothes like 
 a real lady-girl. What makes you so lazy ? " 
 
 " What 's the use ? It all rips out again. Who 
 cares how I look, anyway ? " 
 
 " How can it rip if you never sew it up ? I 
 never saw such a girl ! " 
 
 "I never look decent, no matter how hard I 
 try. You're the bandboxy one. However do 
 you manage ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," sighed Kitty, who had 
 fallen idle again. " I 've been getting careless
 
 KITTY CONTO'S HERESY 247 
 
 lately, myself. It's easy, once you begin. I 
 have n't washed my hair for six weeks." 
 
 " What makes you keep that fan over that 
 picture ? " 
 
 " What picture ? The Fornarina ? A conven- 
 ient place for the fan, I suppose." 
 
 " What wicked eyes she has ! I would n't like 
 to live in the same room with her watching all I 
 did." 
 
 Kitty and the Fornarina exchanged glances of 
 intelligence. Kitty looked out of the window, 
 drumming on the pane with idle fingers. 
 
 " I suppose you 're very fond of Borne," said 
 Bess presently, setting some stitches that were 
 awkward beyond belief. She stabbed her finger 
 with the needle when she pronounced his name, 
 but her voice was placid enough. 
 
 " Fond of why, of course ! " assented Kitty 
 absently. " Who would n't be ? " 
 
 " Yet, somehow, you don't seem so very happy. 
 Of course, I don't know anything about such mat- 
 ters, but I supposed girls about to be married 
 were too jolly for anything." 
 
 " Jolly ! " echoed Kitty in a light-hearted tone, 
 " why, I 'm as jolly as as " She laughed, 
 and, from laughing, cried as if her heart would 
 break. Bess went to her, and the little black 
 head burrowed into her bosom like a kitten taken 
 from its nest and scared at the world's bigness. 
 
 " Kitty Conto you 're not happy. Don't you 
 really care for him ? " 
 
 " Care for him ? Of course I care for him
 
 248 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 but, oh Bess, I wish I didn't have to be mar- 
 ried!" 
 
 " Wishes she did n't have to be married! " echoed 
 Bess, and stared sombrely over her head at the 
 Fornarina. "Loves the man, but doesn't want 
 to marry him. Well ! " 
 
 " It 's like dying or going to be a nun," sobbed 
 Kitty. " I '11 have to think about him always and 
 forever, and nothing else ! " 
 
 " Loves him, but does n't want to think about 
 him all the time ! " said Bess. " I think of course 
 I don't know anything about such things but I 
 think, if I loved a man " she stopped " if I 
 loved a man," she continued, unsteadily, " I im- 
 agine I could not think of anything else, no mat- 
 ter if I tried. I think I should n't know how not 
 to think of him." She pressed her cheek against 
 the shining black head. 
 
 " Kitty, dear, tell Bess. What makes you cry ? " 
 
 " Because I 'm a very silly girl," said Kitty, sit- 
 ting up, and adjusting hairpins in a matter-of-fact 
 way. A suspicion and a hope which had flashed 
 across Elizabeth died down. She went back to 
 her sewing. 
 
 Kitty watched her furtively and pondered many 
 things. She was uncertain just how far she had 
 made a mess of circumstances and whether there 
 was anything she could say to reassure Elizabeth. 
 Bess did n't look very well. Probably she had 
 troubles of her own without worrying over those 
 of Kitty Conto. Bess always did worry over 
 people so ! So it seemed expedient to Kitty to
 
 KITTY CONTO'S HERESY 249 
 
 deliver a little lecture on the subject of true love. 
 If Bess knew no better it would probably seem 
 reasonable enough. 
 
 " You see, it 's this way." She was taking down 
 her disheveled hair. Difficult talk is easier if the 
 fingers are busy. " I 'm very fond of Rome. Of 
 course I am, or I would n't have accepted him." 
 
 " Of course," murmured Elizabeth's grave lips. 
 
 " I never could care for anybody else never 
 but but men sometimes get tired of their wives." 
 
 Elizabeth smiled. " If that 's what 's troubling 
 you" 
 
 " N-no, not exactly that. But I 'm such a dull 
 little thing, not knowing anything about music." 
 
 " He hates musical women." 
 
 " Yes I know. But, well, you said you did n't 
 know anything about love, so how can I ever make 
 you understand ? " 
 
 " I '11 try hard if you '11 be patient with me." 
 
 " Well, it 's just this, then. No matter how much 
 you love a man, you 'd rather not marry him ! " 
 
 The hair enveloped her completely now. She 
 peered through it stealthily at Elizabeth to see the 
 result of her startling heresy. Bess frowned in a 
 puzzled way at the work which had fallen in her 
 lap. 
 
 " That is n't so, Kitty," she said at last, quietly. 
 " That can only mean one thing. You don't love 
 him." 
 
 "Well," said Kitty then, playing her ace of 
 trumps, " he loves me enough to make up ! So I 
 shall learn, and it's all right, anyhow. Did you
 
 250 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 know he was coming back to-morrow ? Must you 
 go ? I had so much to say." 
 
 The fall rains were lowering in the sky, though 
 the yellow maples kept up a pretense of sunshine. 
 On the day that Biznet was expected, Maud Tracy 
 and her aunt had a wood fire built in the damp par- 
 lor, and its cheerful yellow sparkle almost brought 
 a glow of health to the magenta upholstery of the 
 room. 
 
 " I believe I '11 have the room done over next 
 spring," said Miss Tracy, looking forward to future 
 lightness of heart and heaviness of purse. " It 
 ought to be more homelike for you and Billy." 
 
 " I think I 'd like red wall-paper," said Maud ; 
 " that deep rose that they 're using so much now." 
 
 A desire for rose-colored walls and drapery is 
 apt to seize a woman of thirty or a trifle past. The 
 effect is better than rouge, and does not injure the 
 conscience. 
 
 " This weather makes me restless," said Maud, 
 glancing at a gilt clock under a glass case that 
 always pointed to the eleventh hour. Then she 
 consulted the watch at her belt. " Adlor meets 
 the train, of course ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She sat down at the piano, playing carelessly ; 
 but with whatever melody she started it was sure 
 to change presently to something of Biznet's com- 
 position. There was a thing of gloomy march 
 movement which he had called " The Battle in the 
 West":
 
 KITTY CONTO'S HERESY 261 
 
 " Far other is this battle in the West 
 Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth." 
 
 " I am sick of music," she said, when she had 
 played this through, and went abruptly to the win- 
 dow, where she stood with forehead pressed to the 
 glass. And while she frowned at the yellow maples 
 a trio of wandering musicians strolled through the 
 gate, lugging harp, violin, and viola. As they set- 
 tled beneath the window and began to tune, Miss 
 Tracy, sitting before the fire, gave a little cry. 
 
 " I thought it was Rome's 'cello again ! " 
 
 Maud laughed rather bitterly. " I don't wonder. 
 The house is haunted with that 'cello, I sometimes 
 think. It seems to be in every creaking blind or 
 squeak of a mouse. Good gracious ! " 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 " One of these Italians looks enough like Roman 
 Biznet to be his own father, or himself ! " 
 
 Miss Tracy came to the window and adjusted 
 her pince-nez. 
 
 " It is strange, is n't it ? But I always thought 
 he had a rather Italian look. All Canadians with 
 the French-Indian mixture have it." 
 
 The man of whom they were speaking was the 
 violinist and leader. He looked over his shoulder 
 at the women in the window and smiled widely. 
 
 " I am sick of music," said Maud for the second 
 time, as the shabby three played " Non e ver." 
 But as it went much better than one expects of 
 wayside music, the violin, particularly, being extra- 
 ordinarily good, she sang with them, not so softly 
 but that the leader threw her a quick glance of
 
 252 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 approval, at which she stopped, paling, for it 
 seemed impossible that two men could have that 
 look in common, although the face of this one was 
 shriveled and evidently long past middle age. Yet 
 there was an alert and invincible youngness, such 
 as belongs to old and feeble grasshoppers in au- 
 tumn, who keep the vitality of Tithonus. 
 
 "I should almost think it was he, masquer- 
 ading," she said to Miss Tracy. 
 
 Then they played that little march of Biznet's 
 which had grown popular, and which its maker 
 despised. But as they finished, having received 
 a quarter with many smiles and bows and gone off 
 under the yellow maples and brown leaves, Maud 
 watched the violinist with an eager stare. 
 
 " I wonder ! " she said. 
 
 Bess came in just then and asked for Kitty. 
 She had brought with her a hemstitched ruffle 
 which had cost long hours and bleeding fingers. 
 It was grimy and uneven in result, and many 
 strange bits of philosophy had gone to its making. 
 She had read somewhere that if one is in danger 
 of hating somebody, it is well to make some kindly 
 sacrifice of love instead mechanically, as one 
 takes medicine. She understood that in theory she 
 was bound to hate Kitty, and so began the endless 
 ruffle while she was still ill in bed, and whether the 
 ruffle had anything to do with it or not, there was 
 not at any time any jealous poison in her sore 
 heart. Dr. Winthrop, to whose knowledge this 
 little act came, as did pretty nearly everything
 
 KITTY CONTO'S HERESY 253 
 
 concerning the two families, sooner or later, would 
 have given something to possess that ruffle, grime, 
 tiny blood spots and all, to keep it for her as a doc- 
 ument of value against a possible Day of Judg- 
 ment. Kitty met her with an air of mystery and 
 good news, and pulled her eagerly into the room. 
 
 " I want to talk about something." She shook 
 a small forefinger accusingly. " You 're in love 
 with somebody who is it ? " 
 
 " You idiot child ! Just because you 're in love 
 yourself, you think everybody else must be." 
 
 " But you are ! " 
 
 " I 'm not ! And I don't like you to talk that 
 way." 
 
 " You can't cheat me I Is it Billy ? " 
 
 Bess laughed so heartily that Kitty grew slightly 
 indignant. She did not see anything impossible or 
 absurd about loving Billy Tracy. 
 
 " I have other things to think about besides be- 
 ing in love," said Bess, with some scorn. " Some 
 people seem to think that 's the only thing in the 
 world worth thinking about. I don't see why. It 
 is n't so awfully important. Men don't think about 
 it as much as women do that 's because they 're 
 always doing something machinery, or law, or 
 medicine, or fighting. It 's easy enough to keep 
 one's mind full of something sensible, to live on 
 a higher plane. I 'd rather just have friends any- 
 how. I've been studying botany this summer. 
 You 've no idea how interesting botany is " 
 
 " If it is n't Billy, it must be Rome," said 
 Kitty.
 
 254 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Why why the very idea ! You 're going 
 to marry him yourself next week ! " 
 
 " Tell me is it Rome ? " 
 
 " Of course not the very idea ! " 
 
 Kitty went over to Bess and knelt in front of 
 her, turning her face to the light. " It is ! Just 
 as sure as the world ! You can't look me in the 
 eye any more than a cat and you 're going to 
 cry! Don't go please. Don't be mad I 
 wanted to tell you" 
 
 But Bess was rushing down the stairs. On the 
 steps she ran plump into Biznet himself, who 
 bowed gravely as she drew her shawl across her 
 tear-stained face. Adlor, as he turned the carriage 
 toward the barn, glanced at her curiously in a 
 way she afterward remembered.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 KITTY SOLVES HER PROBLEM 
 
 " WELL, Pussy, by this time next week we shall 
 be on our wedding journey." 
 
 She looked sidelong at him over her shoulder, 
 with a suppressed alertness that he did not under- 
 stand. 
 
 "You don't seem to detest the idea, exactly. 
 Did n't happen to fall in love with me while I was 
 away?" 
 
 " You and I did n't have to fall in love, being 
 brother and sister so." 
 
 " How has Maud treated you ? " 
 
 " Oh, she has been just lovely. You must n't 
 blame her and Miss Tracy, Rome. You know how 
 stupid I am and how much they have done for 
 me. And anyhow, it was you Miss Tracy adopted. 
 I was only a bargain end, thrown in for good 
 measure." 
 
 " So Maud has been lovely to you, has she ? 
 Urn ! that 's nice." 
 
 " Rome, I want to ask you something. And 
 you must n't mind, and must answer true. Were 
 you ever in love with anybody ? " 
 
 " Don't you mean anybody else? I 'm pretty 
 well in love with you, Pussy." 
 
 " I don't like you to pretend. Was there any-
 
 256 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 body ? There was ! There was ! You are fidget- 
 ing, you are blinking, as you always do when you 
 tell lies." 
 
 " Be still ! You don't know what you 're talking 
 about. How could there be anybody else ? You 
 don't suppose I class you with kellnerinnen, do 
 you the girls that students know ? If you are 
 thinking of a barmaid rival " 
 
 " It was n't that I meant. All that is nobody's 
 business but your own." 
 
 " Don't get ideas, for heaven's sake," he said. 
 
 They were walking in the threadbare October 
 garden, their steps deadened by the sodden leaves 
 that fell too thickly for Adlor's rake. There were 
 borders of scentless asters, and where the fragrant 
 rose hedge had been the thorns were bare, the 
 scarlet hips dotting them like drops of blood. The 
 blackness of frost was upon all tender plants, the 
 hardy ones looking weary as though leaves were 
 become a burden and a responsibility. 
 
 Kitty picked up a fallen bird's-nest, and tried 
 in an absent-minded way to restore order to its 
 raveled straws and horsehair. Something in its 
 inner softness elicited an amused chuckle. She 
 drew forth a soiled and tangled wisp of light hair. 
 
 " Of all things ! I cut off this lock of Bess 
 Heathway's hair last spring. It was always com- 
 ing into her eyes and I could n't stand it. And 
 here it is ! Did you ever ? " 
 
 She looked at him in solemn mockery and held 
 out the trash between a dainty thumb and finger. 
 "Don't you want it?"
 
 KITTY SOLVES HER PROBLEM 257 
 
 " Why should I want it? " 
 
 " Then why do you look at it like a cat at a 
 piece of meat? And what makes your eyes get 
 pink in the middle ? I thought you were clever ! 
 Oh, I 'm not stupid about everything. I knew she 
 cared for you, but I wanted to make sure about 
 you and now I 've done it ! " 
 
 He took a step toward her menacingly, his right 
 hand gripped upon his cane until the knuckles 
 were white. Perhaps Antoine and Phrebe had 
 looked at each other like this before these two 
 were born. But Kitty was the daughter of Al- 
 phonsine, in whom was no fear. Presently she 
 smiled, and without mockery. 
 
 " Don't be angry," she said softly, " I did n't 
 mean to hurt." 
 
 The band of anger that had clamped his fore- 
 head fell away. He flung his cane into the hedge 
 with a gesture of horror, and sat down wearily on 
 a bench, with averted face. 
 
 " You will never trust me now," he said un- 
 steadily. " But it 's only that my nerves are out 
 of order. I would never have struck you." 
 
 " Would n't you ? But it does n't matter. You 
 see, I understand so well. I think it 's better to 
 have such things understood between us. Don't 
 you?" 
 
 " I don't know that I 've admitted there was 
 anything to understand, have I ? " 
 
 She laughed. " Oh, no ! You are very dis- 
 creet. But you see I am unusually clever." 
 
 " I don't admit that, either."
 
 258 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Well, it does n't matter what you admit. Bess 
 is even less clever than you are. She began to 
 cry as soon as I talked about you." 
 
 He sat up and met her eyes defiantly. " Well, 
 for the sake of argument, then, suppose I do care 
 for Bess and she for me, what then ? You and I 
 can't f go back, can we ? Who owns us ? What 
 can we do ? You 've got your trousseau. I 've 
 taken our rooms in New York. Bess has her mind 
 made up to be bridesmaid. Now what 's the use 
 of going and spoiling it all ? People get over that 
 sort of thing. All we have to do is to settle down 
 and be sensible, like folks." 
 
 Kitty studied her engagement ring in the con- 
 templative manner that she had learned from Maud 
 Tracy. 
 
 " Well, what would you do about it, supposing 
 I admitted it (which I don't) ? " he asked again 
 fretfully. 
 
 " 1 don't know that there 's anything to do," 
 she replied slowly, holding her diamond so near 
 her eyes that they turned in. 
 
 " Everything will go all right once we get to 
 New York." 
 
 " Yes, once we get to New York." 
 
 " All we 've got to do is to be sensible." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " What have you got in your head ? You look 
 as sly as a cat that 's been at the cream." 
 
 " In my head ? Oh, I was planning how I 'd fix 
 our rooms in New York ! I like red ; don't you ? " 
 
 " I '11 like anything you do."
 
 KITTY SOLVES HER PROBLEM 269 
 
 " Bess Heath way likes blue." 
 
 He took hold of her arm and shook it brutally. 
 " Get that idea out of your head ; if you don't, 
 there will be trouble. How would you like it if I 
 kept talking to you about Billy." 
 
 " Oh, I should n't mind ! " She rolled up her 
 sleeve and looked with a curious smile at the marks 
 of his fingers on her arm. " A year from now," 
 she said, " there will be marks like that on my 
 throat, I suppose. We are starting well ! But I 
 have an errand to get a seamstress from the 
 other side of the river. Adlor has the carriage 
 ready, I see. Good-by." 
 
 He did not raise his head as she walked away. 
 But she had not reached the turn of the path be- 
 fore she came running back. She threw her arms 
 about him and kissed him many times, sobbing 
 (though her eyes were dry and bright), and saying 
 that he had been very good to her, that she had n't 
 meant to hurt him in any way, and that she should 
 never forget never. Then she was gone. 
 
 As to what followed, no one ever knew how long 
 before it had been planned, nor what the circum- 
 stances of the strange and sudden courtship be- 
 tween Adlor and Kitty had been. Miss Tracy 
 and Maud and Billy, too, when the news reached 
 him swore they had secretly loved each other 
 for years, that it was a case of like returning to 
 like, and that the Tracy family might wash their 
 hands of the matter with good consciences and talk 
 about Ingratitude.
 
 260 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 But Bess Heathway cried all that night, believ- 
 ing that Kitty had sacrificed herself for her ; and 
 Roman Biznet paced to and fro, heavy-eyed and 
 white-faced because he had once more made a mess 
 of it, though sometimes he would look stealthily 
 toward the Heathway house. 
 
 And this was what happened : The carriage did 
 not come back when in all reason Kitty should have 
 finished her errand with the seamstress, and it did 
 not come back at dinner time. Miss Tracy looked 
 anxious, and Maud went about with lifted eye- 
 brows. Rome walked to the seamstress's house. 
 They had not been there. Of course he knew 
 then, though he tried to reason it out some other 
 way. But he remembered how Kitty had kissed 
 him as if for good-by, and how she had said she 
 should " never forget." He walked home slowly, 
 and as he passed the Heathway house looked to- 
 ward it with a strange expression. 
 
 Mrs. Heathway heard of it through the servants, 
 and came over with bulging eyes, and she and the 
 Tracy women sat about and talked in low tones, 
 listening to everything that passed in the road. 
 Miss Tracy lay upon a lounge, and the other two 
 fanned her and held salts to her nose. 
 
 Dr. Winthrop came over and listened a while to 
 their excited accounts, saying nothing, but looking 
 exceedingly grim. Then he went out, and found 
 Roman Biznet strolling about the grounds, and 
 walked with him arm in arm ; and Roman told him 
 everything, laying particular stress on the fact 
 that he (Biznet) was a fool and a brute. And
 
 KITTY SOLVES HER PROBLEM 261 
 
 the doctor quite understood how it had all come 
 about, and blamed nobody very much. 
 
 But while they walked together they heard car- 
 riage wheels far down the road, and presently the 
 horses turned into the driveway. There was foam 
 upon them, as could be seen in the obscurity of the 
 night. 
 
 " Hola, mon vieux ! " said Biznet, running to 
 their heads. But it was not Adlor who jumped 
 down, and, thrusting two letters into Biznet's 
 hands, ran swiftly away into the dark. 
 
 " To Miss Tracy and to me," said Home, read- 
 ing by the glow of his cigar. " Come in with me, 
 won't you ? It 's two men's work to defend her." 
 
 This was Kitty's letter to Miss Tracy : 
 
 DEAR Miss TRACY, I am sorry that I have 
 disappointed you in every way. You have tried to be 
 very kind to me. If marrying Rome could have 
 really paid you back at all, I should not have done 
 what I have. But I thought it over very carefully, 
 and it seemed to me that I should only be a drag on 
 him and keep him from paying his debt to you, to 
 say nothing of my own. If you had never taken 
 me, I should probably have married Adlor, or 
 somebody like him. Perhaps he and I will be just 
 as happy as though I had not been educated more 
 than he has. I could never have earned enough 
 to pay you anyway, and now at least you will not 
 have to spend any more for me, and Rome will 
 have an easier time paying you for himself. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 KITTY CONTO SANTWIRE.
 
 262 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 " Oh, the cold-bloodedness of it ! " was Miss 
 Tracy's comment. " She thinks of nothing but 
 the money I have spent. The time, the care, and 
 my my affection, count as nothing with her ! " 
 She faltered, for Dr. Winthrop was looking at her 
 with great sternness, and then she began to cry so 
 gustily that he was obliged to think of himself 
 as a physician and do what he could to avert 
 hysteria. 
 
 " What has she written to you ? " asked Maud, 
 noticing that Biznet still held an unopened en- 
 velope. 
 
 " I don't know yet. I shall probably not tell 
 you when I do know. I don't need to open the 
 envelope to be sure of one thing, and that is that 
 my cousin is as innocent and good as a baby in 
 arms. Adlor is a good fellow, and I wish them 
 happiness with all my heart." 
 
 " How extremely noble ! But perhaps you knew 
 all about it beforehand and helped them off ! " 
 
 He looked her over slowly from head to foot, 
 then turned on his heel and went to his room. 
 This was his letter : 
 
 DEAK ROMY, We were brother and sister, 
 and it would n't have been right. I should have 
 dragged you down, and you would have kept on 
 thinking of Elizabeth. Now you will marry her. 
 She loves you enough to wait a long time, and you 
 love her that way too. As it is'now, you can think 
 of me kindly as your little sister. But I knew 
 this afternoon, when you started to strike me and
 
 KITTY SOLVES HER PROBLEM 263 
 
 when you hurt my arm, that you would want to 
 kill me. That was partly why I teased you to 
 find out what you would be like if I bothered you. 
 I don't believe you will ever want to treat Bess 
 so. People don't if they really care very much. 
 
 You must n't worry about Adlor and me. He 
 has a job at Tupper Lake. We shall do very well. 
 He has always been very fond of me. In time I 
 shall slip back to about what I should have been 
 if Miss Tracy had n't educated me. 
 
 I don't believe I cared so very much about Billy. 
 I can't be sure, because I feel so queer and numb 
 about everything, and I can't tell what matters and 
 what does n't. I thought some of dying, but when 
 I found I could make some one happier by staying 
 alive, I thought I would for a while at least, and 
 one does n't know what there is after death, you 
 know. I don't believe the priests and ministers 
 know any more than you or I do. But flowers are 
 pretty and worth living for better than not 
 knowing or seeing anything at all. 
 
 I hope you and Bess will be happy. And please 
 give her this same ring that I am sending back to 
 you I shall like to think of that. 
 
 Be a good boy and try to think kindly of your 
 little sister KITTY.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP CONSIDERS AN ALLEGORY 
 
 THE same night that Kitty went away thieves 
 came to town. Some of the Heathway silver was 
 stolen, and the Tracy chicken roost suffered. So 
 there was much to talk about next day enough 
 for everybody, and fruitful subjects of conversa- 
 tion are so rare that a chicken or two and a few 
 silver spoons seem a small price to pay. The 
 chickens and the spoons were small weapons, but 
 Dr. Winthrop used them with great skill to divert 
 the talk from Kitty. He would say cheerily that 
 it was a foolish thing, perhaps, but that they were 
 all good children and probably knew their own 
 minds best ; then he would hint darkly at the 
 robberies, suggest a lair of tramps in the woods 
 that ought to be unearthed, tell of sights and sounds 
 as of many marauders and hint terrible things they 
 might do if they had a chance. And he painted 
 the unknown terror black with such painstaking 
 skill, that before night people were far more 
 anxious about their own safety than about Kitty 
 Conto Santwire's morals, and the locksmith drove 
 a brisk trade. 
 
 Roman Biznet, being now the only man in the 
 Tracy house, offered to sit up that night and keep
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 265 
 
 an eye on the outbuildings, and on the prospect in 
 general. 
 
 It was a good night for mischief of almost any 
 sort. The moon, in its last quarter, did not rise 
 until toward morning, and there was a restless wind 
 that engulfed all such noises as stealthy footsteps, 
 nibbling at locks, suddenly stifled cries of people 
 or chickens. The sky was clear and starry. A 
 man may see well enough in the starlight to follow 
 out a purpose, but following the man himself is a 
 problem more involved. 
 
 Roman Biznet, in his capacity of chicken warden, 
 sat in a corner of the upper veranda, commanding 
 the outbuildings, the slope toward the railroad 
 tracks, and French Hollow. But his mind ran 
 little to chickens and pilfering Frenchmen. 
 
 He was planning Elizabeth's future and his own. 
 There was to be a flat in New York, chiefly given 
 up to a grand piano, a bass viol, and apparatus 
 for making coffee. He planned it something on 
 the pattern of his bachelor life abroad. They 
 would take their meals out, Bess not being much 
 of a cook or given to domesticity in any form. He 
 wondered if it would be of any use to try to teach 
 her the piano, or if it would lead to rows. Perhaps 
 it would be better to encourage her to turn her at- 
 tention to poetry. The Lunar Moth was not so bad 
 perhaps she could do librettos for him if he 
 should venture upon an opera. He had no doubt 
 about his " hit." Liebermann had no doubt, so 
 why should he have any? It did not greatly 
 trouble him that there was a little matter of recon-
 
 266 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 ciliation with Bess to be gone through, and that 
 Judge Heathway had a will of his own, which he 
 exerted in his family with great success. 
 
 He was in a good humor with himself and the 
 world. Perhaps Kitty had really loved Adlor ! 
 And if so, things were coming out right all around. 
 Some day he would do something for Kitty and 
 Adlor, when he had paid Miss Tracy. 
 
 It seemed the world might sometimes give a 
 man what he wanted after all. He smiled over 
 his shoulder towards the Heathway house, with a 
 pleasant sense of security. 
 
 But the wind kept up a snarling and chittering 
 as of pursuer and pursued all about the house- 
 corners, up and down the empty verandas, through 
 tree-tops, chasing leaves, bits of paper, intangible 
 shadows of nothing. Shrugged into his overcoat, 
 he might himself have been one of the pursued 
 shadows, slunk into this coign of vantage long 
 enough to draw breath and become substance. 
 
 And out of the little wind-blown stars, the Adi- 
 rondacks folded like clouds, the trees, a musical 
 theme untwisted in a widening spiral of imagined 
 sound, until he must place his phantom orchestra 
 in order about him, banked mistily beyond the 
 veranda rail, bass viols, violins, horns, of most per- 
 fect skill to elaborate his theme for him, which 
 should next winter be written on paper and played 
 by a real orchestra when he and Bess were mar- 
 ried. 
 
 His idea had been of music that would express 
 placid approval of a world which now and then
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 267 
 
 gave a man what he wanted, but presently his genii 
 began a very different exposition. His drowsy 
 ears heard alien voices, undertones and over- 
 tones, that became dominant and were not accord- 
 ing to such mathematical laws of sound as he knew. 
 There was disagreement with his hypothesis of a 
 kindly world wherein a man might receive what 
 he desired, there was no provision, they said, for 
 such an outcome ; it was not feasible that there 
 should be, for such conduct would be at variance 
 with some large law of more importance than hap- 
 piness. While fretting over this pessimistic notion, 
 he fell asleep, and into the misery of that familiar 
 dream. 
 
 While he struggled to get out of his inert body 
 he knew that the customary visitor was approach- 
 ing down the length of the veranda behind him, yet 
 his half-open eyes could not change their focus 
 from the veranda pillar and a patch of sky and 
 mountain. And then the creature bent over him 
 and sighed, so that its breath stirred his hair. 
 
 He writhed free and seemed to fall limply at his 
 own feet, like a moth just out of its cocoon, then 
 stood up peering blindly at a shadow that did not, 
 as usual, try to avoid him by sneaking to his rear. 
 There were eyes, and bristling ears. 
 
 " Why, what nonsense ! " said Biznet. " It 's 
 the loup-garou." 
 
 It became clearer when he had named it and 
 grinned familiarly. Biznet grew sober and thought 
 of that remark of Elizabeth's about dreams that 
 Kitty had quoted how a dream may be an alle-
 
 268 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 gory, and have within its ridiculousness a meaning 
 that something we speak of as our " higher ego " 
 wishes to teach us. 
 
 How if this were the result of that polarization 
 which had so long been making confusion within 
 him ? If his two selves were at last unfolded from 
 their fourth dimension, and now, standing face to 
 face, might settle that debate forever ! 
 
 Yet it was with an inward grin at taking a dream 
 so seriously that he leaped at the shadowy throat, 
 and plunged lightly into mid-air with his enemy. 
 And it would seem that there must be still another 
 self somewhere above them who watched the strug- 
 gle, saw that it was like an eddy of dust, and cried 
 shrilly, "Two natures war within us," not giv- 
 ing hope of victory to the one or the other, but 
 stating a law of the world as inevitable as the laws 
 of winds and tides. 
 
 And then what was it that loped gleefully 
 across the garden and the railroad track beyond 
 it, down through French Hollow and the marshy 
 hummocks of the Heathway pasture, frisked among 
 the tree-trunks of the woods, then back through 
 the air, as a sudden notion took it, to sprawl under 
 Bess Heathway's window and look up with lolling 
 jaws. 
 
 And Bess was coming down. Bess always would 
 come if Roman Biznet sat under her window and 
 looked up. It would make no difference how bad 
 and strange he might be, nor if he were in truth 
 the loup-garou. 
 
 She was coming, while overhead something
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 269 
 
 whispered, " Warn her ! warn her quickly ! 
 that two natures are within us, and that one of 
 them is a beast." 
 
 Thereupon he sat up, broad awake, though not 
 quite free from the were-wolf , which still snarled 
 within him because the dream had not lasted long 
 enough for him to throttle Bess Heathway. 
 
 A red ribbon of sunrise had stolen out from 
 behind Mount Powasket's shoulder. 
 
 Something creaked down among the apple-trees : 
 he turned toward the sound, like a cat toward the 
 nibble of a mouse. That should be the thief, com- 
 ing from the Tracy buff cochins. He had intended, 
 if this crisis came about, to capture him cautiously, 
 but firmly, and take him in civilized manner to the 
 county jail. But his neurotic mind, newly roused 
 from the dream of a fight, had not had time to re- 
 place things upon their familiar f ooting. His heart 
 beat with savage irregularity, like a fist striking to 
 left and right ; there was turmoil in his throat and 
 ear-drums. 
 
 Leaping lightly over the veranda rail, he scram- 
 bled down the wistaria vine, sensible of an apish 
 lightness of body. But something pressed upon 
 the top of his head: he thought it was his cap, 
 and tossed it away to let the wind run its cold 
 fingers through his hair. He approached the 
 chicken-house, skillfully dodging about bushes and 
 fences ; the door was open. Somewhere in the 
 direction of the dim sunrise, through a white mist 
 curling and lifting from the lowlands, there came
 
 270 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 a despairing buff cochin squawk. It was stilled 
 suddenly ; but there was a scattering of yellow 
 feathers, and presently a trail of blood which led 
 the way when the squawks were silenced. 
 
 The rapid action of running and the brisk air 
 dragging the blood from his brain and sending it 
 healthily to the rest of his body, gave his gasping 
 sanity another hold on life. He had no clear idea 
 of what he should do with the thief when he got 
 him, but there was a joyous invincibility about his 
 finger-tips. He laughed suddenly at the notion 
 that a man's throat was located something like 
 that of a 'cello, and that the cords of his neck, if 
 pressed 
 
 " Why," he said aloud, " that 's something the 
 way I felt after Bauer's hypodermic ! " 
 
 The Heathway woods lay like a charcoal smear 
 in the mist. He stumbled through muck beds; 
 but whatever noise he made would pass for the 
 blundering of the cattle. A cow's head, the rest 
 of her wrapped in mist, stared at him for a mo- 
 ment, like a mask hung in the air. 
 
 "To dream of cows means trouble," he said. 
 " Whey there ! so, boss, so ! " She vanished 
 with a windy snort, and he kept on until a tangle 
 of underbrush caught at his sleeves, and a web of 
 small roots confused his feet. His eyes could not 
 pierce the fog as they could darkness ; it got under 
 his lashes like wool. He could hear the brook 
 chuckling in front ; the other side of it there was 
 a crackling sound, which might be cattle. But 
 there was a tiny drop of blood on a stone, so he
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 271 
 
 knew that the chicken slayer was somewhere near. 
 It was a tramp evidently, and the crackling sound 
 was the gathering of firewood. 
 
 He went more softly then, and listened between 
 steps. The fog was thinner in the woods ; the lit- 
 tle brook, reflecting it, was as white as milk. It 
 amused him to be watchful and cat-like with his 
 quarry, instead of collaring him at once, as would 
 have been quite possible, for the fellow seemed to 
 feel safe and careless as he crashed about in the 
 underbrush. 
 
 Then an opal-like glow shone through the mist. 
 He had built his fire then, and presently would have 
 chicken for breakfast. Biznet wondered whether 
 he were provided with pepper and salt. He was 
 hungry himself. He had n't been hungry for so 
 long ! He had once been familiar with this kind 
 of breakfast. While the chicken is cooking one 
 should play one's violin; that times them well, 
 and when they are done 
 
 There was a faint musical twang, like the 
 string of a violin. Roman Biznet threw his arms 
 about a friendly tree-trunk, hugging it tightly, 
 unreasoningly, as one in some sudden peril takes 
 sanctuary at a wayside shrine. The rough bark 
 bruised his cheek; he stared through the mist, 
 and put up a groping hand to fight off the white 
 obscurity. Since last hearing a fiddle in these 
 woods, he had dreamed of knowing people of gen- 
 tle lives, of a girl with yellow hair and wise gray 
 eyes, but all these things were vanishing as if they 
 had never been ; he had dreamed that he was a
 
 272 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 man, in a world of men, but he was waking, and 
 knew these things were impossible. 
 
 And Antoine played : Antoine, then, was no 
 dream. As he played his son came slowly to him 
 through the lifting mist. Antoine gave one little 
 start when Roman appeared, as if some one had 
 jogged his elbow ; then grinned widely, proceeding 
 with his playing. 
 
 " Well, Romy," he said at last, laying down the 
 violin, " so you 've come to breakfast ! " 
 
 " I thought you were dead ! " 
 
 " Well, I ain't. What are you fainting for ? " 
 
 "I'm not fainting. Take that bottle away. 
 Damn you, I thought you were dead ! " 
 
 " Why, you dear child ! How you do talk ! " 
 drawled Tony. " Here, drink, damn you ! and 
 be quick, or I '11 hold your nose ! " 
 
 And Rome, around whom the mist had changed 
 from white to black, felt his throat scorched with 
 his father's cheap whiskey. With that stinging 
 fire inside him the world seemed a better place 
 and Antoine not such a bad fellow. He looked up 
 at his father and laughed, thinking how he had 
 feared to dream of him. 
 
 " That 's the way to talk," said Antoine kindly ; 
 " no use in wishing people dead, particularly fathers. 
 Sacre-damn ! how you look like me ! I mean as I 
 was at the Monastery and at McGill and all that, 
 before the world began to go against me." 
 
 " You mean before you began to go against the 
 world?" 
 
 " No, I don't. I 'm all right : world 's all wrong.
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 273 
 
 Chickens are done, Tracy chickens, same as you 
 get at home. Vive les poulets ! " 
 
 He salted and peppered the chickens (formerly 
 there had been no salt and pepper, Rome re- 
 membered) ; then they ate, carnivorously, so 
 that one would not have liked to ask a share 
 of the meal for fear of hurt. Rome ate half his 
 chicken ; then reached for the bottle of his own 
 accord. 
 
 " That 's right," mumbled the hospitable Tony, 
 with full mouth ; " help yourself." 
 
 But at the cordial invitation Rome stopped and 
 frowned, as though his father had said " Hands 
 off ! " Could it be something tangible and real 
 that plucked at his coat sleeve ? Did a hand reach 
 up out of the mouldy leaves, a small, firm hand, 
 like Kitty's? 
 
 To drive away such fancies he tilted up the bot- 
 tle and drank half. Then he remembered that it 
 was somewhere back in Canada they had buried 
 Phoebe, so she could not have crept through the 
 earth to be here in the Cosmos woods. 
 
 It was a good world and a reasonable one, if you 
 considered it rightly. Or was it he and Antoine 
 who were good and reasonable ? And did the 
 world have hard work in living up to their stand- 
 ard? 
 
 " Play something ! By George, you shall play 
 in my orchestra this winter ; we '11 be pals. Tune 
 up, Tony." 
 
 Tony tuned up, and Tony played, and the woods 
 were filled with bacchantes, satyrs, evil faces, until
 
 274 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 Roman Biznet laughed in uproarious content to 
 see all his wicked dreams coming true at last. 
 
 " Don't stop, Von Kettner," he shouted, when 
 Tony paused to refresh himself from the bottle. 
 
 " Quoi ? " said Tony, puzzled. 
 
 " Von Kettner ! that was his name, and should 
 be yours and mine. Von ! We 're gentlemen, you 
 and I." 
 
 " The devil ! Your head must be weak." 
 
 " No, it ain't. 'S-strong 's iron ! Gimme the 
 fiddle, mon pere, till I play you ' Ein rothes Maus- 
 chen,' then you '11 know ! " 
 
 They broke the fiddle between them the fid- 
 dle from Cremona come to this, by what devious 
 paths ! Tony's hair sat up straight, like a dog's 
 hackles ; his narrow forehead lay in crosswise 
 folds. He leaped at his son's throat with a roar 
 ending in a falsetto whimper, fighting with his 
 jaws, gorilla-like. Something apart from the 
 young man, yet of him, still and watchful, saw 
 Roman Biznet gather himself up to the counter- 
 part of his father. 
 
 They bit, tore, scratched, fighting grotesquely, 
 as anthropoids may have fought before men were, 
 burrowing among the dead leaves. " Two na- 
 tures war within us," said a voice somewhere very 
 far off. They strained at each other silently, their 
 veins standing out on their foreheads, knotted and 
 blue. Tony's teeth were fastened in his son's wrist. 
 Suddenly his jaws relaxed, he gasped, and tumbled 
 in a quiet heap. 
 
 As Rome drew back, waiting for his enemy to
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 275 
 
 show some new sign of life and hostility, he heard 
 the voice saying again in a calm tone of virtuous 
 triumph, " Two natures war within us." 
 
 This then was that Other Fellow who had been 
 giving him so much trouble lately. 
 
 The Other Fellow did not stir. Rome stood up, 
 and looked down at him, mistily. His wrist hurt, 
 and he examined curiously the semicircle of blue 
 marks from which blood was oozing painfully. 
 
 The broken violin caught his attention. He 
 picked up the pieces and tried to fit them to- 
 gether, looking now and then in sulky defiance at 
 the prostrate figure. Tony seemed to have flat- 
 tened, somehow, and sunk deeper into the dis- 
 ordered leaves, since he fell. 
 
 The mist cleared as he worked over the broken 
 edges of wood. There came a serene smile of 
 early sunlight upon the bare tops of trees. A 
 chipmunk, dashing past on some urgent errand, 
 ran over the quiet figure in the leaves. 
 
 Roman Biznet looked up at the sunlight, at the 
 distinct tree-trunks, at a crow flapping heavily to- 
 ward a dead pine, at the fragments of wood in his 
 hands, at the motionless man in the leaves. What- 
 ever cloud it was that had rested upon him that 
 night, dissolved. 
 
 Dr. Winthrop was asleep, so his curtains said 
 to all who passed, and the boys going by to school 
 stopped whistling, according to many years' cus- 
 tom. The fathers of some of them had been drilled 
 to it before them. Even to-day, when the house
 
 276 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 stands empty, there are men who will tell you that 
 they fall silent from habit as they pass, and that the 
 fearless whistle of the youngest generation seems to 
 them sacrilege and insult, although they know that 
 the little doctor has now slept almost long enough 
 to make up for those many white nights, and by 
 glancing at a hill just beyond the house one can 
 distinguish the stone that symbolizes this rest, as 
 the drawn curtains of his window used to do. 
 
 On this morning, the curtains being drawn, 
 there was no one in all the village who would have 
 waked him. 
 
 Yet some one pounded on his door, stammering 
 his name with lips too stiff with fear to be intel- 
 ligible ; and the little doctor, waking, knew that 
 here was one worse off than he. 
 
 When he opened his door Biznet fell across the 
 threshold. His face was .ghastly, his eyes dim 
 and staring ; his mouth opened and shut spasmodi- 
 cally as he breathed. 
 
 Dragging him to his own bed, the doctor worked 
 over him patiently, doing this and that in an easy, 
 precise way without question, as he had once worked 
 on battle fields, until the stertorous breathing 
 stopped. The boy's eyes shone wide with intel- 
 ligence and terror. He put up his arms around the 
 doctor's neck and drew him down, holding him 
 tight, babbling softly an incoherent story about 
 something dead in the woods, about his mother, 
 about Alphonsine, about Kitty, about Bess Heath- 
 way so that the doctor, not understanding who 
 it was that lay dead in the woods, fell into a 
 panic about Bess Ileathway.
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 277 
 
 " Tell me," he said, in a sterner voice than he 
 had used since the days of battle, " tell me at 
 once exactly what has happened." 
 
 And the sharp voice did what kindness could 
 not have done. Biznet sat up. " I Ve killed my 
 father. Will you go with me to the woods ? " 
 
 " I don't know much about it," Biznet explained 
 as they walked together through the fresh blue 
 morning. 
 
 " By your breath you 've been drinking." 
 
 " That is n't what made me do it. Something 
 happened in my head. Two natures war within 
 us." He spoke in a bewildered way, mechanically, 
 as if repeating a lesson. " I think I thought he 
 was some one else. Two natures war within us." 
 
 " What did you do to him ? " 
 
 " I don't know. How long ago was it that he 
 and I buried my mother in the woods ? And he 
 killed Phosy. Nobody knew that but Kitty, but 
 it does n't matter now. She 's married. I did n't 
 want Bess to know, either. But it does n't matter. 
 You may tell her if you like. Two natures " 
 
 They left the crisp glare of sunlight for the 
 broken shadows of the woods, and stepped across 
 the chuckling brook. The fire still smouldered, 
 having reached out a red tongue to lick at a pile 
 of leaves near. Pieces of the violin lay scattered 
 about, as Rome had dropped them when he fled. 
 A little further was what the doctor at first 
 thought to be a prone tree-trunk. 
 
 Antoine lay sprawled and huddled, dingy and 
 threadbare as a long dead leaf. Dr. Winthrop
 
 278 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 put his hand on a thin shoulder and turned him 
 over. The eyes, half open, were still bright as if 
 with intelligence, but the lines of the face were 
 relaxed to such a degree that one could not have 
 said with any great assurance, " This man was a 
 devil." He seemed placid, somnolent, even kindly. 
 
 And when the doctor had looked over the body, 
 straightening it out into some dignity, he almost 
 laughed with relief, for there was no mark on 
 him. 
 
 " No tragedy here, my boy. It 's as natural a 
 thing as sleep, a matter with which we need not 
 concern ourselves, except to be glad." 
 
 Biznet went for other men, while the doctor sat by 
 Antoine. He laid the Cremona on the fire, where 
 it sent out a faint resinous odor like sandalwood, 
 and he sat so still that a crow, swooping down, 
 had almost lighted on the dead face before it 
 descried the living watcher and flapped away with 
 a startled " Quoi ! " 
 
 If one might so fight with one's self, thought 
 the doctor, as the lad in his delirium had fancied 
 he was doing, life would be simpler. To bring the 
 thing, once, thus, to tangible debate and then to 
 leave the worse element vanquished and dead ! 
 
 He bent over the dead man and studied care- 
 fully the ill-planned head and features. Every- 
 thing seemed so wretchedly wrong ! Who blames 
 the rattlesnake for its poisonous bite ? Its venom 
 was carefully constructed to that end in the cruci- 
 ble that fashioned the first snake. 
 
 Perhaps for Antoine there was nothing but evil
 
 DOCTOR WINTHROP 279 
 
 possible. Yet in his son there was a germ of de- 
 sire. By a germ of desire mens' skulls have been 
 enlarged from generation to generation, until at 
 last a man is rather worthier than an ape. Can 
 one man do what the race has done ? Dr. Win- 
 throp wanted very much to think it possible. If 
 the boy could keep well if Bessie would make 
 him a wise and loving wife here the doctor 
 shuddered at the idea of that experiment's failing, 
 but his patient philosophy comforted him with the 
 idea that life is not very long and that its chief 
 use seems to be as an experiment anyway. 
 
 Love might do much, and then there was the 
 music, so much greater in him than in his ances- 
 tors. One might hope at least. 
 
 Antoine's heart had broken with his fiddle. 
 When Roman Biznet was his own man again he 
 grieved for them both, yet exulted, too, in a way, 
 as if it had been in some sort a victory. And 
 Cosmos never knew the name and the history of 
 the dead chicken-thief, deciding after a brief in- 
 quiry that the battle redounded to Roman Biznet's 
 credit, even Squire Heathway admitting that he 
 had not supposed the boy possessed of so much 
 grit. 
 
 It was Dr. Winthrop who persuaded Home to 
 keep silence in the matter, arguing that there was 
 much to be lost and nothing to be gained by pub- 
 lishing Antoine's identity. It was to conceal it 
 that he had burned those precious fragments of 
 the Cremona. 
 
 But the little doctor mused much over that
 
 280 ROMAN BIZNET 
 
 notion of Roman Biznet's that his lower nature 
 was somehow embodied in his father. It seemed 
 to make a satisfactory allegory, when one put it 
 that way, as if most moral struggles were in the 
 nature of parricide.
 
 (<bc 
 
 Electrotyptd and printed by H. O. Hougkton &* Co. 
 Cambridge, Mass., U.S, A,
 
 A 000127539 5